The Chaos Balance

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Two twin-branched candelabra provided the light, and, thankfully, the small hearth was cold, and the high rear windows were open, providing a light breeze.

  Nylan hoped Weryl and Sylenia were getting along, but he was glad for some time when neither he nor Ayrlyn was worrying about his son. He took a slow deep breath as he settled into the straight-backed chair at the table.

  “The wine is one of Father’s best,” Zeldyan said brightly. “The brown pitcher.”

  Nylan took the hint and poured some for each of them, although he had to lean forward and stretch to reach Ayrlyn’s goblet.

  “This is very good,” the redhead said after her first sip.

  “Thank you,” answered the oldest regent.

  “Excellent,” added Nylan.

  Two serving women entered with the heaping platters of food. Nylan could smell the spices before they reached the table.

  “Wintermint all-curry,” Zeldyan said with a smile, “and no quilla tonight.” He glanced at her father. “Next time.”

  The gray-haired Gethen smiled back.

  One of the serving women returned with a basket filled with two hot loaves of dark bread, fueling Nylan’s suspicions that the all-curry was spicy indeed.

  “You leave tomorrow?” asked Gethen rhetorically. “A long ride, as long as riding to Rulyarth.”

  “The port?” asked Nylan politely.

  “Such as it be,” said Gethen with a laugh.

  “Father, you are too modest.” Zeldyan turned her head to Nylan. “My sire has practically rebuilt the entire port, and city, and we could not survive without the revenues from the traders there. The Suthyans are jealous.” She shrugged. “But they neglected the port when they held it, in favor of Armat. Now they wish they had not.”

  “Lord Sillek-he acquired the port?” asked Ayrlyn.

  “He had little choice. Lornth was beset on all sides. Ildyrom-the lord of Jerans and the grasslands to the west-had established a fort just across the river from Clynya. The traders were squeezing us because they controlled all the ports, and…” Zeldyan gave an embarrassed smile. “That be history.”

  “Zeldyan speaks truth,” continued Gethen. “Lord Sillek needed security and coins. He drove the Jeranyi out of the grasslands west of Clynya, and then was successful in taking Rulyarth. He had hoped that the revenues from Rulyarth and the expanded trade would strengthen Lornth.” Gethen paused and took a sip of wine. “They did, except that the older holder families insisted that he take on Westwind before Lornth was strong enough. Both Karthanos of Gallos and Ildyrom sent thousands of golds to support the Westwind campaign, and made sure the older holders knew it.”

  “It sounds as though they forced Lord Sillek to overreach himself,” Nylan said.

  “Everyone only wanted him to do the honorable thing.” Zeldyan’s voice was overly sweet.

  Gethen cleared his throat.

  “We are sorry…” began Ayrlyn. “It must be painful…”

  Nylan recalled his speculations about Sillek-that the man had been too decent for his own good and forced into an impossible situation. It appeared those speculations had been closer to truth than he had realized. Was trying to be good, decent, and even-handed always a formula for failure in government? Ryba would have said so.

  “We cannot change the past,” Zeldyan said, “even if it be painful.”

  “The future be the question,” Gethen added.

  “Do you know where the Cyadorans are?” Nylan asked, his fingers on the goblet.

  “The white demons have taken the mines,” Gethen said, “as I thought they would. We received the message yesterday from Fornal in Rohrn. He writes of his concerns. They crossed the Grass Hills and brought more lancers and foot than have been seen in Lornth in generations.”

  “I believe I’d be concerned also,” said Nylan. “Did they bring any of their horseless wagons or anything like that?”

  “No. They brought no strange devices, not that our scouts have reported.” Zeldyan served herself some of the creamy curry, filled with chunks of meat, before passing the platter to Nylan. Then she broke off the end of one loaf of bread and passed that.

  Nylan’s eyes watered from the aroma of the curry as he served himself.

  “How are you finding Sylenia?” asked the older regent.

  “She seems very nice,” answered Nylan. “She and Weryl get along.”

  “You would not consider leaving him in my care?” asked Zeldyan. “I would treat him as my own.”

  “You are most kind,” Nylan said, “but who knows how long we will be wherever we end up?”

  “I understand.” Zeldyan nodded. “I do not like leaving Nesslek. I am glad I am not in your boots.” She turned to Ayrlyn. “Have you any ideas how you might assist us in removing the white demons?”

  “Well,” answered the redhead, with a slight laugh, “since it appears unlikely they will leave voluntarily, we’ll have to find a way to make life unpleasant. That usually means a better way to slaughter people. I don’t look forward to it.”

  “For people reputed to be so warlike, you seem to dislike killing,” said Gethen.

  “Most people respond only to force,” Nylan said. “That’s the way it is, and I’d be a fool not to accept that. I don’t have to like it.”

  “That is why you are so dangerous.” Gethen shook his head. “That is why Sillek would have been a great lord.”

  A faint smile crooked Zeldyan’s lips.

  “Perhaps he was,” suggested Ayrlyn. “Most great leaders die before their greatness is known, or they’re hated while they’re alive because they want to change things.”

  An awkward silence settled over the table.

  “How effective has Fornal been in raising armsmen?” asked Nylan, abruptly, breaking off another chunk of the dark bread, and refraining from wiping his damp forehead.

  “He will have twenty score in levies, and a quarter of that more in true armsmen,” said Gethen.

  “And how many Cyadorans are there?” asked the engineer.

  “We do not know for certain, but between five and ten times that number.” The gray-haired regent smiled grimly. “That is why we had hoped you might help.”

  Nylan nodded. Gethen didn’t want help; he wanted divine intervention, and Nylan hadn’t the faintest idea of how to get it, only that he and Ayrlyn had to figure out something.

  He glanced to his right and saw Ayrlyn nod, ever so slightly.

  “It could be an interesting year,” she said quietly.

  Gethen and Zeldyan exchanged glances, before Zeldyan lifted the brown pitcher. “Would you like some more of the wine?”

  “A little,” answered Nylan.

  “Please,” followed Ayrlyn.

  The smith took another sip, wondering how a land that could create such good wine had gotten itself in such a mess.

  LV

  THRAP!

  In the gray light of predawn, Nylan lowered the wide-bladed razor he was using to shave and glanced over his shoulder toward the bedchamber, catching sight of Weryl. The boy stood and held on to the brass-bound chest, rocking his weight back and forth as though he wanted to take a step.

  “Ah dah dah ah…”

  A slight breeze stirred the room, bearing the odor of damp grass and the slight fragrance of some unknown flower-both sharp in the air cleaned by the night’s thunderstorms. A small puddle of water lay beneath the open window.

  Thrap!

  “Can you get that?” he asked.

  “I’m throwing something on, master of the bath chamber,” snapped Ayrlyn.

  “Sorry. Do you want me…”

  “I’ll get it.”

  At the sound of the door opening, Nylan lifted the crude razor to finish shaving, concentrating on not slashing himself. He finished as quickly as he could and washed hastily, trying to ignore the cock with the off-key crowing that seemed perched on the wall directly below their open window.

  “Zeldyan sent these up with breakfast,” Ayrlyn said a
s Nylan stumbled from the washroom. She held up trousers, shirt, and tunic, all in dark gray. “There’s a set for me as well. They seem to be to our measurements.”

  The smith shook his head. “Why now?”

  “So we couldn’t exactly refuse. It also reflects on the regents, I suspect, if we’re poorly clothed.” Ayrlyn offered a tight smile. “I’m sure we’ll pay for the garments.”

  “You would put it that way.” Nylan lifted the trousers and slipped them on.

  “They do fit nicely,” Ayrlyn observed. “I like them on you.”

  Nylan flushed.

  By the time they were dressed, had wolfed down the eggs and cheese and slabs of something Nylan hoped was ham, and had all their gear in the appropriate bags, the edge of the sun was peering over the eastern horizon, casting a flat glare into the room.

  “Huruc did say dawn,” Ayrlyn said.

  “We’re a little behind.” Nylan hoisted saddlebags into his arms, trying not to get them caught on either his shoulder harness or the hilt of the blade in his waist scabbard.

  “Not so that it would matter. In case you haven’t noticed, this isn’t the most punctual of cultures.” Ayrlyn reclaimed Weryl from his exercises with the trunk.

  “No exact timepieces,” observed Nylan, struggling toward the door, then waiting for the other two.

  “It’s hard to make anything exact in a low-tech culture.”

  As Ayrlyn opened the heavy door, Sylenia rushed down the stones of the corridor toward them. On her back was a thin pack, but she also wore new grays, trimmed with purple, unlike those of Ayrlyn and Nylan.

  “Oh, sers, let me take Weryl.”

  “Be my guest,” said Ayrlyn.

  “You look so handsome this morning,” the nursemaid cooed at the boy. “One day all the girls will think so.”

  “Not too soon,” said Nylan.

  “You don’t want to stop lugging him around?” asked Ayrlyn as they started down the steps to the courtyard door.

  “That would be nice, but I’ve noticed that the older children get, the more problems they have.”

  “Since you’ve never had children before, that has to come from your own upbringing.” The flame-haired angel shook her head. “I pity your poor parents.”

  Horses and their riders milled around in the shadows of the courtyard as the three adults and Weryl made their way toward the stables. Nylan dodged a fresh horse dropping, slipped slightly on the damp paving stones, and jarred Ayrlyn’s arm. “Sorry.”

  “Walking is hazardous to your health here,” she said wryly. “Just about everything is.”

  Merthek was waiting just inside the stable door, with the four horses lined up. “I have your mounts saddled, sers, but I didn’t know about the seat.” His head went to the leather-covered framework by his feet.

  Nylan shifted the bags in his arms. “I’ll attach it to my sad-die, but it works better after the saddlebags are in place-one set anyway. The others will go on the gray.” Nylan had drilled holes in all three saddles-his, Ayrlyn’s, and Sylenia’s-so that Weryl’s seat could be moved from one mount to the other, as necessary. Weryl faced backward, seeing where they had been.

  After setting Weryl in the seat, and fastening him in place with the wide leather strap, Nylan stepped back and asked Ayrlyn, “How does he look?”

  “Happier than when he was in the carrypak.”

  “I think I’ll be happier, too.”

  “You mean you don’t want to fight off bandits with your son strapped to your chest?”

  Sylenia, wearing her new long-sleeved gray shirt, glanced from Nylan to Ayrlyn, and then to the array of armsmen mounted in the open space of the courtyard to the north of Huruc.

  Nylan swung into his saddle, then checked the shoulder harness, before looking to Ayrlyn and Sylenia. As he did, the purple-cloaked Huruc rode slowly across the damp stones of the courtyard.

  “Are you ready, angels?” asked the burly armsman. “We’re ready,” answered Nylan.

  Huruc guided his mount across the paving stones, each step clicking and echoing from the keep walls. “If you do not mind, we should ride at the head of the column.”

  Nylan flicked the dark brown mare’s reins, urging her after Huruc. Ayrlyn eased the chestnut beside Nylan, and Sylenia, seated easily in her saddle, followed. “… get that nag moving, Nuorr!”

  “… in line… know where you belong! Keep it that way.” Nylan looked back over his shoulder at the still-shadowed walls, whitish-pink and splotched with irregular patches of moisture from the night’s rain. Neither Gethen nor Zeldyan had appeared.

  Again, Nylan noted, there were four guards in gray and purple at the gate to the keep. While the four stood stiffly as the column moved past, none looked up. Slowly, slowly, the column clopped out the open gate and turned southward, away from the river, back along the road that had brought Nylan and Ayrlyn to Lornth, less than a handful of eight-days earlier.

  LVI

  THE THREE OFFICERS remained mounted, watching on the hillock, as the engineers struggled below to lift walls around the mining camp, each wall a rampart of earth piled between walls of stone. A deep pit gaped on the eastern side of the camp, where stones were being mined. Only the wall facing the road to Clynya had been completed, and it rose less than six cubits. Other engineers worked on the additional earthen-walled barracks.

  “I don’t like it,” muttered Captain Azarphi. “They all just scattered, not a single arrow.”

  “You want arrows.” Captain Miatorphi laughed. “We’ll see them soon enough. Why do you think we need barracks and not tents?”

  Majer Piataphi did not take his eyes from the horse teams that dragged stone boats full of red earth from the back side of the hill.

  “What do you think, Majer?” asked Azarphi.

  “I’ll be happier when we’re dug in properly.”

  “Maybe we should keep the locals busy,” suggested Miatorphi.

  The major nodded. “According to the old maps, there’s a town a half day west of here. It’s called something like Derlya. Take a detachment and scout it out.” The majer paused, without looking at either officer, then added, “You, Azarphi.”

  “There are a couple of hamlets closer than that, small places,” ventured Miatorphi.

  “You take care of them,” answered the majer. “Not personally. Send a force leader with a few scouts to each, but try not to be seen.”

  “Those miners, they didn’t even know we were coming,” repeated Azarphi. “They ran, like no one had told them.” He shook his head, squinting slightly against the bright morning sun.

  “You asked me what I thought,” said Piataphi abruptly. “I don’t like it either. Those Lornian barbarians, they had to know we’d send a force. Their messages were stalling for time.”

  “You think they’re headed this way with lots of those half-assed warriors?” asked Azarphi.

  “Not yet. They were stalling, and that means they need time. It also means they think they can do something. We need to know when they’re coming and from where.” Piataphi turned in the saddle to face Azarphi. “Try not to let them see you.”

  “What can they do, really do?” inquired Miatorphi. “Very little, if we set up our base right and carry out His Mightiness’s orders. That is, if we’re careful, and I intend to be very careful.”

  LVII

  THERE BE ROHRN,“ announced Huruc.

  Nylan’s eyes followed the armsman’s gesture, although he had to squint into the sun that hung low in the western sky.

  Rohrn lay where the river forked, a town perhaps three-quarters the size of Lornth lying on the west side of the western fork, rather than on the triangle of land formed by the fork. The eastern fork seemed barely a third the size of the western branch, but the road led to a bridge over the eastern fork and then across the triangle to a second and larger stone bridge across the larger fork to Rohrn itself.

  “Daaaa…”

  At Weryl’s semi-words, Nylan looked at the road ahead, no
t quite muddy, but slippery in places from the previous day’s rain, and at the gentle slope down to the first bridge. Deep ruts filled the center of the road, and the riders all took one shoulder or the other.

  The road had followed the east side of the river all the way from Lornth, if often more than a kay or more from the river itself, because of the frequent marshes and swamps, at times even climbing the low hills east of the river to avoid the wetlands beside the water.

  As he rode down toward the eastern fork and the smaller bridge, Nylan noted that thickets and low trees bordered the narrow strip of brown water from the fork all the way back to where it vanished into the rolling hills to the southeast.

  Huruc reined up at the approach to the bridge and turned his mount. “You lead ‘em across, angels, if you would.”

  “All right.” Ayrlyn nodded, as did Nylan.

  The timbered bridge was perhaps six cubits wide and almost a hundred cubits long, with log piers planted at each end and on each side of the actual stream. It had a planked roadbed and a single railing on each side, scarcely sturdy enough to halt a running horse or a heavy cart. The thickets below the approach rose from the streambed to nearly the height of the waist-high railing, and only the center of the span, that part over the water itself, was clear of flanking growth.

  Nylan urged the mare onto the planks, and her hoofs clunked on the wood.

  “Two abreast,” ordered Huruc, from behind them, as the armsmen neared the span. “More spaces between your mounts. Two abreast. Not so close.”

  Even with the spacing, Nylan could sense the bridge flexing as they neared the far side. No wonder the chief armsman wanted them spaced out.

  Nylan drew up short of the second bridge, a wider stone span, with two stone piers anchored in the river itself. Despite the raised causeway approach to the eastern side, the bridge still sloped slightly upward to the bluff on the western side where it entered the city.