The Chaos Balance

CXL

In the darkness that held but a glimmer of gray, the chimes clanged, off-tone, off-key, once, then again.

Nylan looked across the darkness of the quarters with eyes that had been open for what seemed most of the night to the cots where Sylenia lay, and where Weryl snored softly. Despite the open shutters, the room was close, hot, and the sounds of men moving across the packed clay of the barracks yard grew louder. A horse whinnied, then another answered. A set of wagon harnesses jangled.

He turned to face Ayrlyn’s also open eyes. “Not much for sleeping, was it?” he whispered.

She shook her head, then leaned forward and touched his cheek with her lips. “I’ll be glad when it’s over.”

“I hope I’ll be glad when it’s over.”

“Pessimist.” Ayrlyn stretched, then rolled into a sitting position, her knees tucked up almost to her chin.

“Realist. We’ll either be dead or the agents of a huge change, and no one likes agents of change, especially our friend Fornal.” Nylan yawned and sat on the edge of the bed that was a cross between a cot and plank platform. His back was stiff, and he stood slowly, stretching. “Ohhhh…”

“It’s not that bad,” hissed Ayrlyn.

Outside, the off-key triangle chimes clanged again.

“Da? Ahwen?” Silver-haired Weryl sat up, his green eyes wide, arms extended.

“In a moment, son. Let your old dad get his boots on.”

“Does no one here ever sleep?” grumbled Sylenia, throwing back her blanket with a disgusted gesture.

“Actually,” Nylan said, “we were sleeping while you were out exchanging sweet words with a certain armsman.”

“Sleeping you were not, not even when I returned.”

Nylan flushed.

…walked into that one… Ayrlyn shook her head and headed for the provisions bag.

As Ayrlyn used her dagger on the remaining squash bread, Nylan hacked off several slices of the hard yellow cheese. Even more than an eight-day old, the orange bread was better than that turned out by the Lornian armsmen’s cooks. On the other hand, the cheese, tough as it was, remained a definite improvement over wasol roots.

“The cheese, it is hard.”

“It’s what we have.” Nylan refrained from comparing cheese and wasol roots. “The bread is still good.”

Ayrlyn grinned, then erased the expression as she handed a slab of the orange stuff to Weryl, who sat on the end of his cot, eyes fixed on the food.

“Food.”

“You can eat,” Nylan told his son, and followed his own advice.

When they had finished their quick breakfast, the engineer looked to the redhead. “Can you find out where the Cyadorans are-without using too much effort?”

Ayrlyn’s eyes glazed over, and Nylan waited…but only briefly.

“They’re camped on the bluffs four or five kays south, and they’re beginning to form up.”

Nylan nodded. “The chimes were right, then?”

“Looks that way.”

The two began to strap on their blades.

Then, Nylan picked up Weryl, holding him tightly. His eyes burned, and he swallowed. How long he held his son, he did not know.

“Nylan…” …need to go…

“I know.” The engineer lifted his head and looked into the green eyes. “You be good for Sylenia, you understand?”

“Good, da?”

“He always be good,” said the dark-haired nursemaid. “Greedy, mayhap, but good.”

Nylan set the silver-haired child on his cot, but Weryl’s arms stretched out again. “Da?”

“He has to go, child.” Sylenia picked up the boy. “They both must go…and Tonsar.”

Nylan and Ayrlyn eased out into the yard under a dark green-blue sky barely turning orange in the east beyond the roofs of Rohrn. The clank of harnesses, the whuffing and chuffing and neighing of mounts and the low murmurs of wary armsmen filled the space between the stables and the barracks.

As they crossed the yard toward the stable, the dark-cloaked figure of Fornal pointedly turned his back to the angels, and began to talk to Lewa. Nylan frowned.

“He doesn’t want to see us.”

“I wonder why.”

“Because he can’t deal with us. He knows we’re the only hope, but we stand for change and for a lot of things he finds hard to accept. And he’s smart enough to know that there’s no point in making a point until there’s a reason to,” suggested Ayrlyn.

“After the battle, if we have an ‘after.’”

“Something like that, but there will be. And we’ll have to deal with that, too.”

“So…we’re disposable if we win?”

“I don’t know,” Ayrlyn admitted. “Gethen’s hard to read, and there’s Zeldyan. She’s not happy with Fornal, either.”

Huruc offered a half-gesture, half-salute as he rode past.

Both angels returned the gesture.

“Some people still think we exist,” Nylan noted.

“The better ones.”

Nylan tried not to breathe too deeply, not when the front of the stable smelled of manure, horse urine, damp straw, and other even less appetizing items, but his nose twitched and his mouth curled.

“Pretty rank,” Ayrlyn confirmed.

Like their choices-rank: Ryba’s feminist dictatorship-clean, ordered, and oppressive; Lornth’s honor-bound, backward, and filthy male autocracy; or Cyador’s chaos-founded, clean, male-dominated, and all-controlling empire.

“We have another choice,” she pointed out. The forest…more home than anything…

“Not unless we defeat Cyador.”

Still, his thoughts held the small and clean cottage that had seemed more homelike than most of Candar. Had it been more homelike than Sybra? He wasn’t certain, and that comparison would have to wait.

Their mounts were near the front of the stable, for which Nylan was glad, having the feeling that matters got even ranker deeper in the recesses of the ancient structure.

They groomed and saddled the two mares quickly and silently, although Ayrlyn ended up helping the always-slower Nylan. By the time they led their mounts out to the comparatively less odorous yard before the stable, the sun peered over the roofs of Rohrn. Only a dotting of distant white clouds marred the green-blue sky-to the west.

“Angels!” boomed a burly mounted figure. “I have not my orders from you.”

Nylan couldn’t help but grin. “Tonsar.”

“Lord Gethen, he told me to find you. And to do as you ordered.” Tonsar’s voice lowered slightly. “Sylenia-she told me the same, and she was not gentle in her words.”

“She has gotten a little more forthright,” Nylan observed cautiously.

“She speaks her mind, and you men…” Ayrlyn shook her head and mounted.

Nylan followed her example and climbed into his saddle. “Was I complaining? Did I say a negative word?”

“You didn’t have to.”

The chimes rang again, longer, more loudly.

“Ah…angels…my orders?” Behind Tonsar was at least a squad of armsmen, mounted. Nylan could see Sias’s long face.

The engineer paused, fingering his chin. “Actually, it’s pretty simple. You’ll need a squad or so just to keep anyone from bothering us while we work. It’ll be easier if we can get out of Lornth, but we don’t need to be on top of the enemy.”

A figure in black galloped out of the barracks yard, holding a huge blade high. A good tenscore armsmen cantered after him.

“There goes the great armsman,” muttered Nylan.

“Don’t be bitter.”

“We are ready,” announced Tonsar. “We will shield you while you destroy the white demons.”

“Let’s go.” Nylan turned the mare after the departing armsmen, but let her walk quickly. He doubted that a canter or gallop would make any difference, except to leave him sore.

The Lornian forces were drawing up to the southeast, less than a kay beyond the last houses that could have been deemed a part of the town. There was no wall, as was the case with any town the angels had seen in Lornth.

Gethen and Fornal had arrayed their armsmen in four squares, with Fornal positioned with a small mounted guard before the two squares to the right, and Gethen before those to the left. Nylan rode to a point even with the front rank of the squares and midway between the second and third squares.

Gethen glanced in their direction.

Nylan shifted his weight in the saddle, watching as the lines of white, the shimmering round shields reflecting the sunlight, formed a semicircle on the flat that had been fields and meadows, a semicircle of destruction that was more than two kays away from the outskirts of Rohrn, and more than a kay from the Lornian forces. The white troops and lancers stretched from the river bluff due south of the town all the way to the northwest road that led to Lornth itself-an arc of nearly a hundred and twenty degrees filled with armsmen and weapons, without a gap.

“Here?” asked Ayrlyn, reining up.

“As good a spot as any.”

“Never have I seen so many armsmen…” whispered Tonsar.

Nylan hoped never to see so many ever again, either. “You better get your squad set up.” He swung out of the saddle.

Ayrlyn followed his example.

“Someone will need to hold our mounts,” he told Tonsar.

“Sias!”

“Yes, ser.”

“Don’t worry, Sias,” Nylan told the young former apprentice as he handed over the mare’s reins. “You won’t miss a thing.” In fact, you just might see too much.

The engineer let his senses range over the ground, just trying to get a feel, trying to extend his links to the distant forest, and to the order-chaos boundaries that felt all too far away.

“This is going to get nasty,” he said in a low voice. “All that distance…hope we can do it.”

“It already is nasty,” Ayrlyn pointed out.

“So how do you plan to stop them, ser angel?” Gethen, flanked by a pair of hard-faced armsmen, and followed by the square-faced Huruc, reined up beside Tonsar. “You had told us to leave this spot for you. Will you rout them on foot?”

“Do you really want to know?” blurted Nylan. “I apologize, ser Gethen,” he added quickly. “We hope to raise the forces of the forest to stop them before they attack. Or before most of their forces can reach us.”

“Before?”

“Why not? There’s not much doubt about what they intend, not after what they did to Jerans and southern Lornth.” Nylan swallowed, his mouth dry.

“No.” Gethen’s words were cold, colder than his eyes.

A series of horn calls echoed from the south.

“Do what you must do,” said Gethen gruffly. “The white demons are raising their banners. We will hold while we can.” With a stiff nod, the older regent turned his mount toward the armsmen arrayed to the north of where Nylan and Ayrlyn stood. Stood alone amid the mounted host.

Nylan swallowed, or tried to. His throat felt dusty, dry.

Ayrlyn handed him a water bottle.

Another series of horn calls stabbed the day, and a faint rumbling, and trembling of the ground began.

Whhstt! A firebolt arced into the air and exploded.

“We’d better…”

“Just do it!”

Absently, Nylan corked the water bottle, bent and set it on the dusty ground that had been a meadow, and pushed his senses to the south, well behind and beyond the white and red blotches that represented the slow-advancing Cyadoran forces.

Reflected light flashed from the Cyadoran shields, and Nylan closed his eyes, concentrating, feeling, seeking.

The power he sought seemed so distant…so far south.

“We can do it.” Ayrlyn’s words and presence warmed him.

He tried to relax, to extend his tenuous probe, but much as he pressed, that distant link eluded him, flitted from his mental grasp.

The ground vibrated with the impact of hoofs and feet, and the horns echoed toward Rohrn again.

Another blast of fire soared out of the south and splashed across the meadow before the Lornian forces. Little balls of fire rolled toward the mounted armsmen, each leaving a long charred line behind it before dying away. A gust of wind carried the odor of burned grass northward, and Nylan sniffed inadvertently.

The engineer tried to wrench his attention back to that distant and continual barrier struggle between order and chaos, even as yet another fireball hissed toward the Lornian armsmen.

For a moment, less than an instant, Nylan touched the dark bands of order, bands binding the very soil in place over the ancient rocks, slowly infusing those artificial planoformed established boundaries with the mixture of order and chaos that ran through the forest and through much of Cyador and southern Lornth.

Then…the link snapped, and he stepped sideways, off-balance.

“Again…” whispered Ayrlyn.

After another deep breath, the engineer tried once more, this time conceiving of the link as a network, an underspace connection. For a longer instant, his thoughts held the dark bands of order, but the chaos lines eluded him, snapping back so hard that he staggered where he stood, then sat down roughly.

“What the frig…the angel doing?” came a hissed whisper.

“Silence!” ordered Tonsar.

Nylan stood, helped up by Ayrlyn. Somehow he needed to stand.

A huge white fireball arced toward the Lornian forces, shattering in midair and spraying liquid flames among the mounted armsmen of the first square, the one farthest left of the two angels.

“Aeeeeiiii…no…no…” The screams of dying men seemed like whispers against the growing thud of hoofs and the underlying shrieks of chaos lifted by the mages to the south.

Whheeeee…. eeeeee! The shrieks of suffering and dying horses climbed above those of the armsmen.

Another fireball flared, turning the grass before the Lornian forces into a wall of flame, flame so hot that it seared the skin and singed the hair of the men and horses in the front rank.

Sweat ran down Nylan’s forehead, and into his eyes, burning them as the struggle to release the energy in the order-chaos boundaries throughout Candar burned through his skull and soul. His own hair crinkled in the heat.

Beside him, Ayrlyn tweaked the shallower lines of order, and a line of flames, dark flames, rose from the fields before the advancing Shining Foot, turning white uniforms black, charring the flesh under the blackened shells that had marched proudly instants before.

Nylan’s stomach turned-or was he feeling her revulsion?

Somehow, someway, he had to tap some kind of order-chaos energy-before everyone was killed. But he couldn’t reach it!

Whhhhsttt! Another white-red fireball flared across the morning sky, splattering death and flames through the armsmen to the angel’s left.

More screams of mounts and men filled the morning, and the light wind carried cinders, ashes, and the odor of charred meat. Nylan’s guts turned again.

The sun burned more brightly, or so it seemed, upon his back, and the oncoming Cyadorans appeared endless-endless ranks of white, of shimmering shields and clashing reflections.

His shirt was soaked, and his eyes burned from salty sweat, from trying to reach and channel elusive chaos. But if he couldn’t tap that distant force…how could the white mages? He didn’t feel them doing anything like that-and they were certainly using order and chaos.

“If you can’t reach the one you need,” he murmured, “use the one you can reach.”

Are you sure? asked a small voice.

He shook his head, but sent his perceptions down, straight down, to where rock met magma, to where a different sort of order and chaos met. There, there he seized the deeper boundary, the edge between rock and magma.

Do you want to do this? His jaw tightened. What choice did he have? He was too far from the forest and had too little time left. There is always a choice.

Do what we must…Ayrlyn’s calm thought helped.

With a sound between sob and cry, he cleft order and chaos, struggling to hold layers and layers of order between him and the raw white energy, especially between Ayrlyn and that energy.

As they struggled, Ayrlyn adding her order, her force, yet another fireball sprayed the meadow, this time less than a hundred cubits before them. Nylan could feel his own hair crisping more, the heat of chaos fire washing over both him and Ayrlyn, their skin near burning from the chaos fire.

Concentrate on your work…Ayrlyn’s calmness soothed the questions in his soul as he wedged chaos and order farther apart, building a channel up from the depths, a channel to the back side of the Cyadoran forces, even as he tried to create an order wall before their own armsmen.

Not much good if you turn us into cinders.

Ayrlyn coaxed and eased yet more of the black webs, the unseen black patterns, into that barrier.

Whhssttt! Whsstt! Two fireballs in quick succession splashed against the unseen barrier, with the gouts of chaos fire rebounding toward the advancing Shining Foot.

A half-score of white-coated foot flared like fatwood in a winter fire, and the line slowed, but only momentarily, before the Shining Foot surged forward once more, the second line of troops marching over the charred corpses of those who had led the charge.

Whhhstt!

The white mages continued to cast their fireballs, despite the barrier, despite the casualties to the advancing Shining Foot.

The trumpets sounded again, and the heavy drumming of hoofs rumbled the ground, nearer than ever before.

Not yet! Nylan thought desperately. Not yet! His eyes opened involuntarily. The Cyadoran forces were nearly upon the Lornians, and Gethen’s blade was poised, raised.

Nylan closed his eyes, tried to speed the rising globs of chaos, to open order channels, hundreds of them, and his forehead spewed sweat. His eyes were blind, unseeing, as all his efforts went into pressing order against chaos, against the power from the depths.

But the Shining Foot surged northward, and the lancers pounded forward, toward the Lornians, toward them, toward Gethen, toward the chaos fields that had yet to rise where Nylan struggled to bring them into the open air.

The engineer’s breath rasped from his laboring lungs and through his raw throat.

“Make ready,” ordered Tonsar, his voice firm, far steadier than Nylan felt.

Nylan reached, straining, for the slow-rising deep chaos.

The Shining Foot to the left began to run, less than a dozen yards from Gethen’s forces, building speed.

And still the demon-damned chaos seemed to float upward, ever so slowly, ignoring the straining, the order channels, and the need for its presence now.

Nylan groaned, knives flashing through his skull, pressing order against chaos, chivying the energies upward, ignoring the nearness of the chaos, ignoring the shivering of the ground, and the fireballs that continued to fall across the field.

Now…!