The Order War

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Martan and Gunnar exchanged glances before Gunnar’s eyes strayed to the crude rock barrier topped with two sheets of black iron plate from the land engine. “I mean it. You could go blind, or worse.” A long drum-roll echoed up the hillside from the white-paved road leading south out of Fairhaven. A second drum-roll followed. The standard-bearers dipped both the white banners and crimson-trimmed gray ones in response to the drum-rolls. The air smelled like damp leaves, though the trees had barely begun to turn Justen climbed into the wicker basket, careful not to upset the lens assembly or the brackets to which he would have to attach it once the balloon cleared the ground with room to spare.

  *Give me strength. Oh, Dayala… be with me.*

  *I am with you… always…*

  The Gray Wizard, for he was a Gray Wizard, he knew, smiled. This time, those warm thoughts were not just his imaginings. “Let the clamps go.”

  Martan released one clamp, then the other, straining to keep the line paying out at an even rate.

  As the balloon rose, Justen grasped the sides of the basket, sides whose lightness, so laudable in his experiments, seemed more and more like fragility as the balloon rose. The cottage on the brown-grassed hillside below turned into a shed and then into a dollhouse-or so it seemed, even though the balloon was less than two hundred cubits above the hilltop.

  Another roll rumbled from the drums. Justen lurched sideways slightly as he shifted his weight and the basket tilted.

  “Oooo…” A line of fire burned his forehead, and the smell of singed hair filled his nostrils as he pulled his head away from the small heating pan that had replaced the stove.

  He took a deep breath and forced himself to rebalance order and chaos in the burned patch of hair, and took another breath in relief as the pain faded and as the basket steadied.

  Slowly, he lowered the bracket assembly over the side of the basket and clamped it in place, so that the lenses reached out sideways. The light from the afternoon sun barely reached the upper lens.

  Once more the drums rolled, and the lancers moved up to the stone wall at the bottom of the hill. Justen continued to hang over the side of the balloon basket, which had again begun to sway, trying to adjust the brackets. Somehow, the adjustments were harder to make when he was hanging from the basket than when he was on the ground. “Come on…”

  The swaying increased as the balloon continued to rise. Ummmphhh… The balloon gave a jolt as it reached the ends of the tethers, and Justen grasped the sides of the basket with both hands. For a moment, his stomach seemed suspended, but he swallowed hard. Had Martan felt that way while traveling on the curves in the road?

  Justen smiled a brief, wry grin and bent over again to adjust the lens assembly. From the corner of his eye, he could see the White lancers and the Iron Guard nearing the bottom of the hill. After doing nothing for half the day, they had decided to move quickly. The white banners and the group of wizards remained in the same position farther back on the road. The new High Wizard?

  Justen readjusted the brackets, but the light focus was not quite right, and he backed down the clamp a fraction of a turn.

  Hssstttt…

  A firebolt flared toward the balloon, but seemed to fade to the side even before Justen had fully seen it.

  Gunnar-it had to be Gunnar, shielding him while he worked. His eyes flickered down, but Gunnar was partly concealed by the armor. Martan still remained by the tether stakes.

  “Martan!” he yelled. “Light off those rockets to cover Gunnar.”

  Hhhssttt.-. .

  The Weather Wizard deflected another firebolt.

  “Crap!” muttered Justen, still trying to get the lens to focus on the fire-eye. He was going to get fried because he couldn’t adjust the settings while hanging upside down, and because the frigging Whites actually acted quickly, and because he was worried about Gunnar and Martan, and they wouldn’t have a chance if he didn’t get his weapon working, and soon.

  Hssstttt…

  The balloon basket swayed again as Justen’s boot slipped, and he had to grab the basket with both hands to keep from plunging out headfirst. He’d touched the bracket again and fuzzed the focus.

  “Shit… shit… shit!”

  He forced himself to be calm, and slowly he edged the clamp a fraction of a turn.

  Hssttt… hssstttt… hhssttt.

  The last bolts were close enough for his face to feel as though it had been singed by a forge fire, close enough that he seemed to smell brimstone.

  From the land engine came the whooshing of the rockets, arrowing downhill toward the mass of the White lancers.

  Crummpt…

  The first rocket sailed over the White positions and into the meadow beyond, igniting browning grass into white smoke.

  Crumptt…

  The second plowed through the right flank of the lancers.

  Whheeee… eeeee… eeee.

  Ignoring the screaming horses, Justen adjusted the clamp another fraction of a turn. The light hit the fire-eye at the right angle, and the fire-eye was pointed, at least generally, toward the White tower. A blade of light flared out from the assembly, ending in midair.

  Even as he realized that the brackets needed finer adjustment, Justen permitted himself the luxury of a tight smile.

  Hssstttt…

  Crummpttt… Another rocket slammed into the stone before the Iron Guard, spraying flame over a half-dozen foot soldiers. One ran forward and vaulted the stone wall and tried to roll the fire out on the ground. Instead, the fire grew into a long groove in the high grass, where a charred figure twitched, its screams dying into moans, then into silence.

  Hhssstttt! Another firebolt passed below the balloon.

  Crummptt! Crumpptt! Two more rockets flew downhill into the massed White center, leaving a blackened gap.

  A quick roll of drums punctuated the air, and half of the White lancers began to ride uphill.

  Three rockets in succession turned the front line of the lancers into a charred heap. The remaining riders split around the fallen and continued toward the land engine.

  Two of the next three rockets exploded into the turf before the right wing of the lancers, raising smoke and dirt and slowing the charge. The rocket aimed at the left wing brought down the lead horse, but it did not break the momentum of the charge Gunnar deflected another pair of firebolts as Justen fiddled with the brackets.

  Cruumptt! Crumptt! Crumptt!

  “Ohhhh…” In spite of himself, Justen glanced below, where Marian sprinted from the land engine toward the crude revetment, not even looking back at the tangled, twisted, and burned mass of human and horse flesh created by the last rockets.

  Hhsssttt!

  Justen ducked involuntarily, although Gunnar’s shields guided the firebolt away from the balloon. He glanced below quickly, where Martan, despite Justen’s orders, still stood in the open, if half-behind the stone-and-iron-plate revetment. The marine was lofting black arrows downhill, where they exploded among the remaining massed White lancers. As scattered shafts began to fly uphill, the marine released yet another black shaft before moving behind the barrier where Gunnar sat, eyes closed, order continuing to build around him.

  Justen edged the bracket the slightest bit, and the light-blade flared into the ground behind the High Wizard’s coach.

  The response was instantaneous, with firebolts flying toward the balloon.

  Hsssttt… hsssttt… hssttt.

  The barrage of firebolts flew by the balloon basket, still protected by Gunner’s shields. But the air grew warmer, as though the hottest days of summer were flying toward him.

  Justen shook himself. “Act, damn it!”

  He took a deep breath, closed his eyes and concentrated, smoothing the flow and weaving the light into the collecting lens. A web of shadow flickered around the balloon, and Jus-ten could feel Gunnar withdraw his shields in order for Justen to gather the full power of the sunlight.

  Darkness spread from the balloon, almost as sunlight would
have radiated from a second sun. It seemed as though night had emerged from the balloon and fallen across the hillside, then spread northward toward Fairhaven itself, glittering like a white gem between the browning green hills.

  The dark shadow raced northward, its forward edge a knife-sharp line between day and night.

  Hhssstt… The firebolt seemed to drop away from the balloon even without Gunnar’s shields.

  Below, looking like a doll behind his shelter, Martan loosed another string of arrows. Each arrow arced downhill, and each seemed to find a target, each shaft as inexorable as black death. With every lancer transfixed by an arrow, there came a faint crump as chaos and order met and exploded. The rhythm continued, and Martan’s hands and arms unleashed a steady stream of dark shafts, flying so fast that they almost streaked like black lightning down upon the White lancers. The crump, crump, crump of heads exploding as they struck echoed far into the growing darkness. With each explosion came a faint point of light in the twilight that had fallen around the hill.

  Justen concentrated more intently, trying to block Martan from his thoughts, trying to block out his concerns for Gunnar, trying only to funnel more light into the lens and direct it to the gem.

  Ssssssttt…

  Like a sword of the ancient Angels, the blade of fire seared the ground at the foot of the hill, cutting through the brown-green turf, striking sparks, flinging molten rock like miniature firebolts as it tore through the stone wall beside the road. Small fires and plumes of smoke rose from scattered points in the field where the flaming rock droplets had fallen.

  Hsssttt!

  The sun-blade dimmed as Gunnar’s shields deflected the firebolts, then flared back to brightness and slashed at an angle through a squad of lancers. Screams mixed with the hissing that resembled the vent of a massive steam engine.

  Where the light-blade had passed, white ashes swirled and drifted snowlike, falling on the clay beside the road, on the glass-hard melted stone of the road itself, and across the glassy parts of the shoulder that had once been sand.

  Horses reared, those that were left, screaming as they tried to plunge away from the rain of ash, and from the blackened heaps that had been men and horses merely brushed by the light blade. In the dimness, the white banners fluttered against the growing wind from nowhere, their muffled crackling adding to the swell of sound. Hssstttt!

  Justen winced as the heat of the firebolt seemed to blister his face.

  Another roll of drums sounded, and the crimson-trimmed gray banners headed uphill toward the balloon-and toward Gunnar and Martan. The Iron Guard horse trotted forward to lead the next advance, and the foot began to quickstep.

  Marian’s arrows shifted to the gray-clad troops, but no longer did the shafts explode and strew bodies. The Guards fell, but they fell one at a time, and there were far fewer shafts than Guards, even as the marine’s arms seemed to blur with their speed. That blur stopped for a moment as Martan pulled an arrow from the fleshy part of his shoulder and then, almost without losing his rhythm, released yet another black shaft, and another. But the wave of gray troops surged uphill, ever nearer to Martan and Gunnar. Ssssstttttt…

  With his thoughts, Justen swung the beam across the line of the White forces, trying to slow the advance. The blade played back across the hillside, cutting a blackened gash across the turf, flinging scattered bits of flaming debris out and away from the line of sun-fire.

  “Aeeeeüü…” Only a few cries rose from the Iron Guard.

  Heavier gray smoke curled from the burning grass. The smell of scorched turf and the odor of burned flesh-human and animal-permeated the lower hillside. But the Iron Guard closed ranks, and the crimson-trimmed gray banners continued uphill. Hssstt!

  Another firebolt flashed below the balloon; the wicker of the basket crackled with the heat, and the balloon bounced. Justen forced the sun-blade back toward the Iron Guard, but the line of fire crossed the road and the White lancers behind the stone wall. The remnant of the lancers broke and curled away. Horses foamed and screamed, some hurling riders onto the road.

  “Form up! Follow the Guard!”

  Another drum-roll sounded, not quite in cadence, and the remnants of two squads of lancers began to trot up the hillside road, almost as if following Justen’s light-blade.

  Higher on the hillside, nearer the land engine and the tethers of the balloon, at least half of the Iron Guard-half foot, half horse-continued to march, more slowly but steadily, uphill toward Marian and Gunnar.

  From the White Wizards on the road there swelled a growing pressure: pure chaos, so deep that it was more red than white.

  Hhhsttt! Hhhssstt!

  Hssstttt! Hsssttt!

  From the host of fireballs flaring toward Justen, one slammed past him and into the balloon. The basket rocked, and a faint hissing began. Trying to maintain his concentration, Justen grabbed the basket with one hand, but the light-sword from the fire-eye slewed away from the White forces and across a row of houses at the edge of Fairhaven.

  One of the houses with a thatched roof exploded into flame, an instant torch, and smoke poured skyward. Another structure’s tile roof cracked and splintered, sending hot masonry across down the street like red-hot arrows. A tall stone house slumped like a fat wax candle caught in full summer sun, or a baker’s oven, oozing out in all directions, the molten stone creating a ring of fire that caused nearby trees and garden plants to erupt in flame.

  The sounds of steaming vegetation, screaming people, and panicked animals melded into a low roar that in turn merged with the hissing of the light-sword itself.

  Hhsssttt! Hsssttt!

  The twin firebolts fell short, but Justen could sense the growing mass of chaos building in the White Wizards.

  Trying to hold back his horror at the results of the sun-blade, Justen struggled to get his balance in the rocking balloon basket and to swing the sun-blade back toward the Iron Guard, which advanced inexorably toward Gunnar and Mar-tan.

  Martan continued to loose arrows, his right sleeve damp with blood, and Gunnar struggled with the high and mighty winds, trying to keep the sky clear for Justen.

  Ssssstttt…

  Justen wrenched the sun-blade back below him, playing it across the advancing ranks of the Iron Guard, trying to ignore the greasy smoke and the screams.

  Still the Guard advanced, now no more than a hundred cubits from where Martan stood and let fly his arrows.

  Justen coughed, and the blade slewed wildly, flashing back toward the horizon and slagging a corner of the traders’ market into molten white stone.

  Again the White Wizards focused their will, and another huge swell of chaos flared. Sensing the chaos, Justen slewed the sun-blade across the firebolts. Hhhsttt! Crummpptt!

  With the impact of chaos and order, the sky seemed to explode. Black stars and deep, blinding-white flares intersected, flashing through each other and dwindling into nothingness as the wind built. The balloon bounced so wildly that Justen, even with both hands on the basket, was thrown against the coal pan and half over the side. The smell of singed hair again filled his nostrils.

  The light-blade flared northward, and the park in the traders’ square flashed into flame. Cinders and ashes spewed skyward. Even while Justen struggled upright and brought the blade back to bear on the Iron Guard, the trees in the traders’ square burned like bright candles through the artificial twilight, haze, and ever-thickening smoke.

  “That’s it,” muttered Justen to himself, “Meet chaos with order…”

  He spit out blood and forced his thoughts back onto the light-blade, focusing it on the front ranks of the Iron Guard, playing it back across infantry and troopers alike, ignoring the white agony that welled from soldiers whose bodies exploded in steaming fury instants before they became piles of ash.

  More chaos fire flared around the balloon.

  Hssssttt!! Hsssttttt!

  The balloon bounced again, but braced, Justen kept swinging the blade across the Iron Guard, reduced no
w to less than a score of horsemen charging toward Martan and Gunnar.

  Justen slammed the blade along a line between the two and the Iron Guard, and still trying to hold on to the Balance between chaos and order, stretched his light-gathering net to cover the sky as far as he could reach. He needed to gather an ever-wider sweep of light.

  Below, Marian hacked an Iron Guard off his horse and then mounted it, swinging a stolen sabre and charging the half-squad of Guards remaining-as if to push or pull them away from Gunnar and Justen.

  More firebolts flashed past Justen, and the hissing of the balloon grew louder, a sound that Justen sensed more than felt since his ears were deafened by the shrieking of the light-blade, the roaring of the firebolts, and the rushing of the winds that yanked the balloon to the ends of its tethers.

  Below, the sabre flew from Martan’s hands as one of the last three Iron Guards slashed from his blind side.

  Almost sobbing as he mentally grabbed at the increased order-energy from his wider capture net, Justen threw the sun-blade at the three Iron Guards before Marian. Still weaving and focusing, Justen directed the growing flow of order thai was like a river from the heavens, even as a darker force seemed to gather beside it, welling from the earth beneath.

  Ignoring that dark force, Justen flung the wider light-blade back along the hillside, throwing bodies everywhere, burning through the turf and melting stone outcrops, trying to keep the Guards, those three remaining, from Gunnar and Martan, although he could no longer sense the marine, only Gunnar’s will across the skies.

  Then a long wave wrenched the earth beneath the valley, rolling from the hill and to the north. The undulating motion ran back through the tethers, rocking the balloon, but that rocking was muted because the tethers were slackening as the balloon had begun to sink.

  To the north, the massive landquake rippled along the highway, lifting the twenty-stone paving blocks and dropping some of them back into disjointed positions, others into cracked and shattered fragments.

  Houses-those not already fused, charred, or exploded into fragments-heaved like boats in the surf as the solid ground around them turned into liquid and shook like jelly. One swell followed another, and timbered walls bent, and bent, and snapped apart like twigs. Stone and masonry walls shivered, and shivered, and sprayed outward in cascades of brick and stone.