The Order War

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  The Order War

  L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

  Copyright © 1995

  CONTENT

  Map

  Dedication

  Part I Chaos-Building

  Part II Order-Mending

  Part III The Order-Chaos War

  About The Author

  By L.E. Modesitt, Jr.

  Map

  Dedication

  To Jeff, for being there and being a true brother, even when I failed to understand.

  Part I

  Chaos-Building

  I

  Justen watched from the smooth stones of the oldest pier in Nylan as the Shierra pulled away and out into the channel. The black iron plate of the deckhouse and single turret glistened in the morning sunlight, and the four-span gun pointed forward like a black staff aimed at chaos.

  A thin line of white water flowed aft from the newest warship of the Mighty Ten as she eased out into the Gulf of Candar between the twin breakwaters that dated back to the building of Nylan itself.

  The young man in engineers’ black brushed a hand through his short and light brown hair before glancing at the three students. “Watch closely, with just your eyes, after she clears the breakwater.”

  “Watch what?” asked the thin, redheaded boy.

  “The ship, silly,” answered the stocky girl.

  “Why?” questioned Norah, a petite and big-eyed blonde girl.

  “Watch,” repeated Justen.

  As heat pulsed from the Shierra’s funnel, visible only as a wavering of the greenish-blue sky to the west, white streaks seemed to flow back from the bow as the black warship built up speed. Suddenly, both wake and ship vanished, leaving only the heat lines across the western sky.

  “What happened?” asked Daskin, the redhead, a hand raised to scratch his thick, curly hair.

  “The Brother raised his shields, of course, just like we’re going to be taught to do.” The stocky girl, Jyll, did not quite snort her disgust, but flipped her hair away from Daskin.

  Justen stepped back to avoid swallowing long, black, loose tresses. He did not contradict her statement about being taught shielding, but it would be years before any of these three were ready-at least from what he could tell, but that, thankfully, was not his decision.

  “Let’s go.” He turned uphill, and the three students followed, Norah trailing, her eyes still turning seaward toward the heat lines that were the only trace of the Shierra. A light breeze, bearing a remnant of chill from the later winter, ruffled his black overtunic.

  As they passed the armory, a lanky, red-haired woman in green emerged.

  “Krytella!” Justen waved.

  “Justen. I’ll walk up to the classroom building, if you’re headed that way.” Krytella smiled. “Do you know if Gunnar’s anywhere around?”

  “No. He’s up at Land’s End, studying the Founders’ records of the Change.” Justen tried to keep his voice level. Gunnar, always Gunnar, as if his older brother were the great Creslin himself.

  “Are there any? Real records, I mean?”

  “I suppose there must be. Dorrin certainly left records.” Justen stopped outside of the long and low black stone building that almost seemed part of the grassy hillside.

  “But he was an engineer.”

  “He also wrote The Basis of Order. Most of it, anyway.” Justen gestured at the three students. “You can get something from the fruit table in the dining hall. Then we’ll meet in the corner room.”

  “Thank you, Magister Justen,” the three chorused.

  “I’m not a magister, just a junior engineer of sorts,” Jus-ten observed, but the three had already trooped off.

  “How can you be happy offering beginning order-instruction to spoiled kids?” asked Krytella.

  “Why not? Someone has to, and-” Justen stopped, realizing that once again Krytella had compared him, unfavorably, to his older brother. He forced a grin and continued. “-and I’d better catch up with them before they eat all the fruit.”

  “Tell Gunnar I need to talk to him.”

  “I will, but you’ll likely see him before I do.”

  “Have fun with your students.”

  “Thank you.”

  The three had not eaten all the dried fruit, having left at least half of it. In passing the snack table, Justen grabbed several dried pearapple sections and stuffed them in his mouth. He chewed and swallowed quickly. Then he walked down the stairs to the belowground corridor that bisected the sunken indoor garden. The garden separated the dining wing from the classrooms.

  The three looked up from their cushions as he closed the door.

  “Take out your Basis of Order. Let’s take a look at the third section of the first part, page fifty-the part about the concentration of order.” Justen waited as they paged through the books that were still too stiff, as if the only time they read was when Justen insisted. “Would you read it, Norah?”

  The wide-eyed blonde cleared her throat. “… a staff, or any other object, may be infused with order. If the Balance is maintained, concentrating such order must result in a greater amount of chaos somewhere else. Therefore, the greater the effort to concentrate order within material objects, the greater the amount of free chaos within the world.”

  “What does that mean, Daskin?”

  “I don’t know, Magister.”

  “All right. You read the words, the same words.”

  “The same words?”

  Justen nodded.

  “… a staff, or any other object…” Daskin repeated the words already read aloud by Norah.

  “Now, what does it mean?” Daskin sighed. “I guess it’s something about why the engineers don’t put order into everything they build.”

  Justen nodded at Jyll.

  “Is that why there are only ten of the black iron ships?” she asked.

  “How much order goes into building a ship like the Shierra?” Justen probed.

  “Lots, or you wouldn’t have asked,” Norah said, grinning.

  “How much iron would it take to build a hundred ships?”

  “But iron’s stronger, isn’t it?” asked Daskin.

  “You can grow more oaks and firs, but you can’t grow more iron. Once you’ve taken iron out of the earth, it’s used. Once you remove that iron from the high hills… then what?”

  All three looked blankly at the floor.

  “What holds Recluce together?”

  “Order,” the three muttered.

  “What does iron do?”

  “Holds order.”

  “Fine. What happens if we take all the iron out of the high hills? Why do you think we try to buy as much iron as we can from Hamor, or even from Lydiar?”

  “Oh… That keeps more order in Recluce?”

  “Right.” Justen forced a smile. “Let’s look at the question of limits. Where will you find that, Jyll?”

  The stocky girl shrugged.

  Justen took a deep breath instead of yelling. He waited before saying, “Look toward the end of the opening chapters. All of you. Tell me when you find something.”

  Justen walked from one corner of the room to the other. Had he and Gunnar been so slow?

  The three students continued to page slowly through The Basis of Order.

  Finally, Norah raised a hand. “Is this it?” She cleared her throat, then began to read slowly: “If order or chaos be without limits, then common sense would indicate that each should have triumphed when the great ones of each discipline have arisen. Yet neither has so triumphed, despite men and women of power, intelligence, and ambition. Therefore, the scope of both order and chaos is in fact limited, and the belief in the balance of forces demonstrated…”

  Justen nodded, “What does it mean?”

  “I�
��m not sure.”

  The young engineer looked out the window, across the ridgeline and northward to the blackstone walls that separated Nylan from the rest of Recluce. Then he looked downhill and out across the Eastern Ocean. Maybe Krytella was correct. Someone had to teach, but was he the right one?

  II

  “The road has reached the old domain of Westwind.” The older counselor rubbed her forehead for an instant, then dropped her arms onto the ancient black-oak table of the Council Room. The faint sound of surf from the beach below the Black Holding hissed in through the half-open windows on the early spring breeze.

  “The road does not concern me so much as the troops that precede it,” suggested the wispy-haired man.

  “Ryltar… the road is the key to the troops, and to the trade that follows. When that road is finished, it will be the only direct access to Sarronnyn.”

  The third counselor pursed her thin lips, then coughed. “So far, the Sarronnese have lost nearly two thousand troops.”

  “The Spidlarians lost twice that, and there the Whites razed three cities, and we did nothing,” responded Ryltar dryly. “No one can even precisely locate Diev to this day.”

  “At the time, we didn’t exactly have too much with which to respond.” The older woman, black-haired and broad-shouldered, shook her head.

  “You are so good at keeping me honest, Claris.” Ryltar smiled.

  “You’re rather good at making me sick, Ryltar,” added the younger woman. “The point is that Fairhaven has taken the next step in implementing Cerryl the Great’s master plan for conquering Candar. The question is what we intend to do about it?”

  “Ah, yes. The great master plan of which we have heard so much for so many decades. Thank you for reminding me, Jenna.”

  “Ryltar, be serious.” Jenna held back a sigh.

  “I am being serious. Why don’t we face the facts? First, with our ships, even if all of Candar falls to Fairhaven, just how could the White Wizards threaten us? Second, we scarcely have the trained troops to send an army to Sarronnyn, nor could we raise such a force without conscription, and conscription would destroy us more surely than Fairhaven would.” Ryltar turned toward Jenna. “Just tell me. What is the threat to Recluce? What can Fairhaven really do to us?”

  “Destroy our basis of order, or reduce it to the point where our ships can no longer defend us.”

  “Oh? Have you been talking to old Gylart again?”

  “I don’t think that Gylart’s age automatically discredits his logic,” interjected Claris. “Jenna’s-or Gylart’s- point is valid. The Whites are creating ‘domesticated’ order to increase their chaos power. Once they take Fairhaven, what is to keep them from taking Hamor? Or for the Hamorians to follow the same example? How would that affect your most profitable trade routes then, Ryltar?”

  “We are talking centuries. Besides, I return to my original point. Just what can we do?” Ryltar smiled again.

  III

  “Run up the ensign,” ordered the captain. On the staff above the iron pilothouse fluttered the black ryall on a white background. “Looks to be a Lydian trader.” Hyntal turned to the two engineers. “We’ll just pull alongside for a mite, Brother Pendak, and you see if you sense anything.”

  Pendak nodded.

  “Captain! She’s turning! Trying to run before the wind.”

  “Shields!” snapped the captain. “Just between us.”

  “Shit,” muttered Pendak.

  “Want help?” asked Justen.

  “Not now.”

  Justen sensed the effort Pendak marshaled to create the barrier that blocked the Lydians’ view of the Llyse.

  “Starboard a quarter.”

  “Coming starboard a quarter,” echoed the woman at the helm.

  The Llyse turned downwind, and heavy turbines whined beneath the plated decks, the sound so faint that Justen sensed the increased power rather than heard it. Ahead off the Llyse’s starboard bow, Justen sensed the Lydian ship, flying only the duke’s banner, not the crimson-trimmed white banner of Fairhaven, as it lumbered through the heavy swells. What he and the crew saw off the bow was a black emptiness. What the Lydians saw was an empty sea off their port quarter.

  “Course bearing on the Lydian?” asked the captain.

  “Steady on the starboard forequarter, Captain. Three cables and closing,” answered Pendak, the ship’s Brother.

  “Bring her port an eighth. What devil’s trick are the Whites up to now?”

  Captain Hyntal had never forgotten that his great-greatgrandfather had captained the Black Hammer. Unfortunately, he had never let anyone else forget it either, reflected Justen.

  “Coming port an eighth.” The woman at the helm eased the wheel port to parallel the Lydian’s course.

  Spray flashed across the deck, and tiny droplets misted into the pilothouse where Justen stood beside Pendak. The older engineer’s forehead remained beaded with sweat from the effort of holding the single-edged shield in place.

  Hyntal turned toward the gunnery chief. “Ready, weapons?”

  “Turret’s ready. Captain. Shells and rockets on standby.”

  “Drop the shields, Brother Pendak,” ordered Hyntal. “Let’s see what those devil Whites have added to this stew.”

  The Lydian ship appeared off the starboard bow. The carved plate over the unused paddle wheel read Zemyla. Pendak wiped his forehead and reached for the water bottle. “Harder to keep a single-edge shield than a circular one, Jus-ten.”

  “I could tell,” Justen whispered back.

  Hyntal glared at the engineers but said nothing as the Llyse edged up to the trader.

  “She’s not furling those sails.”

  “Put a signal rocket across her bow.”

  Flssttt… The signal rocket flared in front of the Zemyla.

  The Llyse kept abreast of the trader until a blue-edged white banner floated on the aft jackstaff. Then a second parley flag flapped over the mainmast as the trader shortened sail.

  “Grapples.”

  “Aye, grapples.”

  “Boarding party.”

  The stern-faced, black-clad marines mustered on the starboard side, then swarmed onto the merchantman.

  “It’s your turn, Brothers,” suggested the captain.

  “You wanted to see what it’s all about, Justen,” Pendak said.

  The younger engineer followed Pendak up the ladder and onto the gently pitching deck of the Zemyla, where the crew had already circled away from the boarders and were clustering either on the poop or near the bowsprit.

  The black-clad marines marched the man in the captain’s jacket to the foot of the mast. “They say he’s the captain.”

  “Have you always been the captain of this ship?” asked Pendak wearily.

  “Yes, Master.”

  The wrongness of the words twisted at Justen. He looked at Pendak. Pendak looked at the head marine, an intense-appearing young man named Marten. “Find the first mate.”

  Marten and another marine turned, but even before they took a full step, a man jumped from the poop into the sea.

  For a time, the marines and the two engineers watched the water below, but no head appeared and Justen could sense no one there.

  “Was that the captain?” asked Pendak, turning to the pseudo-captain.

  “No, Ser.”

  The wrongness still turned in the man’s words.

  “Find me the second mate.”

  “I’m the second.” A burly man stepped up to the marines, his face and forearms tanned and leathery, his hair sun-bleached and his trimmed beard a mixture of blond and white. His words rang true to Justen.

  “Is this man a convict?”

  “Begging yer pardon. Master… but ye’ll put us all in a terrible stew if this goes on.”

  “Do you want us to sink the ship?” snapped Pendak.

  “We’d be fools to want that.”

  Justen cleared his throat softly. Pendak looked at him, then nodded.

 
; “Were all of you threatened if you didn’t agree to call this man the captain?” asked Justen.

  “I wouldn’t say as it was a threat exactly.” Sweat appeared on the burly mate’s forehead.

  “More like you didn’t have much choice?”

  “I don’t know as how I could answer that.” The words choked forth, and perspiration coated the mate’s face.

  The soaked shirt and red face made Justen’s decision. “That’s all.”

  “We’ll need to look around,” Pendak added. “Not that we expect we’ll find anything.”

  “As you wish, Order Masters.”

  “You want to take forward?” Pendak pointed toward the bow.

  “Fine.” Justen walked forward, and his senses ranged over the ship. Pendak was right. The ship felt orderly, too orderly. Before long, he walked back to the marines, where the older engineer waited. “Nothing. Baled Sligan and Montgren wool, dried fruits, perfume wood, and some big jugs of oil.”

  Pendak shook his head. “Let’s go.” He nodded toward the marines, then turned to the burly second. “Good sailing. Mate.”

  “Thanks be to ye, not that most will, Wizards.” The perspiring man half-saluted.

  IV

  The dull clank of one hammer and yet another laid upon chisels echoed through the chill air of the deep canyon.

  A line of bent figures trudged back from the pile of rock that marked the edge of the construction. Each worker passed the deep, straight clefts that separated one foundation block from another, each foundation block a stone cube thirty cubits square.

  Behind the laborers stretched the knife-edged raw slashes that marked the great Westhorn Highway. The base of that highway had been formed from the mortared and fitted stones mat linked the foundation blocks. Each long section was as straight as a quarrel, a segment of the road that would run from Fairhaven to the Western Sea through Sarronnyn and to Southwind.

  A wall of solid stone terminated the western end of the canyon. The trees and soil more than two hundred cubits above had been removed, and the dust and white ash from that removal sifted downward into the chill depths. Workers coughed, squinted, and blinked away the ash and grit. But they kept walking, lugging their baskets of fractured stone from the pile at the end of the canyon back to the unloading station.