L. Modesitt - Colors of Chaos

“Two score…” mused Cerryl.

“Fydel will be closer to the Black arms commander’s forces and will need a somewhat larger force.” Jeslek lifted the stones holding down the corners of the map, one at a time, then rolled it up. “I do not propose to have large groups of lancers strung out across Spidlar. You and Fydel are to stop any attacks, when possible without losing many lancers, to avoid battle when you cannot, and to ensure that any levies traveling the road are warned well in advance of any possible attacks that you cannot turn.” Jeslek paused before his final words.

“With your skills, Cerryl, I am certain you can handle such a mundane task.”

Behind the High Wizard, Anya smiled through the dim lamplight.

“I appreciate your trust and confidence.” Wonderful! You’re in charge of more road than Fydel and with fewer lancers. Yet another opportunity for failure and disgrace, especially against an experienced Black commander .

THE BREEZE FROM outside the small cot was warm already, even though the sun was barely above the horizon. Cerryl could hear someone feeding the horses and the clanking of a cook pot. His eyes dropped to the screeing glass upon the time-worn wood before him, and he leaned forward on the bench, slowly sketching from it what he could on the rough map beside the glass. He paused and dipped the quill in the traveling inkstand once more, then added another dashed line that represented a narrow trail. His maps suffered in accuracy, but making them was another way beside riding every cubit of trail and road to learn more about Spidlar. He particularly tried to follow and note on his crude maps the narrow trails that were not exactly roads. Those were the ones that an experienced lancer leader might well use against someone-like Cerryl-who did not know the land, especially in dry weather.

He shook his head and went back to screeing. Finally, after his fingers began to tremble, he let the image of a patch of land to the northwest of his encampment fade, and he put his head in his hands, closing his eyes for a time.

A bit later, he smiled and reached for another place. Leyladin’s image swirled through the mists, and a puzzled look crossed her face. Then came a smile, a broad smile, and her fingers touched her lips. Behind her, Cerryl could see the green silk hangings of her room.

After a moment, Cerryl let the image fade, a wistful smile upon his own lips. While he could sense when someone used a glass to scree him, he still wondered how Leyladin could sense he was the one looking at her, but, in a way, she’d known him first through the glass and had always recognized his screeing. What else has she always known?

He frowned and studied the blankness before him on the rough wooden trestle table. The glass showed him no riders in blue, no armsmen in each of the hamlets he screed-those within a day’s ride of the road between Axalt and the staging town where he and his small detachment of lancers were based. His screeings did not mean that his lancers might not face ambushes, only that there were no large bodies of armsmen that near.

They’re all making Jeslek’s advance difficult, that’s why . Cerryl wiped his forehead, damp with the effort of working with the glass, then took a swig from his water bottle.

He concentrated again, thinking about the smith in distant Diev, whose focused order radiated across the kays separating them.

The red-haired smith was beside his forge, drawing wire, and Cerryl could sense the order in that wire even through the glass. Like Leyladin, Dorrin glanced up as his image strengthened in the glass before Cerryl. Unlike the blonde healer, the smith scowled, but briefly, before returning to drawing wire.

“Ordered black iron wire,” murmured the gray-eyed mage, shaking his head. What Dorrin was doing would cause great troubles for the White forces moving toward Elparta, even if Cerryl did not yet understand how. That he could feel. Does Jeslek know? Or care?

Cerryl stood and packed the mirror back into its carrying case.

WHILE THE MORNING cook fires were building, Cerryl took the screeing glass from its case and set it on the trestle table-the beginning of his daily pattern. The already-warm wind gusted through the open door, swirling Cerryl’s white trousers around his legs and boots and carrying the odor of green wood into the cot.

He rubbed his nose, then pulled the bench out so that he could sit as he called up the images he needed-and as he added to the rough maps he continued to draw. He had sketched in most of the side roads and trails that fed into the main road between Axalt and Elparta, and there were far more of them than he ever would have guessed before he’d begun his informal project.

He frowned as he looked at the blank glass, deciding against seeking Leyladin until he was finished with a drafting session and with scanning the nearby hamlets. That way, at least, he could end with a pleasant visage.

He found one more trail, winding through the rolling hills and leading almost to the main road where Jeslek and his forces massed a good forty kays to the southeast of Elparta along the hills that separated Gallos and Spidlar. After Cerryl added that to the map, he began to look for the latest supply wagons from Certis. Those were encamped somewhere in the Easthorns short of ruined Axalt. Finally, he began to scree the nearby hamlets.

The first two attempts showed still-empty hamlets. Even before the silver mists cleared on his third effort, a good four-, perhaps fivescore mounted armsmen wearing blue tunics or vests appeared in the glass, saddling their mounts and preparing to ride.

Cerryl couldn’t tell exactly where they were, but they looked to be on the road leading to the crossroads just beyond the hamlet where he’d made his headquarters-less than a half-day’s ride on what passed for one of the better roads in the area.

The brown-haired mage forced himself to finish checking the other locales before he returned to the image of the mounted armsmen. After studying the image again, he slowly stood and wiped his suddenly damp forehead. From what he could tell, no inordinate order or chaos accompanied the armsmen, and the glass wasn’t wrong. At least, it usually wasn’t.

You hope it’s not . He swallowed and walked out of the cot, glancing around the hamlet, the few buildings swathed in the orange of postdawn, lancers gathering beyond the cook fires for their rations.

“Ser?” asked the young lancer serving as a messenger.

“Oh…I need Hiser and Ferek. Right now.”

“Yes, ser.”

As the lancer scurried off, Cerryl massaged his clean-shaven chin. Even in the field, he hated the itchiness of a beard, although sometimes he skipped shaving a day or two with the white-bronze razor that Leyladin had given him years before.

Has it been that long?

Hiser was the first to arrive, his lank blonde hair flopping across his forehead. The older Ferek followed, brushing back thinning red hair streaked liberally with white.

“We’ve finally got visitors,” Cerryl said. “Probably fivescore Spidlarian lancers. They look like they’re on the road to the fork, maybe a half-day’s hard ride.”

“That’s more than we have.” Ferek looked speculatively at Cerryl.

Hiser nodded.

“I’m not really an armsman,” Cerryl ventured, “but it seems to me that we want to meet them somewhere that favors us, where they can’t easily ride around us and where they have to ride uphill to reach us.” He paused. “And where I can throw firebolts at them.”

“There’s that bunch of hills about two kays beyond where the road forks,” suggested Hiser.

Cerryl nodded. It might work. “Ferek…you get the men ready, and Hiser and I and a few lancers will ride out there now to see how we can best set up.”