L. Modesitt - Arms-Commander

Now what?

She had no more explosives, not to speak of, and no more penetrators in which to place them, and certainly not enough time to do either. But she had to do something. She had to.

She didn’t even look into the valley. There was no time for that. She walked quickly to the edge of the crevice, just opposite the largest bulge in the overhang, stopping just a yard or so back from the break in the stone. She tried to feel the junctures of order and chaos. Four of them were gone-the ones targeted by the first, fourth, fifth, and sixth penetrators. The second juncture was there, but so weak that it was more like a tangle of strands of order and chaos.

Saryn had no idea how to break the bonds holding the mass of rock to the mesa, but she had to find a way…and quickly. She’d changed the flow of the order-lines around the penetrators to protect them from the lightning. Could she change the flows around the junctures so that the order and chaos didn’t intertwine?

She immediately reached out with her senses to the weaker juncture and began to ease the dark gray strands away from the pinkish gray ones. The effort was more like trying to move water with a rake or fan air with a small leafless branch…or part hair with a toothless comb.

Still, after a moment, the weaker tangle separated, but the strands immediately reformed-flowing around the single remaining juncture, which began to vibrate. Saryn turned her efforts to the remaining juncture, pressing harder, smoothing, parting the currents, or the strands, edging the flows away from each other, and yet, as she did, she realized that the separate flows became stronger, as if parallel flows of order and of chaos were stronger. As each dark strand separated from what seemed to be its complementary pinkish gray one, Saryn could sense a growing reddish white ball of chaos growing around the disintegrating juncture, yet somehow contained-if barely-by a ball of grayish order.

As the last strand flowed away, Saryn could feel the chaos flaring toward an intense whitish red…and she instinctively flattened herself on the stone, yelling, “Down! Everyone! Get down!”

The explosion that followed shook the entire mesa, and was so massive and loud that Saryn heard nothing at all. Just silence, and pressure.

Then a second blow hammered her into the rock, and her skull felt like it was being split in half. At the same time, rock fragments pelted down and kept pelting down. Although her eyes were closed, Saryn felt as though scores of invisible needles were jabbing through them and into her brain.

Then…she felt nothing.

Dampness on her face brought her back.

“Ser…ser…”

Someone was pressing a damp cloth across her forehead, and she was lying on her back.

“I’m…all right.” She wasn’t. Not exactly. Her head was splitting, far worse than when she had tried to manipulate where the lightning struck, and her eyes were tearing so badly that she could see almost nothing but blurred colors and figures.

Slowly, she sat up. “It broke loose, didn’t it?” She looked at the guard she thought was Klarisa.

“Yes, ser.”

Saryn struggled to her feet. Even without her numbed senses, she could feel the fear in the squad leader. She blotted her eyes. After several moments, she could see, if intermittently, since her vision blanked out with each unseen hammerblow on her skull, but she could tell the large section of the mesa was gone. Where the crevice had been was the mesa’s edge.

Klarisa looked at Saryn, then down at the valley.

Saryn turned. The entire middle section was shrouded in brown-and-gray dust.

Shrouded…a good word .

“Ser…what did you do?” the squad leader finally asked.

“What had to be done.” Saryn looked down into the slowly clearing dust, watching as the higher ground of the hillock finally emerged. While it was surrounded by tumbled rock, stone, and earth, fighting continued on the slopes, where at least a company of the Gallosian cavalry had managed to ride high enough to avoid being swept away by the tide of rock and stone.

Saryn felt helpless, but there was nothing else she could do, only watch. Even if she had been down in the valley, her head throbbed so much that she knew she wouldn’t have been any good in a battle, or not much. Had Ryba guessed that? Saryn frowned. That couldn’t be, because if Saryn hadn’t had to use her skills to help the penetrators, she wouldn’t have had the headache…but then most of Arthanos’s army would have escaped.

The end of the fighting did not last that long, endless as it seemed to Saryn, and, finally, Saryn could see a few Gallosians-both mounted and on foot-scrambling onto the rocks below the hillock, trying to escape the remaining guards. She turned her head away, not really wanting to think about the casualties-on either side.

“Ser? It looks like the Marshal won…didn’t she?” asked Klarisa.

“We survived…and they didn’t.” For now.

Would it always be like that? Winning by destroying massive forces and taking huge losses in the process? Why, when everyone would have been better off without such battles?

Abruptly, she looked back toward the easternmost part of the valley-and saw nothing. As her vision returned, she made out a company of Westwind guards emerging from the forest on the northern side of the road and bearing down on the ten or so supply wagons that had not been engulfed in earth and rock. The remaining Gallosians were scattering.

“Klarisa, we need to mount up and head down there. We can’t do any more here, and they’ll need us.” Saryn walked back down to the upper camp and her mount, without an answer to her questions.

By the time Saryn and fourth squad had descended from the mesa and ridden down the next set of slopes, then made their way along the road until they had nearly reached the western end of the mass of churned rock and earth and sand-a half kay west of the hillock-the sun had dropped behind the western peaks and ridges, and the entire valley lay in shadow. Because her vision continued to vanish unpredictably, Saryn was forced to rely on Klarisa.

Ryba rode up to meet Saryn, easing her mount to a halt, almost stirrup to stirrup with the younger woman. “I knew I could count on you. You had trouble, didn’t you?”

“Yes.” After the ride, and the events of the past two days, every part of her body ached, her head and eyes most of all. “We managed. How about you?”

“All told, we lost thirty-one guards.” Ryba’s voice was hoarse.

“How many of the Gallosians survived?”

“We don’t know for certain, but no more than a few hundred. A handful rode north and managed to get onto a few higher places, and the last two companies-his rear guard-managed to escape. I didn’t have second company chase them. The wagons were more valuable.” Ryba frowned. “It’s going to be the demon’s own time getting them over or around that mess you created. It might take days.”

“What about our wounded?” Saryn lost her vision again, with another thunderclap inside her skull.

“There are another forty or so, but the healers tell me that most of them will make it.” Ryba’s voice was hoarse. “The ones who died-they were more than a tenth of all those at Westwind, and that doesn’t count the wounded. Gallos has to lose nine or ten thousand men before it’s a serious loss. Every loss is still serious to us.”

“They won’t try again, not soon.”

“Thanks to you, no. Not for another few years, or a generation at most, before some other younger son or hothead decides that having a land ruled by women is insufferable to the mighty male ego.” Ryba’s voice dripped with acid bitterness.