L. Modesitt - Arms-Commander

“We captured two Gallosian scouts. The older one was the obnoxious, dominating-male type. The younger one was just worried. Scared, even. The obnoxious one decided to tell me that Arthanos would torture me within a digit of my life for all that I’d done, and that I ought to let him go. Before he started talking, I’d thought about it, because releasing him would have confused them and showed a certain arrogance. But then…he spat at me.”

Saryn winced.

“I changed my mind,” Ryba continued. “Instead, I took off the battle harness and the dagger, and had them remove his scabbard and check him for hidden weapons. Then I told him that he could go free if he bested me, but that I’d kill him with my hands and feet if he couldn’t. He couldn’t wait to charge me. I smashed his knee, broke one arm, then the other. I could have broken his neck, but that wouldn’t have done what was necessary. So I crushed his throat and let him suffocate. It didn’t take very long.”

“And you sent the other one back?” asked Saryn.

“I told him that was what an unarmed woman could do to the most experienced armsmen. Then I had Murkassa take him-and the broken body of the arrogant one-down to where he could ride and report to Arthanos. I told her, while he listened, to kill him if he didn’t ride straight to the Gallosian lines.”

“You’re trying to infuriate them even more, aren’t you?” asked Saryn.

“Fury weakens. It impairs judgment, and it burns out strength too soon. Besides, I’m tired of men who seem to think that might makes right but only when they have the might.”

“They may kill the younger scout because he didn’t fight,” Saryn pointed out.

“They may. That’s his problem and theirs.”

Saryn saw no point in commenting on that. “You still haven’t said when I’ll know to light off the fuses on the weapons.”

“We’ll flash you with the mirrors. Just long flashes. From there.” Ryba pointed to a low hillock on the south side of the road not far from the southern end of the mountain meadows.

“Won’t the signaler have to get clear?”

“That hill is higher than it looks from here.”

“What if there’s no sun?”

“There should be,” replied Ryba. “But if there’s not, we’ll torch a fire with a column of smoke-heavy smoke. I brought some oil mixtures that do that. Just make sure that they explode at close to the same time.”

“I’ve timed the fuse burn rates, but it’s still a guess. Some of the fuses have to be longer than I’d like.”

“I’m sure you’ll work it out. Remember, Saryn, the future of the Legend lies in your hands.”

The future of the Legend?

“The Legend of Westwind and the hope of women on this forsaken world,” Ryba added.

“It rests more on you,” Saryn replied. “You’re the one who created Westwind.”

“And you’ll help save it. You’ll see.” Ryba smiled, a trace sadly, then turned her mount. “We need to get back down. You understand why I came, I trust?”

“Yes.” To make sure I’ll detonate the explosions that will destroy more than eight thousand men and who knows how many mounts.

“Sometimes, there are no good choices, no matter what those who might follow will say.”

As she watched the Marshal ride slowly downhill, Saryn shook her head. She had never envied Ryba, and she certainly didn’t now.

Even by midmorning on fiveday, Saryn was getting a bad feeling about the line of thunderstorms to the northeast. They looked darker than most, and she could hear the distant rumbling of thunder. Also, thunderstorms that formed earlier in the day were more severe. So far she’d had no word from the Marshal as to the progress of the Gallosian forces, but no news meant that Arthanos wasn’t all that close. Not yet, anyway.

By just before noon, the line of thunderstorms had reached the other side of the valley opposite the mesa, and rain was beginning to fall there. Saryn had been careful to place the penetrators on rock high enough not to be flooded but low enough that they weren’t anywhere near the highest points on that part of the mesa. But still…she looked toward the oncoming ominous clouds and the sheets of rain that looked black in the gloom cast by the thick and towering clouds blocking the sun. The penetrator casings were iron, and there were far more lightning flashes than she’d yet seen in a mountain thunderstorm.

There certainly wasn’t time to move the penetrators off the mesa, not when it had taken most of a day to get them up there, and with the intensity of the oncoming storm, Saryn wasn’t certain that anywhere would have been safe. Probably she should have waited to cart them onto the mesa, but she’d always hated to be forced into doing anything at the last moment.

Now…by being too prepared, she might lose everything.

Could she use her skills with the “flow” of order to draw or keep the lightning bolts away from the penetrators? How? Was it even possible?

What was a lightning bolt? She didn’t see how it could be order. Was it some form of chaosbolt, like those flung by the white mages?

She walked hurriedly eastward toward the mesa, angling her path so that she reached a point just a few yards down from where the rock surface flattened into the mesa top and a handful of yards back from the cliff overlooking the valley. The gusting chill winds whipped at her, and she had to refasten her riding jacket. Then she sat down on one of the tumbled rocky chunks and concentrated on the nearest edge of the thunderstorm, no more than a kay away.

At first, all she could sense was a swirl of chaos. Rather than probe, she just let her senses absorb the swirling winds and water droplets. Before long, she began to grasp that, for all the chaos, there was a pattern there, and an interplay between order and chaos.

Cracckkk! A blast of energy slammed somewhere down into the valley, but it was close enough that for several moments Saryn heard nothing. Then tiny high-pitched bells rang in her ears before her hearing began to return.

Scattered rain droplets began to pelt her, and she tried again to absorb the pattern or patterns within the approaching thunderstorm. Somehow the water droplets collected or embodied order. That order was tossed up by chaos high into the storm, then dropped, only to be hurled upward once more. With each cycle, more order was gathered…and so was more chaos, except the chaos, she realized, was being drawn from the ground or rocks beneath the storm.

That’s it! Lightning is chaos cloaked in order…and it actually flows in both directions at once. Somehow…somehow, she had to create enough of an order-barrier around the weapons so that the order strength of the storm wouldn’t draw chaos from the mesa and through the iron casings of the penetrators, but from a point at least a few yards away from them.

She began to scramble over the rocky ground and bare rocks in the direction of the weapons. She didn’t want to get too close, but she just couldn’t handle order flows from a distance. Nylan might have been able to, but she didn’t have his skills.

She stopped well over fifty yards from the weapons, dropping behind a block of red rock that offered protection from flying iron or lightning-she hoped. The rain droplets were falling faster and harder, and another roll of thunder shook the air. Saryn forced herself to concentrate.

First, she tried to sense any order-pathways around where the weapons were. There were only three, and they were faint. There didn’t seem to be much chaos, either. But she could sense a distant rush of it moving from the north end of the mesa, as if it accompanied the wall of rain that had begun to sweep toward her and the weapons. All Saryn could think of was to try to braid the three faint order-pathways into a loose pattern around the penetrators. That might divert the buildup of chaos to another higher area of the mesa. If she could make it work…