Recluce 07 - Chaos Balance (34 page)

THEY SKULK AROUND and watch,“ snapped Miatorphi. ”If we ride out with less than twoscore lancers, they wait, and then they attack, and run. We've lost half our scouts, ten at a crack, twice, and more than a few in some skirmishes, and that one time where we lost nearly a half company.“ He scowled. ”Three men left."

 
  “They only attack when they have an advantage in numbers,” added Azarphi, his narrow face shimmering in sweat. “If we ride out with more, nothing happens.”

   “One on one, they're no match for a Mirror Lancer,” said Miatorphi.

   Majer Piataphi frowned. “Some must be. One of their war leaders sliced right through a blade and a shield. Funssa brought back the shield. Another shattered a lance and a sabre with a short blade.”

   “So ... we move in larger groups.”

   “That's not the point,” countered Piataphi. “That means they're using blades with sharp edges, and not just those metal bars they call swords.”

   The two captains waited.

   After a moment, the majer continued. “The sooner we get rid of them the better. Have you located their camp?”

   “It's here, we think.” Azarphi pointed to the map. “One of the smaller hamlets where we removed all the contraries in the first sweep.”

   “Take the entire Fourth and Sixth Lancers.” Majer Piataphi frowned. “And the Eighth. Attack their base. Their 'honor' will make them defend it if we attack-and that will be the end of them.”

   “What if they show some common sense and retreat?” asked Miatorphi.

   “We lose nothing. Destroy the camp. Raze it to the ground. Then they will have a less suitable base. We will keep doing that until they have no place suitable.” The majer smiled grimly. “And we only move in forces of two companies or more. That should put an end to these efforts to whittle away our men.”

NYLAN LOWERED THE hammer and turned the cooling blade, but it looked and felt right. From the partial shade under the eaves, his eyes strayed toward the trampled grasslands beyond the corral, where Ayrlyn again worked the levies in the already hot mid-morning sun.

   He smiled. No longer, not after the skirmishes, was there such reluctance to the drills. Some of that was doubtless because several of those who had been clumsy or reluctant were dead or wounded. Still, neither the other levies nor the professionals drilled, and, after a while, it might be a problem to keep upgrading the skills of the angel-led squads.

   “You can stop pumping,” the smith added to Sias. 'Take a quick break."

   Fornal strolled toward the makeshift smithy as the apprentice trotted toward the well and as Nylan slipped the blade into the cooling tank, not much more than brackish water, and not nearly so effective as what Hie had used on the Roof of the World.

   “I see why you didn't allow your trainees to practice with blades,” said Fornal. “Don't the narrow blades break more often, though?”

   Nylan set the blade on the forge stones to anneal before turning to face the black-bearded regent. “They might. We work on how to avoid taking a big blade straight-on. That's hard on both the armsman and a blade. Besides, the point is to take out your enemy, not bang up his blade.”

   Fornal nodded. “You have a different view of arms.”

   “I suppose so. We don't like to fight.” The smith shrugged. “If we have to, we want to get it over as quickly as possible, with as little injury to us or to our armsmen as possible.”

   “Are all angels that way?”

   “Most of them. Ryba likes to humiliate her personal opponents as quickly as possible, I think. She's good enough that it's never been a problem.” Looking over Fornal's shoulder, Nylan could see a line of dust on the south road. “Do you have scouts out? Someone's riding hard.”

   The dark-haired regent glanced south for a minute, then back at Nylan. “Ours. Perhaps the Cyadorans are on the move.”

   “I'd be surprised if they weren't. Empires don't like being stung by wasps, especially barbarian wasps.” Nylan grinned.

   “You are pleased to think of yourself as an insect?”

   “Fornal... as you pointed out, I'm more interested in what works than in how I look.” Except that you like to be well thought of as much as the next person. Nylan repressed a frown at the inadvertent self-correction. Whatever it was about Candar, he was having more and more trouble deceiving himself-about much of anything. “Not that I mind looking good,” he added to quiet the twinges in his skull.

   “It is good to know that a terrible angel has some vanity.” Fornal did not quite grin as he waited.

   “More than some,” Nylan admitted.

   Fornal did offer a faint smile.

   The rider guided his dust-streaked mount straight to Fornal, reining up, then swallowing as he looked at the regent. “Must be more than score twenty riding this way-still more than ten kays south, though,” panted the scout.

   “Score twenty? All mounted?”

   “Yes, ser.”

   “Go,” snapped Fornal. “Send Huruc, Lewa, and the other angel here.”

   The scout flicked the reins and turned his mount toward the barn.

   “Should we fight?” asked the regent after the sweating scout trotted toward the barn barracks.

   “Against that many? Why? We can keep picking them off, bit by bit. This attack just points out that what we're doing is right.” Nylan paused as Ayrlyn rode up and dismounted.

   She tied the chestnut to a corner post and stepped toward the two men, her face impassive. “Bad news? A big Cyadoran force?”

   “Gifrac says there are score twenty,” answered Fornal.

   “We must have upset them,” observed Ayrlyn.

   “I don't think it takes much,” said Nylan.

   The three waited as Huruc and Lewa strode across the dusty ground toward them. The sole chicken pecked at the ground along the east side of the old barn, ignoring the hurrying humans and the armsmen who gathered and watched the five.

   “Gifrac said the white demons were bringing score twenty against us.” Huruc's voice was neutral.

 
  Lewa just bobbed his head and waited.

   “I do not like to retreat,” Fornal said. “You know that. But a dead commander does not fight again, nor does one without many armsmen.” He offered a grim smile. “We move to Syskar, and then . . . then we kill more white demons.”

   “I'd better get the men loaded out,” said Huruc.

   Lewa nodded once more and turned to follow the senior armsman.

   “Ours are mostly mounted already, because of the drills this morning, but they'll have to get gear.” Ayrlyn inclined her head to the regent, then turned and untied her mare.

   As Fornal walked toward the dwelling, presumably to gather his own gear, Nylan turned back toward the smithy and an open-mouthed Sias.

   “Sias! Unfasten the anvil-knock it loose if you have to. We don't have time to waste. Dump the anvil, the bellows, and the tools in the wagon. Any of the bagged coal. Forget the loose coal.”

   “We aren't holding here?” A puzzled look crossed the face of the lank blond man, and he brushed back a lock of sweat-stained hair.

   “Not this time.”

   Sias shook his head. “I thought you angels . . .” Nylan paused. “Sias ... we're not gods. We're people, and the Cyadorans have about twentyscore troops marching this way. If I got lucky and wanted to commit suicide, maybe I could stop a dozen-individuals, not scores. How many could you stop?”

   The armsman/apprentice looked down at the dusty clay. “.. . hoped ...”

   “We're not giving up, damn it! In a couple of days, we'll be back killing Cyadorans.” Unfortunately. “Now, let's get this packed up so that we have the gear to keep giving them fits.”

   He glanced toward the dwelling where Sylenia stood, Weryl in her arms. Her entire body posture reflected concern and confusion. “I'll be right back. I need to get Sylenia moving, too. Start with the anvil and the tools. ...”

NYLAN LOOKED DOWN at the line of bricks and stone. This time his makeshift smithy was in the remnants of a chicken coop- but he needed some sort of roof as protection from a sun that kept getting hotter with each passing day. His eyes went to the tile-roofed and heavy-walled house that quartered two subofficers, the regent, two angels, and a nursemaid, and child. The thick walls kept the dwelling from getting more than hot enough to roast meat during the day, but the place was dark and smelled moldy, although how any place that warm could smell moldy was beyond the smith's knowledge.

   Syskar was a few kays farther from the mines than Kula had been, and ten kays farther west, and ten kays more distant from Lornth. The hamlet was smaller even than Kula, and the stream was a mere trickle that barely sufficed for the more than a hundred horses. Nylan snorted. More like a hundred and several score. Before long, the way things were going with the captured mounts, they might have spare mounts for every Lornian.

   In the afternoon heat, half the squad sat under the eastern eaves of the long roof of what had been the winter sheep barn. It was too hot in the still air to rest inside the heavy planked walls. Ayrlyn had the other half with her, scouting the area, and seeing where watchposts should be established.

   The sound of hoofs broke the hot stillness as Sias drove the team toward the holding. The wagon shuddered to a stop less than ten cubits from the chicken house smithy, and a black-faced Sias set the brake, then clambered down. The one thing that Syskar did have was a small seam of coal, almost played out, but with enough to feed Nylan's forge-once Sias chipped the dark rock away from the walls of the near-abandoned pit trench.

   “There should be enough for an eight-day, ser.”

   “You don't know how fast a forge can go through coal.”

   The lanky armsman slowly shook his head.

   “Let's get it unloaded. Then you can take care of the horses.”

   After the two shoveled the rough chunks of coal into a pile, and Sias led the team toward the corral, Nylan stepped toward the forge and looked at the short heap of white-bronze blades. He needed a closed container first-the tubing would come later.

   The white-bronze blades held some order, like his own dark iron blades-something he had not anticipated, not after sensing the whitish chaos that seemed to mist around the Cyadoran forces. After studying the top blade, turning it, and letting his perceptions range across and through it, he set it back on the pile, and took his own blade from the scabbard hung in the corner, and gave it the same scrutiny.

   He frowned. There was definitely whiteness within his blade, almost as though he had inadvertently wrapped order around chaos to bind it-but he had never even thought about that, not before the tree dreams and his binding order with chaos in healing Nesslek. Finally, he replaced the blade. Speculations weren't going to solve his technical problems.

   By the time the cookfires had added smoke and grit to the dusty air, as well as the odor of burned fat and strong mutton, and the chime had rung, Nylan had little more than two sheets, of bronze-or was it brass? No, brass was softer, he thought, and used zinc as an alloy.

   “Let's bank it,” he told Sias. “Enough for tonight. The bronze is harder to work, and ... never mind.”

   “Harder?”

   “You have to be more gentle. I punched through more than once, and you saw the problems that caused.” The smith racked the tools. Once he was satisfied the smithy was as neat as possible and the coals were safely banked, he headed for the well. He needed to wash up-badly-before he ate.

   The evening meal was as strong as the odors had suggested, and eating around the battered trestle table in the dwelling with Fornal, Lewa, and Tonsar-none of whom placed bathing high on the list of daily rituals-didn't help the offenses to Nylan's olfactory system. Nor to Ayrlyn's. She excused herself even before Nylan, and Fornal only grunted.

   After forcing himself to eat and finishing what he could, Nylan escaped the hot table in the main room of the dwelling by following Ayrlyn's example and heading for the shadowed front stoop on the north side of the structure.

   He paused in the doorway, listerling to Sylenia and Ayrlyn singing.

   "Oh, Nylan was a mage, and a mighty smith was he.

   With rock from the heights and a lightning blade built he..."

   The smith held in a groan and stepped out onto the stoop, keeping a smile on his face, mainly for Weryl, since Ayrlyn wasn't deceived by such.

   Ayrlyn continued to strum the lutar, but her eyes smiled as she wound up the song. Then she turned to Sylenia. “You need time to yourself, whatever . . . but don't believe everything that Tonsar says.”

   The nursemaid flushed.

   Nylan scooped up his silver-haired son and hugged him, just holding him for a long time, until Weryl began to squirm.

   “All right... all right.” Nylan sat down in the shade on the fired mud tiles of the stoop, setting Weryl so that the boy stood between his knees.

   “Enyah .. .” Weryl jabbed a hand toward the black-haired nursemaid as she walked through the long shadows that presaged twilight toward the well, toward the long and low former sheep shed that served as the barracks for all the armsmen. “Enyah.”

   “That's Sylenia. She's good to you.” And good to us.

   “Does it bother you?” asked Ayrlyn from where she sat propped up beside the door Nylan had rehung with a crude . strap hinge he had forged.

   “That he's taken to her?” Nylan shrugged. “I don't know. If he'd stayed with Zeldyan, he'd be fond of her, too. It's better this way in some ways-but he's had rashes, and sunburn, and that insect bite. It's a good thing you're a healer.”

   “You've healed as many minor injuries as I have. More probably.” Ayrlyn offered a faint smile. “Why don't you think of yourself as a healer? Does identifying yourself as a smith and engineer mean you can't be a healer?”

   The silver-haired angel rubbed a stubbly chin, extending an arm that Weryl promptly grabbed.

   “Daaa!”

   Nylan smiled at his son.

   “Well?” prodded the redhead gently. “Why don't you want to think of yourself as a healer?”

   Was it that he thought healers were somehow ... unmanly? No ... not exactly, because he'd certainly tried to heal enough people in Westwind after discovering the innate talent. Did he fear that being labeled as a healer would force him to prove more? Or was it that he thought being a smith and engineer was more valuable . . . more prestigious?

   “I'm not sure... probably a combination of a lot of things.” He eased himself down a step to follow Weryl as the toddler climbed down the steps.

   Nylan's eyes caught a movement, and he paused as the squat brown-bearded levy stepped toward Sylenia. She shook her head, her face set.

   Nylan's fingers reached for the blade at his hip, but relaxed as Tonsar strolled from the de facto barracks toward the woman. The levy backed away.

   The shadows did not hide what seemed to be a wide and shy smile from Sylenia as the subofficer neared.

   “Tonsar seems well-meaning enough, for all the bluster.” Nylan paused. “Think we ought to talk to him about Sylenia?”

   “Like your engineer self-definition, his bluster protects him. And yes, we should.”

   “Do you know who that levy is?”

   “Tregva or Tregvo, something like that.”

   “He's been watching her.”

   “I told Tonsar,” Ayrlyn said. “He said that no one would bother her.”

   “Enyah!” Weryl began to totter toward the well.

   The smith found himself walking after the boy and scooping him up. “Let her be, young man.” He lifted the boy to his shoulder and turned back toward the dwelling where he set Weryl on the stoop, seating himself so that his body and legs blocked the steps.

   “Enyah?”

   “Later.” Twilight or not, Nylan found his forehead dripping. “Darkness, it's hot. These people really are descendants of the Old Rat demons.”

   “It's not even the hottest part of the summer, yet.” The corners of Ayrlyn's mouth turned up in the dimness of the covered stoop. “They think we're descendants of the ice angels, remember?”

   “Crazy universe ...”

   “I don't think we've found out how crazy,” Ayrlyn said.

   Despite the heat, Nylan shivered at the certainty in her voice.