Colors of Chaos

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “You’re right,” Cerryl agreed amiably. “We won’t fight here. I don’t want them to see that, though. If they do, they might try something else.” That I wouldn’t be able to puzzle out quickly enough.

  Ferek scratched his beard. “Tire the mounts some to ride back there if they’re chasing us.”

  “They’ve ridden farther, much farther,” Cerryl pointed out, “and it will be a time before they arrive-at least midday.” He paused. “If you rest and water the mounts in the stream there, will they be ready?”

  Ferek looked toward the stream that crossed the southeastern side of the long meadow. “Easy. Do it in squads, I would.”

  “Then why don’t you start now?” Cerryl smiled.

  Hiser covered his mouth and coughed to hide a smile.

  Ferek swung his bay around and ordered, “Water time. Stand down in squads! Water. Be quick now.”

  Cerryl rode the gelding back to the sole oak tree near the road on the crest of the rise and dismounted. He took out the glass and called up the image of the Spidlarians-who appeared nearer. Overhead, the leaves rustled briefly, then stilled again.

  It was almost noon before the Spidlarian force appeared on the more distant hill-and reined up as the riders saw the short line of Cerryl’s lancers, all mounted and apparently ready to repulse any attack or to attack themselves.

  “Mayhap they won’t come forward,” said Ferek, from Cerryl’s right. “Or they’ll let their mounts get their wind.”

  “It could be. We’ll have to see.” Cerryl blotted more of the dampness from his forehead and the back of his neck and stood slightly in the stirrups, trying to loosen trousers that clung too tightly, welded to his body by heat and sweat.

  As Ferek’s lancers had done, the Spidlarians cautiously watered their mounts in small groups, clearly not letting any horse drink much, before re-forming on the rise across the meadow from Cerryl’s forces.

  Slightly before midafternoon, the larger Spidlarian force slowly began to move, taking the slightly lower sections of the long meadow, then moving up. A group of archers rode halfway up the meadow and started to dismount and string their bows.

  “Don’t like that, ser,” Ferek said.

  Cerryl concentrated.

  Whhhssttt. A firebolt arched and fell on one side of the archers.

  One man flared into flame, and the others fell back a good hundred cubits.

  Cerryl frowned. The archers were at the edge of his range, especially for accuracy, but he didn’t want them getting too close.

  Still more than a kay away, the blue lancers split into groups of perhaps four riders and spread from one another as they walked their mounts slowly uphill and across the gentle slope of the rise. The hot sun glinted from their bared blades.

  “They be not together,” mumbled Ferek.

  “I thought that might happen.” Cerryl nodded. The Spidlarians knew or suspected that the Fairhaven forces had a White wizard; so they would not charge in mass where a single firebolt could wreak damage on more than a handful. Still, they would have to mass at some point before they reached Cerryl’s force… but that could be almost at the last moment on the gentle meadow. They wouldn’t be able to keep that spread out once they reached the narrower section of the vale the road traveled between the hills to the southeast.

  “There are a lot more of them…” ventured Ferek.

  Cerryl smiled faintly. “When they get to those bushes, down by the dead tree, we’ll turn and ride back along the road.”

  Ferek frowned. “Why’d we ride up this far?”

  “So they wouldn’t see how the road goes through that narrow place behind us.” Cerryl repressed a sigh. He’d already told Ferek once. “All right, have the men follow me back to the second hill-all but the two squads with Riser.” He paused. “You ready, Hiser?”

  “Yes, ser.” The subofficer gave a quick nod, his eyes going to the lancers who flanked him.

  Whhssst! Cerryl arched another fireball toward the Spidlarians. It fell well short, as he knew it would, but the lancers slowed as the green grass burned for a time, with a thick grayish smoke that quickly faded and then dissipated. “Let’s fall back.” Cerryl turned the gelding. “Hiser… have your group hold here as long as you can without losing anyone, then ride back to our position.”

  That would spend the horses more than Cerryl would have liked, but he didn’t want a fallback to turn into a pell-mell retreat, and having two squads remaining to “hold” the lower rise might ensure a more orderly retreat. If you’re lucky.

  “We’ll hold ‘em long enough for you to re-form, ser,” Hiser promised.

  “Don’t hold too lone,” Cerryl answered. “The idea is to avoid losing men.”

  Riser nodded.

  Cerryl wanted to wince. “I meant that.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  With a nod, Cerryl turned the chestnut and rode alongside Ferek, glancing over his shoulder. With the “retreat” of the White Lancers, the Spidlarian forces began to urge their mounts into a quick trot up the hillside.

  Cerryl reined up, then cast a last firebolt. Whhsttt!

  “Aeüi…”

  More by luck than skill, the wobbly sphere of chaos fire enveloped a blue lancer more than twenty cubits in front of the others. Cerryl was gratified to note that the blues’ advance slowed.

  Almost with each of the gelding’s hoofbeats on the road through the vale toward the higher hill to the southeast Cerryl looked back over his shoulder, nearly bouncing off the trotting mount. The dust burned his eyes, and his throat felt almost clogged with the reddish stuff.

  After what seemed the entire afternoon, Ferek’s lancers turned and re-formed on the higher hillcrest, barely getting into formation before Hiser’s squad galloped back uphill, at least several men short.

  “Lost a few, ser,” Hiser said as he wheeled and drew up beside Cerryl. “The blues are a-coming fast.”

  “Let’s hope they’re coming fast enough.” Cerryl began to muster chaos around him, so much that he could feel the air tingle.

  Although the quick-moving Spidlarians were still more than half a kay away from Cerryl’s position on a still relatively low crest, now more than twenty cubits higher than the road below, the first Spidlarian lancers found themselves riding closer and closer together, forced nearer and nearer to one another by the narrowing of the swale that wasn’t really even a true valley.

  Whhsstt! The firebolt arced into the middle of the horsemen, flaring into a mushroom-shaped flame.

  The screams were faint and quick, but the riders swerved around the blazing figures and the grass on either side of the road, and the Spidlarian advance slowed just slightly.

  “Darkness… he got near on a score…”

  More like half that. Cerryl concentrated and loosed a second firebolt. Whhssstt!

  Some of the riders saw the chaos fire, and those at the edge of the Spidlarian formation split off and galloped up the lower hill to the south of Cerryl’s force, then turned back to the west.

  Abruptly, at the trumpet triplet that rang out across the hill, the remainder of the riders turned away.

  “Why they do that? Just because of a few blasts of flame?” Ferek scratched his white-streaked red beard.

  “I figure they lost near on a score right there,” suggested Hiser. “They saw the trap and backed off. They’ll look for another way to get at us.”

  Cerryl knew the younger subofficer was right. He just had to figure out how and where the Spidlarians would strike again. If you can.

  XCIV

  Overhead, a handful of widely scattered and white puffy clouds barely moved through the green-blue sky. The air was hot and damp from the soaking rains of the day before, and the road clay remained dark, but not sloppy, except in the handful of places where muddy water had puddled.

  The road ran from east to west along a low ridge that bisected a meadow and formed the southern boundary of the vale. A stream, surrounded by wet ground and intermittent marshy spots, wound ba
ck and forth across the center of the lower ground. Irregular clumps of low bushes dotted the marshy ground.

  On the far west end of the open valley were a half-score cots, outbuildings, and cultivated fields that showed lines of green. A handful of figures appeared to be toiling in those fields, and a thin line of smoke rose from the chimney of one cot. The presence of peasants was a measure of just how far north he and his lancers had followed the Spidlarians, Cerryl reflected.

  The White mage reined up and studied the vale, trying to ignore the damp midday heat and the sweat that bathed him.

  Cerryl could see the Spidlarian forces on the western end of the ridge that formed the northern horizon. “Looks like they’re all there.”

  “If we try to get to them, we’ll have to ride down into the valley and back up the other side,” Ferek pointed out. “We ride to them… and we’ll lose men. They got archers.”

  “We don’t try right now,” suggested Cerryl. “Just let them see that we’re here. They’d have to ride through the marshy ground below to reach us, and they won’t do that.” Just like we won’t. Besides, if they tried it, you wouldn’t have any trouble dropping more firebolts on them, and they know that.

  “No way to fight.”

  “We’re not interested in fighting unless we can win,” Cerryl pointed out. “We’re keeping them from getting to the supply wagons and from harassing any levies traveling to support the High Wizard.” If any more ever show up.

  Cerryl shifted his weight in the saddle and studied the blue-clad figures on the far ridge. After a time, he shifted his weight again The Spidlarians did not move. A brief whisper of a breeze passed over the White mage. Then the air was still and sodden once more.

  Finally, Cerryl dismounted.

  “Ser?” asked Hiser.

  “I want to see if they’re all really there.” Cerryl took out the leather case and set the mirror on the grass. He knelt beside it and concentrated.

  Ferek and Hiser dismounted and stood on the road behind Cerryl. From there they could see the screeing glass.

  As Cerryl had suspected, behind the two or three squads silhouetted on the near horizon the majority of the Spidlarians were slipping down the far side of the ridge and forming up on a narrow trail that seemed to lead back eastward. Probably south as well, and they’re trying to vet behind us and toward the supply road.

  “They’d be a-sneaking off,” opined Ferek.

  “So they can flank us,” suggested Hiser.

  Cerryl nodded and tried another image, hoping to trace out the trail where the Spidlarians were assembling. He needed to see where it led - and if there were a way in which he could block them from the Axalt - Elparta road, a way that didn’t cost him any of his too-few lancers.

  The narrow road or trail where the Spidlarians were marshaling wound southeast, behind a line of rises too gentle to be hills. Perhaps the way was a farm road of some sort-or the longer and original road-since it rejoined the road Cerryl and his lancers had taken, perhaps four kays to the east.

  Cerryl frowned as he let the road image fade. He rubbed his forehead. Did he dare move his lancers while some of the blue forces were still observing them?

  He squinted in the bright afternoon light, trying to call up the image of the Spidlarian lancers once more. His head ached by the time the silver mists cleared and he had a sightly misty image of the opposing force. Sweat dribbled down the back of his neck and oozed down his forehead.

  The Spidlarians had started to move southeast, and at almost a quick trot, and the last blue squads had vanished from the ridge.

  Cerryl lifted the glass and began to pack it. “Ferek, Hiser, have the men turn. We’re headed back to that higher hill three kays or so back, the one with the low bluff just beyond the rodent pond.”

  The two subofficers mounted.

  “Form up! We’re headed back.” Ferek’s deep voice rumbled across the ridge.

  “Form up!” echoed Hiser.

  Cerryl slipped the glass into the saddlebag and remounted, easing the gelding up beside Hiser and riding beside the young subofficer to the head of the column headed back to the southeast.

  “Ride to one place… wait… watch him throw a fireball. Then turn and ride some more…”

  “Shut up, Burean… Ride all day if’n it be saving my ass.”

  You hope you’re saving them, Cerryl thought. If you’re not… ? But what choice did he have against a larger force that he needed to keep from the supply lines?

  Cerryl found his eyes drifting to the north and east as he rode beside the two subofficers, back along the same stretch of road that they had ridden that same morning. He couldn’t sense the Spidlarians, nor hear any sign of another force, but his eyes flicked in the direction of the trail road nonetheless. The sounds of the mounts drowned out any murmurs of insects or birdcalls-if there were any.

  “You sure they be headed back this way, ser?” inquired Hiser, his voice deferential.

  No. “As sure as anything is, Hiser.”

  The blond subofficer nodded.

  “I’ll check again in a while,” Cerryl said, “once we get back to the higher ground on the road.”

  “Always take the high ground.” Ferek bobbed his head.

  Cerryl was sweating more heavily when he reined up on the grassy bluff, flanked by gentle grassy slopes that slanted downward to the narrow trail where he expected the Spidlarians to appear. He frowned. While he’d remembered the central bluff and the overlook well enough, he hadn’t recalled how gentle the inclines were on each side.

  He glanced over his shoulder back along the road and the higher ground where his force had mustered. Farther to the southeast, the small pond created by the water rodents glimmered silver between two rises, almost like a distant screeing glass. He turned in the saddle, looking sideways at Ferek. “This overlooks where the trail joins up… but our road is better, and we should have gotten here before them. I’m going to try the glass again.”

  With another look to the trail road below, he slipped out of the saddle and tried the glass. The headache that came with the image of Spidlarian lancers was worse than the last, and flashes of light sparkled in his eyes, light that bore the white of chaos, chaos not from the sun.

  A quick study of the image in the glass reassured him that the Spidlarians continued on their track, with a handful of scouts out ahead, and he released the image as quickly as he could, trying not to stagger as he collected the glass and straightened.

  His tunic was damp through, and the headache remained. Behind him he could hear the murmurs of the lancers and the breathing of their mounts, at least those nearby. The horses probably needed water, but he dared not let them seek the stream farther back along the road, not when the Spidlarians were approaching.

  From where he stood on the road Cerryl glanced up at the two subofficers. “Ferek… have the men stay down on that side of the hill-just below the crest. I don’t want the Spidlarians to see them.”

  Ferek’s salt - and - pepper eyebrows lifted.

  “I want to give them a little surprise. I can’t if they see our lancers.”

  After a moment the older subofficer nodded, then turned his mount.

  “The same for your company, Hiser.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Cerryl rubbed his forehead, then stepped toward the gelding to repack the glass. He found his hands trembling. When had he last eaten? He tended to forget that mustering either order or chaos-or using the glass to spy out the enemy-required that he eat more often.

  Tiredly he pulled a stale, hard biscuit from his saddlebag and chewed slowly, moistening his mouth with occasional swallows from his water bottle, his eyes on the trail road. Abruptly he shook his head and remounted, turning the gelding back down the road, just far enough that he could barely see the trail on which he hoped the Spidlarians continued to ride toward him.

  He fumbled out another road biscuit and crunched on it, until all that remained were crumbs. Unhappily, the headache remaine
d also, if slightly diminished.

  A whispering sound intruded on Cerryl, the faintest of whispers, and he pulled himself more erect in the saddle. No longer was he sore each evening from riding, but even all his recent riding experience hadn’t made him any less susceptible to fatigue.

  Cerryl motioned to the subofficers for quiet, watching the trail road, waiting as the lead Spidlarian scouts appeared, followed by a vanguard of perhaps half a squad. Shortly, as the scouts disappeared from view under the short bluff, Cerryl began to gather chaos to himself as he eased the gelding uphill.

  Whhhstt! A firebolt arched out toward the angled trail, splashing across the damp clay well back of the lead Spidlarian scouts, but short of the main body of riders. Cerryl eased the gelding back downhill a few dozen cubits and flattened himself against his mount’s neck and mane, trusting that the opposing lancers would ride a few dozen cubits farther.

  As the sounds of mounts grew louder, and as Hiser and Ferek glanced worriedly at him, Cerryl rode back uphill and out onto the downslope that led to the narrow bluff overlooking the trail-just in time to see several scouts point in his direction.

  A half-score mounted archers spurred their mounts along the gentle slopes that flanked the bluff overlook, angling their mounts in toward him.

  You waited too long. Cerryl mustered chaos once more and focused it on the two leading lancers-into a narrow beam of lance fire.

  Both archers went down, vanishing into ashes, leaving a thin line of black smoke rising into the clear afternoon sky.

  Whhsttt! Cerryl followed the light lancer with another firebolt, one that sprayed across the lancers behind and downslope of the archers.

  Greasy black smoke seemed to puddle around the front lines of the blue-clad lancers, swirling back upon itself in the damp and still air.

  An arrow hissed past the mage’s shoulder, and Cerryl jerked around in the saddle to see another pair of archers renocking their bows from mounts less than a hundred cubits to his right-almost as high on the grassy inclines to the west of the bluff as he was on the center.

  His mind felt as clumsy as frozen hands had on cold mornings at the mill as he struggled to raise more chaos and fling it against the two bowmen.