L. Modesitt - Ordermaster

“That’s where most of the regular armsmen who will probably support Egen are. That’s where most of the white wizards are. I’d like to see if we can drag up some lancers to help before we take them on.” Kharl didn’t want to consider-not yet-dealing with the southern forces without some sort of support.

“You gonna throw in with Lord West?” asked Jeka.

“Osten, I hope,” Kharl admitted. “He may not be any better than his sire, but he can’t be any worse than Egen.”

“Some choice,” muttered Jeka.

“You have a better idea?” Kharl took another swallow of the cider. Jeka handed him some bread, and he began to eat. He mixed the bread with some of the hard cheese as well.

After a time, he looked up again. “We might have some influence on Osten-or even Ostcrag, especially if we get rid of Egen and the Hamorians. Egen doesn’t listen to anyone. I don’t think he ever has.”

“‘Sides, pissprick doesn’t deserve to live,” Jeka pointed out, more practically.

Kharl had to agree with that.

Kharl′s guess had been right. There was no one in the southern barracks. All the buildings were deserted-except for one elderly groom who could only say that everyone had left “soon after the big battle” and that they’d all headed south on orders from Overcaptain Vielam. While some gear had been left, there were no provisions, and no rifles or cartridges. There were bags of powder in an iron-lined, stone-walled magazine building well away from the others, but nothing besides cannon shells and powder.

The quick departure confirmed Kharl’s secondhand impression of Vielam, both of his abilities and his courage, since Vielam couldn’t havebeen in the force that faced Kharl. It might also reflect Vielam’s intelligence in assessing the situation, Kharl reflected.

Kharl and the others settled back into their saddles and rode northward. Less than a kay from the deserted barracks area, they turned from the south road onto the ring road that led northward to the east road. Like the south road leading out of Brysta, it was packed clay, turned sloppy by the rain, but there were few tracks, and nothing to indicate that any large body of lancers had traveled in either direction, or that armsmen had marched the road recently. Hadn’t Vielam sent any messengers northward? Was the eastern road camp or barracks even held by Egen’s forces?

Kharl shrugged. In a sense, that didn’t matter. If all of Egen’s forces were already regrouping in the south, then finding Ostcrag or Osten might well be easier. If they weren’t, Kharl needed to do something to neutralize the camp ahead.

As he rode along the ring road that he had once walked with Jeka, fleeing a white wizard before he’d even known he was a mage, that journey seemed ages ago, for all that it had been slightly less than a year before. So much had changed, and was still changing.

After a glass or so, he turned in the saddle and called to her. “It’s faster riding.”

“Sorer, too,” she responded, with a faint smile.

Erdyl looked puzzled, and, after turning to watch the road ahead, Kharl extended his order-senses to hear what his secretary might ask.

“ … why did he say that?”

“Been this way before, time back. He can tell you,” Jeka said pleasantly.

“How did you come to know him?”

“Better if he told you.” Her voice remained pleasant.

Kharl couldn′t help but smile at Jeka’s responses.

Less than two glasses later, Kharl turned his mount off the ring road, a good kay before it intersected Angle Road, and followed a lane that looked to head east. After less than a kay on the lane, half a kay away to the north, across the hills, he could see the south side of Vetrad’s sawmill and lumber barn.

Ahead, the green hills steepened into irregular and rocky shapes, and the lane turned sharply south. Kharl reined up, extending his order-senses once more, feeling for the camp and lancers that he knew could not be that far to the northeast of where he was. There was no concentration of chaosthat would have marked a white wizard, but Kharl did gain a sense of the muted chaos that often marked large groups of people-almost due north. He studied the ground, mostly small meadows marked by stone walls and hedgerows, and infrequent cots and huts.

About two hundred cubits ahead on the left side of the lane, just before it turned, was a gap in the low, piled-stone wall, and a narrow track seemed to head north. They could try that, Kharl decided, and he urged the gelding forward.

The track was more like an animal trail, or a lane that had once seen more traffic and since been largely overgrown. There were no tracks in the damp clay, except for those of coneys and other small animal traces that Kharl did not recognize. He had to duck continually, or brush away branches that poked out from the two hedgerows that framed the track.

They had traveled less than half a kay when the track turned leftward, but more to the northwest, rather than straight west. Kharl could sense that they were still slightly to the east of the camp. He kept checking with his order-senses, since he could not actually see beyond the trees and bushes that had once been a better-kept hedgerow.

Another three hundred cubits or so later, they neared a gap in the vegetation on the right side. Kharl reined up and looked through, out onto what had once been a meadow, but now sported a forest of saplings that ranged from knee high to as high as his mount’s ears. From what he could tell, the camp lay beyond the former meadow, even beyond the woods on the far side.

“This way.”

As he rode slowly through the saplings, he wondered why the area had been deserted. Land was life to a holder, and Kharl couldn’t imagine it being neglected without some reason. Had the holder let the lands lapse back to the local lord? Why? Or had the holders been removed by Ostcrag? Or Osten?

The light was beginning to fade by the time Kharl reined up on the far side of the narrow woods, at the edge of a short bluff that began within a half score of cubits from the end of the trees. Below the bluff was a gully cut by another stream flowing out of the hills. In the middle of the rise on the far side of the gully stood what he had sought.

The eastern camp was more like a fort than the barracks to the south of Brysta. Gray stone walls a good six cubits high surrounded the buildings and stables. There were gates to the south and west, but not to the east.There the low hill had been cut away, and cannon mounted on the top of the wider walls faced the main road. The road was on the north side of the stream that had cut a narrow canyon through the higher hills to the east, giving the fort control of the road. Given the rocky and rugged nature of the hills-and the crumbliness of the rock-the fort clearly controlled the east road. The area around the fort had been cleared of brush, although the grasses looked to be almost knee high.

Even in the dimming light, the rising fog, and the growing mist, Kharl could tell that the walls were manned not by Nordlan armsmen from the West Quadrant, but by Egen’s patrollers, and the gates were closed.

He eased his mount back into the trees, toward a small clearing they had passed less than fifty cubits back. There he dismounted, tied the gelding, and stretched. The others followed his example.

“What are you going to do?” asked Jeka.

“Eat and rest, and when it gets full dark, I’ll slip under the walls on the east side and blow up the cannon,” Kharl said. “Then come back here.”

“Like before?”

“Mostly. Except I won’t be facing white wizards. There aren′t any near.”

“Do you have to, ser?” asked Erdyl.

“No. I can wait until they leave and swell Egen’s forces. Or I can wait until Egen shows up here with white wizards, then face them all alone. Or we can ride northeast to Hemmen and catch a ship back to Valmurl, where I’ll tell Lord Ghrant that I failed and the West Quadrant will soon be a possession of Hamor.”