L. Modesitt - Mage-Guard of Hamor

After a moment, he guided the gelding between two companies and continued uphill. As he neared the front of the formation, a majer turned his mount and headed toward Rahl.

"Captain!"

Rahl continued to ride.

The majer reached Rahl just as Rahl was abreast of the first rank of troopers.

"We're to hold here, Captain!"

Rahl turned and looked at the officer. "That's correct. You're to hold here. And it's 'Majer,' by the way, and I'm operating under the orders of the subcommander. You might recognize the headquarters squad." Rahl smiled, but extended his order shields just slightly, with enough force to press the officer back in his saddle. "If you'll excuse me, I'd like to get on with what I'm doing so that more of your troopers don't get killed unnecessarily."

Rahl could sense both fear and anger within the majer, and he was already beginning to tire of that reaction. He forced cordiality into his voice, but projected a sense of absolute power behind the words. "You're here to do your duty, Majer, and I'm here to do mine." Then he urged the gelding forward, but only at a slow walk. Riding quickly would be one way to get the rebels charging down on him.

Behind him, the majer reined up, but Rahl could still sense anger.

"How far, ser?" asked the squad leader.

"As close as we can get without them wanting to charge us." Rahl extended his order-senses, trying to feel any indication that the lancers directly across the open grass from him-if several hundred cubits uphill-were thinking about attacking.

Slowly, Rahl continued uphill, but at an angle, away from the center of the stone walls.

Whhhsttt!

Rahl just let the firebolt splatter on the grass a good sixty cubits uphill.

The next firebolt was closer, but he merely order-nudged it so that it burned into the mud-spattered grass some thirty cubits to his left. The third one was noticeably weaker, but by then Rahl was closer than he really wanted to be to the mounted rebel troopers-a distance that seemed little less than 150 cubits.

He reined up and began to study the area around the stone fort. Then he shrugged and began to project his thin and unseen order line. He had perhaps a third of his half completed when he began to sense Taryl's work.

Another firebolt soared out from behind the stone walls and down toward Rahl. He diverted it and tried to concentrate on completing his order barrier just below the surface of the ground. He managed to get another third completed when a single set of trumpet triplets sounded, and the rebel lancers in the company closest to him and the headquarters squad quickly dressed their lines and began to charge toward him. Moments later, two more balls of chaos-flame arced toward him.

This time, Rahl hurriedly flung the chaos back at the lancers, using order to flatten and narrow the chaos into a thin line-almost like a chaos-whip snapped by order.

Lancers went down and piled into each other.

Using that delay, Rahl struggled to extend his order-line more to the west to reach the section of the unseen perimeter that Taryl was constructing.

Just as the two halves joined, three or four more chaos-bolts flared toward Rahl.

Rahl threw them at the rebel lancers, then reached out and began to start delinking the order-points inside the order-perimeter, but he kept having to divert his attention to block or divert what seemed like a rain of firebolts.

Then he realized that the rebel lancers were charging once more.

"Ser?"

"This way!" Rahl urged the gelding eastward, almost paralleling his order-perimeter while trying to stay on the gelding, keep distance between him and the lancers, and continue to order-delink the ground inside the order-line.

The lancers pulled up, letting Rahl move away from a position directly below the small stone walls, but the firebolts kept coming, if intermittently.

Rahl could sense a far greater wave of delinking and ooze formation on the north side of the hill, but then, he told himself, even as he tried to keep adding to the process, Taryl hadn't been under attack all the time.

Then… just as Taryl had predicted, the ground everywhere under the fort and the rebel troops seemed to liquefy all at once. The fort and the higher ground began to sink. Rebel troopers and lancers started to ride downhill in every direction.

With a huge sucking sound, everything inside the order-line vanished into a grayish brown ooze. Moreover, the hilltop had vanished as well, leaving a flat expanse of ooze level with the top of the order-perimeter created by the two mage-guards.

For a moment, Rahl just looked.

Then he could sense Taryl straining to restore order, and he immediately devoted himself to that. For a time, he felt as though he were trying to hold back a wave of mud with a sieve, and he could feel the suffocation and strangulation of hundreds of men, but slowly, slowly, the edges of the ooze solidified. Then, in apparent reversal of the process, everything solidified… and all those thousands trapped within the hill and still alive died, crushed to death by the return of solidity.

Under that wave of death and chill, Rahl began to shiver so violently that he had to grab the saddle rim to steady himself. So many deaths… so many all at once.

Abruptly, he forced himself to straighten. He could sense Taryl-and there was no way he should be able to sense where the older mage-guard was unless Taryl was wounded or in trouble.

"We need to get back to the overcommander!" Rahl started to urge the gelding forward, not down the hill, but farther eastward, around the flattened and solidified hilltop that had entombed thousands of men. Then he shook his head. The flattened area above him was solid, and it provided a far quicker route.

Rahl could sense the hesitation of the headquarters squad, but he did not hold back, not when Taryl might be in trouble. He galloped across the grayish brown clay, so hard that the gelding's hoofs sounded as though he were riding a paved road.

On the other side, Taryl was by himself, a good five hundred cubits above the other headquarters' squad, as well as above the marshal's massed forces. As Rahl reined up beside Taryl, the older man was white and ready to fall from his saddle-that was the way he felt to Rahl.

"Ser." Rahl managed to extend a slight bit of order, the little he could afford.

Taryl straightened. "Riding over that was a bit much."

"It was the quickest way, and I could feel your shields collapsing."

"You could?"

For the first time in seasons, Rahl actually felt the unshielded surprise of the older mage-guard. "Yes, ser. That's why I came the quickest way."

"I suppose I'm fortunate to have an assistant so diligent."

"You need to eat something." Rahl twisted in the saddle and fumbled some travel biscuits from his saddlebags. "Here."

Taryl took them, saying nothing until he had eaten both biscuits and swallowed some water. "Follow your own advice."

Belatedly, Rahl did, realizing that he was not in much better shape than Taryl.

Neither spoke for a time.

"You made that circle rather large," Taryl finally said.

"I'm not as skilled as you are. I couldn't figure out how to hold a sight shield and create the order circle at the same time. I rode as close as I could, but the rebel officers were about to charge if I'd gotten much nearer. Their wizards and chaos-mages were throwing firebolts the whole time."

"I thought that might have been the case." Taryl smiled. "It was good practice for you. You'll need to learn to handle more than two mage-tasks at once, anyway. Now… we need to tell the marshal what happened… rather why it happened. He won't be pleased."

Why wouldn't the marshal be pleased? Taryl's and Rahl's effort had eliminated some of the top rebel officers and cost the rebels several thousand troopers without the loss of any more Imperial forces. Rahl could still feel that massive cold void of thousands of deaths, a chill that the riding jacket did nothing to dispel, but he knew the marshal was incapable of feeling that directness of death.