The Death of Chaos

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “I don’t know,” said Yelena slowly.

  “If they’re here as scouts, they must have fast horses,” I pointed out. “What would you do if five squads of strange horsemen appeared?”

  “Run like the demons of light were chasing me,” offered Jylla.

  Yelena glared at her.

  I turned to Weldein. “All right. You won’t be able to see. That’s all right. I can’t see either behind a shield. That’s why I’ll lead your horse.” I concentrated.

  “He’s gone…”

  I could hear the indrawn breaths.

  “… son of a bitch is a wizard…”

  “… not so loud, idiot… want him to do it to you?”

  “Weldein, don’t do anything until you can see, but have your blade out of the scabbard and ready to use.”

  “How can I do anything?” he muttered. “I can’t see shit.”

  “You will.” I swallowed and fumbled around until I grasped the leathers of his reins. “Let’s go.”

  As we stepped out, Yelena slowly began to bring the Finest as close to the guards as she could without getting into their sight.

  “Easy, Weldein.”

  “I’m here. Where that is, is something else.”

  His mount whickered, but that didn’t matter, because the guards wouldn’t notice the sound didn’t come from Gairloch until we got too close.

  I rode past the last stand of trees separating me from the patrol. The two mounted riders watched as I whistled my way toward them. I think I was off-key.

  “What are you doing, fellow?” asked the one who rode toward me. He was a skinny little trooper with a wispy beard and little eyes, and that probably meant he was as good and nasty as the demons of light. “How did you get past the guards at Arastia?”

  “I’m leading my invisible horse. I won him at the market in Sunta. I’m going to take him to sell in Kyphros.” It sounded logical to me.

  “Invisible horse? Well, you need to take your invisible horse and turn around and head right back to Sunta.” He put his hand on the hilt of his blade.

  “But I can’t go to Kyphros that way,” I protested, letting go of the all-too-real invisible bridle, and edging forward. I needed to get closer to the other mounted trooper.

  “You can’t go this way.” He insisted.

  “It is the road to Kyphros, isn’t it? I am on the right road?” I put a whining tone in my voice as I edged Gairloch to the side of the road and forced the trooper to follow me.

  He drew his sabre. “You just turn around right now.”

  “But I can’t sell my invisible horse unless I go to Kyphros.”

  The other two troopers were smirking.

  “You won’t sell that horse anywhere!” He spurred toward me, lifting the sabre, and I urged Gairloch toward the other two, who had burst into laughter at the spectacle of the poor mad fool fleeing the trooper.

  Then, I pulled out the staff, and, somehow, held on to it as I brought it across the chest of the other mounted trooper. She went down like a flour sack, even as I released the shields around Weldein.

  The first trooper didn’t even see Weldein, so intent was he on spitting me. His blade flashed. I did parry it, even though he took a chunk right out of the hard wood, and shivered my arms. Gairloch backed around, without much guidance from me.

  Another wild swing followed, and this time I slid his blade rather than taking the impact. My fingers still tingled from the first one, but I got the staff back in position to counter another hacking blow.

  “Get you… get you yet…” he grunted as he took an even more forceful cut.

  The last wild blow left him off balance, and I countered with a perfect blow across the face as he was bringing his blade back up. The blow sounded half dull, half gonglike from where the iron ring on the staff hit his plate skullcap.

  He slumped in his saddle, his sabre clattering to the ground, and a wave of whiteness struck me, almost as hard as his blows. I knew he was dead.

  His horse stood motionless, and I tried to project some reassurance to the beast. Dead? Had I struck that hard?

  Weldein galloped up in time to keep the third trooper from mounting. The unmounted man looked from me to Weldein and his sabre and back to me, but didn’t say anything.

  The woman trooper struggled to her knees, clutching one arm. I could feel the pain.

  “Are you all right?” I asked stupidly.

  “Bastard! Go ahead and kill me… go ahead… Frigging invisible horse…”

  I half expected tears, but she remained hard-eyed, standing in the dirt of the road. Her mount had stopped on the shoulder of the road nearest the river.

  The two remaining troopers watched, almost blank-eyed, as the rest of the Kyphran troopers rode up.

  “… shit to pay, Murros…” mumbled the woman to the sole uninjured Hydlenese.

  “… white wizard’ll take them…”

  “… maybe… maybe… you want to tell him what happened?”

  Yelena surveyed the carnage, shaking her head. “Did you really need any help?”

  If I’d been able to shield more people, I might not have needed to kill anyone. But I couldn’t. I slowly replaced the staff in the lanceholder, and wiped my forehead, not realizing until then that I’d been sweating.

  “Bind them,” commanded the force leader.

  “Wait a moment,” I found myself saying as two troopers dismounted and stepped toward the injured woman. I climbed off Gairloch and handed the reins to Jylla. She took them gingerly.

  “Frig you…” the injured Hydlenese trooper muttered as I walked forward.

  I could sense the dislocated bone even before I got too close.

  “If you don’t mind, trooper,” I said, “I’d like to set that break so it heals right.”

  “Why? You caused it, you dumb bastard.”

  “Call it fortunes of battle.” I nodded to the two troopers. “Hold her. It’s likely to hurt for a moment.”

  She spat at me, but she didn’t scream, although I could feel how much it hurt. She slumped, not quite unconscious by the time I applied a touch of order binding, and strapped her arm in place. I hoped riding wouldn’t reinjure it, but that was the best I could do. Then I wiped my face.

  I checked the break again after they boosted her into her saddle, but my rough setting and the order patch had held. She still glared at me, and I couldn’t blame her.

  Two other troopers had cut a shallow trench in the ground by the stream while I had worked on the woman’s arm, and a squad was piling rocks over the body to create a rough cairn.

  I swallowed, unable to see for a moment. None of it really made sense, but more people would die if the wizard had been warned, wouldn’t they?

  “Mount up,” ordered Yelena after a while.

  I rode in silence at the head of the column; Yelena rode beside me. A good three lengths separated us from the others. The road continued to climb, but so gently that the only way I could tell was to look back.

  The road ran beside the curves of the Yellow River, the winter-gray trees, interspersed with a scattering of evergreens, to the left of the packed clay that bore traces of more heavy carts headed back into Hydlen. Rocketcarts?

  “You are terrible, you know,” offered Yelena after we had covered another two kays-without seeing any other sentries.

  “Yes. I’m terrible at fighting.” And a few other things. Could I have talked more, and stalled the Hydlenese troopers until they were surrounded? I wished I’d been a stronger mage and could have cloaked a whole squad. Then no one would have been hurt.

  “You’re rather good at it once someone attacks. That’s unfortunate for you.” Yelena paused. “And for them.”

  Armsmaster Gilberto had been right. My body had known when to attack, but I felt almost betrayed by it. And yet what choice had I had? When people started fighting, people died. Ferrel had only gone out to investigate, and she was dead. I still didn’t understand why, and I didn’t think anyone else did eit
her, except maybe the white wizard.

  “I said you were terrible,” continued Yelena. “I meant it. It is terrifying to see a gentle man destroy people. It is terrifying to see an honest man use deception.”

  Terrifying? I wouldn’t have used the term. Miserable, unhappy, unfortunate, and stupid, yes. Terrifying, no.

  We rode on, and I still felt as though someone were watching, but there were no vulcrows, no sentries, nothing but the sound of gray leaves in the light breeze, rushing water, hoofs upon a damp clay road, and low voices muttering about the fortunes of battle.

  XXXII

  SOMETIME AFTER A quick midday watering and an even quicker gulping of rations, we passed the boundary stone clearly flaunted by the Hydlenese-the one that stated “Kyphros.” Someone had thrown or kicked horse droppings at the letters on the gray stone marker.

  No one said anything, but Jylla looked at the defaced kaystone for a long moment as she rode past.

  The road rose more steeply and bore right as it neared the valley holding the brimstone springs. The wind carried the faint scent of brimstone along with the dust that indicated it had not rained recently, maybe since my hurried departure from Hydlen.

  Yelena held up a hand. The column came to a halt.

  “… we there yet…”

  “… riding in circles, it seems like…”

  “Quiet.” Yelena’s calm command carried as she looked at me. “There have to be more sentries.”

  “They were just inside the valley last time.” I nodded and sent out my perceptions, trying to sense what lay over the low rise around the curve in the road. If I were the Hydlenese, I’d have had sentries on the top of the rise to give them more than a kay’s warning. That was where the sentries had been before, and they still were.

  When my eyes refocused, I looked at Yelena. “The sentries are at the top of the rise around the curve. Except it’s not really a curve, but it looks that way because the trees grow closer to the road there.”

  “Are you up for another invisible horse, Weldein?” asked Freyda.

  Jylla laughed.

  “That won’t work,” I added. “There’s more than half a squad, and they can’t be more than two kays from the edge of the Hydlenese camp lines.”

  “Can you tell how many troopers are in the main body?” asked Yelena.

  “Not from here. The camp looks about the same, though. Probably not more than ten- or fifteenscore.”

  “Just between two and four times what we have. Enough to make it interesting,” mused Freyda.

  “What about going through the trees, the way we planned?” asked the force leader, after a sharp look at Freyda, who had ignored the glance.

  “It looks all right, but let me go a little farther.” I edged Gairloch off the clay to the left-the south side of the road- and through the scrub and cedars. My nose twitched at the acrid odor of winter leaves and the underlying pungency rising from the cedar fronds left beside the road by a Hydlenese firewood detail.

  Just as I recalled, the slope was gentle, and the trees far enough apart for mounted troops, even with their larger horses, to pass easily. Without really trying, I could also feel the presence of the white wizard, the unseen chaos boiling out of the valley.

  I was going to try to confine a white wizard more powerful than Antonin with a special order bound? And use order to turn chaos against him? Did I really have a choice?

  When I returned, Yelena looked at me.

  “It should work. There’s no one stationed at the bottom of the rise, and you can’t see the far south side of the first meadow from the road where the sentries are. The scattered trees on the rise reach almost to the plain where their tents are.”

  Yelena looked at me. “Are the commander’s main forces close enough to see us?”

  “I can’t tell from here. We’ll have to get into the trees on the rise before I’ll be able to tell.” I pursed my lips. “I’m sorry, but I can’t sense things that far away.”

  “… sorry he can’t see more than a kay away over trees… glad he’s on our side…”

  I hoped the unknown trooper would feel that way later.

  “We’ll be exposed.”

  I knew that, but there wasn’t much else I could do. So I started Gairloch through the trees. Yelena must have motioned, because I could hear the sound of hoofs behind me. I kept Gairloch moving, slanting southward, until we emerged onto the meadow almost in the corner where the south valley walls started rising. There was a fine haze of dust rising behind us, and I hoped that no one happened to be looking closely in our direction, although the dust couldn’t have been seen from the main camp. I rubbed my nose to keep from sneezing, as I sat on Gairloch and sent out my perceptions again.

  The meadow and the trees beyond on the rise seemed clear, and I started across with Gairloch.

  Yelena pulled up beside me. “You don’t have to lead a charge.” Her tone was only partly serious.

  “I think they have to see their wizard sticking out his scrawny neck.” I shrugged, trying to loosen the tightness in my shoulders. I could feel my stomach tightening as well.

  “You will let my squads lead the charge on the Hydlenese?”

  “Yes. I’ll need to find a white wizard.”

  I slowed halfway down the far side of the rise, where the trees and the shadows from the mid-afternoon sun were still thick enough to provide cover. Wood smoke from cook fires or something drifted our way, mixing with brimstone.

  “Now?” asked Yelena.

  “Hold on a moment.” After reining up Gairloch next to a cedar tree, perhaps the same one I had used more than an eight-day earlier, I sent out my perceptions, not toward the Hydlenese, but toward the road beyond, trying to find any sense of where Krystal and the main forces might be.

  I thought I sensed some Kyphran scouts, but I couldn’t tell. What I could tell was that there were a good five squads of lancers drawn up in a rough formation near the western exit to the valley, even beyond the far end of the valley where the brimstone springs flowed and the low stone buildings stood. There were only a dozen or so of the rocket carts, from what I could tell, and they were lined up at the western edge of the tent area, pointed roughly toward Kyphros, and toward where Krystal’s forces would be if they left the cover of the gorge and reached the road.

  Krystal had been right about that, and it would take time to turn the rockets back toward us, if they could be turned and moved at all during a quick attack.

  I had another problem. If I couldn’t hold off Gerlis with my order shields, was I willing to use order to funnel chaos to him? I let my perceptions drift below the valley, using the water flows, rather than the rocks, seeking that white-hot-redness of natural chaos.

  The sweat beaded on my forehead. There was a lot of natural chaos, perhaps more than that focused in Gerlis. Did I want to try? Would I have any choice?

  “Are you all right?” asked Weldein.

  I nodded and took a deep breath. I also lied, and that didn’t help the twisted feeling in my guts.

  Yelena had drawn up the Finest and the outliers behind me in a rough line. Below us to the west of the rise was the flat plain where the tents of the Hydlenese forces were set out. Beyond where I watched lay the last part of the rise that dropped a good fifty cubits in less than half a kay.

  “Well?” asked the force leader in a low voice.

  “I think there are some scouts out there. The Hydlenese have about five squads stationed near the valley entrance, and they seem to be waiting.”

  Yelena shifted her weight in the saddle and studied the flat beyond the rise. “That would leave ten squads standing down in the area around the tents.”

  I waited.

  Finally, she gave me a grim smile. “Can you keep the wizard out of our hair?”

  “I can only try,” I admitted. “And I’ll have to get a lot closer.”

  “The opportunity’s just too good.” She looked at me again. “Where are those devices?”

  “At
the west end of the tents. There aren’t many Hydlenese around them right now.”

  Yelena turned to Weldein and Jylla. “You two guard the order-master. Try to keep him out of too much trouble. He’s going to find the white wizard.”

  Weldein grunted.

  “You’re so generous to share the joy of single combat, Weldein,” murmured Jylla, her low voice carrying.

  Yelena glanced down the hillside again. “We’ll have to hit the troops they’ve got drawn up first, but I’ll send the outliers through the tent area, and hold the second back.”

  She rode toward a small thin subofficer and began to explain something, then rode on to another subofficer, and another, until she had covered all the squad leaders.

  The first and third squads lined up quietly on the left, while the two squads of outliers formed up on my right. One squad of the Finest-the second-remained in the center behind the other four groups.

  Yelena eased her mount up beside me. “Are you ready?”

  I wasn’t ready. My guts were twisted, and my heart was pounding. Reacting, as I had with the white wizard on the road, was much, much easier than deciding to ride down on an armed camp and a white wizard powerful enough to swat me aside like a fly.

  I felt like the third wheel on a two-wheeled cart, better at watching, and only able to get in the way if I tried anything. But I had to try something.

  “First and third. Now.” Yelena raised her hand, then dropped it.

  The front four squads charged-except it wasn’t a charge. There were no trumpet blasts, no yells, just horses trotting down through the scattered cedars and out onto the plain.

  Yelena’s troops moved out quickly, drawing well ahead of the rest, and leaving a fine cloud of dust that drifted toward us. I coughed, more than once, as I bounced along between Weldein and Jylla, slightly behind and to the left of the outliers. Their longer-legged beasts drew ahead of Gairloch and me. That was fine for me, trying as I was to locate Gerlis without alerting him. The location wasn’t that hard, not with that tower of unseen white pouring from his pavilion tent near the far end of the encampment. Dust rose around me, and I tried not to cough.