The Chaos Balance

CXIII

The farther south Nylan and Ayrlyn had ridden from the lake the more the hills had flattened, first into low hills, then rolling plains. Now they rode through what seemed almost flat and level farmland.

The fields to the left contained low plants, with faded yellow flowers rising above dark green leaves that had begun to curl at the tips. A hint of a fragrance like reisera, but not exactly the same, drifted on the faintest of breezes across the dusty road. That was like so much of Candar-familiar, but not exactly the same.

Gray clouds, the first Nylan had seen since they had entered Lornth more than a season earlier, covered the sky, and scattered raindrops fell, leaving an occasional dark spot on the road.

“I don’t like this,” murmured Ayrlyn.

“The rain? It’s a relief from the sun.”

“No, Cyador. The whole situation.”

“Too exposed? You think we should abort?” Nylan glanced ahead, where he could see what seemed to be a gathering of dwellings. “There’s a village ahead. Here comes another wagon.”

“Let me check.” Ayrlyn’s eyes glazed, and she half-sagged in the saddle as the four horses walked slowly southward, and as the single-horse wagon rolled toward them.

Nylan glanced toward the wagon, but, like the ones they had seen before, it was small, with spoked wheels and an axle supporting springs-certainly more sophisticated than anything he’d seen in Lornth. The driver was a dark-haired man, who, upon seeing the riders, turned the wagon into a side lane and flicked the reins.

Nylan frowned. Had they seen anyone else on horseback? He didn’t think so.

“There’s a big river beyond the town,” Ayrlyn announced, straightening in the saddle.

“How far be this forest?” asked Sylenia.

“It’s beyond the town,” Nylan said dryly.

Ayrlyn raised her eyebrows.

“Should we ride through or try to ride around?” he asked quickly.

“It’s not a big town,” Ayrlyn pointed out. “And we can either ride through some farmer’s fields and ford the river-and get everyone asking who we are. Or we can ride through the town and use the bridge, and save a lot of time. There’s no one that looks like an armsman or a soldier.”

“Soldier?” The word was murmured by Sylenia, and Nylan realized that the term came from Sybran, that the only Old Rat terms were either “armsman” or “mercenary.”

“I guess we ride through, looking like we own the place, ready to draw iron if we have to.”

“If there aren’t any armsmen,” Ayrlyn said, “we won’t be drawing anything. The locals turn from a blade. Haven’t you seen that?”

Nylan nodded, then added, “Yes,” after realizing that the redhead’s eyes were on the road ahead. “I don’t think anyone rides horseback unless they’re military.”

“That would figure.”

Sylenia’s eyes went from Nylan to Ayrlyn and back, a slightly puzzled look on her face.

“Enyah! Piscut, pease?”

“I can hear someone’s awake,” Nylan noted.

“A moment, a moment.” Sylenia twisted, struggling to open the small sack fastened to one side of the back of her saddle, just to allow her easy access to a few of their rapidly diminishing provisions.

The longer the smith looked at the village ahead, the more something bothered him. That was another problem-he could feel energies, still looming beneath the ground, and sense that Cyador was trouble, but so little of it had anything concrete in the way of proof. Was he losing his mind? Or had he lost it long before, and was he wandering through a mental labyrinth of insanity?

His eyes went to the woodlot behind the holding on the right side of the road, a holding, like all the others, well back from the road, and shielded by a screen of bushes. No trees, just bushes.

He scanned the woodlot again. The trees-what was it about them? Then he swallowed. So obvious-and yet not obvious at all.

“Look at the trees,” Nylan said.

“The trees? All right. They’re trees, and they’re in woodlots.”

“See any anyplace else?”

After a time came a soft “oh.”

“Do you recall seeing any trees that weren’t?”

“No…now that you mention it. Do you think-”

“I don’t know, but let’s hope that means the forest isn’t too far.”

They neared a house-screened by bushes-that stood a mere forty cubits back from the road. A woman picked green berries from one of the bushes. At the sound of hoofs, she turned, revealing an advanced stage of pregnancy. Her eyes widened, even as she grabbed the berry basket and darted around the bushes. A door slammed.

“Here, it’s the door they slam,” Ayrlyn said.

“That’s because the shutters are already closed.”

Nylan surveyed the town as they passed several more dwellings, still set back somewhat from the road. The houses were built of yellow brick-large bricks, and each brick was more than two thirds of a cubit long. Some dwellings were covered with plaster or stucco, but all were brick. The yellowish tint pervaded all the structures, and green gratework and bars covered all the lower-level windows.

The silver-haired angel frowned.

A gray-haired man with a broom in his hand looked up, bowed quickly, and then scurried off the brick walk that bordered the road, and behind another screen of bushes before a house.

As though a wave had passed through the town, doors shut ahead of the riders, and the road emptied, nearly soundlessly.

“They do not like strangers.” Sylenia’s voice was matter-of-fact.

“How about people on horseback?” suggested Ayrlyn.

A light wagon raced down the street ahead of them, heading toward the bridge.

“We’d better step it up,” Nylan suggested. “I’d rather be on the other side of the river before the local authorities arrive.” He flicked the mare’s reins.

Nearer the center of town was a two-story roofed building, with brick columns. The lower level seemed open, and Nylan could see people inside, gathered in small groups, groups that turned away from the riders as they passed.

“Covered marketplace,” noted Ayrlyn.

On the left side of the road from the marketplace was an ornate fountain, sculpted to resemble a tree of some sort, unfamiliar to Nylan, with spreading branches, from which water flowed in smooth sheets, giving the impression of moss or shedding rain in a storm.

“That’s beautiful,” Ayrlyn said.

“It is.” But the town continued to bother Nylan. “It doesn’t smell,” he said.

“What?”

“Most low-tech towns smell. This one doesn’t. It’s clean.”

“The Old Rats were pretty organized.”

They kept riding, now at a quick trot, as the people scurried inside and the doors closed.

On the southern side of the town was the river. The three-piered bridge was made of the same yellowish brick, with only the base of the piers that rose out of the sluggish gray water being stone. To the east, downstream, were several brick piers that jutted out slightly from the raised levies, embankments presumably designed to confine any seasonal floodwaters.

At one pier was tied a long and narrow barge of some sort, filled with woven baskets piled two deep. Three men relayed baskets from the pier to the barge, and none looked up as the four horses passed, even as their hoofs struck the brick-paved approach to the span.

The river itself was larger than Nylan had anticipated, nearly a hundred cubits across, and, while the dull gray water seemed slow-moving, he could sense that it was deep enough that fording it would have been difficult.

The roadway of the bridge was narrow, no more than seven or eight cubits wide. Sylenia let her mount fall back, riding across right behind the two angels and side-by-side with the pack mare, her legs no more than a cubit from the low brick railing.

Years of use had carved two wagon ruts in the brick paving. Nylan let his senses study the bridge, then range outward. “The river’s new. At least the riverbed is.”

“New? It looks like it’s been here awhile,” said Ayrlyn.

“A few hundred years,” Nylan admitted, “but that’s new for a river.”

“More planoforming.”

But why? Why move a river? Nylan jerked forward in the saddle as the mare started down the other side of the arched bridge way.

The fields resumed on the far side of the river, just beyond the base of the brick-faced levy, with no houses or dwellings in immediate sight.

“Floodplain,” Ayrlyn said. “The levies are lower on this side. Very Rationalist planning.”

“I’m impressed, but it bothers me, and I can’t say why.”

“There’s another thing,” Ayrlyn added. “There were no signs. Nothing written in any public space in that town.”

“That’s odd.”

“Yes.” Ayrlyn stopped, then said, “There’s someone ahead, where the road forks. On horseback.”

“Frig.” Nylan’s hand touched the blade in the shoulder harness, and the one at his waist, moving both to see that they would not bind if he needed them. “Should we cut across the fields?”

“There are only three. They know the roads, and their mounts are probably fresher.”

“You really don’t think we can talk our way out of this?”

“No. But it might work, and we’ll create more of a surprise than if we start running right now.”

That made sense, but Ayrlyn usually did, often more than he did, Nylan reflected. Still, there were three armsmen waiting. And only he and Ayrlyn were armed.

Three men in green, all holding white-bronze sabres and mounted on dark brown horses, waited at the crossroads.

“Sylenia, you stay back.” Nylan reined up a good twenty cubits back from the local patrol, his hand ready to draw the Westwind shortsword.

“You must come with us,” announced the center rider.

The tongue was unadulterated Old Rationalist, and it took a moment for Nylan to make the mental adjustment.

“Why?” asked Ayrlyn. “We have bothered no one.”

“You are strangers. Strangers are not permitted. Cyad must not be polluted.” The almost leering look of the speaker contrasted with the flat speech.

Nylan studied the area behind the armsmen, but could see or sense no one.

“Come!” snapped the Cyadoran leader, as though it were inconceivable that he would be defied.

Thunk!

Nylan gaped as Ayrlyn’s mount darted forward and her heavy blade slammed through the speaker’s shoulder. Seemingly too slowly, he pulled his own blade from the waist scabbard, and urged the mare forward.

The armsman to the right glanced from Nylan to the sagging leader and back to the angel before raising his sabre. Nylan beat the white-bronze blade aside, and slashed through the other’s shoulder, then knocked the blade from the armsman’s hand on the recovery.

“Ser!”

At Sylenia’s scream he turned in the saddle to see the third Cyadoran bearing down on Ayrlyn, who held her second blade weakly before her. Reacting rather than thinking, he threw his heavy blade, smoothing the order flows.

The backflash of chaos froze him in his saddle. His vision flared into the nova of a powerflux, and he shuddered, blind and trying to grope for the blade in his shoulder harness.

“You don’t have to, ser Nylan.” Sylenia’s voice wavered in and out of his hearing. “You don’t have to. They’re all dead.”

He lowered his hand, his eyes still clinched shut-futilely-against the sparks of chaos that flared through them.

“What do we do?” asked the nursemaid.

“Just ride. Fast walk,” gasped Nylan. “Need to get to a woodlot or somewhere…sheltered…but not close to here. You lead.”

“I…I could not.”

“You’re the only one who can see.”

“Oh.”

Nylan shivered in his saddle, letting Sylenia lead the way, letting the mare carry him forward. He knew Ayrlyn was in worse shape, barely able to ride. But she had been right to attack first. Had they any choice? Not in this situation. Not outnumbered and with Weryl and Sylenia vulnerable. Not against a culture to whom outsiders were worthless.

Again…and again…only force mattered. It was all that anyone respected. Not feelings, not reason, not balance-just force.

…glare-damned…frigging force…

He swallowed and tried to stay in the saddle, trusting the mare to follow Sylenia.