L. Modesitt - Arms-Commander

“Just a moment,” she called to the two guards, even as she was moving toward the edge of the cliff. Since what she sensed was several yards, if not farther, below the lip of the cliff, she flattened herself and edged forward until she could look partway down. What she had found was an outcropping of rock projecting from the cliff some twenty yards below her. Over the years, the stone around the outcrop had peeled away, leaving a ledgelike formation a few yards long that projected out perhaps a yard and a half.

Saryn’s problem was simple enough. She had no way to exert force on that outcropping to see whether the juncture she sensed represented strength or weakness. Although she was personally convinced it was weakness, she couldn’t very well go on feelings alone when so much was at stake.

At that moment, several long rolls of thunder echoed across the valley toward the three guards. Saryn glanced northward. The storm was definitely moving quickly toward them.

“Frig…” How could she test her idea?

If the darker gray represented a form of order…could she somehow move it out of the juncture, divert it, smooth its flow into the cliff…and let the pinkish gray dominate?

Another roll of thunder washed over her, and she could sense the concern of the two guards at the other end of the rope. Saryn forced herself to concentrate on the order-chaos knot at the base of the isolated small ledge below her. While it might be easier to work on the pink, somehow, that didn’t feel right. She took a slow breath, then used her senses to try almost to stroke the grayish order away from the juncture.

Another gust of wind whipped across her, stronger than any of those that had swept the top of the mesa earlier. She kept trying to ease the gray away from the pink, and several smaller strands retreated into the cliff proper…and reformed, as if completing a circuit.

Crack….

Saryn could feel the stone shudder beneath her, and reflexively, she grasped a stone protrusion in her right hand. The ledge slowly leaned out away from the cliff, then, after a second crack, dropped away and plummeted toward the scree nearly a thousand yards below. Saryn looked down to follow it…and wished she hadn’t. The red chunks of rock at the bottom of the sheer drop looked incredibly distant. She quickly concentrated on easing back from the edge while keeping a firm handhold on the solid outcropping her right hand clutched.

At the same time, she couldn’t help but wonder. In both atmospheric and space piloting, she’d had no problem in looking down; but on top of rocks on a planet that had no aircraft, she found being at the top of a cliff incredibly disconcerting.

She pushed those thoughts away as she stood and walked back toward the two guards. They needed to get off the mesa before the thunderstorm finished crossing the valley and swept down on them.

“Any luck, ser?” asked Hoilya, the taller of the two guards and the one closer to Saryn.

“More than I’d hoped for, but we’ll have to come back early tomorrow and start positioning the devices.” That would be even more difficult than finding where to place them had been, Saryn suspected.

“We need to hurry,” she added, as another roll of thunder announced the oncoming thunderstorm.

Heading down off the mesa, she couldn’t help but wonder if order and chaos could be used like power flows, with variations on current and voltage. But…order and chaos?

Each of the penetrators had to be filled with powder, with the fuse placed and sealed with wax, even before any could be lowered into place. Saryn had had each one filled and fused, but not lowered, because the afternoon thunderstorms turned the crevice into a waterfall, and she couldn’t be certain that the fuses would stay dry under such a deluge. Instead, they remained on a rocky rise on the mesa, covered with the personal tarpaulins of individual guards, which were waterproof enough to keep the devices dry. That meant, unfortunately, that Saryn and fourth squad would have to place each one essentially at the last moment, once they had word that the Gallosian forces were about to enter the valley. It also resulted in Saryn and those at the upper camp ending up wetter than they would have liked.

Slightly after noon on fourday, Saryn finished inspecting the penetrators and began to walk back westward on the mesa. Unlike many afternoons in the Westhorns, the sky remained clear, without any sign that an afternoon thunderstorm might be building. With luck, Saryn thought, there wouldn’t be any more storms until the time came to place the weapons.

“Commander! The Marshal’s headed up here.” Thalya, one of the younger guards in fourth squad, ran from her observation post. “You can see her standard.”

That meant Arthanos was on the march, but how far he was from the valley was another matter. Saryn picked up her pace, but Ryba and three guards had reined up short of the twisted pines and waited for Saryn. As Saryn neared, Ryba eased her mount forward.

“Marshal, welcome to one of the more lovely and fertile spots on the Roof of the World,” offered Saryn sardonically.

“I can see that. How are you coming with the weapons?”

“We can’t lower them into place until the day the Gallosians enter the valley. The thunderstorms drench where they need to be. But they’re filled and sealed and in their harnesses near where they’ll be placed. We’ve used most of our personal waterproofs to keep them dry.”

Ryba merely nodded. “Arthanos and his army are moving westward along the route we anticipated. He could make the valley in two more days, but it might be three.”

Saryn forbore to point out that Ryba, not Saryn, had been the one to foresee which of the three approaches the Gallosians would take. Instead, she said, “I thought I’d leave Klarisa here to light off the penetrators. That way-”

“You need to be here,” Ryba interrupted. “Everything depends on the penetrators, and no one else has your skills.”

“But as your arms-commander, I’m totally out of touch up here.”

“I can rely on you, and none of the other guards really understand explosives.”

All of what Ryba said was true, but it wasn’t the whole story, Saryn knew. “What else?”

“I can’t be certain matters will work out unless you’re here. Besides, I’ll have both the captains you trained.”

“What exactly do you have in mind?” asked Saryn.

“A barricade across the road that will appear after we’ve cut off their advance company. It will look like a picket of pikes.”

“Placed so as to slow them down and put them in a battle formation, where the easiest ground to flank us is south of the road on the sloping meadows where no one can hide?”

“Approximately…yes.”

“How many men does he have?”

“He couldn’t fill all the companies, it appears. There were still around eight thousand. There are a few less now. I’m having the best archers pick off as many officers and squad leaders as they can from a distance. That should give them the impression that we don’t have the troops to fight a massed battle. It will also keep outliers close to the main formation.”

Saryn turned and glanced back at the valley below and to her right. Not surprisingly, what Ryba planned wasn’t all that different from what she’d had in mind.

“We had an interesting morning,” Ryba said.

Saryn didn’t like the way Ryba said “interesting,” but she just looked back at the Marshal. The circles under the Marshal’s eyes were dark, and a tracery of fine lines radiated from the corners of those eyes. Fine silver hairs were interspersed with the short jet-black. With a jolt, Saryn realized that Ryba was no longer young, something she had known, but not really felt. Not until now.