L. Modesitt - Arms-Commander

“Maeldyn! Spalkyn! Use your armsmen to make the parley squad surrender or cut them down! Using a parley squad to conceal an attack voids any truce!” Saryn turned the gelding and rode back toward Shalya. “First squad! On me! Tight formation!”

Then she rode toward what she thought was the chaos-concealment shield, gathering and weaving order and chaos flows together, even while she drew one of the blades from the knee sheath, rather than from the easier-to-reach battle harness. Behind her, first squad formed a tight wedge. That was a gamble, because a tight formation would suffer greater losses if Saryn’s shields failed, but she couldn’t protect a wider formation.

She was almost a hundred yards away from the bushes when a fire-bolt arched toward her. Her first attempt at throwing a small sliding shield at the fiery chaos was successful only in that it redirected the chaos just enough that the mass of fire slammed into the sand and dirt less than ten yards in front of her, and she barely avoided riding into it.

Frig!

A second firebolt followed the first, but Saryn managed to deflect it without using much effort, as she did with the third. By then she was close enough to fling the short sword at the chaos-shaded form that she could sense, but still not see. As she released the blade, she added just a touch of order to the point, then smoothed its path and increased its force, using order and chaos.

Less than ten yards from where she sensed the indistinct chaos-mage, flame flared around the blade, and both blade and flame dropped to the ground.

Saryn launched a second blade.

The same thing happened again, but almost at the spot where Saryn felt the white wizard was. When the chaos flared away, so did the concealment shield, revealing a squad of mounted armsmen in brilliant red tunics with gold trim, their sabres ready, and starting to charge toward first squad.

Saryn threw the third blade, at less than thirty yards, directly at the wizard, attired in red as well, and then drew the fourth blade, trying to fashion a narrow and yet thin order-chaos-knife before she released it at the squad of armsmen.

The white wizard flung up a chaos-barrier of some sort, but the black-iron short sword slammed through it and into the wizard, and a pillar of flame exploded in all directions, just as the order-bounded chaos-knife sliced through the center of the red-clad squad of men and mounts.

Saryn guided the gelding right after the chaos-knife because she didn’t want to get close to any possible survivors, not without weapons. First squad followed her lead, and the three armsmen in red who had been outside the range of the order-chaos-blade were so stunned that they went down under the short swords of the guards at the outer edge of the wedge.

Saryn could barely see through the dust as she reined up well past the fallen armsmen, but she immediately used her senses to check the area. She could feel no one, and she had only the slightest headache…and no lightknives stabbed into her eyes.

So far. She’d have to eat something, though, and drink more than she wanted. That, she was learning from experience, helped greatly.

Were the red-and-gold armsmen Suthyan? She didn’t know from where else they could have come.

Shortly, Shalya brought first squad back into formation facing Saryn. “No survivors, ser.”

“Recover everything you can quickly.” Saryn paused. “There might be one of my blades that’s in one piece. There aren’t any other armsmen close. Not now. I’m going to tell the other lord-holders what happened. As soon as you’re done, if you’d report to me?”

“Yes, ser.” Shalya inclined her head.

Saryn took her time riding back, remembering to get out her water bottle and drink, and then eat several of the hard biscuits she’d slipped into a pouch at the top of her saddlebags.

As she neared Zeldyan and the other two lord-holders, she could feel a sense of nausea from the former regent, as well as from Maeldyn.

“Did you capture anyone?” asked Spalkyn.

“No. They were all dead after the first charge. Were the red-coats Suthyan armsmen, or did they belong to some lord-holder I don’t know about?”

Spalkyn nodded. “The red and gold are the colors of Suthya. The traders believe in spending others’ blood for their gold.”

Saryn reined up facing the three. “Since they supplied the mage and armsmen, I don’t think there’s much doubt that they’re behind Henstrenn.”

“It didn’t do them much good,” said Zeldyan.

“Not here,” replied Saryn, “but there are likely several more at Duevek, according to what we learned earlier.”

“How did you manage all that?” asked Maeldyn.

“We just charged them with cold iron,” answered Saryn before asking quickly, “What happened to the parley squad?”

“The moment you started to ride, they galloped off,” Maeldyn said. “I decided against chasing them at that speed.”

Saryn nodded. “That was probably a good idea. They might have had another trap planned along the way.” Henstrenn’s ploy just confirmed to Saryn that the lord-holder of Duevek didn’t respect either side of a parley flag.

“Another one of Henstrenn’s bits of trickery,” declared Spalkyn.

“It would have worked if the commander had not acted,” Zeldyan pointed out.

“I don’t believe you mentioned that you were a mage,” Maeldyn said dryly.

“I’m not,” Saryn replied. “I can’t throw fire-bolts or things like that. I still had to use a blade to kill him. In fact, I ended up using four. The fire that exploded was his chaos against the iron of the blade.” That was an oversimplification, but Saryn really didn’t want all of Lornth to think she was a mage. Not any sooner than necessary.

“Besides, how could any woman master magery?” added Zeldyan, her words coated with irony. “We certainly can’t be trusted to master anything, can we?”

Spalkyn glanced from Zeldyan to Saryn, then to Maeldyn. He looked as though he might speak, then gave the smallest of headshakes and instead smiled ruefully at Maeldyn.

“I think we do have yet another answer as to whether Henstrenn could be trusted as overlord, or even to retain his current holding,” said Maeldyn. “I suggest we move forward before the good lord-holder of Duevek can come up with another scheme to delay us.”

Spalkyn nodded, as did Zeldyan. Saryn drank some more water and ate two more biscuits.

As soon as Shalya and first squad returned and reported, and the joint force began to ride toward Duevek once more, Saryn eased the gelding back to the wagons.

“Commander,” called Dealdron from the seat of the first, “I have your blades here. Four of them, if you need that many.”

Saryn eased the mount up beside the wagon with a wry smile. “I’ll need all four. How did you know?”

“You use blades. I made sure I had plenty in the wagons for you.”

“What about the other guards?”

“They can do with one, if need be. If you are without blades, all will suffer, and they all know that.”

“You make me sound like a one-person company,” said Saryn as she took the first short sword he proffered, hilt first, and slipped it into the battle harness.

“No, Commander. You are not a one-person company.” Dealdron offered the second blade. “A one-person army, perhaps, but not merely a company.”

Saryn almost dropped the second blade before putting it into the scabbard in the battle harness. “That’s absurd.”

“I think not. Why else would the Marshal send you to Lornth?”

“That’s obvious enough. She doesn’t want an enemy that close to Westwind.”

“That is most true, in both senses. Sooner or later, you would cross the Marshal. The later it happened, the more likely you would win. If it happened soon enough that the Marshal had to defeat you, Westwind would lose as well.”