The grass was thick and green, nearly knee-high. Later in the year it would burn well, but not now. What if he loosed the order bounds right beneath the surface? What would that do? Cerryl frowned. He couldn’t just leave order free. Could he shift it into other parts of the ground?
He swallowed and tried to reshift some of the order and chaos, strengthening the ground beneath the surface in thin lines and then breaking the order ties in other places.
Grrrrr… The ground shifted ever so slightly, and Cerryl swallowed.
“What was that?” asked Hiser.
Cerryl didn’t answer, struggling as he was with his battle to change the order-chaos balance of the rocks and subsoil, shift the strengths and the bonds that had knit the ground together. Sweat rolled down his forehead, and he absently blotted it away from his eyes.
A flock of blue-winged birds fluttered from the hardwoods, shriek-ing as they did. A sudden buzzing filled the sodden air, and dozens of flying grasshoppers rose out of the grass and hummed their way eastward and north, away from the ground Cerryl strained to alter. A single deer bolted downhill, then turned as she saw the White riders and bounded back into the woods.
“… little closer and we’d a had a good meal…”
“… real good meal…”
“… better be still… He’s got that look.”
“So’s Riser.”
Cerryl squinted and blocked away the low-voiced comments from the lancer squad. Even as he continued his efforts, he began to sense a roiling, almost a boiling, and an ebb and flow or order and chaos, far, far deeper than the subsoil where he worked.
Coils and lines of black order wound around unseen but clearly felt fountains of chaos that rose and fell sporadically in the depths beneath the meadow. Should he send his senses below? Would it help?
No… not now. Too much to do here. He forced his concentration back to the task at hand.
In the end, the meadow grass concealed a churned mass of clay beneath a thin layer of soil holding the long green grass, clay that, Cerryl suspected, more nearly resembled quicksand than clay. Cerryl had also left just enough support in thin pillars and layers of order to hold a few riders and mounts-in case the Spidlarians wanted to scout the meadow. Some of that order he would have to shift later.
The thoroughly sweat-soaked mage finally took a deep breath in the late-afternoon air, then another. He closed his eyes for several moments, perhaps longer, to shut out the sparkling flashes of light that disrupted his vision, before turning in the saddle to Hiser. “Make sure that no one rides across that meadow. It’s likely to be the last ride they take.” Cerryl’s tone was dry as he turned back toward his horse.
“Ah, yes, ser.”
Cerryl remounted the gelding, his thoughts still on the sense of entwined order and chaos that he had sensed deep below the meadow. How far into the depths do they extend? He shook his head. Those speculations would have to wait. Besides, his entire body was screaming that he’d done enough, more than enough. He turned to Hiser. “We’ll head west, back beyond where the trees start. That way, if they send out scouts, they won’t see us anywhere near the fields.”
“There be nothing ‘tween them and the next wagons and levies, then,” pointed out the blond subofficer, tugging at his beard.
“We travel faster than they do. If they turn east, we can catch them unless they want to founder their mounts, and then…” Cerryl shrugged dramatically.
And in the meantime, we wait…
XCVII
In the gray light of another cloudy morning just past dawn, Cerryl stood and packed the screeing glass back into its case, his eyes going to the two subofficers. “They’re still on the road. Both groups have joined, and I make out a good ten score, perhaps twelve score.”
“Another score in scouts and a score more in their van,” suggested Ferek.
Cerryl offered a casual shrug he didn’t entirely feel. “It won’t matter if they come up the meadow.” What if they don’t? How do you assure that they climb the meadow? He took a deep breath, conscious that even the air smelled and felt dampish, moldy, despite the warmth already apparent.
Ferek and Hiser exchanged wary glances.
“Can you think of any way to ensure that they climb the meadow?” Cerryl glanced toward the trees to the south of the camp, then toward the thin clouds of the eastern sky and the light that seeped up behind them. The air remained hot and still, almost as though it had cooled little over night, and the odor of overcooked biscuits seeped around him.
“If’n their captain thought we were a-waiting…” mused Ferek. “Along the end of the narrow road, that be.”
Cerryl massaged his forehead. All the order-chaos manipulations and screeing were extracting their price. His tunic and trousers were looser, and his eyes burned almost all the time, not to mention the headaches and the flashes of light that sparked before his eyes. Using the glass before eating doesn’t help… you know? “I need to eat.”
“Not much but dried mutton, hard cheese, and harder biscuits,” offered Hiser. “Cooked them too long, someway.”
“That’s fine.” Cerryl set the glass case beside his bedroll, then straightened, turned, and walked a dozen paces toward the rough-hewn serving plank, where he took two biscuits. The brownish oval of the first was so hard that when he tried to gnaw off a corner, his upper teeth slid off the biscuit and he nearly bit his lip.
“I said they were hard, ser,” offered Hiser, who had followed him.
Cerryl unsheathed his knife and hacked off a tan chunk that seemed closer to wood than food, then put it in his mouth and took a swallow of water to moisten the rock-hard biscuit. One taste of the dried mutton jerky was enough to persuade him to try another biscuit and more of the hard and musty cheese.
The light flashes before his eyes stopped after the second biscuit, and the headache diminished but did not disappear. His stomach did stop growling. After he finished the third hard biscuit, Cerryl turned to Ferek, who had waited for the mage to finish eating. “What if you took twoscore lancers and rode them down that narrow road and then back… and left a couple of scouts on fast mounts where the road curves back to the west?”
Riser grinned. “You mean where the blues could see them?”
Cerryl nodded. “That might give them the idea to climb the field, especially if we’re not in sight on the road above the fields.”
“Have to pull back pretty far so as their scout not be seeing us,” offered Ferek.
“You can put most of the lancers a kay or so back, even farther,” suggested Cerryl. “We’ll need some trees or a small woods for a screen. Otherwise, their scouts will see us.”
“What if they overrun you? You can’t throw firebolts at all of them,” Hiser pointed out.
“If they don’t try the meadow… there’s no way we have enough lancers to stop them. I can use the glass to scout them.” And get more headaches. “We might as well take another look right now.”
Cerryl walked back to where he had left his bedroll and the leather-cased glass, picking both up. The bedroll needed a real washing-not just a brushing with chaos to remove the worst of odors and dirt-but Cerryl doubted he’d have a chance for that anytime soon. He’d already spent more than a season in Spidlar, and all of it had been spent patrolling one section of road in support of Jeslek’s advance on Elparta. Is Fydel having the same problems? Does it matter?
One way or another, it was clear that Jeslek was having great difficulty, though Cerryl had no idea precisely why. Dorrin, the redheaded Black smith, had remained far to the north in Diev, and Cerryl had found no hint of any other order concentrations in Spidlar. Was the Black arms commander that good? Good enough to slow or stop the High Wizard and all the chaos at Jeslek’s command?
The two subofficers followed the mage.
“Ferek, I’d like you to come with us, but have your men wait here at the camp. We don’t need them riding back and forth and tiring their mounts.” Cerryl strapped his bedroll in place behind the gelding’s saddle, then put the glass and its case into the one saddlebag. The other carried one set of riding whites and some smallclothes, both more soiled than what he wore. Chaos-cleaning, after a while, just didn’t remove everything.
“I’ll get the company ready,” said Hiser.
“Dierso can get mine ready while I ride with you,” added Ferek.
As both subofficers left Cerryl to his own preparations, the White mage studied the encampment, with the mounts on tie-lines run from the trees behind the clearing and the half-dozen fire rings for cooking. The lancers doubling as cooks had already begun to bank the fires and douse them with water from the small stream.
Cerryl remembered to check the gelding’s bridle and girths before he mounted and surveyed the area again, this time from the saddle, as he waited for Ferek and Hiser and his company of lancers to join him.
The day had brightened and warmed even more when Cerryl reined up on the main road, well back from the sloping meadow that lay between the two roads. He nodded to himself as he did, then turned to the two subofficers. “We’ll pull back to the south-to the thicker trees there.” He pointed to a dense grove several hundred cubits to his right. “Just your companies, Hiser. And we’ll circle them in from the east, so that there are no tracks across the grass between the road and the trees.” He turned to the older subcaptain. “You take your company from where we camped back to where the roads join and bring them along the lower road-but just to the edge of the woods there, where the lower road curves-then pull back and form up to defend the draw where the two roads join. That way, maybe the Spidlarians will get the impression that the rest of us are lurking farther back-or in the lower woods.”
Ferek nodded. “Be me, I’d worry about that.”
“I don’t think they’ll reach us until early this afternoon, but I’ll send a messenger if it’s going to be earlier.” Cerryl paused. “If you find out anything you think I should know…”
“Don’t worry, ser. I’ll send you a messenger.”
As Ferek turned his mount back to the west, accompanied by two lancers, Cerryl and Hiser continued eastward along the main road for almost a kay, until they reached another series of fields, each with cots by the road-almost, but not quite, a hamlet of sorts.
Cerryl saw no one, and the shutters of the nearest cot remained closed, as they had the day before when Cerryl’s forces had first passed and the fields were empty.
“If we go along that track there,” Cerryl pointed, “it won’t be as noticed, and at the end of the fields we can turn back west.”
“Singles now,” Hiser ordered, letting Cerryl lead the way.
The White mage could sense no one in the cot, but he kept looking as he rode past along the clay trace beside the field. The only thing that moved was an orangish cat that jumped off a woodpile and into the green stalks of maize nearest the shuttered cot.
“… ride and hide… ride and sneak.”
“Shut up, Birnil… Most of us are still here… not like when Eliasar wanted to teach the Sligans a lesson.”
“No lessons here.”
Cerryl turned in the saddle and called, loudly enough for his voice to carry, “The tutoring’s not over yet!”
Hiser grinned, and the muttering died away. The lancers followed Cerryl more quietly as he turned the gelding back westward. The riding was slower through the loosely wooded and overgrown regrowth area and toward the thicker section of woods opposite the chaos-trapped meadow that Cerryl hoped the Spidlarians would take to reach the main Axalt - Elparta road.
Once the company reached the denser and mainly oak woods, Cerryl turned in the saddle, inclining his head toward the blond subofficer. “They can stand down for a while.”
“I’ll tell them.”
When the young subofficer returned from arranging his men, he watched as Cerryl took out the screeing glass and set it in a darker space between two oak roots.
Cerryl scanned the silver-framed image in the glass, but where the lower road bordered the steeply sloping meadow remained empty, with no sign of riders-or anything else.
Hiser glanced at Cerryl.
“Not yet.”
Cerryl checked the glass periodically until, sometime slightly after midday, a single rider in blue trotted down the lower road, his head turning from side to side as he studied the meadow without halting. The scout passed on and disappeared around the curve where the lower road entered the woods to the west.
Before long a second scout followed.
Cerryl let the image lapse and straightened from studying the glass, half-leaning against the rough bark of the old tree
“It can’t be long,” suggested Hiser in a low voice.
“Midafternoon,” said Cerryl.
After a time, the scouts returned, heading back toward the main Spidlarian force, Cerryl surmised. Before long, another scout appeared, this one studying the meadow and then riding up through the tall grass to the top.
Cerryl held his breath, but the chaos-altered ground supported mount and rider. The scout studied the road, and the hoofprints that led eastward, and rode to the east for close to half a kay before returning and descending the grassy slope to the lower road. He also vanished, headed back toward the main body of Spidlarian lancers.
As Cerryl had predicted, the full column of mounted Spidlarians eventually reached the sloping meadow slightly past midafternoon. The long column halted at the base of the meadow.
Finally, yet another pair of scouts rode up through the grass and up onto the main road. One turned west, the other east. They also returned and rode down the meadow to the main body.
As the glass showed the Spidlarians re-forming to climb the grassy slope, Cerryl could at last hear the sounds of voices, low voices, more like the intermittent and muted hum of insects. When the riders in the column turned, so that they presented a wide front in riding up the sloping meadow, Cerryl released the image in the screeing glass and extended his perceptions, removing the last order props that supported the top layer of grass and soil, beginning near the main road at the top of the slope.
“More than I thought…” murmured Hiser.