L. Modesitt - Ordermaster

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With the patrollers-what looked to be half a company-rode a white wizard. Although Kharl was still shielding himself, he got the impression from the other’s projected chaos that the man was the wizard who’d betrayed Lord West.

Whhstt … A firebolt arced from behind the leading riders.

Rather than extend any great effort until their pursuers were closer, Kharl used his shields just to nudge the chaos into the ground uphill of them.

“Ser?” asked the serjeant.

“Don’t worry about this one,” Kharl snapped. The patrollers were almost close enough.

Another firebolt flared at them, and Kharl slid it behind the short column. “Halt. Right here.” He reined up, and concentrated on the oncoming riders, now less than fifty cubits away.

Whhsttt!

This time, Kharl twisted the chaos-energies through the back linkage into the white wizard, beyond him across the sixty-odd riders. Death voids flashed across him, but many of the trailing riders escaped. Within moments, the score of survivors had turned and galloped eastward, not uphill but along the side of the hill.

“Now! Straight uphill!” Kharl called.

This time, while he pulled his shielding cloak back together, he knew that the other wizards would know that he was somewhere behind them. He needed to get as close as he could before they could turn their forces and force him to fight his way to them-if he could.

Kharl reached a point several hundred cubits below the hillcrest on the west side when he saw that perhaps half the patrollers on the rise had finished a wheeling maneuver into a formation to face his small force. He dropped the cloaking shield that had kept him from the full perceptions of the white wizards.

Between the two sets of mounted patrollers were the white wizards, and to their right was another group of riders-wearing dark blue and burgundy. At their head was a slender figure he recognized even at a distance-Egen.The would-be lord’s chaos-that of evil and not of chaosforce-was clear enough to Kharl.

Kharl permitted himself a smile that vanished as chaos mounted from within and around the white wizards.

Whhsttt! Whssst! Whsstt! The three firebolts that arced from behind the line of charging patrollers were linked together, feeding off each other, seemingly expanding into a wall of chaos flame.

Kharl had already sensed the linked shields of the three. He couldn’t use the wizards’ tie to the firebolts to funnel that chaos back at them, but instead, he created his momentary hardened air shield curved to fling the chaos back across the first wave of patrollers-much as he would have preferred to throw that massive force at Egen and his personal guard.

More than two companies of patrollers vanished as the wall of fire flared across them.

A swath of knee-high grass was no more-just a bare stretch of blackened earth, with occasional low rocks protruding from the baked soil.

While the wizards retained their shield, the early-afternoon sky was empty of firebolts.

Slowly, the remaining patrollers began to wheel toward Kharl.

Kharl grabbed for his water bottle and took a long swallow of cider, watching the hillcrest to the east. Then he urged the gelding forward, not at a walk, but at what he thought might be a canter. He could see what was likely to come, even before the patrollers began to raise their rifles. After a moment, Demyst, Erdyl, Alynar, and Jeka followed him, as did some of the two squads of lancers, although Kharl thought that some of the lancers had dropped back. So had the serjeant, but there was no help for that.

Kharl glanced over his shoulder, then shouted, “Demyst! Jeka! Erdyl! Get right behind me! Now!”

“You heard him!” ordered Demyst.

Kharl snapped his head back forward. He kept riding, watching the patrollers as they brought their rifles up. At what he thought was the last moment, he threw up a shield of hardened air-a good fifty cubits in front of him-and wide enough, he hoped, to shield him and his small party. He couldn’t spare the energy to shield the lancers behind him, spread as they were.

Crack! Crack! Crack! … The rifle reports sounded like continuing whip cracks.

Behind him, Kharl felt one death, then another, as he narrowed the gap between him and the patrollers and the white wizards behind them. In those moments when he thought that there was a lull in the firing, he dropped the air shield and rebuilt it farther ahead. Each time he wondered if he would be shot in that brief instant when he was unprotected.

Yet, for all the rifle fire, there were no firebolts, no use of chaos by the white wizards, except to maintain their linked shields. Had they realized that Kharl was using their own chaos against them? How could they not?

Kharl kept riding, trying to reach a point where he could extend an order-probe to where the white wizards stood, impervious, waiting, and to the right, Egen and his personal patrollers.

All the time, the patrollers kept firing, and lancers behind and flanking Kharl dropped, wounded or killed. Before him, chaos drawn from somewhere began to mount behind the shields of the three white wizards. His entire body was hot, burning like a fire pot, it seemed, and he was drenched in sweat, squinting as the salty stuff ran by and into his eyes.

He was less than two hundred cubits from the first line of patrollers, and the ground shivered. With that shivering, the chaos behind the white shields intensified. Kharl could sense chaos building everywhere-in the ground under him, in the air above him-and yet he was still not close enough to unbind chaos against the wizards.

But … if he unbound it against the patrollers …

He reached out and unlinked the order within the iron of the rifle of the patroller closest to him.

Currumpttt!!!

White-and-red chaos-flame flared back across the mounted patrollers, pressed by the shields Kharl threw up hastily. Those patrollers and mounts who were not turned into instant pillars of ashes flared like trees blackened in a firestorm-then toppled. Abruptly, the chaos-flare vanished, sucked into the swirling vortex of brilliance that rose around the three Hamorian wizards, a whirlwind of energy burning brighter than the sun, so bright that not a single figure remaining on the hillcrest cast a shadow, a pitiless searing light, with which nothing Kharl had ever seen or felt could have possibly compared.

Yet behind that vortex, protected as the other patrollers had not been, remained the enemy wizards-and Egen and his personal guard.

Egen-coward, betrayer of his own family, and destroyer of Kharl’s. Egen … protected by the chaos energy of the white wizards.

From somewhere deep within Kharl a cold rage began to build. They would not protect Egen!

A high whining sound began to build.

Kharl raised both an air shield and order shield directly in front of him.

The air itself vibrated, and the shrilling penetrated Kharl’s ears like sharpened needles. As it did, a line of white light flared from the shielded chaos toward Kharl. As that light lance struck the air shield, coruscating, strobing light exploded like cannon shells going off in all directions.

The well of white chaos that surrounded the three Hamorian wizards throbbed. The white vortex dimmed-but only for a moment. Then the ground shivered once more, and the shrilling began to build again.

Kharl kept riding, although he could sense that few remained riding with or behind him. He had to get close enough to reach Egen-and the chaos-wizards. He had to.

Now, he was on the flat of the hillcrest, and only a hundred cubits from the wizards and their linked shield … and the blindlingly brilliant chaos vortex that rose like an inverted triangle into the sky-and Egen!

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