Colors of Chaos (Saga of Recluce)

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Standing by the rough pole corral fence, Ferek lowered the chunk of greasy meat he was eating. “You’d not be looking all that pleased this morning, Mage Cerryl,” observed the subofficer. “Have the blues gone into the Easthorns now, trying to reach the road?”

  “I think not.” Cerryl motioned to Hiser.

  The blonde subofficer swallowed the last morsels of the hard bread he had been eating and walked toward the mage and the older subofficer.

  Cerryl’s headache and watering eyes reminded him that he also needed to eat, and the mage stepped aside toward the plank propped on two tree sections that served as a provision board. Cerryl took almost half a small loaf of bread and used his white-bronze belt-knife to laboriously cut a chunk of the dry white cheese that seemed nearly as hard as the wood on which it rested.

  The bread, though warm, was dry, and Cerryl had to struggle to swallow a mouthful. He wished he’d brought his water bottle from the cot, but he managed to gnaw off a corner of the cheese before he turned back to the subofficers and swallowed before speaking. “There are two forces now, the one we’ve been chasing and another one, maybe half the size of the first. They’re headed toward the Elparta road, maybe forty kays west of here.”

  “That’d be a solid two-day ride,” said Hiser.

  “It should be three for them.” You hope.

  “Together…what? Fourfold our numbers?” asked Ferek.

  “Could be more than that,” Cerryl admitted. “We have to keep them from getting to where they can attack Jeslek and the other lancers from behind.”

  “Take some mighty good working to do that.” Ferek’s tone was bland.

  Hiser just looked at Cerryl, his mouth expressionless but concern in his eyes.

  “We’ll find a way.” Cerryl offered a smile he did not feel. “After you finish eating, get the men ready. We’ll need to start as soon as we can. I’d like them to have a chance to rest before we face the blues.”

  The blonde Hiser nodded, then tugged at his short beard. “We leave anything here?”

  Cerryl shook his head. If they beat back the Spidlarians, they’d need to stay closer to Jeslek’s force, and if they didn’t…

  “One way or the other…no sense in that,” agreed Ferek, mumbling his words over another mouthful of the greasy mutton.

  Cerryl took another mouthful of bread and a chunk of the hard white cheese, chewing carefully.

  “They won’t ride away this time,” predicted Hiser.

  “No, I don’t think so either.” Cerryl could feel some of the worst of the headache subsiding. You have to remember to eat…

  “I’ll have them cook down the rest of the mutton.” Ferek turned toward the cook fires.

  “I’ll pass the word,” Hiser answered. “Be a bit, still.”

  “I know,” Cerryl mumbled through the last of the hard cheese. He turned and walked slowly back to the cot to pack his own gear, thinking about Hiser’s words. How could he deal with close to eightscore lancers who knew how to avoid firebolts?

  He frowned as he paused inside the cot’s doorway, his eyes going to the glass he’d left on the table. What about rearranging order and chaos? Wouldn’t that be less tiring than extracting chaos and flinging it? How would that help you in a battle or skirmish?

  Cerryl shrugged as he packed the glass and peered around the dusty room. You’d better find some way.

  With a last glance at the empty trestle table, he turned and stepped back into the cool morning air, hoping that the day would remain pleasant, rather than turn sweltering.

  XCVI

  THE HAZY CLOUDS of morning had thickened and turned into heavy gray masses that filled most of the sky, with but occasional patches of blue-tinged green. Despite the clouds, the day was warm and sultry, without even a hint of a breeze. The light rain of the morning had given way first to mist and then to the damp heat that permeated everything.

  Cerryl felt that if he so much as lifted an arm or shifted his grip on the gelding’s reins, he would burst into sudden sweat.

  “Damp,” murmured Hiser. “Makes it seem hotter.”

  “Get hotter yet ’fore summer’s over,” answered Ferek.

  “This is where they join.” Cerryl reined up and surveyed the road and the draw that held the narrower way that the Spidlarians traveled from the north. He shook his head, thinking about how the narrow strip of clay actually curved eastward for several kays, around the hills, before swinging west and south to join the Axalt-Elparta road.

  Behind him, the column slowed and stopped. The scouts had already vanished behind the woods a kay or so ahead, around which the main road curved.

  “They won’t be coming that way,” suggested Ferek, spitting onto the patchy grass of the main road’s shoulder. One hand gestured toward the wooded hills to the right of the road and toward the defile that held the narrower road from the northwest.

  “How would you come?” asked Cerryl.

  “Those fields back a ways…they be a trace steep, but they be open. They slope to the main road. I’d bring the mounts up that way. Specially after knowing what you done to ’em in narrow places.”

  From his mount to Cerryl’s left Hiser nodded.

  What Ferek said made sense, but would the Spidlarians see it that way? And if they did, what could Cerryl do with an open field? As Cerryl recalled the meadows, the slope from the narrow road was uphill. Would any lancers advance uphill?

  Cerryl dismounted and handed the gelding’s reins to one of the lancers drawn up behind Hiser. Then he extracted the glass and set it on an even patch of ground on top of its leather case. With the heavy clouds overhead, there was no direct sunshine to worry about.

  Cerryl concentrated on the glass, trying to bring up the image of the Spidlarians, ignoring the perspiration that intensified when he attempted screeing or employing either order or chaos. Slowly, the silver mists cleared, and an image of lancers appeared. From what he could tell, they remained on the same road as before, heading in a generally southward direction, but at least a day north of where Cerryl and his forces were positioned.

  You hope. Then, Cerryl had been screeing and hoping a great deal over the past several eight-days. Finally, he repacked the glass, pausing to massage his forehead for a moment.

  “Ser?” asked Hiser.

  “They’re still riding this way.” Cerryl remounted and looked eastward. “We should ride back to those fields,” he decided. “Not everyone, just a half-score or so. The others can stand down here.”

  “Now?” asked Hiser.

  “The blues won’t be here for almost another day, not at the pace they’re making.”

  “What if they go across the hills to cut off distance? They could do that,” suggested Hiser.

  “Don’t think so,” offered Ferek. “From what the mage has shown in the glass, that north way be open. Till the last few kays, leastwise. Cross the hills, and too many places there for a mage to hide and throw fire.”

  “Best we lay out the encampment,” suggested Ferek.

  “And send out scouts and pickets,” added Hiser.

  “Ferek,” Cerryl ordered, “you take care of setting up the encampment. Hiser will lead the half-score lancers from his company who will ride back to that meadow field with me.”

  “Yes, ser.” Ferek nodded. “Men could use an early stop and some rest. We’ll have it all set up when you get back.”

  Cerryl turned his mount back eastward, letting Hiser ride ahead of him and issue the commands to select the half-score of lancers that would accompany the two of them. He would have preferred to stop and rest himself.

  How are you going to handle a force that could be five or six times yours? Especially when they know how to attack a White mage? Cerryl shifted his weight in the saddle. He didn’t have any answers, just hoped that there was something about the fields that would give him an idea.

  Hiser eased his mount up beside Cerryl as the smaller group separated from the longer column of White Lancers. For a time the onl
y sounds were the plodding of hoofs, the breathing of horses, and scattered murmurs of the lancers trailing the two.

  “How are we going to face some tenscore lancers? Can you destroy them all with wizard fire, ser?” Hiser finally asked.

  “Not if they spread out the way they usually do. That’s why we’re riding back there. I need to see what else I might do.”

  When they reached their destination, Cerryl could sense that it was well past midafternoon, despite the still-thick gray clouds.

  Once he reined up, a lone vulcrow cawed and flapped away from the higher grass downhill from the main road. Cerryl studied the slanting fields once more. He let his order-chaos senses slide under the long, sloping field, probing for concentrations of order or chaos, but the ground felt no different from any other patch of soil, except that some order seemed slightly more concentrated near the small stream to the west of the lower road that lay beyond the broad and slanting meadow.

  Through a small gap in the clouds a thin line of sunlight arrowed across the afternoon, briefly lighting the edge of the hardwoods that defined the eastern edge of the meadow, a meadow nearly a kay wide. The light faded as swiftly as it had appeared, and the green leaves of the woods appeared gray-green once more.

  The distance between the two roads was closer to two kays, and to Cerryl’s eyes the main road appeared nearly two hundred cubits higher than the other, far narrower road, which wound back into the lower woods to the north and west. The lower road flanked the stream for perhaps four kays before actually meeting the main road to the west, and both stream and road wound through relatively thick woods.

  “Two hundred cubits higher, even, maybe,” Cerryl murmured to himself. The slope between the two roads was greater than Ferek had thought and than Cerryl had recalled.

  “A bit steep to bring up a mount,” suggested Hiser.

  “Could be, but it’s nearly two kays, and they can spread out. If they take the road, they get bunched together.” Cerryl shrugged. “If they do, we go back to where the camp is. Between the hill gap and the woods, their lancers will get all bunched up.”

  “They’d not like that.”

  Less than coming up the meadow. Cerryl rode the gelding slowly out and down into the meadow. While the ground was uneven in places, the footing seemed firm and the slope not so steep as it had appeared from the higher road.

  The grass was thick and green, nearly knee-high. Later in the year it would burn well, but not now. What if he loosed the order bounds right beneath the surface? What would that do? Cerryl frowned. He couldn’t just leave order free. Could he shift it into other parts of the ground?

  He swallowed and tried to reshift some of the order and chaos, strengthening the ground beneath the surface in thin lines and then breaking the order ties in other places.

  Grrrrr…The ground shifted ever so slightly, and Cerryl swallowed.

  “What was that?” asked Hiser.

  Cerryl didn’t answer, struggling as he was with his battle to change the order-chaos balance of the rocks and subsoil, shift the strengths and the bonds that had knit the ground together. Sweat rolled down his forehead, and he absently blotted it away from his eyes.

  A flock of blue-winged birds fluttered from the hardwoods, shrieking as they did. A sudden buzzing filled the sodden air, and dozens of flying grasshoppers rose out of the grass and hummed their way eastward and north, away from the ground Cerryl strained to alter. A single deer bolted downhill, then turned as she saw the White riders and bounded back into the woods.

  “…little closer and we’d a had a good meal…”

  “…real good meal…”

  “…better be still…He’s got that look.”

  “So’s Hiser.”

  Cerryl squinted and blocked away the low-voiced comments from the lancer squad. Even as he continued his efforts, he began to sense a roiling, almost a boiling, and an ebb and flow of order and chaos, far, far deeper than the subsoil where he worked.

  Coils and lines of black order wound around unseen but clearly felt fountains of chaos that rose and fell sporadically in the depths beneath the meadow. Should he send his senses below? Would it help?

  No…not now. Too much to do here. He forced his concentration back to the task at hand.

  In the end, the meadow grass concealed a churned mass of clay beneath a thin layer of soil holding the long green grass, clay that, Cerryl suspected, more nearly resembled quicksand than clay. Cerryl had also left just enough support in thin pillars and layers of order to hold a few riders and mounts—in case the Spidlarians wanted to scout the meadow. Some of that order he would have to shift later.

  The thoroughly sweat-soaked mage finally took a deep breath in the late-afternoon air, then another. He closed his eyes for several moments, perhaps longer, to shut out the sparkling flashes of light that disrupted his vision, before turning in the saddle to Hiser. “Make sure that no one rides across that meadow. It’s likely to be the last ride they take.” Cerryl’s tone was dry as he turned back toward his horse.

  “Ah, yes, ser.”

  Cerryl remounted the gelding, his thoughts still on the sense of entwined order and chaos that he had sensed deep below the meadow. How far into the depths do they extend? He shook his head. Those speculations would have to wait. Besides, his entire body was screaming that he’d done enough, more than enough. He turned to Hiser. “We’ll head west, back beyond where the trees start. That way, if they send out scouts, they won’t see us anywhere near the fields.”

  “There be nothing ’tween them and the next wagons and levies, then,” pointed out the blonde subofficer, tugging at his beard.

  “We travel faster than they do. If they turn east, we can catch them unless they want to founder their mounts, and then…” Cerryl shrugged dramatically.

  And in the meantime, we wait…

  XCVII

  IN THE GRAY light of another cloudy morning just past dawn, Cerryl stood and packed the screeing glass back into its case, his eyes going to the two subofficers. “They’re still on the road. Both groups have joined, and I make out a good ten score, perhaps twelve score.”

  “Another score in scouts and a score more in their van,” suggested Ferek.

  Cerryl offered a casual shrug he didn’t entirely feel. “It won’t matter if they come up the meadow.” What if they don’t? How do you assure that they climb the meadow? He took a deep breath, conscious that even the air smelled and felt dampish, moldy, despite the warmth already apparent.

  Ferek and Hiser exchanged wary glances.

  “Can you think of any way to ensure that they climb the meadow?” Cerryl glanced toward the trees to the south of the camp, then toward the thin clouds of the eastern sky and the light that seeped up behind them. The air remained hot and still, almost as though it had cooled little over night, and the odor of overcooked biscuits seeped around him.

  “If’n their captain thought we were a-waiting…” mused Ferek. “Along the end of the narrow road, that be.”

  Cerryl massaged his forehead. All the order-chaos manipulations and screeing were extracting their price. His tunic and trousers were looser, and his eyes burned almost all the time, not to mention the headaches and the flashes of light that sparked before his eyes. Using the glass before eating doesn’t help…. you know? “I need to eat.”

  “Not much but dried mutton, hard cheese, and harder biscuits,” offered Hiser. “Cooked them too long, someway.”

  “That’s fine.” Cerryl set the glass case beside his bedroll, then straightened, turned, and walked a dozen paces toward the rough-hewn serving plank, where he took two biscuits. The brownish oval of the first was so hard that when he tried to gnaw off a corner, his upper teeth slid off the biscuit and he nearly bit his lip.

  “I said they were hard, ser,” offered Hiser, who had followed him.

  Cerryl unsheathed his knife and hacked off a tan chunk that seemed closer to wood than food, then put it in his mouth and took a swallow of water to moisten the
rock-hard biscuit. One taste of the dried mutton jerky was enough to persuade him to try another biscuit and more of the hard and musty cheese.

  The light flashes before his eyes stopped after the second biscuit, and the headache diminished but did not disappear. His stomach did stop growling. After he finished the third hard biscuit, Cerryl turned to Ferek, who had waited for the mage to finish eating. “What if you took twoscore lancers and rode them down that narrow road and then back…and left a couple of scouts on fast mounts where the road curves back to the west?”

  Hiser grinned. “You mean where the blues could see them?”

  Cerryl nodded. “That might give them the idea to climb the field, especially if we’re not in sight on the road above the fields.”

  “Have to pull back pretty far so as their scout not be seeing us,” offered Ferek.

  “You can put most of the lancers a kay or so back, even farther,” suggested Cerryl. “We’ll need some trees or a small woods for a screen. Otherwise, their scouts will see us.”

  “What if they overrun you? You can’t throw firebolts at all of them,” Hiser pointed out.

  “If they don’t try the meadow…there’s no way we have enough lancers to stop them. I can use the glass to scout them.” And get more headaches. “We might as well take another look right now.”

  Cerryl walked back to where he had left his bedroll and the leather-cased glass, picking both up. The bedroll needed a real washing—not just a brushing with chaos to remove the worst of odors and dirt—but Cerryl doubted he’d have a chance for that anytime soon. He’d already spent more than a season in Spidlar, and all of it had been spent patrolling one section of road in support of Jeslek’s advance on Elparta. Is Fydel having the same problems? Does it matter?

  One way or another, it was clear that Jeslek was having great difficulty, though Cerryl had no idea precisely why. Dorrin, the redheaded Black smith, had remained far to the north in Diev, and Cerryl had found no hint of any other order concentrations in Spidlar. Was the Black arms commander that good? Good enough to slow or stop the High Wizard and all the chaos at Jeslek’s command?