Arms-Commander

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Slowly, she sat up. “It broke loose, didn’t it?” She looked at the guard she thought was Klarisa.

  “Yes, ser.”

  Saryn struggled to her feet. Even without her numbed senses, she could feel the fear in the squad leader. She blotted her eyes. After several moments, she could see, if intermittently, since her vision blanked out with each unseen hammerblow on her skull, but she could tell the large section of the mesa was gone. Where the crevice had been was the mesa’s edge.

  Klarisa looked at Saryn, then down at the valley.

  Saryn turned. The entire middle section was shrouded in brown-and-gray dust.

  Shrouded…a good word.

  “Ser…what did you do?” the squad leader finally asked.

  “What had to be done.” Saryn looked down into the slowly clearing dust, watching as the higher ground of the hillock finally emerged. While it was surrounded by tumbled rock, stone, and earth, fighting continued on the slopes, where at least a company of the Gallosian cavalry had managed to ride high enough to avoid being swept away by the tide of rock and stone.

  Saryn felt helpless, but there was nothing else she could do, only watch. Even if she had been down in the valley, her head throbbed so much that she knew she wouldn’t have been any good in a battle, or not much. Had Ryba guessed that? Saryn frowned. That couldn’t be, because if Saryn hadn’t had to use her skills to help the penetrators, she wouldn’t have had the headache…but then most of Arthanos’s army would have escaped.

  The end of the fighting did not last that long, endless as it seemed to Saryn, and, finally, Saryn could see a few Gallosians—both mounted and on foot—scrambling onto the rocks below the hillock, trying to escape the remaining guards. She turned her head away, not really wanting to think about the casualties—on either side.

  “Ser? It looks like the Marshal won…didn’t she?” asked Klarisa.

  “We survived…and they didn’t.” For now.

  Would it always be like that? Winning by destroying massive forces and taking huge losses in the process? Why, when everyone would have been better off without such battles?

  Abruptly, she looked back toward the easternmost part of the valley—and saw nothing. As her vision returned, she made out a company of Westwind guards emerging from the forest on the northern side of the road and bearing down on the ten or so supply wagons that had not been engulfed in earth and rock. The remaining Gallosians were scattering.

  “Klarisa, we need to mount up and head down there. We can’t do any more here, and they’ll need us.” Saryn walked back down to the upper camp and her mount, without an answer to her questions.

  XXXVII

  By the time Saryn and fourth squad had descended from the mesa and ridden down the next set of slopes, then made their way along the road until they had nearly reached the western end of the mass of churned rock and earth and sand—a half kay west of the hillock—the sun had dropped behind the western peaks and ridges, and the entire valley lay in shadow. Because her vision continued to vanish unpredictably, Saryn was forced to rely on Klarisa.

  Ryba rode up to meet Saryn, easing her mount to a halt, almost stirrup to stirrup with the younger woman. “I knew I could count on you. You had trouble, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.” After the ride, and the events of the past two days, every part of her body ached, her head and eyes most of all. “We managed. How about you?”

  “All told, we lost thirty-one guards.” Ryba’s voice was hoarse.

  “How many of the Gallosians survived?”

  “We don’t know for certain, but no more than a few hundred. A handful rode north and managed to get onto a few higher places, and the last two companies—his rear guard—managed to escape. I didn’t have second company chase them. The wagons were more valuable.” Ryba frowned. “It’s going to be the demon’s own time getting them over or around that mess you created. It might take days.”

  “What about our wounded?” Saryn lost her vision again, with another thunderclap inside her skull.

  “There are another forty or so, but the healers tell me that most of them will make it.” Ryba’s voice was hoarse. “The ones who died—they were more than a tenth of all those at Westwind, and that doesn’t count the wounded. Gallos has to lose nine or ten thousand men before it’s a serious loss. Every loss is still serious to us.”

  “They won’t try again, not soon.”

  “Thanks to you, no. Not for another few years, or a generation at most, before some other younger son or hothead decides that having a land ruled by women is insufferable to the mighty male ego.” Ryba’s voice dripped with acid bitterness.

  At that moment, Saryn’s vision flickered back, and she saw the heavy dressing on Ryba’s upper left arm. “You were in the front lines, weren’t you?”

  “Second line, but one company of theirs was good. Not as good as us, but much better than anything we’ve seen.”

  “One of those special companies,” suggested Saryn.

  “In the end, it didn’t matter. They all died, too.”

  “All of them?”

  “They couldn’t face the fact that they weren’t that special. Not one would surrender. There seems to be a certain disgrace to being bested by a woman at arms.” Ryba snorted.

  “So…you didn’t spare anyone?”

  “I’m not that cruel, no matter what Arthanos told his men. There are close to a hundred wounded and fifty who did yield. We took their weapons, and let them have two of their wagons and sent them back to Karthanos. I also sent a message with them, suggesting that peace would be far less costly than war. I also said we had no intentions on his lands, but that we would suffer none on ours, nor on traders or others who wished to travel the Westhorns.”

  “Will he get it?”

  “I had Istril with me. I gave it to a wounded undercaptain. She said he was honest and would deliver it.” Ryba’s smile was twisted. “We will see.”

  “What about their mages? How many did they have?”

  “Two, I think. Chaos-fire isn’t that effective against an avalanche.” Ryba paused. “I’m going to take two squads, along with the wounded, and head back to Westwind first thing in the morning with Siret. I’m leaving you in charge here to manage getting the Gallosian wagons to the road and acting as our rear guard.”

  “I can do that,” Saryn said dryly. But I’ll need someone who can see all the time.

  “I know. I need to think about the Suthyans.” Ryba laughed, sardonically and hoarsely. “We can’t block every road in the Westhorns, or we won’t have either travelers or trade.”

  Saryn looked pointedly at Ryba’s bound arm, only to find that, again, she saw nothing except a sparkling blackness punctuated with what felt like blows to her skull and eyes. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “It’s only a slash. Istril says that it will heal but not to use it for a while.”

  “Please don’t.” From the pallor Saryn had seen briefly in Ryba’s face and the tiredness in her eyes and posture, Saryn had the impression that the Marshal’s wound wasn’t just a slash. She couldn’t use her own senses to tell, not at the moment, and she wondered how long it would be before she regained her own abilities.

  “I doubt that I could. If you’d look things over and take charge, I’d appreciate it.” Ryba paused. “Hryessa and first company are east about a hundred yards.”

  As the Marshal turned her mount, Saryn tried to extend her senses, since her sight had not returned, and before dizziness and pain washed away her perceptions, felt another locus of chaos, and a splint of sorts, on Ryba’s lower right leg. Second line? As she forced herself to try to relax, Saryn had her doubts about that.

  She had to wait for a time before her sight returned, and she could urge the gelding forward, riding toward several wagons and what looked to be a camp ahead on the right side of the narrow road.

  Hryessa was mounted, and when she caught sight of Saryn, rode to meet the arms-commander, easing her mount around the end of o
ne of the wagons. As the captain neared, Saryn reined up. She could see several guards stretched out in the wagon, one with a dressing that covered her entire upper face.

  “Arms-commander, you are back. When the top of the mountain exploded, we feared that none would survive and return.”

  “It wasn’t as bad as it looked,” Saryn replied. “How bad was it here?”

  Hryessa reined up close to the arms-commander. “It was terrible, but our guards, they were magnificent. The Gallosians were beasts. Some had sabres smeared with poison, and others…” She shook her head. “I worried that the Marshal waited too long, but she did not. If she had called for you to bring down the rocks any earlier, there would have been many more Gallosians who escaped their fate.”

  “Where did you come up with that last company to take the wagons?”

  Hryessa grinned. “We used barely trained junior guards, but they were led by first squad. The Gallosians in the rear were not thinking after they saw their army disappear under the rocks.”

  “Was that your idea?”

  “I offered it to the Marshal. She agreed. It was a long wager, but we need the supplies.”

  “I’m certain we do. The Marshal will be taking two squads and the wounded back tomorrow. We have the task of salvaging everything we can and getting those supply wagons from the other end of the valley here.”

  “I already have guards searching for the best path through the woods.”

  Saryn smiled. “You’re ahead of me.”

  “Is that not what a captain is for, ser?”

  “A good one, and you are,” Saryn said with a laugh she did not feel, as her vision vanished again, and she swayed in the saddle.

  XXXVIII

  All in all, it took nearly two full days for Saryn and the remaining healthy Westwind guards to reorganize and to move the ten supply wagons less than three kays through the woods, as well as collect anything useful that could be reclaimed from the avalanche and from what the surviving Gallosians had discarded in their flight. Personally, Saryn suspected that the fifty-odd Gallosian mounts they had captured might well prove to be of the greatest value, those and the supply wagons themselves, since they would allow Westwind to send its own traders out with enough cartage capacity to bring back meaningful quantities of goods.

  Finally, at first light on oneday morning, they set out on the return journey to Westwind. Saryn rode just behind Hryessa’s first squad, which provided the outriders and scouts and served as vanguard. Beside her rode Istril, since Hryessa was leading the vanguard.

  Saryn said little for the first several glasses after they left the valley, lost as she was in her thoughts about the battle. She really hadn’t had time to think about it since she’d rejoined the main force, not with all that she had been required to organize and supervise, not to mention that she had worried that some of the Gallosians might turn into marauders, whom she wouldn’t have been able to discover. Her ability to sense anything without blinding herself or risking unconsciousness had only begun to return late on eightday, and she hadn’t pressed herself. She still had spells during which she could not see.

  On one level, she understood why Arthanos had tried to destroy Westwind, but she had trouble understanding emotionally. Even if he had succeeded, he would have lost hundreds of men, if not thousands…and for what? To destroy only a few hundred women in the middle of mountains that no one really wanted? Was it an attempt at revenge for the fact that Balyea—his former mistress—had left him for Westwind? Saryn almost couldn’t believe he had mounted such a massive campaign because he opposed a tiny land where women ruled…and yet she could.

  “You’re deep in thought, ser,” Istril finally said.

  “I’m still having trouble with the idea that a ruler’s son would sacrifice thousands because he couldn’t stand a few women who didn’t have to bow and bend to men.”

  “There are men like that everywhere. Some places have more, some less, but all have some. It’s not just men, either. Some women would like it the other way.”

  “It’s a sad comment on people.”

  “Everyone wants to be in charge.”

  Saryn wondered about that. Did everyone want to be in charge, or did most people just want control over their own lives?

  When she did not say anything, and the silence dragged out, punctuated only by the sound of hoofs on the road, Istril spoke again. “It’s a good thing you were the one on the mesa to loose the rocks. You had to use order and chaos in addition to the explosives, didn’t you?”

  Saryn glanced around. No one else was riding that close to them. She nodded. “Some.”

  “More than some. I could sense it down in the valley. So could Siret.”

  “I’m not like the engineer,” Saryn protested. “It was nothing compared to what he did.”

  “No, you’re not. What you did was different. But it wasn’t nothing. The entire side of the mesa exploded. It was loud enough to stop everyone for several moments.”

  And then the killing resumed. Saryn’s smile was bitter. Who was she to talk about other people’s killing? “I couldn’t hear for a while.”

  “I can imagine. It was worse than that, wasn’t it? You’re still pale…order-frayed, and it’s almost three days later. You lose your sight at times, don’t you?”

  “I can’t complain. I survived in one piece, and thousands didn’t.”

  “That’s true, but you paid in a different way. People who use a lot of order or chaos do. But you’re not quite like either the engineer or Siret or me, or even the white mages. You’re not black, and you’re not white. There’s a grayness around you, and it’s getting stronger, and your eyes, they’re sort of silvery instead of straight gray. What does it feel like?”

  Grayness? “I hadn’t even noticed it,” Saryn admitted.

  “I’d suggest you do.” Istril’s words were gentle. “How do you see order and chaos?”

  “Order…chaos—they’re more like flows…like winds through the air or water through the ground…or even unseen electrical fields or currents…”

  Istril frowned. “I don’t sense it that way. Siret doesn’t, either, and neither did Nylan or Ayrlyn. Flows?”

  Saryn nodded. “The order or chaos in or around things…they just look like they’re stationary, but they’re really not. Everything is moving, all the time. That’s the way it seems, anyway. That could just be me, though.”

  “How could everything be moving? There’s order and chaos: But cold iron, it has order in it, and it doesn’t move.”

  Saryn shrugged. “I can’t explain it. That’s just the way it seems to me.” She wasn’t about to try to explain how to integrate magic and higher-level physics on a world that half the time she wasn’t sure even ought to exist—except that she’d seen and felt…and caused…enough death to know that it was a very real world.

  “I don’t think anyone’s going to argue with what you did, ser. Or how you did it. They’re just glad you did.”

  “No. The Marshal just wants results.” And she’s never much cared how she gets them.

  “That’s true of most people who run things,” Istril pointed out.

  Am I like that? Saryn smiled sardonically. She hadn’t cared all that much about all the deaths she’d caused with her use of order and chaos flows—just that she wiped out Arthanos’s army. But still…She shook her head. She had more than a little thinking left to do, but that could wait…for a while.

  “Do you think most of the wounded will recover?” she asked.

  “Most, but some won’t ever use an arm or a leg right again, and some probably won’t think very well…”

  XXXIX

  By fiveday morning, three days after Saryn had returned to Westwind, matters seemed to have settled back close to the normal routine. Saryn stood on the northern side of the arms practice field, her back to the smithy uphill behind her, looking out across the guards as they gathered for the morning exercises and drills. The first thing that struck her, as it had
every morning since her return, was the smaller numbers of guards on the field, almost a third fewer, as a result of deaths and casualties. The second was that Dealdron, who now wore a lighter splint on his leg, was lined up behind all the junior guards, looking directly at her.

  She ignored his scrutiny and began her own exercises. Only after the exercises and after she’d sparred two rounds with Hryessa did she look again in Dealdron’s direction.

  The younger man was being pressed by two of the trio simultaneously, and for a moment Saryn wondered why, since he certainly wasn’t as skilled as any of the three. But as she watched, she realized they were putting him through a defensive drill, where he was only to block all attacks. He did not block all of them, but he had definitely improved. At the same time, while his movements were precise and even smooth, there remained an awkwardness about them.

  From Istril’s reminders, and her own nagging conscience, she knew she had to talk with Dealdron, and before long, but that conversation was something she had put off. She knew she could do that no longer.

  “The Gallosian won’t make an armsman,” said Ryba from behind Saryn’s shoulder. “Not if he practices for years.” The Marshal wore a light splint on her leg and a dressing on her arm.

  “No,” replied Saryn, “but he’s better than some of the Gallosians and Lornians, and he wouldn’t get slaughtered out of hand now. His defense is better than his attacks.”

  “He’s strong enough that he gives the girls an understanding of why technique is important. They’ll need that. For such, the Gallosian is useful.”

  That was about as much acceptance as Saryn was going to get from Ryba about letting Dealdron remain at Westwind. “He’s been helping both Siret and Vierna.”

  “He’s trying to earn his keep, unlike some men.”