Mage-Guard of Hamor

LXXVIII

In the early morning light of twoday, under a green-blue sky tinted with a light haze, Rahl and Drakeyt once more studied the barricades blocking the road up to the Administrator's Residence. Neither officer was mounted, given their orders, nor was Third Company, but all the lancers held the reins to their horses and were ready to mount, if necessary. Behind the two barricades across the road were hundreds of rebels, if not more, and the road provided an easy route from above for reinforcements to reach the defenders. Third Company was stationed on the south wing of the regiment, for "contingency duty." The fog of the previous day had lifted when a warmer wind off the ocean had blown in, and a light ocean breeze still blew.

Taryl's instructions to the two officers on oneday night had been succinct. "You and Third Company are assigned to Fifth Regiment under Commander Shuchyl. Fifth Regiment is being tasked with the attack on the fortified road on the north side of the promontory. In practice, it is unlikely that you will be able to make much headway there. The real purpose is to keep the rebel force bottled up while the main body of First and Second Army attacks the more accessible slope to the south. Third Company is not to take part in the attacks, except in cases where either the battle would be lost or where you can clearly break the enemy and gain the top of the promontory."

After the overcommander had finished, he had dismissed Drakeyt and added a few words to Rahl. "You are not to attempt to protect the entire regiment, no matter what happens. The rebels have more mages, and in short order they will just wear you down. Use your magery only for significant tactical advantage. Significant, Rahl. Significant."

As he continued to ponder what he might do that Taryl would consider significant, Rahl looked back over the Imperial forces. Fifth Regiment was drawn up a good half kay below the first barricade across the road, well out of easy arrow or crossbow range, and had been since dawn.

"It'd be stupid to charge that barricade," Drakeyt observed, making conversation, because both men had already concluded that. "Wonder what the commander will do."

"He didn't tell you?" asked Rahl.

"We're directly under the overcommander, remember, Majer?"

Rahl concealed a wince. Shuchyl had barely talked to either officer, only confirming that Third Company was there to keep mages and others from escaping in the event that the rebels did break. "I imagine you talked to some of the other officers."

Drakeyt grinned. "The commander has a few tricks in his saddlebags. They might work."

"Such as?"

"He gathered all those crossbows-the oversized ones. He also has some small ballistas, and he's got some fast little wagons that carry siege ladders."

"Because they don't use cammabark or powder?" Rahl was still attempting to determine what he could do that might be effective in dealing with the rebel position. There was little use in trying to undermine the road by turning the underlying soil to ooze, because there was no soil. The road had been cut out of solid rock, and even trying to weaken those order bonds in the smallest of areas would exhaust Rahl without doing much to help Fifth Regiment. Taryl had forbidden him to use massive shields, except to prevent a disaster, and throwing order-bolts was only useful against chaos-mages. Besides, that would leave him too weak to do anything else. Charging the barricade behind his shields would have been equally futile against who knew how many mages and that many troopers. All the other order-skills he had mastered seemed useless in the situation before him.

"He's also gathered several wagons of thoroughly dried dung." Drakeyt was the one to frown.

Rahl had to think about that for a moment, then he nodded. "It's waste ordered in a way by animals, and some of it burns."

"No one I ever knew really got hurt by flying crap."

A trumpet call Rahl did not recognize rang out from the rear of Fifth Regiment.

An entire company of archers moved forward, raised their bows, and began to release shafts, lofting them over the barricade wall, if barely. Flashes of chaos-flame flicked out, but only where the arrows were heaviest. As the archers kept loosing their shafts, Rahl began to feel the injuries from behind the wall-not all that many, but some. Then, there was a death, and another.

The archers retreated just before a return volley flew from the rebel forces. Even so, several of the Imperial archers were wounded. Rahl thought one was killed.

Two wagons covered with a framework of leather soaked in water and pushed by troopers shielded largely by the framework trundled forward from the Imperial line, down the road, and then up toward the barricade. At the same time, the Imperial archers returned and began to loose their shafts once more. The rebels retaliated, and the air was filled with missiles.

The wagons moved slowly forward. As they did, a trooper in each wagon and behind the leather framework kept dipping a bucket into a half barrel and throwing water over the leather. Rahl could sense some kind of crude mechanism in the wagon bed as well.

The wagons were within a hundred cubits of the wall before a firebolt arched from behind the barricade and splattered squarely on the leather framework of the right wagon. While chaos-fire dribbled across the framework, it did not catch fire, and the trooper with the bucket scooped and threw water even more quickly.

"They must have soaked the leather in ink or something," Drakeyt said.

"Ink?"

"Iron-gall ink, and they probably added more iron. It soaks into the leather, and with all the water, it makes it harder for chaos-fire to burn it. For a while."

Rahl had never heard of that, but whatever it was that Shuchyl's engineers had come up with, it was working-for the moment.

No sooner had Rahl thought that than the rebel chaos-mages changed their tactics. A firebolt splattered on the stone just in front of the right wagon, but it guttered out short of the wheels. So did the next one.

The troopers working the left wagon eased it closer to the stone cliff face overlooking the road, but kept moving forward.

Another firebolt exploded just under the front wheels and axle of the right wagon. Flames licked upward. Immediately, all the troopers turned and sprinted away. The entire wagon erupted in a gout of flame, with smaller globs of flame exploding away from the column of fire. One glob of flame enveloped two of the fleeing troopers, turning them into moving torches. The flame had to have held both chaos and whatever liquid the engineers had used, because the two torches flared into ashes and dust instantly.

That did not deter the troopers pushing the other wagon, who had propelled that conveyance close enough to the barricade wall that the firebolts of the chaos-mages were only occasionally striking the pavement. A trooper yanked a lever, and bladders of all sizes and shapes cascaded toward the wall. Most cleared it, although one or two splattered on the rough stones. The troopers who had been pushing the wagon sprinted back away from the barricade, trying to stay close to the shelter of the sheer rock of the cliff face overlooking the road, but the rebels seemed almost to ignore them, perhaps because the Imperial archers launched another attack.

The chaos-mages attempted to block the most concentrated flights-all of which were aimed directly behind where the bladders had struck. Falling arrows, bits of chaos-flame… and a section of wall, as well as the area behind it, flared into flame.

Rahl winced, even as he admired Shuchyl's success in getting the rebels to light off the flammable oils.

A series of four notes on the trumpet sounded, and a company of troopers rode forward. With them were several tall and light wagons. The charge was directed at a point immediately to the left of the center of the wall, where the flames had died away, leaving a wide area of blackened stone.

Just before the first line of mounted troopers reached the wall, a point of light flared-so brightly that Rahl could see nothing. Each eye felt like it had been pierced by an enormous needle. He blinked and rubbed his eyes gently.

Slowly, his vision returned, although stars danced across what he could see.

The charge had been stopped, and mounts milled below the wall. Firebolts dropped into the mix of troopers, and waves of chaos and death swept past Rahl.

Another trumpet signal rang out, and the troopers withdrew, leaving the bodies of both men and mounts strewn before the barricade.

Rahl glanced up. According to the sun it was approaching midmorning. Had it been that long?

"Any ideas, Majer?" Drakeyt's voice was low, concerned.

"Not yet. Anything I could do wouldn't be much help. Not here." At least, not anything that he'd been able to think up since the night before.

Drakeyt nodded.

For a time, the area between the two forces remained empty except for remnants of burned wagons, mounts, and men, but Rahl knew that would not last. He could sense movement behind the barricade, as well as activity at the rear of Fifth Regiment. Before that long, another set of wagons trundled forward from the Imperial side.

Surprisingly, to Rahl, only a few firebolts flew toward the wagons, but more than a few arrows did, and a number carried flaming tips, dipped in pitch or some similar substance. The arrows had even less effect than the firebolts had-until the wagons neared the barricade and several rebels stood near the top of the barricade and hurled what looked to be cloth soaked in oil and wrapped around a chunk of firewood under the nearer wagon.

That wagon began to burn, but the Imperial archers cut down most of the exposed rebels as another wave of troopers appeared, riding hard for the barricade.

This time the troopers who rode forward all had makeshift patches over one eye. Rahl nodded to himself. Crude, but effective. Theoretically, the chaos-mage who had loosed the first blinding flash could wait for a moment, then deliver another, but the amount of chaos required, from what Rahl had felt, made it most unlikely that any chaos-mage could do that often or in quick succession. It was also unlikely that more than one chaos-mage had that talent.

Rahl almost shook his head. How did he know that? Maybe the brilliant light flash was something from Fairhaven, where all the white wizards could do it.

There was a light flash, but far weaker, so much so that Rahl's vision returned almost immediately, and the mounted troopers rode to the wall, dragging the light scaling wagons into position.

Chaos-bolts flared down toward the Imperial forces surging toward the barricade, then died away. Rahl could sense a chill, and whiteness ran across the front of the lower-road barricade, then began to flow down the stones, turning into liquidlike fire moving from the barricade wall to the pavement, then toward the attacking troopers.

The flowing chaos licked at the forelegs of the mounts, then engulfed both the first line of horses and riders. The screams of men and mounts were lost in the roar of flames flaring skyward.

Rahl swallowed. He'd never seen anything like that. or smelled it, as the sickly-sweet nauseating odor of burned flesh settled around him and Third Company.

"Frig!" muttered Dhosyn from where he sat on his mount behind Rahl and Drakeyt.

Still, Rahl could feel the chaos ebbing.

Another wave of troopers rode forward, and this time there were only a few weak chaos-bolts, and a handful of arrows. Scaling ladders unfolded from the light wagons, and troopers began to climb up and over the barricade.

For a time, intermittent waves of death flowed down and across Rahl.

Then the rebel survivors broke and sprinted or hobbled back up the road, scrambling up and over the second barricade, set a good three hundred cubits farther up the road, a road that was but twenty cubits wide. The second barricade wasn't any higher than the first, but there was a ledge cut into the cliffside above the barricade and slightly behind it, also with a low wall, and on that ledge were both archers and chaos-mages, Rahl sensed.

Again, a kind of quiet fell across the contested area.

Rahl checked the sun, its white light diluted not only by the high haze, but by the smoke that had risen from all the fires and chaos-burning, and was surprised-again-to find that it was later than he would have believed, almost midafternoon. Bodies were everywhere, more than several hundred, Rahl thought, possibly close to a thousand. Given the nature of the fight so far, he doubted that there were many wounded.

Shuchyl did not even consider attacking the second barricade immediately. Instead, two shielded wagons moved up to the first barricade, and figures in brown and khaki-engineers-began to use bars and picks to remove the stones in the middle of the barricade.

Rahl took the time to walk back to where one of the first squad's troopers held his mount and extracted some of his travel rations from his saddlebags. As he ate, and drank from his water bottle, he kept looking at the barricade where the engineers moved stones. He had to wonder at the danger involved, but Shuchyl had judged that the chaos-mages were so worn down that they did not want to try to pick off engineers behind stone by trying to throw chaos-bolts hundreds of cubits. Even so, Rahl was concerned, but the rebels did not even attempt more than scattered flights of arrows, few of which hit anywhere near the engineers, and the sun had dropped noticeably lower in the afternoon sky by the time there was a breach in the barricade ten cubits wide.

That suggested to Rahl that the rebels definitely had limited manpower-or that their defense consisted of efforts to bleed the Imperial forces down without losing many of their own troops. Yet, if that had been the case, why had they fought at Selyma as they had?

Once the engineers had opened a gap almost twenty cubits wide in the lower-barricade wall, they retreated, the next company of troopers moved up and stationed themselves behind the remaining end sections of the barricade as shelter from attacks from the second barricade, not that the rebels were showing much of an attack.

Just as Rahl had thought that, a barrage of firebolts cascaded down into the troopers behind the barricade walls. Then a hail of arrows followed.

Another wave of deaths surged over Rahl.

"Too bad there's no easy way to put a gap in that second wall, or get cammabark close enough to blow it open." Dhosyn's voice was low, resigned, coming from behind Rahl.

"The cammabark wouldn't be any good unless it was in a casing, like a shell or an old-style cannonball," Drakeyt pointed out. "Then their mages would just explode it before anyone could get close enough."

Rahl frowned. Exploding the wall… exploding the wall… He'd once exploded a part of a wall. Admittedly, that had been the black wall separating Nylan from the rest of Recluce, and it had only worked because of the additional order linked into the stone… but natural stone did have more order than soil or sand.

Shuchyl ordered the archers back into the fray, and, as their shafts lofted and fell behind the second barricade, the number of rebel arrows fell off. The firebolts continued, if only occasionally.

From the positions taken by the regimental companies, it appeared as though the commander was not about to attempt any more assaults.. or not soon. Considering that Shuchyl had already lost more than a third of the regiment, Rahl could understand that decision.

Still… he glanced at the remnants of the carnage below the breached barricade wall and back toward the thinner ranks of Fifth Regiment. His eyes went back to the upper barricade. Could he do what he thought might be possible?

Finally, he squared his shoulders and turned to Drakeyt. "I think it's time."

"You have something in mind?" asked Drakeyt.

"Yes. I don't know if it will work, but it's worth the effort to see." He shrugged. "If it's not, no one will know." Except you and me, he thought.

Rahl moved more to his left, toward the base of the cliff, but raised his sight shield before he moved away from Third Company, navigating toward the road and the barricades with his order-senses. Holding both sight shield and order shields as strongly as he could, he walked forward, then up the slope of the paved road, staying in the shadows he could not see, hugging the cliff face, and hoping that his patience had convinced the rebels that all the Imperial mage-guards were with the main forces of First and Second Army.

He had to pick his way around the troopers behind the lower barricade, then ease through the breach and back to the side of the road. He could sense an occasional firebolt, but none were hurled in his direction. His sight shield kept the light from him, and he had no way of feeling whether he was in the shade except by staying as close to the ancient chaos-smoothed stone that formed the cliff-face wall overlooking the road.

When he neared the upper barricade, Rahl could feel the presence of several mages on the walled ledge behind and uphill of the barrier. One exuded such whiteness that he had to be a white wizard from Fairhaven. Intermittent chaos-order-probes flickered around the barricade, but they felt random, almost halfhearted.

Keeping himself in the corner between the barricade and the smoothed cliffside, Rahl concentrated on the center of the barricade wall, ignoring the scores of rebels behind it, not to mention those on the walled ledge. When he had exploded the black wall in Nylan, he had merely attempted to see how the order was structured over and around the stones. Each stone had had an order framework, but that framework had been strengthened, not created, by the wall-builders. As he reached out with his order-senses and touched the crude wall before him, he knew he needed to find the knots of higher and underlying order embedded within the mixture of rock and timber.

Many of the stones were almost "dead," with barely enough order to hold them together. Amid the mixture, Rahl found bits of what he would have called "sparkling" order, and he began to link one to the next, using a thin line of order. With each link, a knotted pattern of order built, and so did the strength of the sparkling. Was the sparkle something like order ready to release chaos? That was the closest to how Rahl could have described it.

He forced himself to work deliberately, adding links and strands one by one until he had an order-chaos structure that, if he recalled correctly, had something like the power of a small section of the black wall. As he kept adding to that structure, he began to funnel and channel the forces toward the middle of the barricade wall.

Whhhsst!

A firebolt slammed against his shields, followed by a second one, then a third.

Rahl staggered, trying to stay on his feet. So much for remaining undetected.

He couldn't keep doing what he was doing and hold his shields against a continuing barrage of chaos-bolts. Or could he? What if he linked that power into his order-chaos web? Could he?

Whhssst!

With the next firebolt, Rahl channeled the chaos into the barricade, holding it behind order. Two more chaos-bolts followed, and he did the same.

Then came the light flash-not that Rahl could see it behind his shields-but he could feel the power. That kind of chaos-force was so different from the firebolts that he couldn't find a way to grasp it.

"Chaos-mage below! Near the inside of the road! Just beyond the barricade!"

"Heavy crossbows! Iron bolts!"

Rahl could sense all sorts of rebels forming up, in addition to a well of chaos building above him. He had to do what he could, and he had no idea whether it would even work. He moistened his lips and concentrated, untwisting all the links he had built-all at once-then reinforced his own shields.

CRUUMMPP!

The explosion threw Rahl backward and then into the ancient smooth stone of the cliff face. Even within his shields, he was stunned, lying on his side, his back against smooth stone. He struggled to maintain the sight shield. He didn't want anyone shooting iron bolts at him, not when he doubted whether his shields would hold much longer.

Stones pattered down around him, and more death-far closer-swept over him.

Rahl's guts twisted and turned, and he kept swallowing to keep the bile down. Officers didn't retch on themselves. They didn't.

He slowly rolled onto his knees and then staggered erect. He put one boot in front of the other and began to make his way downhill, slowly, because there were fragments of rock and stone everywhere.

Below he could hear the trumpet calls of Fifth Regiment, and he forced himself to keep moving. He didn't want to get trampled by his own forces. He finally released the sight shield when he made his way through and past the breach in the lower barricade. Two troopers from first squad were already riding uphill, leading the gelding. Behind them were Dhosyn and first squad.

Rahl just stepped back against the stone of the cliff face and gestured.

Dhosyn caught sight of him immediately. "Majer's over there!"

Once Dhosyn and first squad reached Rahl, they had to hug the cliff face as troopers from Fifth Regiment companies poured up the road in pursuit of the rebels.

Rahl climbed into the saddle, slowly and awkwardly, then turned to the squad leader. "Thank you."

"The captain and I-we thought you might be looking for a mount." Dhosyn gestured uphill. "Specially after that."

Rahl looked back toward the upper barricade. It wasn't there. Rather, a few loose heaps of stone remained, with fragments strewn for hundreds of cubits. Behind where it had stood, there was even less, and Rahl sensed that none of the rebels within a hundred cubits had survived. Nor had the two mages.

Rahl eased the gelding close to the stone of the cliff face to allow another company of Imperial troopers to gallop past first squad. He was in no hurry to join such a charge. He'd barely been able to mount the gelding, and his legs were shaking so much he wondered if his boots would remain in the stirrups. Even though he had made that charge possible, the fact that he was in no condition to ride out immediately galled him.

He turned and reached for his saddlebags, but he was so light-headed that he nearly lost his seat. He ate whatever he had, and slowly drained his water bottle.

By the time he thought he could stay in the saddle, most of Fifth Regiment had passed first squad, and Drakeyt had ridden up with the remainder of Third Company.

"You don't do things in a small way, Majer."

"Some things you can't." Rahl grimaced. He was going to be sore again. "That's what the overcommander keeps telling me. We need to follow the regiment."

Drakeyt nodded. "Deliberately."

Rahl understood. The company had already taken more than its share of casualties, and there was little point in hurrying into a melee where they could add little.

The sun was low in the west, and the road up the east side of the promontory was completely in shadow by the time Rahl and Third Company reached the top of the kay-long incline and came out on the flat. Park-like grounds stretched southward, surrounding the Administrator's Residence-a large villa of two levels-enclosed only by a head-high iron gratework fence. Two squads of Imperial troopers had been detailed to guard the open gates, clearly to prevent looting.

At the south end of the park was a compound with buildings and barracks. Before the gates in its low stone walls was another squad of troopers.

"No rebels there?" Rahl called out.

"No, ser. They saw us coming and rode south."

Beyond the compound, the mesa-like flat area on the top of the ridge began to narrow and slope downward. Rahl reined up.

Below, Imperial forces had encircled the rebels and surged inward, compressing the defenders so that many could hardly move. While Rahl could not see any firebolts, he could sense from the diffuse chaos that many had been thrown and that wide patches of blackened ground lay beneath the hoofs of the mounts of rebels and Imperials alike.

"The rebels had more mages than we do," Dhosyn said.

"The more troops involved," Rahl replied, "the less effect a mage can have."

"You had a certain effect, Majer," Drakeyt said.

"Only because of the way they tried to defend Nubyat," Rahl replied. "You might recall that what I did in wide field battles was far less effective."

"It was effective enough." Drakeyt's words were dry.

Effective enough? For what? For the moment, Rahl watched as the Imperial forces continued to slaughter the rebels, hoping that he would not have to contribute more to what had turned into a massacre-all because of what he had managed to do with one stone barricade.