Colors of Chaos

XC

JUST BECAUSE HE’D given Fydel a questioning look the night before, now Cerryl found himself back on the gelding, his muscles no longer aching but only moderately sore. Fydel’s score of lancers rode northward on a road that was more trail than road, a track of dusty gray clay that rose in powdery clouds with each hoof that struck it, a track barely able to take two riders abreast. Despite the full morning sunlight, the day was pleasant, although Cerryl suspected that the afternoon would be hotter and far less pleasant.

On the east side of the road was a piled stone wall, no more than two cubits high. Behind the stone was a higher meadow, where fresh green shoots twined up between the frayed and brown stalks of the previous year. To the downhill and left side of the road was a field that had been plowed, but which showed no regular growth, just scattered splotches of green against the dry tan soil.

Cerryl wondered if the arrival of the White Lancers had driven off the peasants before they could plant.

“See? There’s no one there. Or you think there isn’t. Except they’re there…waiting with some dark angel trap.” From where he rode to the left of Cerryl, Fydel snorted.

Glancing across the open terrain, Cerryl had to wonder where the Spidlarian forces would even hide. He couldn’t detect any chaos or order that could have been used to conceal riders or armsmen on foot.

“They don’t use magery,” Fydel answered the unspoken question. “You’ll see.”

As they continued northwest on the narrow road, the cultivated fields gave way to more woodlots or woods and meadows-and peasant cots even more widely scattered.

A fly buzzed past Cerryl’s face, and the gelding’s tail swished to brush the offending insect away, sending it back to plague Cerryl. He swatted at it several times before it flew elsewhere; then he blotted his forehead.

After a time, the road dipped into a swale, with a small marsh below the road to the left. A brook ran from the east through a depression in the road. A good thirty cubits upstream from the road was a clump of bushes, the small new leaves barely unfurled and the second-year leaves still half-gray.

“They hide in places like that. Well…they won’t hide any longer.” Fydel’s face screwed up in concentration.

Cerryl could feel the chaos buildup. “There’s nothing there.”

“There won’t be,” grunted the older wizard.

Whhhstt! The fireball arced out and fell onto the clump of bushes. Chaos flames spurted into the sky as the bushes flared red. A puff of flame fluttered from the bushes before arching into the ground and dissolving into white ashes that fell into an oval on the brown and green grass. Cerryl swallowed as he realized that the brief flame puff had been a bird of some sort.

The flame tongues where the bushes had been died away almost immediately, leaving reddish embers and thin trails of black and gray smoke that wound skyward. The acrid scent of burning brush and winter leaves filled the air, then died away as the light breeze scattered the ashes, even before Cerryl and the lancers reached the marshy area.

“Easier that way,” grunted Fydel. “Doesn’t leave them anywhere to hide.”

Cerryl hadn’t seen that much cover, not any sufficient to conceal any force large enough to threaten even a score of lancers. “How big a force do they have?”

“Around here? A score perhaps, but they don’t ever send that many-just a few archers. They loose some shafts, and they’re gone. They don’t use magery, and you can’t use a glass to find something that disturbs neither order nor chaos.”

Cerryl nodded, his eyes flicking to the left at the ashes and wisps of smoke that had been marsh bushes, then to the road. Another hill, higher than the one the troop had just descended rose beyond the stream, and the road angled eastward and began to climb once more.

The murmurs from the lancers who rode behind Teras drifted up to Cerryl over the dust-muffled sound of hoofs.

“…up and down…up and down…”

“…got two mages today…Mayhap that’ll help.”

“Don’t count on mages…”

“Ready lance or blade’s best defense for a lancer.”

Cerryl rubbed his nose, trying to stop the itching. Kkkchew…He rubbed his nose.

From the next high point in the road Cerryl looked northward. Ahead, the road turned eastward as it curved down and around the hillside toward a broad valley filled with meadows where scattered purple wildflowers dotted the green. Beyond the meadows was a forest or woods that stretched up the hillsides. Nearer, below the road to the left, the grass was sparser. Occasional bushes-still showing furled winter-gray leaves and bare branches-bordered the uphill side of the road.

Cerryl glanced toward the valley, leaning forward in the saddle and squinting to make out the forms in the meadows.

“Cattle,” observed Fydel. “We might be able to send out a wagon and bring in some for rations.” He paused. “If they’re still here…if the blue bastards haven’t set them up as a trap.” He turned in the saddle and added in a louder voice to Teras, “Woods ahead-and cattle. Have them ready for anything.”

“Arms ready!” ordered Teras.

“Arms ready.”

Cerryl took a deep breath, then exhaled. From behind one of the bushes farther uphill-exactly where Cerryl couldn’t see-an arrow arched down toward the small column.

Whhhsttt! Cerryl loosed chaos, almost without thinking.

The metal arrowhead, glowing red, tumbled into the road dirt, less than a dozen cubits before Cerryl’s mount.

“Arms!” The order came from Teras.

About a half-score of lancers galloped past Cerryl and off the road in the direction from which the shaft had come.

“Quick there,” said Fydel. “Lucky you were looking that way.”

“You said they might do something.” Cerryl tried to reach out with his order-chaos senses but could find no indication of anyone, especially not the ordered blackness of a Black mage.

He listened. After a moment, he could hear hoofs on harder ground, sounds that vanished almost immediately, as did the half-score lancers.

Fydel and Teras kept riding downhill toward the meadows and the cattle that grazed there. Since they did, as did the lancers who followed, so did Cerryl, but he kept his eyes and senses alert for order or chaos concentrations-or more arrows.

The road and the valley remained unchanged-until the lancer detachment rejoined Fydel and the others halfway down the road to the valley.

“They were gone, ser,” reported the subofficer who had led the half-score lancers back to rejoin. He offered a nod to Captain Teras. “Would have foundered our mounts trying to catch them.”

“Fall in, at the end,” said Teras laconically.

“Yes, ser.”

The lancers rejoined the column.

“Lucky this time,” Fydel said dourly. “Won’t always be looking in the right direction when someone looses a shaft.”

“I’ll take good luck when we can have it,” replied Teras from beside the square-bearded mage, “especially against attackers who loose shafts and then flee.”

“We need more levies. That way we could just move ahead and take over all these hamlets.” Fydel grinned at Cerryl. “Then you could worry about peacekeeping and this sort of thing.”

“Thank you,” the younger mage answered. “I appreciate your faith.”

“Think nothing of it.” Fydel’s grin broadened.

“We might get some fresh beef out of this patrol,” suggested Teras. “The men will appreciate that.”

“We all will,” said Fydel.

Except for the peasants who lose their animals. Cerryl just nodded and blotted his forehead again.