L. Modesitt - Colors of Chaos

The distance between the two roads was closer to two kays, and to Cerryl’s eyes the main road appeared nearly two hundred cubits higher than the other, far narrower road, which wound back into the lower woods to the north and west. The lower road flanked the stream for perhaps four kays before actually meeting the main road to the west, and both stream and road wound through relatively thick woods.

“Two hundred cubits higher, even, maybe,” Cerryl murmured to himself. The slope between the two roads was greater than Ferek had thought and than Cerryl had recalled.

“A bit steep to bring up a mount,” suggested Hiser.

“Could be, but it’s nearly two kays, and they can spread out. If they take the road, they get bunched together.” Cerryl shrugged. “If they do, we go back to where the camp is. Between the hill gap and the woods, their lancers will get all bunched up.”

“They’d not like that.”

Less than coming up the meadow . Cerryl rode the gelding slowly out and down into the meadow. While the ground was uneven in places, the footing seemed firm and the slope not so steep as it had appeared from the higher road.

The grass was thick and green, nearly knee-high. Later in the year it would burn well, but not now. What if he loosed the order bounds right beneath the surface? What would that do? Cerryl frowned. He couldn’t just leave order free. Could he shift it into other parts of the ground?

He swallowed and tried to reshift some of the order and chaos, strengthening the ground beneath the surface in thin lines and then breaking the order ties in other places.

Grrrrr …The ground shifted ever so slightly, and Cerryl swallowed.

“What was that?” asked Hiser.

Cerryl didn’t answer, struggling as he was with his battle to change the order-chaos balance of the rocks and subsoil, shift the strengths and the bonds that had knit the ground together. Sweat rolled down his forehead, and he absently blotted it away from his eyes.

A flock of blue-winged birds fluttered from the hardwoods, shrieking as they did. A sudden buzzing filled the sodden air, and dozens of flying grasshoppers rose out of the grass and hummed their way eastward and north, away from the ground Cerryl strained to alter. A single deer bolted downhill, then turned as she saw the White riders and bounded back into the woods.

“…little closer and we’d a had a good meal…”

“…real good meal…”

“…better be still…He’s got that look.”

“So’s Hiser.”

Cerryl squinted and blocked away the low-voiced comments from the lancer squad. Even as he continued his efforts, he began to sense a roiling, almost a boiling, and an ebb and flow of order and chaos, far, far deeper than the subsoil where he worked.

Coils and lines of black order wound around unseen but clearly felt fountains of chaos that rose and fell sporadically in the depths beneath the meadow. Should he send his senses below? Would it help?

No…not now. Too much to do here . He forced his concentration back to the task at hand.

In the end, the meadow grass concealed a churned mass of clay beneath a thin layer of soil holding the long green grass, clay that, Cerryl suspected, more nearly resembled quicksand than clay. Cerryl had also left just enough support in thin pillars and layers of order to hold a few riders and mounts-in case the Spidlarians wanted to scout the meadow. Some of that order he would have to shift later.

The thoroughly sweat-soaked mage finally took a deep breath in the late-afternoon air, then another. He closed his eyes for several moments, perhaps longer, to shut out the sparkling flashes of light that disrupted his vision, before turning in the saddle to Hiser. “Make sure that no one rides across that meadow. It’s likely to be the last ride they take.” Cerryl’s tone was dry as he turned back toward his horse.

“Ah, yes, ser.”

Cerryl remounted the gelding, his thoughts still on the sense of entwined order and chaos that he had sensed deep below the meadow. How far into the depths do they extend? He shook his head. Those speculations would have to wait. Besides, his entire body was screaming that he’d done enough, more than enough. He turned to Hiser. “We’ll head west, back beyond where the trees start. That way, if they send out scouts, they won’t see us anywhere near the fields.”

“There be nothing ’tween them and the next wagons and levies, then,” pointed out the blonde subofficer, tugging at his beard.

“We travel faster than they do. If they turn east, we can catch them unless they want to founder their mounts, and then…” Cerryl shrugged dramatically.

And in the meantime, we wait …

IN THE GRAY light of another cloudy morning just past dawn, Cerryl stood and packed the screeing glass back into its case, his eyes going to the two subofficers. “They’re still on the road. Both groups have joined, and I make out a good ten score, perhaps twelve score.”

“Another score in scouts and a score more in their van,” suggested Ferek.

Cerryl offered a casual shrug he didn’t entirely feel. “It won’t matter if they come up the meadow.” What if they don’t? How do you assure that they climb the meadow? He took a deep breath, conscious that even the air smelled and felt dampish, moldy, despite the warmth already apparent.

Ferek and Hiser exchanged wary glances.

“Can you think of any way to ensure that they climb the meadow?” Cerryl glanced toward the trees to the south of the camp, then toward the thin clouds of the eastern sky and the light that seeped up behind them. The air remained hot and still, almost as though it had cooled little over night, and the odor of overcooked biscuits seeped around him.

“If’n their captain thought we were a-waiting…” mused Ferek. “Along the end of the narrow road, that be.”

Cerryl massaged his forehead. All the order-chaos manipulations and screeing were extracting their price. His tunic and trousers were looser, and his eyes burned almost all the time, not to mention the headaches and the flashes of light that sparked before his eyes. Using the glass before eating doesn’t help…. you know? “I need to eat.”

“Not much but dried mutton, hard cheese, and harder biscuits,” offered Hiser. “Cooked them too long, someway.”

“That’s fine.” Cerryl set the glass case beside his bedroll, then straightened, turned, and walked a dozen paces toward the rough-hewn serving plank, where he took two biscuits. The brownish oval of the first was so hard that when he tried to gnaw off a corner, his upper teeth slid off the biscuit and he nearly bit his lip.

“I said they were hard, ser,” offered Hiser, who had followed him.

Cerryl unsheathed his knife and hacked off a tan chunk that seemed closer to wood than food, then put it in his mouth and took a swallow of water to moisten the rock-hard biscuit. One taste of the dried mutton jerky was enough to persuade him to try another biscuit and more of the hard and musty cheese.

The light flashes before his eyes stopped after the second biscuit, and the headache diminished but did not disappear. His stomach did stop growling. After he finished the third hard biscuit, Cerryl turned to Ferek, who had waited for the mage to finish eating. “What if you took twoscore lancers and rode them down that narrow road and then back…and left a couple of scouts on fast mounts where the road curves back to the west?”

Hiser grinned. “You mean where the blues could see them?”

Cerryl nodded. “That might give them the idea to climb the field, especially if we’re not in sight on the road above the fields.”