Cyador’s Heirs

by Jr. L. E. Modesitt

  Lerial is conscious of Altyrn’s eyes on his back as he leads the two rankers through the gate and then continues southward through the calf-high grass toward the outer road gate, behind which wait a half score of men in brown. He brings the gelding to a halt some ten yards short of the gate guards and surveys the gate. From what he recalls when he passed earlier, it is a good half yard thick, if not more. He cannot determine of what the gate is constructed although the back side consists of thick timbers over thick planks. The east end of the gate fits tightly into stone groves in the massive pillar, and from each end of the gate extend stone walls as far as he can see, not that he can make out much beyond ten yards, so entwined are the walls with the trunks of the massive trees on both sides.

  Unless the Meroweyans have brought siege engines, and Lerial has seen no sign of such, they are unlikely to breach the road gate. Even with chaos-fire, it is likely to take a number of firebolts. Yet … what can Altyrn do?

  A wry smile crosses Lerial’s face as he realizes that well might be the reason why the majer has allowed him to see what he can do.

  He waits almost a quarter glass before he senses the line of shieldmen moving forward, then stopping a good fifty yards back from the road gate. He can also sense a chaos wizard behind the shield wall, flanked by armsmen and then by horsemen.

  Chaos builds.

  Lerial tries to create the circular spiral pattern he has visualized, but before he can complete it, a firebolt arches from behind the shield wall and slams into the road gate. The gate does not even shiver, although flames flash skyward, followed by puffs of gray-black smoke.

  An involuntary “Oh!” escapes from one of the rankers behind Lerial.

  You’ve got to be quicker. Lerial begins creating the pattern the moment he senses that chaos is building around the second white wizard.

  The second firebolt arches not toward the road gate, but toward the thick woods to the west of the gate, and Lerial barely manages to throw his pattern into the path of the chaos-fire.

  An unseen whip of order and chaos rocks him in the saddle, and a thin line of chaos-fire forms an arch between a point just short of the woods and another point short of the shield wall, where the chaos flares against an unseen barrier.

  Shields! Lerial is well aware that some Magi’i have shields, but the appearance of shields among the Meroweyan white wizards startles him, so much so that he is slow to react to the next firebolt, partly because of the throbbing headache the backlash, if that is what it was, that struck him has created.

  Belatedly, he realizes that the third firebolt is aimed directly at him, as if the white wizards know he is there. But why shouldn’t they? You know they’re there.

  Frantically, Lerial throws together another order coil, stronger, he hopes, and more accurate because he doesn’t have to gauge or measure the incoming firebolt—it’s headed toward him.

  Lerial snaps the order-coil pattern into place just as he feels the faintest heat from the approaching firebolt—and order and chaos flare in a searing pattern!

  Lerial almost smiles as he can sense the chaos flashing back toward the white wizard, except blackness smashes him down before his lips can even curl.

  * * *

  He wakes with a start, and the blackness hammers him again, so much that his vision narrows to a point of grayness. He closes his eyes. He is lying on a blanket, but the blanket is clearly on the ground, because he can feel every lump and stick digging into his back.

  “Don’t try to move, Captain.” The voice is a woman’s, and he doesn’t recognize her, but the accent suggests she is Verdyn. “You’re still very weak. You will recover quickly, though.” There is a slight laugh.

  “It’s funny that I’m lying here unable to move?”

  “No … but the reason is.”

  Lerial opens his eyes slowly. The woman kneeling beside him on the blanket is silver haired. She is not old, but neither is she young.

  “What might that be?” he asks cautiously. He can smell the acrid odor of burning wood and vegetation, but he can see no fire, nor any smoke.

  “You almost died from having too much order in your body. It tends to make everything stop.”

  Too much order? “How … did that happen?”

  She shakes her head. “I’ve never seen that before. Your men rushed you here. You weren’t breathing, and if it hadn’t been for the order you would have died immediately. You would have if we hadn’t bled off some of the order and gotten you breathing. Your chest and back may be a little sore.” At his puzzled look, she adds, “That’s not from what caused you to stop breathing. It’s from what we had to do to get you breathing again. Don’t move your head, but wiggle your fingers.”

  Lerial does so.

  “Good. Do they hurt?”

  “No.”

  “Lift your arms and put them across your chest…” After a tenth of a glass of gentle exercises, the healer has him sit up … slowly. After watching him for a time, she nods. “You’ll be fine. Just don’t do what you did again.” She straightens, then turns and walks away.

  Lerial glances around. While he had thought it might be twilight, that was because he had been lying in the deep shade and gloom of a space under giant trees of some sort, and it is clear it is still afternoon. Almost absently, he recalls what Emerya had said something like a year earlier, about the body needing to balance order and chaos.

  “Ser?” Linstaar hurries toward Lerial.

  Behind him, Muaran remains with the three mounts

  “Are you all right?” asks Linstaar.

  Lerial realizes his chest is sore, not much, but noticeably. “I’m sore. The healer says I’ll be fine. What happened? What did you see?”

  “Ah … ser…”

  “Did you see anything? Tell me, even if you think it was strange or that you might not have really seen it.”

  “Ah … well, ser … There was a firebolt. It was headed right toward us. Then everything got bright, and it sort of split and part of it struck back toward the Meroweyans. That part was sort of golden red and brilliant white. The other part … well it was hazy and silver gray … maybe silver black. It hit you, ser. You were like a statue. Muaran said we had to get you to the healer, and we did. She did something, and some of the fuzzy blackness … well, it sort of flowed off you. Then she made us lift your arms while she pressed on your chest to get you breathing again.”

  Lerial nods. “Thank you.” He decides to stand and does so slowly.

  Linstaar recovers the blanket, shakes it out, and rolls it up.

  “Is that your blanket?”

  “Yes, ser.”

  “Thank you. Where are we? Or, rather, where is second company?”

  “The company’s maybe two hundred yards that way, ser, along that path.”

  “What about the Meroweyans? What are they doing?”

  “The ones outside on the road? The guards said that they moved back. The others I don’t know.”

  Lerial is still trying to gather himself together when Altyrn appears.

  “They said you were wounded.” The majer surveys Lerial.

  “In a way.” Lerial doesn’t know what else to say. “Did it help?”

  “You’ve gained us some time.”

  “What happened?” Lerial’s voice is rough.

  “You didn’t see?”

  “The backlash was … rather quick.”

  “The healer said you got covered in pure order. How did you do that?”

  “I was trying to send the chaos-bolt back at him.”

  “You did that all right. There’s a wide blackened space where those two white wizards used to be. All the Meroweyan forces have backed off. They’re likely rethinking their tactics.” Altyrn studies Lerial. “You don’t look that bad for nearly dying. Only like eightday-old sowshit.” He shakes his head. “Don’t do that again. I don’t want to explain that I let you try to kill yourself twice … and that you were successful the second time. You’re worth far more than one fri
gging white wizard. Or even two.”

  “I won’t try that again.” Something else perhaps, but with greater care.

  “Good. Go get something to eat and then lie down and get some sleep.”

  “Now?”

  “Now. They don’t look like they’ll attack soon, and you need the rest.”

  Lerial decides against arguing.

  LIX

  When Lerial wakes early the next morning, his eyes are irritated and itching and the smell of smoke is everywhere. He cannot believe how long he has slept. Then, again, the way he had felt when he fell asleep … maybe he can. Even so, the first coherent thoughts he has are about what had happened the day before and how he might somehow change the pattern he constructed so that the order doesn’t flood back to him. But how will you know if it will work?

  He doesn’t have an answer to that question, and he has scarcely pulled himself together and has just finished eating barely warm ghano-egg hash of some sort, washed down with extra-tart greenberry juice, when Altyrn arrives by the cookfire in the middle of the small clearing.

  “You’re looking better this morning. Are you?”

  “Yes.” Considering how he’d felt the evening before, being able to stand and eat without feeling like a stiff breeze would push him over meant he was feeling much better.

  “Good. I’ve got another mission for second company. Second company, not Captain Lerial.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  “Late last night, Casseon’s forces sent out mages in the darkness to burn gaps in the forest protections—”

  “Why didn’t you wake me?”

  “So you could go out there in the darkness and try to kill yourself again?” asks Altyrn.

  “Why didn’t the forest just keep burning?” asks Lerial, not really wanting to answer the majer’s question.

  “It burned enough. The elders have ways of slowing it. Before long, once the embers and coals cool, the Meroweyans will try to move through those openings. At the same time, the forces near here look to be forming into a large body. They’ll likely be the ones to attack through the burned out area—”

  “Where we were?”

  The majer shakes his head and opens a map, handing it to Lerial. “Hold this. They gave up on that and moved half a kay east. The other two groups have split, a larger one farther to the west and the smallest one to the east. For the moment we’ll have to do what we can, and leave the rest to what the Verdyn can do without us. Casseon can’t have that many mages, and he has two less now. A wayguide will take you and second company to one of the hidden paths in and out of the Verd near the smaller force to the east.” Altyrn points to the map. “Here is where you’ll be. Here is where the companies you’re going to attack are. Once you get the signal that the mage has left to burn another entrance to the Verd, you’ll leave the woods and get as close to the companies escorting him as you can. The companies escorting him. Not him. Send one squad to ride through the lines and then race through the lower ground here. If you set your archers here, they should be able to cut down a fair number of them before withdrawing. Then keep riding east until you reach somewhere here. There should be a wayguide there to see you in through another narrow passage. Keep the map. You’ll need it.”

  “You’re doing this sort of thing with the other companies?”

  “Just third.”

  “Where will we get more arrows?”

  “There are some carts on the way. Once the Meroweyans moved away from the battle sites, the elders sent out youths to gather any that they could find, whether whole or broken. The Meroweyans weren’t that interested in picking them up.”

  “What did that cost them? The youths?” asks Lerial.

  “So far, nothing.”

  “Don’t they have archers?”

  “Casseon probably does. He likely didn’t send many north. Massed archers aren’t that useful in wooded lands, except at close range and from behind trees, and the Meroweyans don’t like to fight that way. They’re also wary of ambushes. So they’re leaving the youths alone. For now, anyway. That will change.”

  Lerial wonders what the majer knows that he can make such a statement so confidently … and sadly.

  After Altyrn leaves, Lerial slips the map inside his jacket and passes the word to the squad leaders, then goes over the majer’s plan with them, deciding that second squad will make either an attack or a feint to draw the Meroweyans, whichever looks to be effective without excessive casualties, depending on what Lerial sees once they encounter the Meroweyans. The point is to kill them, not to get our Lancers killed.

  After that, while he and second company wait for the carts with the arrows, Lerial studies the map that Altyrn has given him. At the same time, in the back of his mind, the same thoughts with which he had awakened keep coming back. How can you change the patterns so that the order doesn’t come back to you personally?

  Abruptly, he realizes a simple fact—he’d never really directed the coil away from himself. He’d been so focused on capturing the chaos-bolt with the coil that he’d never considered what might happen. He shudders. It could have been so much worse.

  Then he takes a deep breath and eases out the silk pouch that holds the lodestone, concentrating on it, and trying to see if he can not only replicate that coil pattern, on the smallest scale, but also find a way to split the order on the return. Except … Why split it? You never been able to raise enough order to do things like shields. Why can’t you divert it into a shield of some sort, so that when the next firebolt comes …

  For the next half glass or so, until Lerial hears the creaking of carts approaching, he is very busy trying out various tiny order patterns with the lodestone. He thinks he might have something … but that will have to wait while he makes sure that all his rankers are as armed as they can be.

  Right after all the arrows are distributed and Lerial gets the reports from his squad leaders, Altyrn rides up, accompanied by a white-haired older man in the near-uniform brown garb that most men of the Verd seem to wear.

  He always seems to know just when to be where. “Second company stands ready, ser.” Second company may be ready, but its captain isn’t. Not yet.

  “Excellent. This is Wayguide Smathyl. Smathyl, this is Captain Lerial.”

  “Pleased to meet you, ser.” The older man inclines his head politely.

  “And I, you.”

  “Smathyl will be guiding second company to a point where you can leave the Verd some distance east of the main body of the eastern Meroweyan force that appears to be readying itself for an attack through the burned area about half a kay east of here. I’ll leave you in his hands, Captain.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  “You and your men can ride double file for now, but when we get to the hidden way, there will only be space for one horse at a time.”

  “Whatever is necessary, Wayguide.”

  “If you’d follow me, then.”

  “By squad! Double file!” Lerial orders. “Forward!”

  After less than two hundred yards following the main road north, the wayguide turns onto a path barely wide enough for two mounts abreast. From the dust raised on the path, Lerial suspects that other companies have ridden the same way earlier. That thought is confirmed when after almost half a kay, they pass an opening to a small clearing. There, Lerial sees several companies standing down and waiting. He thinks he sees Kusyl, but he is not certain. After that, there is little dust raised by second company on the path, although they only ride another three hundred yards or so, where the wayguide reins up and dismounts beside a thornbush thicket.

  “If you would hold the reins, Captain.”

  Lerial leans forward and takes the reins, then watches as the guide walks to one side. He cannot see exactly what the guide does, but part of the bush rolls aside, revealing a narrow path.

  Then Smathyl walks back to Lerial. “Ride and lead my mount until you hear that everyone is on the way. Then stop and wait for me.”

  Lerial looks
at the narrow path and then at the wayguide.

  “It’s wide enough for a mount and a man, but not two mounts.”

  Lerial laughs softly. “I’ll take your word for it.”

  It is almost a quarter glass later when Smathyl rejoins Lerial, somehow eases his mount past Lerial, then remounts. Second company begins to follow him along the narrow path that twists and turns through the thickest woods, or so it seems to Lerial. After some time, he finally makes that observation to Smathyl, riding ahead of him.

  “That it does, ser, and for a reason. Should anyone find the path, they would be hard-pressed to find their way any place with any speed.” The wayguide turns in the saddle and grins. “Not that it’s difficult to make such a path. All one has to do is follow ground at the same level through the woods.”

  At the same level … There is something to those words, something that almost but not quite reminds Lerial of … But he cannot grasp that elusive thought, and he goes back to practicing creating coil patterns.

  Almost a glass later, Smathyl reins up in a small clearing where the path appears to end, with only enough space for a mount and rider to turn. Lerial immediately extends his senses and realizes that open ground lies beyond the clearing, perhaps less than ten yards away, yet he can see no sign of what he senses.

  The wayguide whistles an odd tune, and two men in brown appear as if from nowhere to stand in front of the thick thornbush. Smathyl rides forward, and the three converse. Lerial can only make out phrases, even using his order sensing.

  “… almost a kay…”

  “… make sure … move quick…”

  “… little ones…”

  After a few more moments, Smathyl rides back to Lerial. “It’s clear to the south, but the evil ones have split. The larger body is a kay or so to the west. They won’t be able to see you because the trees extend farther south just west of here. We’d appreciate it if you’d turn all your riders west quickly so that it looks like you’ve been shadowing the tree line. The smaller group is almost two kays east, and they’ve got a wizard who’s throwing firebolts at the trees. Not big ones, but making a mess. So far he hasn’t started any fires.”