Ordermaster

LXXXV

As Kharl had suspected, Osten’s forces were not ready on sevenday, although Kharl had been able to sense the approach of Egen’s white wizards by late in the day. By sunset, he felt as though they were still well south of Brysta proper, south even of the barracks on the south side of the city.

Early on eightday Kharl and his group rode out to join Osten’s forces. The day had dawned with a hazy sky, but Kharl had the feeling that it would clear. That meant that Egen was more likely to attack, since the white mages preferred not to fight in the rain. By midmorning, all of Osten’s forces were moving southward on the ring road, less than a kay from where it joined the south road. The lancers led the column, and the armed foot brought up the rear, with the supply wagons trailing, and having a hard time of it in the muddy clay left by the combination of summer-end rain and the mounts and men traveling before them.

Kharl and his small party rode just behind the vanguard, in the second body of troops, following Osten and his personal guard-lancers clad in a blue so dark it was almost black, with a thin piping of silver-gray. Osten had detailed-not quite grudgingly-two squads of lancers as support for Kharl. Kharl′s trousers were mud-spattered, and there were even a few splotches on his sleeves, although those had dried quickly even under the hazy morning sunlight.

The ground on both sides of the road held low hills, but the those onthe eastern side were higher and presaged the more rugged hills to the south. Kharl could just make out, over the tops of the woodlot trees ahead to his left, the beginning of the long ridge to the north of the southern patroller barracks.

“How far away do you think Egen is?” asked Demyst.

“About four kays south of here, close to the barracks where we were before.” Kharl’s order-senses gave him a rough idea. Over the past day, he had pondered whether he should have destroyed the structures, but at that time, he’d been more worried about the eastern fort and whether more white wizards might appear. If he had, he certainly wouldn’t have had the strength for at least another day to deal with the eastern fort, and who knew what those patrollers might have been able to do?

“They moving?”

“They don’t seem to be.”

“Waiting for us to come to them.”

Kharl nodded as he sensed two scouts who rode back toward Osten. He just hoped that Osten would tell him what they had discovered, although he had more than a few doubts about Osten′s judgment. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, he wished he had been faced with better choices as to whom he needed to back on behalf of Lord Ghrant.

After perhaps a quarter glass, a lancer pulled his mount from the column ahead and began to ride back toward Kharl.

“Lord Osten wants something, I’d wager,” offered Demyst, riding beside Kharl.

“All lords do,” Kharl said dryly, realizing as he spoke the words that he’d condemned himself as well. His wry smile was brief.

The lancer turned his mount to ride on the shoulder, alongside and matching pace with Kharl and his escort. “Lord Kharl, Lord Osten would like you to join him.”

Kharl eased his mount forward and onto the shoulder, where he rode past the rear of Osten’s guard until he neared Osten himself.

“Lord Osten …”

The blond lord turned his head. “Join me.”

Kharl eased his mount beside Osten, momentarily conscious of just how much bigger he was than Osten.

“Lord Kharl,” Osten began, “what can you tell me about the would-be usurper’s position?”

“I do not have scouts, as you do, but the main body of his forces, and three or four white wizards, are somewhere ahead. I would judge about three kays.”

For a moment, the narrow-faced Osten was silent. Then, he nodded. “Almost exactly two and a half kays ahead. His wizards or his patrollers killed one party of scouts. The two who just returned tell me that we face three companies of mounted patrollers and two companies of patroller foot, with almost ten companies of regular Nordlan lancers. The entire rebel force has retaken the southern barracks area.”

“There was nothing to stop them. The barracks were empty, and they took everything with them when they retreated earlier.”

“All the supplies?” Osten’s voice was disbelieving.

“All of them except some cannon powder, but the cannon were damaged in the battle.” Except one. And Kharl wasn’t about to mention that.

“The scouts did not report cannon.”

Kharl nodded, waiting to see what Osten would say next.

“They have blocked the road, and hold the flat to the east and the high ground to the west. They have fixed crude pikes across the road to block our lancers there or to force us into the marshy part of the flat or uphill against the patrollers with rifles.”

“Most of the patrollers are probably Hamorian lancers in patroller uniforms,” Kharl suggested.

“That is like him. Ungrateful wretch!” Osten spat to the side away from Kharl. “I found it hard to believe that he could have trained so many in a year, even with …″ The lord-heir let the words trail away.

Kharl noted that Osten had yet to refer to his brother by name. “He didn’t. That way, the emperor-″

“The white demon can claim that he only supplied a few wizards and some training to the men of the would-be usurper. That is so like Hamor. Be that as it may, what great aid do you offer us?”

“The hills to the west are not at all that high, and the slopes are gentle. That is where the white wizards are. If they were not there, you could take the hills and flank … the usurper. Then he and his men would be trapped against the ridge and the marshy ground.”

“You want me to send men against the wizards?” Osten’s voice turned scornful.

“No. I intend to deal with the wizards-with the two squads of lancers you loaned me, of course. We’ll circle behind them and attack them fromthe west. From what you’ve said, and from their positions, they expect you to attack. They plan to use the wizards to kill as many lancers as possible before you can reach them.” Kharl smiled politely. “What I suggest is that you ready your men for such an attack, and take a great deal of time doing it. When I have dealt with the white wizards, you take the hills to the west and begin to encircle them.”

“What about the rifles?”

“They’ll go when the white wizards do.” If I am successful.

“Pardon me, ser mage. What happens if you are not successful?” Osten’s voice was cold.

“You have lost nothing but two squads of lancers, and your enemy is that much weaker,” Kharl pointed out. “You hazard little. From where his forces are set, he cannot attack quickly.”

“When will you begin your attack?”

“When we get there,” Kharl said flatly. “You will see chaos-fire and much else.”

Osten offered an excessive half bow from the saddle. “We await your efforts, Lord Kharl.”

“Thank you, Lord Osten.” With a smile he did not feel, Kharl turned his mount, his shields ready for any treachery, although he did not believe such an attempt would come until later.

As he rode back northward to his own small detachment, when he passed the last rank of lancers, he infused a small mass of order into the saddlebags of one of the lancers. When he later cloaked his own order, he hoped that the white wizards would perceive the order in the saddlebags as him-or as his failure to shield himself adequately.

Even so, Kharl couldn′t help but wonder what new tactics the white mages with Egen might try. He had no real idea, but he did know that almost every time he had faced one of the Hamorian mages, they had done something he had not anticipated. That might also reflect his own lack of training and experience. From what Whetorak had revealed, Hamor trained its envoys extensively, and Kharl would have been surprised if its mages had not also had some type of instruction. He could have used some of that himself, rather than having to discover everything by trial and error.

He snorted quietly. That blade had two edges. On the one edge, he’d had to learn late things others had known early. On the other, he’d discovered techniques no one else seemed to know.

Kharl rode directly to the subofficer in charge of the two lancer squads accompanying him. “Serjeant.”

“Yes, ser?”

“We’re going to be heading west from here. We’re breaking off, and we’ll be circling around.”

“Ser?”

“The white wizards are on high ground ahead to the west of the road. We’ll be attacking them …” He paused. “I’ll be attacking them, and you’ll be there to make sure that someone doesn’t send a squad or something at me. Also, with two squads, we’ll look more like a scouting party, and they won’t think so much about it. You ride with me, and we’ll lead the way.”

“Ah … yes, ser.”

Kharl looked past the serjeant to his own undercaptain.

Demyst nodded, although his face carried a worried expression that was not quite a frown.

After raising the shield to cloak his own order, Kharl eased the chestnut gelding back onto the shoulder of the road, then over a soggy depression into a field that looked to hold some sort of beans. At the western end of the field, there was a lane that wound to the southwest. That was the general direction they needed to go.

As he and the serjeant rode down the rows of the bean field, Kharl was conscious of the words of the lancers who followed Demyst, Erdyl, Jeka, and Alynar.

“One mage … and he’s gonna take on the white devils?”

“You see what he did already? Nothing but rocks …”

“Rocks aren’t wizards …”

Kharl was well aware of that. He turned in the saddle and managed to get out some of the bread and cheese that he had taken from the residence, knowing he would need it. He managed several bites before they reached the lane-barely wide enough for two mounts abreast.

“How far, ser, before we reach the wizards?”

“They’re about two kays over there”-Kharl pointed south-southeast-“but the way we’re going is more like three or three and a half. Lord Osten will be slowing his advance and preparing. He won’t attack until we’re done.”

“We’re not going to charge the wizards, now, are we?”

“Not all the way. Just to get me close enough to deal with them.” And that was far closer than Kharl wanted to be.

Although there were cottages and sheds amid the meadows and fields, Kharl saw not a single soul. That was scarcely surprising, not with a long column of lancers and armsmen visible on the south road stretching back toward Brysta.

After less than a kay, the lane turned westward and downhill, arrowing straight west toward the seacoast cliffs and ridges. Once more Kharl turned off the lane, this time across a meadow toward another set of hedgerows.

A good glass later, he reined up on a low rise, one roughly half a kay to the south of the rise where the white wizards and the mounted “patrollers” waited, although from where he was, Kharl could only see the southernmost of them. He looked more to the northeast, out onto the lower ground. Egen’s regular lancers held the flat to the north of the barracks area. Two hastily constructed lines of angled and sharpened posts blocked the road and ran a good ten rods to either side, while mixed companies of foot patrollers and armsmen were drawn up in formation behind the posts.

Kharl looked back to the north. He thought there were four wizards, but he wasn’t about to probe to find out. That would only reveal where he was. He turned. “Follow me.”

He started the gelding down the slope, mostly grassy, but with some scattered bushes, and a handful of isolated blue oaks.

They had ridden no more than a few hundred cubits down toward the swale between the two hills that were little more than large rises, when the serjeant cleared his throat loudly. “Ser … looks like some of those patrollers might be breaking off, heading toward us.”

“We’ll ride through the swale toward that pair of low oaks on the lower part of the slope there, above that woodlot.”

“Ser …?”

“The woodlot is right below. They’d have to break formation to follow us through the trees, wouldn’t they?”

“Yes, ser … but …″

“We aren’t going to do that, but I want them to think that. I need to get closer to the wizards.” Kharl eased the gelding into a trot, trying not to bounce too much in the saddle.

The others followed.

Kharl kept checking the hillside to the north as he rode across the grassy swale between the two rises.

Once he started up the other side, where the slope of the grassy riseblocked sight of the main patroller force and the other white wizards, Kharl turned the gelding more to the northeast and began to angle up the side of the larger rise that the patrollers were riding down. The patrollers were riding far faster.

With the patrollers-what looked to be half a company-rode a white wizard. Although Kharl was still shielding himself, he got the impression from the other’s projected chaos that the man was the wizard who’d betrayed Lord West.

Whhstt … A firebolt arced from behind the leading riders.

Rather than extend any great effort until their pursuers were closer, Kharl used his shields just to nudge the chaos into the ground uphill of them.

“Ser?” asked the serjeant.

“Don’t worry about this one,” Kharl snapped. The patrollers were almost close enough.

Another firebolt flared at them, and Kharl slid it behind the short column. “Halt. Right here.” He reined up, and concentrated on the oncoming riders, now less than fifty cubits away.

Whhsttt!

This time, Kharl twisted the chaos-energies through the back linkage into the white wizard, beyond him across the sixty-odd riders. Death voids flashed across him, but many of the trailing riders escaped. Within moments, the score of survivors had turned and galloped eastward, not uphill but along the side of the hill.

“Now! Straight uphill!” Kharl called.

This time, while he pulled his shielding cloak back together, he knew that the other wizards would know that he was somewhere behind them. He needed to get as close as he could before they could turn their forces and force him to fight his way to them-if he could.

Kharl reached a point several hundred cubits below the hillcrest on the west side when he saw that perhaps half the patrollers on the rise had finished a wheeling maneuver into a formation to face his small force. He dropped the cloaking shield that had kept him from the full perceptions of the white wizards.

Between the two sets of mounted patrollers were the white wizards, and to their right was another group of riders-wearing dark blue and burgundy. At their head was a slender figure he recognized even at a distance-Egen.The would-be lord’s chaos-that of evil and not of chaosforce-was clear enough to Kharl.

Kharl permitted himself a smile that vanished as chaos mounted from within and around the white wizards.

Whhsttt! Whssst! Whsstt! The three firebolts that arced from behind the line of charging patrollers were linked together, feeding off each other, seemingly expanding into a wall of chaos flame.

Kharl had already sensed the linked shields of the three. He couldn’t use the wizards’ tie to the firebolts to funnel that chaos back at them, but instead, he created his momentary hardened air shield curved to fling the chaos back across the first wave of patrollers-much as he would have preferred to throw that massive force at Egen and his personal guard.

More than two companies of patrollers vanished as the wall of fire flared across them.

A swath of knee-high grass was no more-just a bare stretch of blackened earth, with occasional low rocks protruding from the baked soil.

While the wizards retained their shield, the early-afternoon sky was empty of firebolts.

Slowly, the remaining patrollers began to wheel toward Kharl.

Kharl grabbed for his water bottle and took a long swallow of cider, watching the hillcrest to the east. Then he urged the gelding forward, not at a walk, but at what he thought might be a canter. He could see what was likely to come, even before the patrollers began to raise their rifles. After a moment, Demyst, Erdyl, Alynar, and Jeka followed him, as did some of the two squads of lancers, although Kharl thought that some of the lancers had dropped back. So had the serjeant, but there was no help for that.

Kharl glanced over his shoulder, then shouted, “Demyst! Jeka! Erdyl! Get right behind me! Now!”

“You heard him!” ordered Demyst.

Kharl snapped his head back forward. He kept riding, watching the patrollers as they brought their rifles up. At what he thought was the last moment, he threw up a shield of hardened air-a good fifty cubits in front of him-and wide enough, he hoped, to shield him and his small party. He couldn’t spare the energy to shield the lancers behind him, spread as they were.

Crack! Crack! Crack! … The rifle reports sounded like continuing whip cracks.

Behind him, Kharl felt one death, then another, as he narrowed the gap between him and the patrollers and the white wizards behind them. In those moments when he thought that there was a lull in the firing, he dropped the air shield and rebuilt it farther ahead. Each time he wondered if he would be shot in that brief instant when he was unprotected.

Yet, for all the rifle fire, there were no firebolts, no use of chaos by the white wizards, except to maintain their linked shields. Had they realized that Kharl was using their own chaos against them? How could they not?

Kharl kept riding, trying to reach a point where he could extend an order-probe to where the white wizards stood, impervious, waiting, and to the right, Egen and his personal patrollers.

All the time, the patrollers kept firing, and lancers behind and flanking Kharl dropped, wounded or killed. Before him, chaos drawn from somewhere began to mount behind the shields of the three white wizards. His entire body was hot, burning like a fire pot, it seemed, and he was drenched in sweat, squinting as the salty stuff ran by and into his eyes.

He was less than two hundred cubits from the first line of patrollers, and the ground shivered. With that shivering, the chaos behind the white shields intensified. Kharl could sense chaos building everywhere-in the ground under him, in the air above him-and yet he was still not close enough to unbind chaos against the wizards.

But … if he unbound it against the patrollers …

He reached out and unlinked the order within the iron of the rifle of the patroller closest to him.

Currumpttt!!!

White-and-red chaos-flame flared back across the mounted patrollers, pressed by the shields Kharl threw up hastily. Those patrollers and mounts who were not turned into instant pillars of ashes flared like trees blackened in a firestorm-then toppled. Abruptly, the chaos-flare vanished, sucked into the swirling vortex of brilliance that rose around the three Hamorian wizards, a whirlwind of energy burning brighter than the sun, so bright that not a single figure remaining on the hillcrest cast a shadow, a pitiless searing light, with which nothing Kharl had ever seen or felt could have possibly compared.

Yet behind that vortex, protected as the other patrollers had not been, remained the enemy wizards-and Egen and his personal guard.

Egen-coward, betrayer of his own family, and destroyer of Kharl’s. Egen … protected by the chaos energy of the white wizards.

From somewhere deep within Kharl a cold rage began to build. They would not protect Egen!

A high whining sound began to build.

Kharl raised both an air shield and order shield directly in front of him.

The air itself vibrated, and the shrilling penetrated Kharl’s ears like sharpened needles. As it did, a line of white light flared from the shielded chaos toward Kharl. As that light lance struck the air shield, coruscating, strobing light exploded like cannon shells going off in all directions.

The well of white chaos that surrounded the three Hamorian wizards throbbed. The white vortex dimmed-but only for a moment. Then the ground shivered once more, and the shrilling began to build again.

Kharl kept riding, although he could sense that few remained riding with or behind him. He had to get close enough to reach Egen-and the chaos-wizards. He had to.

Now, he was on the flat of the hillcrest, and only a hundred cubits from the wizards and their linked shield … and the blindlingly brilliant chaos vortex that rose like an inverted triangle into the sky-and Egen!

As he neared the vortex, he struggled, through sweat and heat, and exhaustion, to rebuild his air shield and order shield. Exhausted as he was, he had to … just to get close enough to do what he could, what he had to do.

What could he do? The blinding lightsword he had never seen before, never even read about or thought about. Could he turn it against their shield?

The shrilling rose until he could hear it no longer, until his eyes were watering with agony from the unseen needles stabbing through his ears and into the depth of his skull … and still it rose. Kharl forced more order into the air shield, waiting, watching, trying to pick out Egen as well.

The lightsword flared toward him.

He tried to grasp it with order, and it was like trying to grasp smoke or fog. Yet it struck his shields so hard that he rattled back and forth in his saddle. Explosions of brilliance and light made the noon sun in summer seem as dark as night in the deepest cave that had never seen light.

Once more he was without shields, his defenses shredded.

The chaos-vortex dimmed more than the last time, but the ground shivered, and the vortex began to regain its brightness once again.

The gelding was barely walking forward, and Kharl was panting, breathing heavily. His face felt burned as if he had spent days in the sun without shade, and he knew much of his exposed skin was blistering. It was hard to keep his eyes open from the swelling around them.

What could he do?

The ground quivered once more.

Kharl tried to swallow, but his throat was so dry he nearly choked.

What … how?

He looked at the glowing chaos shields and the brilliant vortex rising once more like a hammer that was about to strike and smash him flat.

The ground trembled more strongly.

The ground?

With what felt like his last strength, Kharl reached toward the white wizards, not directly, but toward the chaos tap that extended deep within the very earth. There was the slightest chink, one of necessity, he felt, just beneath the earth, where one kind of chaos met another and was transformed.

Kharl did not try to change or force anything created by the chaos-wizards. Instead, he began to work on a simple red stone, one mostly of iron, to release the order bounds within that chunk of rock lying just between the two kinds of chaos-and directly beneath the wizards and Egen.

As those bounds dissolved in the iron-stone rock, Kharl drew back his order-probe and flung shields around himself and those just behind him, hoping that his party was all there.

The ground rumbled.

A firebolt flared toward Kharl, a fraction of an instant too late, exploding against his belatedly drawn shields.

Somewhere to the east, he could sense a handful of riders galloping southward from the Hamorian forces, trying to put part of the hill between themselves and the battle; but he would have to worry about them later, after dealing with the wizards.

Then …

A sound like iron being ripped apart, like the agony of a mother losing a child, knifed through Kharl.

The light of the great vortex was nothing compared to the flaring chaos-inferno that exploded skyward. As each chaos-wizard’s shieldfailed, the explosion lanced higher. Kharl shuddered in his saddle, hanging on with both hands as the gelding reared, screaming.

As the whitened redness of death flared around him, he knew, could sense, that none of those opposing him on the hill had survived.

A grim smile crossed Kharl’s face, if but for a moment.

Slowly, so slowly, it seemed, everything faded, and the afternoon sun returned, so dim by comparison that the sunlit afternoon looked like late twilight.

Kharl, Demyst, Jeka, Erdyl, and Alynar remained alone on a fire-scoured rise. The air was like a furnace, and fine ash drifted everywhere.

Kharl forced himself to turn the gelding, although he could see nothing, except through his order-senses. His face was aflame, and he felt as though every bit of skin had been blistered away.

“We need to get away.” His voice came from a great distance, it seemed to him, and patches of blackness appeared before his eyes, then vanished.

Deliberately, he rode southwest, picking a path down the hill away from the area where the scattered grass and brush still smoldered, down to where he could turn westward, then back toward Osten and his forces.

Before long, riders appeared, moving from the east. Kharl squinted. There had to be close to half a company, and all were wearing patroller uniforms-except for one figure in blue.

“Ser!” called Demyst.

The patrollers spurred their mounts toward Kharl and his small group. Several had their rifles out.

“Behind me!” Kharl ordered, hoping that Jeka, above all, was close enough for his shields, shields he only hoped he could hold long enough for Egen to approach more closely.

“Fire! Aim for the mage!” Egen’s voice carried across the ten-odd rods that separated the two groups.

Crack! Crack! …

Kharl rocked in the saddle at the force of the patroller’s volley, and he could feel his grasp on his shields slipping.

“Keep firing! He can’t hold on!” snapped Egen.

Kharl forced himself to reach out, to stretch for a bit of iron, sensing a small amount in Egen’s belt, and untwisting and releasing the order-bonds.

Crumpt!

More light flared across the hillside. When Kharl could see again, his eyes took in another patch of blackened ground.

Somehow … after all that had happened, Kharl just wished Egen had known, really known, who Kharl was. But life didn’t always work out the way one hoped. There hadn′t been a real confrontation, just a footnote to a battle, and Egen was dead. It didn’t seem that Egen had paid enough for all his villainy, not near enough.

“Ser?” Demyst’s voice broke through Kharl’s reverie. “It’s not that safe here, still.”

“You’re right.” Kharl urged the gelding downhill and more to the west.

They had ridden less than half a kay when yet another group of riders appeared, these in Brystan blue.

Kharl blinked when he saw the serjeant who commanded the squads of lancers that had accompanied him-and the half score of lancers who remained, though the lancers hung back from the serjeant.

“You stayed here?” Kharl asked.

“As would any smart man, ser mage.”

Kharl could feel his own party closing up behind him.

“Lord Osten is now Lord West,” Kharl announced, using almost his last strength. “He has the field. You can tell him that he will know where to find me.”

Kharl swayed in the saddle.

The serjeant smiled, driving his mount toward Kharl and lifting his sabre. Kharl tried to turn, but he was sluggish, so sluggish.

The blunt edge and the hilt of Erdyl’s sabre-thrown end over end-slammed into the serjeant’s shoulder and neck.

Then Demyst and Alynar struck, and the serjeant sagged in his saddle.

Another lancer slashed at Erdyl, who had no sabre.

Somehow … Kharl managed to unlink the tiniest bit of order from something-whatever was easiest-in the lancer who had slashed Erdyl. As the chaos flared, Kharl flung up a half shield, one that directed the force across the rest of Osten’s lancers.

Not only blackness, but strobing light-flashes flared across and before Kharl, clouding his order-senses. He could barely feel Jeka, riding closer to him.

“Get me out of here,” he hissed to her. “Can’t hang on much longer. If Osten gets to me …″

At that moment, the deeper blackness swept over him.