L. Modesitt - Ordermaster

Kharl kept waiting.

“You being a mage. Guess I thought … don’t know what I thought.”

“I can do some things … I’ll do everything I can to make sure Egen doesn’t hurt another girl, doesn’t murder another person. I can′t change the whole land. People have to want to change.”

“Osten. He doesn’t want to change.”

“He will,” Kharl said. “I told him that if he wasn’t a better lord than his sire, I’d come back and kill him. I told him that was something I could do.” He grinned ruefully. “That was why he tried to hit me with his sabre. It broke.”

“Told him that?”

Kharl nodded. “Wasn’t all that smart, I guess. If we win, he’ll try to kill me if he thinks he can. But I wanted him to know that he couldn′t be like his sire or his brother.”

“You’d come back and do that?”

“I came back for you,” Kharl pointed out.

“Not just me.”

“No. But I did.”

Jeka uncrossed her legs and reached for the scuffed shoes. “Need to eat. So do you.”

“Once this is over, we need to get you some boots.”

“See about that, then.” But there was a faint hint of a smile.

As he headed down to breakfast, following Jeka, Kharl realized something else. He still hadn′t seen Werwal or his consort. There was no one he felt comfortable sending to the rendering yard. If he went, he’d need to take at least Alynar or Sestalt, and that would leave the residence poorly protected with Osten’s lancers coming into the city. Jeka was good at sneaking around, but Kharl didn’t want her where he didn’t at least have a chance to protect her. He didn’t want to send anyone, in fact, until he knew that Brysta would remain relatively orderly.

Everything he did, he felt, was some sort of compromise between what ought to be and what could be. Belatedly, as always, he realized, that was why Lyras wanted to stay away from the Great House and the Lord of Austra. There was always conflict, a need for compromise in ruling, and in law, as the clerk Jusof had pointed out to him in Valmurl. Law was not justice,and given people’s differing feelings about what they deserved, and what they wanted, it couldn’t be.

That was another reason why he shouldn’t ever try to be more than he was, a mage and a lord. He’d just make matters worse-or tear himself up inside-or both. He’d precipitated the second revolt in Austra by trying to second-guess what Ghrant had needed. Now, in less than a season, he’d created swaths of death and destruction just trying to do his job as envoy to the West Quadrant.

Still, he fretted about both Werwal and Jeka, for very different reasons.

As Kharl had suspected, Osten’s forces were not ready on sevenday, although Kharl had been able to sense the approach of Egen’s white wizards by late in the day. By sunset, he felt as though they were still well south of Brysta proper, south even of the barracks on the south side of the city.

Early on eightday Kharl and his group rode out to join Osten’s forces. The day had dawned with a hazy sky, but Kharl had the feeling that it would clear. That meant that Egen was more likely to attack, since the white mages preferred not to fight in the rain. By midmorning, all of Osten’s forces were moving southward on the ring road, less than a kay from where it joined the south road. The lancers led the column, and the armed foot brought up the rear, with the supply wagons trailing, and having a hard time of it in the muddy clay left by the combination of summer-end rain and the mounts and men traveling before them.

Kharl and his small party rode just behind the vanguard, in the second body of troops, following Osten and his personal guard-lancers clad in a blue so dark it was almost black, with a thin piping of silver-gray. Osten had detailed-not quite grudgingly-two squads of lancers as support for Kharl. Kharl′s trousers were mud-spattered, and there were even a few splotches on his sleeves, although those had dried quickly even under the hazy morning sunlight.

The ground on both sides of the road held low hills, but the those onthe eastern side were higher and presaged the more rugged hills to the south. Kharl could just make out, over the tops of the woodlot trees ahead to his left, the beginning of the long ridge to the north of the southern patroller barracks.

“How far away do you think Egen is?” asked Demyst.

“About four kays south of here, close to the barracks where we were before.” Kharl’s order-senses gave him a rough idea. Over the past day, he had pondered whether he should have destroyed the structures, but at that time, he’d been more worried about the eastern fort and whether more white wizards might appear. If he had, he certainly wouldn’t have had the strength for at least another day to deal with the eastern fort, and who knew what those patrollers might have been able to do?

“They moving?”

“They don’t seem to be.”

“Waiting for us to come to them.”

Kharl nodded as he sensed two scouts who rode back toward Osten. He just hoped that Osten would tell him what they had discovered, although he had more than a few doubts about Osten′s judgment. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, he wished he had been faced with better choices as to whom he needed to back on behalf of Lord Ghrant.

After perhaps a quarter glass, a lancer pulled his mount from the column ahead and began to ride back toward Kharl.

“Lord Osten wants something, I’d wager,” offered Demyst, riding beside Kharl.

“All lords do,” Kharl said dryly, realizing as he spoke the words that he’d condemned himself as well. His wry smile was brief.

The lancer turned his mount to ride on the shoulder, alongside and matching pace with Kharl and his escort. “Lord Kharl, Lord Osten would like you to join him.”

Kharl eased his mount forward and onto the shoulder, where he rode past the rear of Osten’s guard until he neared Osten himself.

“Lord Osten …”

The blond lord turned his head. “Join me.”

Kharl eased his mount beside Osten, momentarily conscious of just how much bigger he was than Osten.

“Lord Kharl,” Osten began, “what can you tell me about the would-be usurper’s position?”

“I do not have scouts, as you do, but the main body of his forces, and three or four white wizards, are somewhere ahead. I would judge about three kays.”

For a moment, the narrow-faced Osten was silent. Then, he nodded. “Almost exactly two and a half kays ahead. His wizards or his patrollers killed one party of scouts. The two who just returned tell me that we face three companies of mounted patrollers and two companies of patroller foot, with almost ten companies of regular Nordlan lancers. The entire rebel force has retaken the southern barracks area.”

“There was nothing to stop them. The barracks were empty, and they took everything with them when they retreated earlier.”

“All the supplies?” Osten’s voice was disbelieving.

“All of them except some cannon powder, but the cannon were damaged in the battle.” Except one . And Kharl wasn’t about to mention that.

“The scouts did not report cannon.”

Kharl nodded, waiting to see what Osten would say next.

“They have blocked the road, and hold the flat to the east and the high ground to the west. They have fixed crude pikes across the road to block our lancers there or to force us into the marshy part of the flat or uphill against the patrollers with rifles.”

“Most of the patrollers are probably Hamorian lancers in patroller uniforms,” Kharl suggested.

“That is like him. Ungrateful wretch!” Osten spat to the side away from Kharl. “I found it hard to believe that he could have trained so many in a year, even with …″ The lord-heir let the words trail away.