The Chaos Balance

LXIX

A single Cyadoran scout wheeled his mount off the road and began a headlong gallop toward the right side of the Lornian line-and Nylan. The dust from the Cyadoran’s mount’s hoofs rose like a brown thunderstorm, blocking the angel’s sight of the rest of the squads farther to the left and around the gentle curve of the road. Light reflected from the round shield, glittering and making Nylan squint.

The angel raised his second blade to throw, but he didn’t have to because Ungit and Wuerek, trailed by Meresat, swept toward the lancer. The white’s sabre slashed at Ungit, and red sprayed across the levy’s upper arm, even as his blade spiraled into the red dust. Wuerek’s heavier steel-edged blade smashed the lighter sabre aside, and Meresat’s edged crowbar crushed through the comparatively thin burnished armor. The circular polished shield bounced along the grass, reflective side down.

“Frig!” Ungit held his arm, sweat beading quickly on his forehead. “Frig…frig.”

“Wuerek! Help Ungit get that arm bound,” Nylan said. “We don’t need anyone surviving the Cyadorans and bleeding to death.”

“Ser.” Wuerek eased his mount up beside the balding Ungit.

The dust settled as quickly as it had risen in the hot and still air, except for what coated the Lornians and Nylan-and the scattered bodies. Nylan’s neck itched, and so did his damp hair. His ears hurt and itched where the flaking and sunburned skin had begun to peel.

Nylan surveyed the road-no dust, no fleeing riders-just ten riderless mounts. And one wounded armsman-Ungit-and one dead. Nylan didn’t even remember the fellow’s name, just that he’d been clumsy in practice. A handful of the armsmen-Nylan guessed they rated the term as much as some of Fornal’s men-had dismounted and were looting the bodies of the Cyadoran scouts.

“Make it quick!” bellowed Tonsar. “Cuplek! You get Fienc’s body on his mount.”

“Me?”

“You! Unless you want me and the angels to help you join Fienc.”

“Yes, ser.”

“Siplor-you and Meresat get the mount detail. We can always use more mounts, one way or another.”

Nylan turned his mare back to the place where he’d thrown his first blade, sheathing the second in the shoulder harness.

An armsman, already looting the corpse, looked up, then quickly extracted the dark gray blade. “Yours, ser?” Nesru extended it sheepishly, hilt first. “You get his purse…”

“You can keep it.” Nylan took the blade and wiped it on the cloth tied to his saddle, then sheathed it and massaged his forehead. The one man he’d killed had been enough.

Then he eased the mare toward the burly subofficer who had reined up on the center of the road. Ayrlyn was guiding her squad from the east toward the rest of the group.

“We got them all,” she said, just loudly enough for her voice to carry. Dark blotches stained her vest.

Nylan looked closely at the stains.

“Not mine. He got closer than I’d like. Those damned shields are distracting.”

“I see.” He raised his eyebrows.

“I’m not as good at throwing blades as you are. That means they get closer.”

“The shields give me trouble. That was why I threw the blade. I only do that when I’m in real trouble,” Nylan confessed, turning his mount and nodding to Tonsar.

“We’re always in real trouble…anymore,” she murmured.

With that, he had to agree.

“Form up!” Tonsar ordered.

For a time they rode quietly through the mid-afternoon, the road dust muffling the clopping of hoofs, but sifting through every opening in Nylan’s garments, or so it seemed. He tried not to scratch too much, and concentrated on listening to the low comments that drifted forward from the squads behind them.

“How did the angels know they were there?”

“…we didn’t have any scouts…”

“…you want to be a scout? White demons don’t take prisoners…”

“…don’t care how they do it…”

Nylan glanced at Ayrlyn. Despite the furrowed brow that indicated the same kind of splitting headache he suffered, he could see a glint in her eyes.

“You’re getting better at sensing people,” he said quietly.

“The weather’s easier.” She nodded. “I can almost ride the winds sometimes.”

Nylan shook his head. “How you do that…”

“To each her own-or in your case, his own. You can feel the grain of those metals you forge, and they feel like opaque blackness to me.”

Nylan took a square of worn gray cloth from his belt and blotted away sweat and mud from his forehead and cheeks, then replaced it, and shifted his weight in the saddle. The mare whickered, but did not increase her measured pace northward.

Nylan looked back southward.

“There’s no one close,” Ayrlyn confirmed. “They won’t keep letting us do this, you know.”

“The Cyadorans?”

“We’ve been getting most of their smaller parties. Life may be cheap here in Candar, but even the Cyadorans are going to stop traveling or scouting in small groups.” The healer stood in her stirrups and massaged one hip. “Won’t ever get used to this.”

“You already are.”

“Not really.”

“You think they’ll start attacking in force?” the smith asked. “Just in force.”

“That’s what I’d do. I’d have started sooner.” Ayrlyn closed her eyes for a long moment, and Nylan could almost feel the relief across the few cubits that separated their mounts.

“Why don’t they use white wizards?”

“Maybe there aren’t too many.”

“Even mighty Cyador has but few of the white mages,” confirmed Tonsar. “They do not wish to send them beyond the white walls. That is what my sister’s man said, and he once guarded the great Hissl.”

“Could it be that there are limits to white wizardry?” Nylan’s tone was mocking.

“Why not? There are limits to everything else.”

Nylan nodded. But what were the limits to wizardry, or magery, or whatever it was called, whether white or black? He looked at the dusty road northward, leading back to Kula…and Weryl.