Colors of Chaos

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Cerryl glanced toward the valley, leaning forward in the saddle and squinting to make out the forms in the meadows.

  “Cattle,” observed Fydel. “We might be able to send out a wagon and bring in some for rations.” He paused. “If they’re still here… if the blue bastards haven’t set them up as a trap.” He turned in the saddle and added in a louder voice to Teras, “Woods ahead-and cattle. Have them ready for anything.”

  “Arms ready!” ordered Teras.

  “Arms ready.”

  Cerryl took a deep breath, then exhaled. From behind one of the bushes farther uphill-exactly where Cerryl couldn’t see-an arrow arched down toward the small column.

  Whhhsttt! Cerryl loosed chaos, almost without thinking.

  The metal arrowhead, glowing red, tumbled into the road dirt, less than a dozen cubits before Cerryl’s mount.

  “Arms!” The order came from Teras.

  About a half-score of lancers galloped past Cerryl and off the road in the direction from which the shaft had come.

  “Quick there,” said Fydel. “Lucky you were looking that way.”

  “You said they might do something.” Cerryl tried to reach out with his order-chaos senses but could find no indication of anyone, especially not the ordered blackness of a Black mage.

  He listened. After a moment, he could hear hoofs on harder ground, sounds that vanished almost immediately, as did the half-score lancers.

  Fydel and Teras kept riding downhill toward the meadows and the cattle that grazed there. Since they did, as did the lancers who followed, so did Cerryl, but he kept his eyes and senses alert for order or chaos concentrations-or more arrows.

  The road and the valley remained unchanged-until the lancer detachment rejoined Fydel and the others halfway down the road to the valley.

  “They were gone, ser,” reported the subofficer who had led the half-score lancers back to rejoin. He offered a nod to Captain Teras. “Would have foundered our mounts trying to catch them.”

  “Fall in, at the end,” said Teras laconically.

  “Yes, ser.”

  The lancers rejoined the column.

  “Lucky this time,” Fydel said dourly. “Won’t always be looking in the right direction when someone looses a shaft.”

  “I’ll take good luck when we can have it,” replied Teras from beside the square-bearded mage, “especially against attackers who loose shafts and then flee.”

  “We need more levies. That way we could just move ahead and take over all these hamlets.” Fydel grinned at Cerryl. “Then you could worry about peacekeeping and this sort of thing.”

  “Thank you,” the younger mage answered. “I appreciate your faith.”

  “Think nothing of it.” Fydel’s grin broadened.

  “We might get some fresh beef out of this patrol,” suggested Teras. “The men will appreciate that.”

  “We all will,” said Fydel.

  Except for the peasants who lose their animals. Cerryl just nodded and blotted his forehead again.

  XCI

  Jeslek looked around the small cot, his eyes flashing in the gloom, first at Anya, then Fydel, and finally resting momentarily on Cerryl. As Anya smiled behind the High Wizard, Cerryl could sense he wasn’t likely to enjoy what was coming.

  “Fydel was most impressed with your ability to sense the blues.” Jeslek smiled a bright smile that was as false as Anya’s well-practiced expression.

  Cerryl waited.

  “You have also had experience in directing patrollers and in battle,” Jeslek continued. “I would be most remiss if I did not employ such talents.” Another smile followed as the High Wizard pointed to the map flattened on the crude trestle table, barely illuminated by the single brass lamp on the wood beside it. “Here is southern Spidlar. The main body of our forces will be traveling westward to Elparta. To begin with, the levies will come through the Easthorns from Rytel. We must protect this section of road from the mountains to where our forces are, and eventually to Elparta.” Jeslek offered a perfunctory nod. “It makes little sense for you to accompany us, Cerryl, not now. It also makes less sense for Fydel to patrol the entire road between our forces and the Easthorns.”

  “You wish me to patrol a section of the road?” asked Cerryl not quite guilelessly.

  “Fydel will command the patrols immediately to the rear of the main body of forces and from the town to the west of the fork hamlet.”

  Fydel nodded.

  “You will patrol the section you recently traveled, from the mountains through this town to the fork hamlet and halfway to the next town.”

  “That is about fifteen kays west of here,” Anya interjected.

  “You will have twoscore White Lancers and two subofficers.” Jeslek smiled again. “You have been most creative in the past, and I am certain you will use that skill to Fairhaven’s advantage once again.”

  “Two score…” mused Cerryl.

  “Fydel will be closer to the Black arms commander’s forces and will need a somewhat larger force.” Jeslek lifted the stones holding down the corners of the map, one at a time, then rolled it up. “I do not propose to have large groups of lancers strung out across Spidlar. You and Fydel are to stop any attacks, when possible without losing many lancers, to avoid battle when you cannot, and to ensure that any levies traveling the road are warned well in advance of any possible attacks that you cannot turn.” Jeslek paused before his final words.

  “With your skills, Cerryl, I am certain you can handle such a mundane task.”

  Behind the High Wizard, Anya smiled through the dim lamplight.

  “I appreciate your trust and confidence.” Wonderful! You’re in charge of more road than Fydel and with fewer lancers. Yet another opportunity for failure and disgrace, especially against an experienced Black commander.

  XCII

  The breeze from outside the small cot was warm already, even though the sun was barely above the horizon. Cerryl could hear someone feeding the horses and the clanking of a cook pot. His eyes dropped to the screeing glass upon the time-worn wood before him, and he leaned forward on the bench, slowly sketching from it what he could on the rough map beside the glass. He paused and dipped the quill in the traveling inkstand once more, then added another dashed line that represented a narrow trail. His maps suffered in accuracy, but making them was another way beside riding every cubit of trail and road to learn more about Spidlar. He particularly tried to follow and note on his crude maps the narrow trails that were not exactly roads. Those were the ones that an experienced lancer leader might well use against someone-like Cerryl-who did not know the land, especially in dry weather.

  He shook his head and went back to screeing. Finally, after his fingers began to tremble, he let the image of a patch of land to the northwest of his encampment fade, and he put his hands in his head, closing his eyes for a time.

  A bit later, he smiled and reached for another place. Leyladin’s image swirled through the mists, and a puzzled look crossed her face, Then came a smile, a broad smile, and her fingers touched her lips. Behind her, Cerryl could see the green silk hangings of her room.

  After a moment, Cerryl let the image fade, a wistful smile upon his own lips. While he could sense when someone used a glass to scree him, he still wondered how Leyladin could sense he was the one looking at her, but, in a way, she’d known him first through the glass and had always recognized his screeing. What else has she always known?

  He frowned and studied the blankness before him on the rough wooden trestle table. The glass showed him no riders in blue, no armsmen in each of the hamlets he screed-those within a day’s ride of the road between Axalt and the staging town where he and his small detachment of lancers were based. His screeings did not mean that his lancers might not face ambushes, only that there were no large bodies of armsmen that near.

  They’re all making Jeslek’s advance difficult, that’s why. Cerryl wiped his forehead, damp with the effort of working with the glass, then took a swig from
his water bottle.

  He concentrated again, thinking about the smith in distant Diev, whose focused order radiated across the kays separating them.

  The red-haired smith was beside his forge, drawing wire, and Cerryl could sense the order in that wire even through the glass. Like Leyladin, Dorrin glanced up as his image strengthened in the glass before Cerryl. Unlike the blonde healer, the smith scowled, but briefly, before returning to drawing wire.

  “Ordered black iron wire,” murmured the gray-eyed mage, shaking his head. What Dorrin was doing would cause great troubles for the White forces moving toward Elparta, even if Cerryl did not yet understand how. That he could feel. Does Jeslek know? Or care?

  Cerryl stood and packed the mirror back into its carrying case.

  XCIII

  While the morning cook fires were building, Cerryl took the screeing glass from its case and set it on the trestle table-the beginning of his daily pattern. The already-warm wind gusted through the open door, swirling Cerryl’s white trousers around his legs and boots and carrying the odor of green wood into the cot.

  He rubbed his nose, then pulled the bench out so that he could sit as he called up the images he needed-and as he added to the rough maps he continued to draw. He had sketched in most of the side roads and trails that fed into the main road between Axalt and Elparta, and there were far more of them than he ever would have guessed before he’d begun his informal project.

  He frowned as he looked at the blank glass, deciding against seeking Leyladin until he was finished with a drafting session and with scanning the nearby hamlets. That way, at least, he could end with a pleasant visage.

  He found one more trail, winding through the rolling hills and leading almost to the main road where Jeslek and his forces massed a good forty kays to the southeast of Elparta along the hills that separated Gallos and Spidlar. After Cerryl added that to the map, he began to look for the latest supply wagons from Certis. Those were encamped somewhere in the Easthorns short of ruined Axalt. Finally, he began to scree the nearby hamlets.

  The first two attempts showed still-empty hamlets. Even before the silver mists cleared on his third effort, a good four-, perhaps fivescore mounted armsmen wearing blue tunics or vests appeared in the glass, saddling their mounts and preparing to ride.

  Cerryl couldn’t tell exactly where they were, but they looked to be on the road leading to the crossroads just beyond the hamlet where he’d made his headquarters-less than a half-day’s ride on what passed for one of the better roads in the area.

  The brown-haired mage forced himself to finish checking the other locales before he returned to the image of the mounted armsmen. After studying the image again, he slowly stood and wiped his suddenly damp forehead. From what he could tell, no inordinate order or chaos accompanied the armsmen, and the glass wasn’t wrong. At least, it usually wasn’t.

  You hope it’s not. He swallowed and walked out of the cot, glancing around the hamlet, the few buildings swathed in the orange of post-dawn, lancers gathering beyond the cook fires for their rations.

  “Ser?” asked the young lancer serving as a messenger.

  “Oh… I need Hiser and Ferek. Right now.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  As the lancer scurried off, Cerryl massaged his clean-shaven chin. Even in the field, he hated the itchiness of a beard, although sometimes he skipped shaving a day or two with the white-bronze razor that Leyladin had given him years before.

  Has it been that long?

  Hiser was the first to arrive, his lank blond hair flopping across his forehead. The older Ferek followed, brushing back thinning red hair streaked liberally with white.

  “We’ve finally got visitors,” Cerryl said. “Probably fivescore Spidlarian lancers. They look like they’re on the road to the fork, maybe a half-day’s hard ride.”

  “That’s more than we have.” Ferek looked speculatively at Cerryl.

  Hiser nodded.

  “I’m not really an armsman,” Cerryl ventured, “but it seems to me that we want to meet them somewhere that favors us, where they can’t easily ride around us and where they have to ride uphill to reach us.” He paused. “And where I can throw firebolts at them.”

  “There’s that bunch of hills about two kays beyond where the road forks,” suggested Hiser.

  Cerryl nodded. It might work. “Ferek… you get the men ready, and Hiser and I and a few lancers will ride out there now to see how we can best set up.”

  “Set up… what’s to set up?” Ferek mumbled to Hiser as the two walked back in the direction of the corral and the lancers, some of whom were still eating.

  Hiser murmured something, but Cerryl didn’t catch his words. The mage turned back to the cot, where he again called up the image of the Spidlarian lancers, now clearly riding southward. He let the image go, slipped the glass into its case, then stepped out of the cot. He walked down to the pole and post corral, stopping by the cook fire to grab a biscuit and some hard yellow cheese, which he wolfed down and chased with water. When he reached the corral, the gelding was already saddled and tied, waiting.

  Hiser was mounted, as were five lancers.

  “We’re ready, ser.”

  Cerryl strapped the glass into a saddlebag and then mounted. The sun had climbed clear of the low hills to the east and blazed out of the clear green-blue morning sky, indicating a day that would be long and hot.

  “Do you know how hard they’re riding?” Hiser asked.

  “They’re walking their mounts.”

  As they rode westward past the untended fields and meadows, Cerryl could hear Ferek’s voice behind them as he addressed the majority of the lancers.

  “No more raids. These be armsmen, and lots of ‘em. A good wizard helps, but he’ll not do everything.”

  Not do everything? Let’s hope I don’t have to. Cerryl still recalled the battles in Gallos, when he’d been an apprentice. It had taken three wizards and three apprentices to defeat the Gallosian lancers. There were a few more Gallosian lancers there than here. But that battle still pointed out the limits of using chaos fire. The bigger the battle, the less use it was, because drawing chaos from the land and air exhausted the White wizard before all the armsmen on the other side were turned to ash.

  The early-morning wind had died, and the morning was still and damp, although there had been no rain in several days. Cerryl shifted his weight in the saddle, his eyes on where the road forked ahead.

  Cerryl, Hiser, and the quarter-score lancers took the north fork, the one that wound its way toward Kleth-eventually. After they had ridden up and down three of the long and gentle rises that barely qualified as hills, the day had gotten warm enough that Cerryl was sweating, and what little breeze there had been had long since died away. The road was empty, and the only tracks were those of Cerryl’s patrols.

  In time, the seven reined up on the hillside that Hiser had thought might be suitable for what he had envisioned. The young mage glanced at the subofficer.

  “See… this is the right place,” Hiser said. “We could form up on the right in that meadow… make them ride up-or charge down.”

  Without speaking, Cerryl surveyed the ground to the northwest. Was Hiser right? Could they use the terrain to their advantage? How? Height wasn’t enough by itself. The road went through a narrower space between the two rolling hills. On the north side was an open meadow and on the south a woods or woodlot, thick enough to slow and split riders. Any decent officer would see that and go another way, and Cerryl couldn’t count on stupidity on the part of the Spidlarians.

  “Let’s ride along the road to the next rise,” the mage suggested.

  A brief frown crossed Hiser’s face.

  “You were right about the place,” Cerryl said, “but if we wait here, it will be obvious to them. I’m wondering if the next rise looks like high ground but would show that we could be flanked.”

  Hiser nodded. “So we’d form up and then give a little attack and fall back.”

 
“We might just fall back,” Cerryl said. “I’d rather avoid losing men we don’t have to lose. It would also give them the idea I don’t know what I’m doing.” You don’t, anyway. He concealed the wince at his own self-doubt.

  “Make them hasty… you think?”

  “Something like that, just so they don’t think too much.”

  Cerryl rode down through the long and gentle slope of the meadow for nearly half a kay, noting that despite the lush grass, the ground appeared flat and firm.

  “They could ride up this easy,” said Hiser. “Course… we could ride down easier.”

  “Let’s hope they think so.” Cerryl turned his mount back uphill.

  After dismounting near the single oak near the road-he thought it was a oak-Cerryl took out the glass and laid it on its case in the shadow of the tree, then motioned for Hiser to join him.

  As the image swam into the glass, Cerryl could hear the lancer sub-officer swallow. The Spidlarian lancers were still on the road headed toward Cerryl. They were not straining their mounts but moving at a good walking pace.

  “Watching their mounts, they are,” observed Hiser.

  “A cautious leader.” And that’s trouble. Cerryl released the image. “We might as well relax until Ferek and the others get here.”

  “Stand down,” Hiser ordered the five lancers.

  Cerryl sat down in the shade, leaning against a crooked oak root that had risen aboveground. He had the feeling he’d best rest while he could.

  Well before midmorning, Ferek and the balance of Cerryl’s lance arrived.

  “The hill the last back is a better place,” Ferek offered brusquely as he reined up beside the oak, looking down at Cerryl, who had not remounted the gelding.