Ordermaster

LXXXI

Kharl′s guess had been right. There was no one in the southern barracks. All the buildings were deserted-except for one elderly groom who could only say that everyone had left “soon after the big battle” and that they’d all headed south on orders from Overcaptain Vielam. While some gear had been left, there were no provisions, and no rifles or cartridges. There were bags of powder in an iron-lined, stone-walled magazine building well away from the others, but nothing besides cannon shells and powder.

The quick departure confirmed Kharl’s secondhand impression of Vielam, both of his abilities and his courage, since Vielam couldn’t havebeen in the force that faced Kharl. It might also reflect Vielam’s intelligence in assessing the situation, Kharl reflected.

Kharl and the others settled back into their saddles and rode northward. Less than a kay from the deserted barracks area, they turned from the south road onto the ring road that led northward to the east road. Like the south road leading out of Brysta, it was packed clay, turned sloppy by the rain, but there were few tracks, and nothing to indicate that any large body of lancers had traveled in either direction, or that armsmen had marched the road recently. Hadn’t Vielam sent any messengers northward? Was the eastern road camp or barracks even held by Egen’s forces?

Kharl shrugged. In a sense, that didn’t matter. If all of Egen’s forces were already regrouping in the south, then finding Ostcrag or Osten might well be easier. If they weren’t, Kharl needed to do something to neutralize the camp ahead.

As he rode along the ring road that he had once walked with Jeka, fleeing a white wizard before he’d even known he was a mage, that journey seemed ages ago, for all that it had been slightly less than a year before. So much had changed, and was still changing.

After a glass or so, he turned in the saddle and called to her. “It’s faster riding.”

“Sorer, too,” she responded, with a faint smile.

Erdyl looked puzzled, and, after turning to watch the road ahead, Kharl extended his order-senses to hear what his secretary might ask.

“ … why did he say that?”

“Been this way before, time back. He can tell you,” Jeka said pleasantly.

“How did you come to know him?”

“Better if he told you.” Her voice remained pleasant.

Kharl couldn′t help but smile at Jeka’s responses.

Less than two glasses later, Kharl turned his mount off the ring road, a good kay before it intersected Angle Road, and followed a lane that looked to head east. After less than a kay on the lane, half a kay away to the north, across the hills, he could see the south side of Vetrad’s sawmill and lumber barn.

Ahead, the green hills steepened into irregular and rocky shapes, and the lane turned sharply south. Kharl reined up, extending his order-senses once more, feeling for the camp and lancers that he knew could not be that far to the northeast of where he was. There was no concentration of chaosthat would have marked a white wizard, but Kharl did gain a sense of the muted chaos that often marked large groups of people-almost due north. He studied the ground, mostly small meadows marked by stone walls and hedgerows, and infrequent cots and huts.

About two hundred cubits ahead on the left side of the lane, just before it turned, was a gap in the low, piled-stone wall, and a narrow track seemed to head north. They could try that, Kharl decided, and he urged the gelding forward.

The track was more like an animal trail, or a lane that had once seen more traffic and since been largely overgrown. There were no tracks in the damp clay, except for those of coneys and other small animal traces that Kharl did not recognize. He had to duck continually, or brush away branches that poked out from the two hedgerows that framed the track.

They had traveled less than half a kay when the track turned leftward, but more to the northwest, rather than straight west. Kharl could sense that they were still slightly to the east of the camp. He kept checking with his order-senses, since he could not actually see beyond the trees and bushes that had once been a better-kept hedgerow.

Another three hundred cubits or so later, they neared a gap in the vegetation on the right side. Kharl reined up and looked through, out onto what had once been a meadow, but now sported a forest of saplings that ranged from knee high to as high as his mount’s ears. From what he could tell, the camp lay beyond the former meadow, even beyond the woods on the far side.

“This way.”

As he rode slowly through the saplings, he wondered why the area had been deserted. Land was life to a holder, and Kharl couldn’t imagine it being neglected without some reason. Had the holder let the lands lapse back to the local lord? Why? Or had the holders been removed by Ostcrag? Or Osten?

The light was beginning to fade by the time Kharl reined up on the far side of the narrow woods, at the edge of a short bluff that began within a half score of cubits from the end of the trees. Below the bluff was a gully cut by another stream flowing out of the hills. In the middle of the rise on the far side of the gully stood what he had sought.

The eastern camp was more like a fort than the barracks to the south of Brysta. Gray stone walls a good six cubits high surrounded the buildings and stables. There were gates to the south and west, but not to the east.There the low hill had been cut away, and cannon mounted on the top of the wider walls faced the main road. The road was on the north side of the stream that had cut a narrow canyon through the higher hills to the east, giving the fort control of the road. Given the rocky and rugged nature of the hills-and the crumbliness of the rock-the fort clearly controlled the east road. The area around the fort had been cleared of brush, although the grasses looked to be almost knee high.

Even in the dimming light, the rising fog, and the growing mist, Kharl could tell that the walls were manned not by Nordlan armsmen from the West Quadrant, but by Egen’s patrollers, and the gates were closed.

He eased his mount back into the trees, toward a small clearing they had passed less than fifty cubits back. There he dismounted, tied the gelding, and stretched. The others followed his example.

“What are you going to do?” asked Jeka.

“Eat and rest, and when it gets full dark, I’ll slip under the walls on the east side and blow up the cannon,” Kharl said. “Then come back here.”

“Like before?”

“Mostly. Except I won’t be facing white wizards. There aren′t any near.”

“Do you have to, ser?” asked Erdyl.

“No. I can wait until they leave and swell Egen’s forces. Or I can wait until Egen shows up here with white wizards, then face them all alone. Or we can ride northeast to Hemmen and catch a ship back to Valmurl, where I’ll tell Lord Ghrant that I failed and the West Quadrant will soon be a possession of Hamor.”

Erdyl took half a step backward. “I’m sorry. It’s just … you’ve done so much, and we haven’t been that much help.”

“And I look like second death, probably,” Kharl added. After a moment, he laughed. “You know, when I found out I was a true lord, I asked Speltar, the steward at Cantyl, what that meant. You know what he told me?”

No one answered.

“He said it meant that, if I did something wrong, I had the privilege of being beheaded instead of being hanged.”

Jeka and Demyst were the only ones who smiled. Erdyl just looked bewildered.

Kharl rummaged through his provisions sack. There was still some bread and cheese left, and he knew one bottle held cider. He could use allthe sustenance he could get before he took on the fort on the other side of the gully.

After eating, Kharl propped himself against a tree and closed his eyes. He thought he might have dozed, but started into full awareness at the sound of a bell tolling.

“Watch bell,” Demyst said. “First glass of the night watch.”

Kharl rose, stiffly, and stretched. He couldn’t help yawning. He stretched again, then looked through the darkness to the undercaptain. “Time to get moving.”

He could feel Jeka’s eyes on him, but she said nothing.

“I’ll be back as soon as I can. If this works, you’ll hear things long before I get back.”

He moved slowly along the rough track the horses had made earlier, stopping at the edge of the woods-or former woodlot, he suspected-where he surveyed the open space beyond and the dark gray mass of stone. There was still no sign or sense of a white wizard.

Kharl couldn’t say that he understood, but he wasn’t going to question the absence of a chaos-wizard, not when he’d faced more of them than he’d expected all too many times.

He took a deep breath and moved toward the gully.

The low bluff was steeper than he’d recalled, and he ended up grabbing roots to slow his descent to the stream-less than two cubits wide, although full to its banks after the rain. He jumped across and promptly found his boots sinking into the spongy ground on the other side. The slope on the north side was more gradual, but longer, and he was breathing heavily when he reached the top. He stayed low, not wanting to be silhouetted against the lighter-colored soil on the south side of the bluff, as he began to cross the meadow toward the south wall of the fort.

He kept his order-senses extended but did not use a sight shield, although he was ready to raise it at any moment. He was tired enough that he wanted to avoid any unnecessary order-magery.

He tried to move quietly, but the swishing of the wet grass against his boots and trousers sounded to him like it carried for kays. He’d only covered a hundred cubits or so before his trousers were soaked below the knee, and water was seeping down into his boots. Step after careful step finally brought him to the south wall, about a third of the way toward the southeast corner.

He extended an order-probe toward the magazines beside the cannon,but they were too far-or rather, the combination of distance and cold iron defeated Kharl’s efforts.

He flattened himself against the gray stone blocks and began to edge his way westward toward the southeast corner of the fort.

Above him, he heard a rustle; and he raised a sight shield and froze in place.

“Serjeant … serjeant …″

Under the sight shield, Kharl kept moving, if more slowly and deliberately. Behind and above him he heard boots on stone, then voices.

″ … thought I saw something down there … grasses moving …″ ″ … ought to be able to see a man, Navoyt … might be a fox … Keep watching … don′t want Osten’s men slipping up on us …″

“Yes, ser.”

The voices got fainter as Kharl reached the corner and began to ease his way down the section of the hill that had been cut away, a drop of another three cubits. Even for all that, he was getting closer to one of the magazines holding powder-or cammabark-and the locked chaos of the powder was definitely stronger to his order-senses.

At the base of the hill-wall, he edged northward, until he stood directly below one of the magazines. Slowly, Kharl extended the finest line of order, upward toward the magazine almost directly above him. Even so, it was an effort. Carefully, he began to unlink the order of a small section of iron on the inside of the magazine, directly beside bagged powder loads for the cannon.

At the moment the linkage began to spray apart of its own momentum, Kharl concentrated and surrounded himself with a shell of hardened air.

CURROMPTTT!!!

Despite the shield, Kharl’s ears rang so badly that he could hear nothing. He felt, rather than heard, the successive explosions of the other magazines. For all his caution, he was thrown against the inside of his own air shield, then hurled back the other way, bouncing back and forth.

Stones and stone fragments crashed down against the shield.

Another wave of explosions followed the first, and yet another after that.

Reddish white waves of death cascaded across Kharl, and his guts tried to turn themselves inside out. He swallowed, convulsively.

Another round of explosions shivered the ground beneath his feet, and more stone hammered at the air shield.

More waves of death buried Kharl, each a knife of reddish white, yet a gaping emptiness as well.

The ground shifted, jerking Kharl against the air shield once more. He struggled to stand erect.

Kharl waited until he was sure that not only the explosions had stopped, but that no more rocks and fragments of the fort were falling. Then, he forced himself to expand the air shield slightly, just to make sure nothing was resting on top of it that would fall on him once he released the shield. Several more chunks of stone rumbled and rattled away.

When he finally released the shield, he was standing in a pit surrounded by stone piled somewhat above his head.

Almost a quarter glass passed before he had climbed out of the pit-most carefully-and started back toward Jeka and the others. He stumbled more than a few times, and half fell into the spongy ground on the north side of the stream, coming down on his knees. He struggled upright and jumped across the stream, then searched for a place where he could use roots to help him climb the bluff that had seemed so much shorter coming down.

Jeka and Demyst were waiting at the top of the bluff. They reached out and pulled him up.

“Thank you,” he panted.

“Not much left,” Demyst pointed.

Kharl looked back. Before, the fort had looked solid and gray. Now, sections glowed red, and even in the darkness, the trails of smoke that wound up toward the overhead clouds were easily visible. It looked like a vision from the time of the white demons.

Kharl turned away, almost stumbling again.

Jeka steadied him. “Now what?”

“We find a place to wait where we don’t get too wet. There should be some cots or something near here,” Kharl said tiredly. “When Lord West-or Osten-or whoever-discovers that the fort is gone, they’ll ride down toward Brysta, or they’ll send scouts.”

“If they don’t?” inquired Demyst.

“Then Egen will move his troops back up here to guard the gap to the east. That won′t happen. Even Osten isn’t stupid enough to stay blocked away to the east, not if he wants a chance at succeeding his father. He might not confront Egen, but if his lancers and armsmen are where they could attack, he’ll be in a stronger position.”

“Why haven′t they fought over Brysta?” asked Jeka.

“Because Brysta is what brings golds into their coffers. They fight over the city itself, and everyone loses, no matter who wins.” Kharl took a deep breath. Demons, he was tired. “If the fighting goes on, they might. I don’t think so, because even the Hamorians wouldn’t want Brysta that badly damaged.”

He made his way toward the gelding, hoping he could mount. He really didn’t want to remain too close to the burning ruins of the fort. He thought, tired as he was, that he could lead them back the way they had come, using his order-senses and night sight. He stifled a yawn. He hadn’t been sleeping that well, and he needed sleep. He wasn′t certain that he’d get that much, but anything would help-after they put some distance between them and the destruction he had created.