L. Modesitt - Mage-Guard of Hamor

Keeping himself in the corner between the barricade and the smoothed cliffside, Rahl concentrated on the center of the barricade wall, ignoring the scores of rebels behind it, not to mention those on the walled ledge. When he had exploded the black wall in Nylan, he had merely attempted to see how the order was structured over and around the stones. Each stone had had an order framework, but that framework had been strengthened, not created, by the wall-builders. As he reached out with his order-senses and touched the crude wall before him, he knew he needed to find the knots of higher and underlying order embedded within the mixture of rock and timber.

Many of the stones were almost "dead," with barely enough order to hold them together. Amid the mixture, Rahl found bits of what he would have called "sparkling" order, and he began to link one to the next, using a thin line of order. With each link, a knotted pattern of order built, and so did the strength of the sparkling. Was the sparkle something like order ready to release chaos? That was the closest to how Rahl could have described it.

He forced himself to work deliberately, adding links and strands one by one until he had an order-chaos structure that, if he recalled correctly, had something like the power of a small section of the black wall. As he kept adding to that structure, he began to funnel and channel the forces toward the middle of the barricade wall.

Whhhsst!

A firebolt slammed against his shields, followed by a second one, then a third.

Rahl staggered, trying to stay on his feet. So much for remaining undetected.

He couldn't keep doing what he was doing and hold his shields against a continuing barrage of chaos-bolts. Or could he? What if he linked that power into his order-chaos web? Could he?

Whhssst!

With the next firebolt, Rahl channeled the chaos into the barricade, holding it behind order. Two more chaos-bolts followed, and he did the same.

Then came the light flash-not that Rahl could see it behind his shields-but he could feel the power. That kind of chaos-force was so different from the firebolts that he couldn't find a way to grasp it.

"Chaos-mage below! Near the inside of the road! Just beyond the barricade!"

"Heavy crossbows! Iron bolts!"

Rahl could sense all sorts of rebels forming up, in addition to a well of chaos building above him. He had to do what he could, and he had no idea whether it would even work. He moistened his lips and concentrated, untwisting all the links he had built-all at once-then reinforced his own shields.

CRUUMMPP!

The explosion threw Rahl backward and then into the ancient smooth stone of the cliff face. Even within his shields, he was stunned, lying on his side, his back against smooth stone. He struggled to maintain the sight shield. He didn't want anyone shooting iron bolts at him, not when he doubted whether his shields would hold much longer.

Stones pattered down around him, and more death-far closer-swept over him.

Rahl's guts twisted and turned, and he kept swallowing to keep the bile down. Officers didn't retch on themselves. They didn't.

He slowly rolled onto his knees and then staggered erect. He put one boot in front of the other and began to make his way downhill, slowly, because there were fragments of rock and stone everywhere.

Below he could hear the trumpet calls of Fifth Regiment, and he forced himself to keep moving. He didn't want to get trampled by his own forces. He finally released the sight shield when he made his way through and past the breach in the lower barricade. Two troopers from first squad were already riding uphill, leading the gelding. Behind them were Dhosyn and first squad.

Rahl just stepped back against the stone of the cliff face and gestured.

Dhosyn caught sight of him immediately. "Majer's over there!"

Once Dhosyn and first squad reached Rahl, they had to hug the cliff face as troopers from Fifth Regiment companies poured up the road in pursuit of the rebels.

Rahl climbed into the saddle, slowly and awkwardly, then turned to the squad leader. "Thank you."

"The captain and I-we thought you might be looking for a mount." Dhosyn gestured uphill. "Specially after that."

Rahl looked back toward the upper barricade. It wasn't there. Rather, a few loose heaps of stone remained, with fragments strewn for hundreds of cubits. Behind where it had stood, there was even less, and Rahl sensed that none of the rebels within a hundred cubits had survived. Nor had the two mages.

Rahl eased the gelding close to the stone of the cliff face to allow another company of Imperial troopers to gallop past first squad. He was in no hurry to join such a charge. He'd barely been able to mount the gelding, and his legs were shaking so much he wondered if his boots would remain in the stirrups. Even though he had made that charge possible, the fact that he was in no condition to ride out immediately galled him.

He turned and reached for his saddlebags, but he was so light-headed that he nearly lost his seat. He ate whatever he had, and slowly drained his water bottle.

By the time he thought he could stay in the saddle, most of Fifth Regiment had passed first squad, and Drakeyt had ridden up with the remainder of Third Company.

"You don't do things in a small way, Majer."

"Some things you can't." Rahl grimaced. He was going to be sore again. "That's what the overcommander keeps telling me. We need to follow the regiment."

Drakeyt nodded. "Deliberately."

Rahl understood. The company had already taken more than its share of casualties, and there was little point in hurrying into a melee where they could add little.

The sun was low in the west, and the road up the east side of the promontory was completely in shadow by the time Rahl and Third Company reached the top of the kay-long incline and came out on the flat. Park-like grounds stretched southward, surrounding the Administrator's Residence-a large villa of two levels-enclosed only by a head-high iron gratework fence. Two squads of Imperial troopers had been detailed to guard the open gates, clearly to prevent looting.

At the south end of the park was a compound with buildings and barracks. Before the gates in its low stone walls was another squad of troopers.

"No rebels there?" Rahl called out.

"No, ser. They saw us coming and rode south."

Beyond the compound, the mesa-like flat area on the top of the ridge began to narrow and slope downward. Rahl reined up.

Below, Imperial forces had encircled the rebels and surged inward, compressing the defenders so that many could hardly move. While Rahl could not see any firebolts, he could sense from the diffuse chaos that many had been thrown and that wide patches of blackened ground lay beneath the hoofs of the mounts of rebels and Imperials alike.

"The rebels had more mages than we do," Dhosyn said.

"The more troops involved," Rahl replied, "the less effect a mage can have."

"You had a certain effect, Majer," Drakeyt said.

"Only because of the way they tried to defend Nubyat," Rahl replied. "You might recall that what I did in wide field battles was far less effective."

"It was effective enough." Drakeyt's words were dry.

Effective enough? For what? For the moment, Rahl watched as the Imperial forces continued to slaughter the rebels, hoping that he would not have to contribute more to what had turned into a massacre-all because of what he had managed to do with one stone barricade.

After the battle on twoday, Rahl and Drakeyt had commandeered a corner of the compound barracks for Third Company. None of the other officers in First or Second Army complained, not to Rahl, at least. Amid the confusion, from what the two officers could gather, Golyat and his senior commanders had not been captured, nor had they been among the slain. Nor did any of the captured and wounded rebels have any idea where the rebel prince might have gone.