The Mage-Fire War

by Modesitt. Jr. , L. E.

  He didn’t.

  “Good,” declared Reynaard as the lead company turned west on the back street paralleling the one on which the mages all lived, some five blocks north.

  Less than a third of a quint later, Beltur saw the end of the street ahead, as well as the thornbushes that grew on the low rise beyond which flowed the creek.

  “I’ll use my shields to clear the bushes,” declared Jessyla, adding in a murmur to Beltur, “I can already sense that white mage. You’re going to need every bit of order you have.”

  Beltur had to agree. He watched as Jessyla eased the mare forward, then extended thin and sharp edges to her shields at close to ankle level, but leaving those shields a little wider than normal higher up. The mare had to struggle a little, it seemed to Beltur, to cut through the bushes. When Jessyla reached the bank of the creek, she turned the mare, and the two came back, leaving a path wide enough for two mounts abreast.

  Beltur moved Slowpoke up beside Jessyla, and the two of them walked their mounts through the shallow creek, little more than ankle deep, and then out into the field beyond, which appeared to be planted in wheat. He couldn’t help but feel a little sorry for the grower, who was going to lose part of his crop come harvest, but if they didn’t stop the Hydlenese, the grower would likely lose a great deal more. Beyond the creek, on the west side, was only grass, for which Beltur was grateful.

  While the others crossed the creek and re-formed, Beltur took another swallow of ale, then blotted his forehead. Despite the warm dampness of the air, and the comparative stillness of the late-morning air, Beltur could smell dust, although he couldn’t see it anywhere.

  Before long, both companies were across the field and riding along the lane toward the main road.

  Beltur turned to Reynaard. “The lead companies are past where the lane joins the main road, but they’ve almost slowed to a stop. I can sense some deaths among their first riders. It might be that they ran into the pike fences that Raelf set up.”

  “That will make the Hydlenese even angrier.”

  “Because they think that’s an unfair way of fighting?” asked Jessyla.

  “Anything you don’t anticipate that kills your men is unfair,” replied Reynaard sardonically.

  “Then this will be recorded by the surviving Hydlenese as the most unfair war ever,” rejoined Jessyla.

  “We’re about to where the greencoats can see us.” Reynaard gestured, and the riders behind re-formed into a three-abreast column, since only three mounts would fit side by side on the narrow lane, intermittently bordered by trees of assorted types and sizes. He looked to Beltur. “Are you willing to charge the squad around the curve? I’d like to get through them quickly, if possible.”

  “Then let me go ahead under a concealment, and have your men charge once you hear the yelling.”

  “We’ll both go,” declared Jessyla. “Just in case there’s a mage closer than we think.”

  Reynaard cocked his head for an instant, then nodded. “How much farther can we go before they’ll see us?”

  “Another fifty yards, I’d judge—about where that dead stump on the right is.”

  “We’ll stop short of there and wait for you to engage.”

  For you to engage … that sounds so much cleaner than charging into unsuspecting troopers and doing your best to slaughter them before they can really do anything. Rather than say anything, Beltur just nodded.

  The company rode quietly, but as they neared the stump, Reynaard raised his arm and dropped it. The troopers halted.

  Beltur raised a concealment, and he and Jessyla kept riding.

  “I’ll go first,” said Beltur, once they were a good ten yards farther around the curve and away from Reynaard. “You follow and try to cut down the ones I miss.”

  Jessyla nodded, then said, “Don’t do any more than you have to. Not a single trooper.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  “Stop short rather than do too many,” she insisted. “The troopers can clean up the strays. That white ahead is stronger than any I’ve ever sensed.”

  While Beltur already knew that, he understood that her words were both a warning and a reminder. Because he could also sense that the Hydlenese were again beginning to press Raelf’s command, he forced himself to keep Slowpoke at a fast walk, fearing that he’d need the gelding’s full speed and strength all too much once they were through the road-guard squad.

  “I’m not going to lift the concealment until we’re about ten yards away, or sooner if they somehow notice us. Charge as soon as you can see.”

  “I will.” Jessyla’s voice was low and tense.

  As they neared the road guards, Beltur caught traces of conversation.

  “… aren’t so tough…”

  “… not when we outnumber ’em…”

  “… any good-looking women here…”

  “Dohlan! You hear riders over there?”

  “Now!” snapped Beltur, dropping the concealment, and urging Slowpoke to full speed, then shaping his shields to suit the lane. Two of the riders had barely turned their mounts before Beltur and Slowpoke were on them.

  The yells and screams were thankfully short.

  Of the twenty-trooper squad, most were down when Jessyla reined up beside Beltur. Of the four who had escaped the attack and were riding through the green stalks of wheat toward the main road, just one glanced back over his shoulder.

  Beltur looked at Jessyla. She looked pale. “You need some ale.”

  “In a moment.” She swallowed, hard, then said, “So do you.”

  Beltur followed his own advice.

  Jessyla took out her water bottle, but just held it for a time. Finally, she took a small swallow, then another, before corking and replacing it in the leather saddle holder. “This is the first time … I really saw…”

  Beltur wasn’t quite sure what to say. He nodded and waited.

  “I’m upset … and angry. I’m angry that we have to kill so frigging many men, especially the young ones, because a spoiled duke wants to conquer people who don’t even like him.” She might have said more, but closed her mouth as Reynaard reined up beside them.

  “You didn’t leave any for us.”

  “They only had a squad here,” replied Beltur. “We need to move on. Raelf’s being pressed hard.”

  Reynaard gestured, and the companies resumed the fast walk toward the main road, a good two hundred yards away, the first hundred of which were curved.

  After a moment, the captain said, “When we get within a hundred yards, past the end of the curve, we’ll re-form. The lane’s too narrow for that before then.”

  “What if they see us and attack first?”

  “Then that should take some of the pressure off Raelf,” replied Reynaard. “We’ll fight through them toward the road. You two do your best to protect us from their wizard.”

  “There are two,” said Jessyla. “The strong one is only a few hundred yards to the west of where the lane meets the road. The weak one is with the rear guard.”

  “Most likely to fend off a possible attack from the rear,” suggested Beltur.

  “Where do you want your archers?” asked Reynaard.

  “Not in the van, but later. On the east side of the lane just off the main road. That’s if we can get to the main road.” As they rode, Beltur kept checking the position of the stronger white mage, but he still appeared to be over a hundred yards west of the lane.

  At about the same time that Reynaard ordered the company to re-form, a mass of greencoats moved onto the lane and rode toward the Montgren force.

  “Good thing that there’s only room for one company on the road,” said Reynaard cheerfully.

  “One at a time, anyway,” murmured Beltur.

  “Forward!” A bugle call followed the captain’s order. After the last few notes died away, Reynaard asked, “How do you want to handle the company ahead?”

  “We’ll try to break through the first rank or so and then move to the eas
t side of the lane in order to deal with the mage.”

  “You think he’ll throw firebolts immediately?”

  “I don’t know. He hasn’t been throwing them against Raelf. Not since we’ve been close enough to sense them, anyway.”

  “That seems strange,” replied Reynaard.

  “He’s saving himself in order to deal with Beltur,” said Jessyla. “He likely sensed the chaos/order explosion. He knows that Beltur is heading toward him.”

  “How strong is he?” asked Reynaard.

  “Stronger than any mage I’ve run across in years.” At least since I left Gallos.

  “Stronger than you?”

  “We’ll find out.”

  By now the distance between Beltur and Jessyla and the approaching Hydlenese was little more than fifty yards.

  “What do you need me to do?” she asked.

  Beltur understood what she wasn’t saying. “I’m going to split the middle of the first rank, then angle through the next rank or two and move to the left and off the road, and let our troopers fight the Hydlenese. You follow me closely, but slightly to the left so that the left front of their column is smashed in.”

  “Good. You don’t need to try any more until we know more about their mage.”

  “I’d thought that.”

  When Beltur reached a distance of just over ten yards, he urged Slowpoke into a gallop, then adjusted the sharp-edged shields, noting with a certain relief that the Hydlenese troopers ahead had neither lances nor spears, but only circular shields and sabres. In moments, he and Slowpoke had ripped through three ranks of troopers and he was slowing the big gelding to a stop in the wheat field with a scrubby-looking tree between him and the lane.

  Jessyla eased the mare up behind him.

  Before she could say a word, a large chaos bolt arced between the scrubby tree and a taller oak toward Beltur.

  Beltur redirected the firebolt into the Hydlenese force on the main road, spreading it slightly so as to take out at least several ranks.

  Even before Beltur finished the redirection, a second and narrower firebolt flew toward Jessyla, who, caught partly unaware, still managed to fling it into the Hydlenese troopers somewhat farther north on the lane.

  “Mages! They’ve got fire-mages…”

  Beltur frowned at that for a moment, thinking that it was strange that no one had told the troopers. But then, the Hydlenese don’t seem to talk to or listen to their rankers.

  He didn’t have much time to think about that before another large firebolt arced toward him, a firebolt that he redirected back to the main road, into troopers farther east, hoping that the fiery impact would slow the advance and help Raelf and his troopers.

  The white then arced another firebolt, not at either Beltur or Jessyla, but straight east on the road, clearly directed at Raelf’s front lines.

  Beltur had to stretch some, but managed to bring that one down just behind the leading Hydlenese troopers.

  The moments turned into much longer than that, but there were no more firebolts, only the sounds of battle, the clash of blades, occasional muttered epithets, and the slow advance of Reynaard’s troops toward the main road. Beltur could still sense both white mages, but neither threw any more chaos bolts.

  Belatedly, Beltur realized that the half squad of archers had drawn up behind him and Jessyla, and he looked at the squad leader.

  “Ser?”

  “In a moment…” What do you do now? The whites have figured out that you’re using their chaos against their troopers, and they’re not about to throw more of it, not when they have the advantage in numbers.

  “We need to go hunting,” he said to Jessyla.

  “The whites?”

  Beltur nodded. “We have to make them use chaos against us.” Then he turned back to the squad leader and was about to say something when a handful of Hydlenese troopers burst off the road, heading between the two trees toward Beltur and Jessyla.

  Beltur swung Slowpoke around and started him toward the five while spreading the knife-edged shields. The attackers’ momentum was going to have to do some of the damage, but any movement forward by Slowpoke would definitely help. At the last moment, Beltur angled Slowpoke between two riders.

  Four of the five went down. Even before Beltur could halt Slowpoke, the fifth, who was at the end of the line the five had formed, gaped and then turned his mount, spurring it back through the wheat in the direction of the main road.

  Beltur immediately rejoined the others and said to the archers’ squad leader, “Jessyla and I will cut the way across the lane. You stay close behind us. Once we’re on the other side, we’ll go through the field toward the main road. I think we can get within fifty yards or so of the stronger white. You’ll use iron shafts, and I’ll tell you where to aim. All that iron coming at the white will force him to act.”

  At a retching sound, barely heard over the clamor from the lane to the west and the main road to the north, Beltur glanced toward a younger archer at the edge of the group who wiped his mouth with a rag. He smiled wryly and said, “I’ve felt that way more than once. We need to go!”

  He looked through the gap between the trees, but could only see pale blue uniforms.

  He turned Slowpoke to the north and motioned for Jessyla to move alongside him, then looked over his shoulder. “Close it up tight! On the double!”

  Once the archers were in position, he gave the command. “Forward!”

  The two rode north through the green stalks of the wheat, until the uniforms on the lane were all green. Then Beltur found another gap in the trees and turned Slowpoke, making sure Jessyla was beside him, before urging Slowpoke forward at a pace more than a fast walk, but all that he dared on the uneven ground between the field and the shoulder of the road.

  “Cutting shields,” he said, turning his head toward Jessyla.

  The two plowed through the riders on the road, slicing some men and mounts and shoving the others aside. Once they were on the west side of the lane, Beltur glanced back. He didn’t see the young archer who’d been at the end, but he couldn’t wait to see if the young man could make his way clear. He guided Slowpoke northwest at a fast walk toward a point on the main road that was possibly seventy yards west of where the lane met the road.

  To Beltur, crossing those hundred or so yards to a point some twenty yards off the road seemed to take a glass, rather than the fifth of a quint that probably passed. Where he reined up was behind an irregular line of waist-high bushes marking the edge of the field. Between the bushes and the road was a shallow depression. Trees at irregular intervals rose from the southern edge of the depression. Immediately, Beltur ordered, “Ready bows! Nock shafts.”

  He concentrated on locating the mage, then said to the squad leader, “Do you see that dead branch on the short tree on the other side of the road, roughly north-northwest?”

  After a moment, the squad leader said, “Yes, ser.”

  “Drop your shafts into the middle of the road there. Loose shafts!”

  As the iron arrows left the bows of the archers, a squad of troopers immediately swung off the main road and rode toward the group. One of the mounts stumbled and went down, most likely because of a rodent burrow or a small sinkhole. The others continued toward Beltur, Jessyla, and the archers.

  Beltur took a deep breath and turned to Jessyla. “Shield the archers if anyone gets close to them. Tell them to stop loosing shafts if you have to raise a shield.”

  Then he readied his own shields, watching as the troopers tried to force their mounts through the bushes. When most of them were slowed and close together along the bushes, Beltur extended the knife shields far enough on one side that they stretched several yards north beyond the bushes, and raised them to roughly neck-height. Then he turned Slowpoke west and urged him at what Beltur thought was a slow canter along the south edge of the bushes. The extended shields slashed or severed necks and shoulders of about half the squad, whose fallen forms and dead or riderless mounts creat
ed even more of a barrier.

  Beltur immediately turned his attention back to the white mage, who had created a sparkling shield that was blocking the iron arrows and dropping them on the Hydlenese troopers around him. At least some of the deflected and largely spent shafts were red-hot and burned anyone they touched on their fall toward the road. The white mage’s shield turned a few into drops of molten iron. While the Hydlenese troopers in front of the mage tried to flee that rain of hot iron, many were too hemmed in by their compatriots to avoid it.

  “Another volley!” Beltur called out.

  The archers were so quick to nock and release their shafts that Beltur only managed to add a coating of order to a handful, but those shafts exploded violently when they struck the sparkling shield.

  “Again!” shouted Beltur. With that volley he was much more prepared, and a half score of those shafts exploded, raining even more hot metal on the troopers beneath.

  Unhappily, by then another squad or so of Hydlenese riders had broken through the bushes farther to the west of Beltur, Jessyla, and the archers, and were riding through the wheat—with no one but Beltur and Jessyla between them and the archers.

  “You take the ones next to the bushes! I’ll get the others!” Beltur told Jessyla, then urged Slowpoke forward.

  Just as Beltur’s shields were about to cut into the leading Hydlenese, a firebolt seared barely above the heads of the greencoats on the road and slammed into Beltur’s shields with enough force to jar him, but the shields held and sprayed chaos-fire across the nearest and now hapless attackers. While the fire momentarily blinded Beltur, he could sense well enough to keep Slowpoke moving between falling riders, rather than into them. The would-be attackers farther back were also partly blinded. A few turned away. Slowpoke and Beltur slashed through the rest.

  Then Beltur turned Slowpoke, and while the gelding walked around the fallen and back toward the archers, he returned his concentration to the white mage, who seemed to be rebuilding his shields. “Another volley!” A brief sensing reassured him that Jessyla had turned her mare and was closing on him.