The Order War

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Now what? The storm won’t hold them long.” Dyessa shouted to make herself heard above the wind and rain.

  “Is everyone out of the valley?”

  “Those that are alive.”

  Gunnar lifted his shoulders and let them drop, then closed his eyes.

  Justen reached over to keep his brother from falling.

  A ripping, rushing, and drumming sound rose over the rain, and the sky grew darker. Even from the depths of the canyon, Justen could see the whirling black tower that swept upward.

  “Light!”

  Even Dyessa’s face paled as she gazed back.

  The roaring increased, as if the stone walls were being beaten like drums.

  Thuunnk… unnkk… uinnkk…

  A series of impacts rocked the roadbed itself, but the roaring dropped to a whisper, and the sky began to lighten. The rain kept falling, subsiding to a normal heavy downpour.

  Gunnar slumped across the neck of his mount.

  “You!” snapped Dyessa. “The Recluce marine!”

  Both Firbek and the woman marine turned.

  “Hold there.” The Sarronnese commander jabbed toward the unconscious Storm Wizard. “Get him on the cart: He can’t ride.”

  Dyessa watched as Justen and Firbek carried Gunnar onto the cart.

  As he covered Gunnar with the Air Wizard’s own waterproof and stepped back to remount the gray, Justen glanced to the gorge, where the water level had suddenly dropped back toward its earlier level.

  “What happened?” Dyessa asked.

  “I need to ride back a little. I think Gunnar dammed the valley.”

  “Good. The damned Whites can’t handle water.”

  “What if the dam gives before we get out?”

  Dyessa glanced back up the canyon, toward the unseen wall of stone and rubble behind her. “It had better not.”

  Justen had already turned. He let the gray pick her way through the last of the Sarronnese stragglers trudging downhill through the mud and rain. By the time he reached the straight section of the canyon below the switchback, he could sense the mass of stone and brush that Gunnar’s whirlwind had thrown into the stream and gorge. Still, he rode almost to the switchback.

  Dark water oozed through the gaps in the stones and cascaded from dozens of points into the gorge, half-filling it in its rush toward the distant River Sarron.

  Justen forced his abused order-senses to enfold the storm-built barrier Gunnar had created. After studying the barrier for a time, he shook his head. His brother wasn’t a bad engineer for a Storm Wizard. He wiped yet more water out of his face and turned the gray back down the canyon. Cold rivulets ran down inside his blacks, chilling him through and through. Even the inside of his boots felt soaked.

  Dyessa was still waiting, but Firbek and the rocket cart- and Gunnar-were out of sight farther down the canyon, the creaking of the cart masked by the dull swishing of the continuing rain.

  The Sarronnese leader looked at Justen. “Will whatever he did hold?”

  Justen wiped more rain from his face, a useless task, and shook himself “Forever… or until there’s a drought and several Chaos Wizards.” Seeing the doubtful look on Dyessa’s face, he added, “There’s a lake building up in Middlevale, or what was Middlevale. That much water carries a lot of order. A good Chaos Wizard or two could blast away the stones there, except for the order of the water. The lake has to be drained or dried up before wizards can do much. And they won’t be doing anything until this rain ends, and I think that’s not going to be for a long time - days anyway-and then if any of them survived, which I doubt many did.”

  “Good. We can reinforce Zerlana somewhere.” Dyessa touched the reins and raised her voice. “Let’s get moving.”

  Before she could start, Justen lifted his hand.“Wait. Have you seen Yonada?”

  “She fell in the first attack, Engineer. She bought you wizards the time to save the rest of us.”

  Justen swallowed. Yonada gone? Just like that?

  “I don’t think I’ll ever understand you wizards.” Dyessa shook her head. “You devise black weapons that destroy whole squads and call storms that turn valleys into lakes and drown entire armies, and then you’re surprised that someone dies.”

  Justen dumbly flicked the reins. He needed to find Gunnar… at least.

  Dyessa picked her away ahead, encouraging, organizing, as the remnants of two forces shambled back toward Sarron. Clutching the black staff, Justen rode slowly to catch up with his brother, hoping he could do something, but scarcely knowing what.

  XXVIII

  A jolt rocked the cart as it rumbled off the even pavement of the pink stone bridge and onto the packed clay ruts of the road. Gunnar moaned, but did not open his eyes. From his saddle on the still-placid gray, Justen lifted his left hand, reaching out instinctively, but the cart settled back into its faintly swaying roll and Gunnar lapsed back into a deeper sleep.

  Even from where he rode beside the cart, Justen could sense the depletion of the order-forces within his brother. He glanced up at the marine in black riding near the front of the column beside Dyessa. Firbek rode with his knees, both hands gesturing. From the movements, Justen suspected he was explaining once again the limited range and shortcomings of the ships rockets.

  Justen snorted. Part of the problem was Firbek’s lack of guts. When a weapon’s accuracy was limited by range, you either moved up to get in range or you let the enemy get close enough to use it. Firbek had done neither. He’d just fired rockets almost for the sake of firing them, and had forced Justen to squander his limited abilities on getting a handful to go somewhere close to where they had been aimed. And that had meant Gunnar had damned near killed himself calling a huge storm.

  So… now… while Firbek was explaining away his shortcomings, Justen was worrying about his brother, laying the black staff next to him when he could, and hoping the proximity of that order would help Gunnar.

  Ahead, the clay road leading from what had been Middlevale merged with the main road to Sarron. Soon they would be traveling the last section of the road that had brought Justen from Rulyarth to Sarron, since Middlevale was north and east of Sarron.

  Dyessa rode past, headed toward the rear of the column, her eyes ignoring the marine driving the cart and the unconscious man under the worn, blue wool blanket. Justen’s eyes followed her as she circled the short column and headed back to its head.

  As Dyessa completed the circuit, the column turned onto the main road. Justen looked to the northwest, back along the route toward Lornth, but the river town was lost beyond the rolling hills.

  Gunnar moaned again, and Justen tried to reach out, not only physically, but with his order-senses… only to find the same gentle barrier that had blocked him ever since the fight. How could one call the mess at Middlevale a battle?

  After wiping his forehead, Justen shifted his weight in the saddle again and tried to ignore Firbek’s continuing conversation with the Sarronnese commander. The rocket cart creaked, Gunnar occasionally moaned, and the gray carried Justen toward Sarron.

  Well before the column trudged up the final section of the road, a single figure in green galloped downhill on a bay mare, pausing but momentarily beside Firbek and Dyessa. Krytella reined up next to the cart, dismounted, and without speaking, handed the bay’s reins to Justen.

  Only after she had spent some time with Gunnar, infusing enough order into the restless Air Wizard that her face had paled even under the afternoon clouds, did she slip off the still-moving cart, reclaim the reins, and remount. Her voice was cold. “You let him do this… why did you let him? He’s your brother.”

  “I did what I could. I did give him some order before he called the storm, but once he collapsed, I really couldn’t reach him.” Justen wiped his forehead again. Since summer had come to Sarronnyn, it seemed like all he did was sweat. “I tried.”

  Krytella frowned. “You transferred a little order. How, I don’t know.” Her eyes flicked back to the unconsc
ious figure.

  “I tried using the staff.” Justen cleared his throat, wondering if the clouds rolling in from the east were the result of Gunnar’s storms and if they would bring more rain. “He’ll be all right, won’t he?”

  “He’ll live. Whether he’ll see or think is another question.”

  “Like Creslin?”

  “I don’t know. I just don’t know.”

  Dyessa eased her mount up beside Krytella’s bay. “Greetings, Healer.”

  Justen glanced past her to see that Firbek had remained near the head of the column.

  “Greetings.”

  The Sarronnese commander gestured vaguely toward (he rocket cart. “I hope he will recover.”

  “So do I.” Krytella paused, then the words burst out as if she could no longer hold them. “What good were all Gunnar’s efforts? They clearly weren’t enough to win the battle, were they?” Krytella’s eyes flashed across the bedraggled column, perhaps a third of its original strength.

  “No, Healer. It was just the only time we happened to have stopped the White devils in more man a season.” Dyessa looked down from her mount. “Victories against the Whites are not exactly cheap. I thought that you of Recluce understood that. This one only cost me two-thirds of my forces-and to stop just a small body of the White devils.”

  Krytella’s eyes turned to the still figure on the rocket cart. “Do you really care?”

  “Healer, I am glad that your Air Wizard will survive. He and the engineer saved us. They more than deserve… our gratitude.” Dyessa took a deep breath. “Whether that gratitude will mean much in the seasons ahead, I question, given our inability to hold the White devils back.”

  “I… was too hasty…”

  “No.” The dark-haired commander smiled sadly. “You are probably correct. But we all do what we must.”

  Krytella and Justen watched as Dyessa guided her mount back toward the front of the riders. The column turned eastward onto the last uphill stretch toward Sarron.

  The clouds thickened, and low rumbles of thunder punctuated the growing gloom.

  “He really did it…” murmured the healer.

  As the raindrops began to fall, Justen eased the gray closer to the bay on which Krytella rode, her eyes focused somewhere beyond the road.

  “Krytella… you have to show me something.”

  “What?”

  “How to transfer order-force from me to someone…”

  “That’s a healer’s-”

  “I tried, and I couldn’t do it. And Gunnar almost died.”

  Krytella looked steadily at Justen. “As much as you’re jealous of Gunnar, you love him, don’t you?” Justen looked at the ground. “He needed help, and I couldn’t give it.”

  “Oh, Justen…” The healer’s hand brushed Justen’s for a moment, so gently that he could not be sure that it had happened, but a warmth flowed from her to him. “That’s how it feels.”

  Justen tried to ignore her closeness and to concentrate on the order-patterns. Pushing aside her warmth and sweet scent, he focused his thoughts. Ignoring the might-have-beens, he let his senses grasp the flow of order. He owed Gunnar that, if not much more.

  XXIX

  The thunder outside the smithy was deep enough to be heard over the clanging of metal and the slow pounding of the hammer mill, tended carefully by Quentel, whose left arm was bound in a splint of wood and canvas.

  Justen lifted the hammer, touching the iron arrowhead on the forge. He frowned. Too bad the engineers couldn’t cast black iron, or that the Sarronnese smiths couldn’t forge black iron, either. Like everything, black iron had its limits. Since it couldn’t be cast, that meant, at least so far, that the Blacks hadn’t been able to make more than a handful of black iron guns-just those on the Mighty Ten-and since the Whites could touch off cammabark or powder held in regular iron, albeit with difficulty, anyone who wasn’t a White or on a Black ship risked having cannon blow up on them.

  Probably the Iron Guard could use long guns or cannon, even if the regular White troops and wizards couldn’t. But that limitation wouldn’t help the Sarronnese much. The engineers had made a few muskets for hunting, but they weren’t feasible for war. Making a musket by hand out of black iron took too much time and effort. Arrowheads were another story.

  Justen took a deep breath, reflecting that the idea for arrowheads had been his, and pulled the next sheet of iron from the forge. Four quick taps with the hot set and the first rough shape was ready. Then he scarfed the base and reheated the iron to welding temperature before tapping the holed rod stock to the base. He followed with another tap to the hot set and a reforming on the special mandrel that sat in the hardie hole.

  “You’d think you’d been doing that all your life,” observed Nicos, stopping for a moment on his way back from outside. The older engineer wiped sweat from his face. ‘ “This place is hotter than Recluce was even before Creslin fixed it. I can sure see why he never wanted to come here.”

  Justen nodded, recalling his trip to the Silver Shield in Sarron. “I can think of several reasons.”

  “Do you think the arrowheads will work?”

  “They’ll work. I just hope the Sarronnese understand how well.”

  “They’re in trouble. You’d think they’d use whatever works.”

  “Maybe…” Justen cleared his throat, trying to swallow the taste of charcoal and metal. He reached for the pitcher and took a swallow of the lukewarm water.

  “With the true Leg end-holders, you never know.” Nicos flashed a smile and turned toward the hammer mill.

  Justen resumed forging. After he had a dozen of the rough-out arrowheads, he nodded to Clerve, who began the tedious job of filing and grinding them before Justen used the last touch of heat and order to turn them into black iron. Then the striker would use the smooth wheel on the grindstone for a final polish.

  While Clerve filed and rough-ground, Justen finished another dozen forms, then began the careful ordering of those completed by Clerve.

  By midday, each man was soaked from the heat of the forge and the hot, damp air that seemed to well out of the ground. But Justen had more than three dozen of the special arrowheads ready.

  “That’s enough for now.” He wiped his forehead and placed the hammer on his bench.

  At the rear and newest forge, Altara set aside her tongs and walked over to where Justen banked the edge of his coals.

  “How are you doing?”

  Justen nodded toward the last half-dozen gleaming black shapes on the hearth. “Around two score this morning. That’s not enough for even a few moments of battle.”

  “Dyessa wants to try them first, and Firbek thinks you ought to go with the next detachment,”

  “I’m no marine.” Justen squinted at the salty sweat that had run into his left eye. He blotted it away and then walked out under the side eave of the smithy, scarcely cooler than the forge area, so still was the midsummer air.

  The chief engineer followed. “I’d like your opinion on whether we should make more arrowheads. Firbek wants more rockets.”

  With a snort, Justen scooped a handful of water out of the bucket set on the small table and splashed it across his face. Altara waited.

  “We’d get better results with the arrowheads,” he said at last.

  “I won’t get that answer from Firbek, especially if you don’t go with Dyessa.”

  “So… I have to go because Firbek loves the rockets?” The young engineer sank onto the rough bench, letting his eyes rest on the road, where two heavy-laden wagons rumbled downhill, headed eastward from Sarron. Farther downhill, another wagon also lumbered eastward. Justen shook his head.

  “I could ask Clerve to go. And Krytella has suggested that the Sarronnese could use a healer,” Altara told him.

  “No. I’ll go. Clerve would just get himself killed. I can at least duck.”

  “You don’t think I should let the healer go?”

  “No. The way the Whites fight, there aren’t man
y wounded.”

  “I got that impression.” Altara caught Justen’s eyes. “Thank you.”

  “When does Dyessa leave?”

  “Sometime within the eight-day, probably before the end days.” Altara paused, “Why do you look so glum? You seem to forget that you were successful in stopping the White thrust through the northern pass.”

  “I suppose.” Justen snorted softly. “We were successful-if that’s what you call losing three-quarters of the Sarronnese forces, half of our black iron equipment, and almost killing the one real wizard we have.”

  “Justen, you’re too hard on yourself.”

  Justen stood. “I’m going for some cold water and to check on Gunnar, The healers are getting some supplies from the river wharf.”

  “You’ll keep working on the arrowheads?”

  Justen smiled and shrugged. “I still think they’ll be more useful than Firbek’s rockets.”

  As Altara watched, Justen stepped off the worn planks of the side porch and onto the red clay that separated the smithy from the old house. First he made his way to the pump behind the dwelling, where he rinsed one of the buckets thoroughly, even adding a touch of order to it to ensure that the water would remain pure, before half-filling it. Then he carried the bucket back to the front porch. When he stepped up to the door of the old house and looked back toward the smithy, Altara was no longer on the side porch, but had apparently returned to work.

  He climbed the stairs almost on tiptoe, setting each foot down as quietly as possible. When one stair creaked, he froze for an instant, then continued. He slipped into the small garret room where Gunnar dozed. Pausing briefly, he studied his brother’s open, unguarded face.

  As quietly as he could, Justen used the small bucket to fill the pitcher on the stand beside the sleeping man and then slipped onto the stool beside the bed. Even as he watched his brother, the openness vanished and Gunnar’s jaw tightened. A half-mumble escaped the nearly closed mouth. Gunnar’s body shuddered and half-turned on the pallet.