L. Modesitt - Colors of Chaos

All the traps had been on the river itself, as if the smith Dorrin had belatedly recognized where the true danger lay.

Cerryl tried to use his eyes and his senses as they rode closer to the woods that began ahead on the west side of the road, the sort of place that would be ideal for another attack by the Spidlarians, for all that, they had not even seen a hoofprint in kays.

Thwing! Thwing! A series of arrows flew past-except one that slammed into the lancer riding beside Hiser.

Cerryl jerked his head around. Concentrating as he had been on seeking order foci, he really hadn’t sensed the approach of the blue archers.

“There they are!” Hiser stood in the stirrups, gesturing toward the side trail that wound toward a gap in the woods ahead on the west side of the road.

The narrow side trail …Cerryl’s eyes flashed toward the trail, his senses following.

A half-score of riders started forward at a fast trot that threatened to become a gallop.

“LANCERS, HALT!” Cerryl yelled.

The riders continued, though Hiser reined up in confusion, glancing at Cerryl as if he could not believe his ears.

Whsstt! Cerryl lofted a firebolt over the heads of the riders, far enough that it sprayed harmlessly across the damp clay. “HALT! You worthless dark shadows!”

The lancers milled to a halt, and Cerryl took a deep breath and rode forward. “Back!”

“…why’s he want to go first?”

“…let him…be target…”

One step at a time, Cerryl took the gelding onto the narrow trail, trying to keep eyes and ears and senses all searching.

Thwinng! This time Cerryl ducked even before he heard the arrow, and he could feel where the archer might be.

Whhhstt! The firebolt arced over the vegetation in the direction from which the shaft had come.

“Aeiii…”

Was there a line of greasy black smoke? Cerryl wasn’t certain, but there was no doubt about the sound of departing hoofs that followed the firebolt and the short scream.

He kept the gelding to a walk, but there were no more arrows. As he had suspected, around the curve was something-something metallic and very ordered. He reined up and beckoned for Hiser to join him.

The subofficer wiped the dampness from his forehead as he halted his mount beside the gelding.

“There’s a trap about two hundred cubits ahead,” Cerryl said quietly. “I don’t feel anyone around, but we’ll have to go slowly.”

Finding the trap was anticlimactic. Two thin wires so black as to be invisible, especially with dust raised by mounts in the air, ran across the trail. On one side, wedged behind a fallen tree trunk, was a black iron bar to which the wires were secured. At the other end of the wires was a second bar, nearly two cubits long, set in the fork of a tree.

Once they had loosened the bars, two lancers slowly wound the wire around them while Cerryl studied the area with both his senses and his sight.

Nothing . Nothing except a black-smeared section of ground on the trail fifty cubits beyond the trap, an area three cubits across where nothing remained but ashes.

“Frigging blues…”

The blue raiders had left nothing, except the first casualty they had taken in two eight-days. Cerryl eased the gelding back toward the main road until he found Hiser. The subofficer was strapping a body over a saddle-the lancer who’d been riding beside him.

“What do we do, ser? If we could ride after them…”

“We would have lost more lancers.”

“But we’re not getting to them.”

Cerryl had no real answers. If they proceeded slowly, they’d lose some lancers to arrows. If they hurried, so as to keep the blues from having time to set things up, they wouldn’t lose as many to shafts, but every so often they’d lose a lot to traps. “We’re taking their land. Before long, they won’t have any place to run.”

“Hope it’s not that long. Begging your pardon, ser.” Hiser gave the rope a last knot and swung into his saddle and gestured to the lancer with one arm bound from an arrow taken earlier in the day. “Muntor, you hang back and take care of the mount here.”

“Yes, ser.” The sandy-haired lancer took the rope lead from Hiser.

“Back to the main road, ser?” asked the subofficer.

“Back to the main road,” Cerryl confirmed. Back to patrolling and being targets, and all because…because why?

He shrugged. The answers that had seemed simple in Fairhaven seemed almost irrelevant along a booby-trapped river road in a war no one really wanted and yet one that no one seemed able to avoid, a war that seemingly sucked in more and more from Fairhaven-Leyladin, Faltar, and a half-dozen young mages without, Cerryl suspected, the real talents to see order traps or avoid the iron crossbow bolts that could prove fatal.

Then…can you keep avoiding them?

AFTER RUBBING DOWN the gelding, Cerryl walked slowly to the canvas awning-not really a full tent-under which the wounded lay. Leyladin was bending over another lancer he did not recognize. Even from where Cerryl stood a dozen cubits away, the light of the low afternoon sun on his back, he could sense the order she mustered.

He wanted to tell her that she couldn’t heal them all. No healer could. Instead, he waited until she straightened.

She walked toward him as if she had sensed him, a gentle smile in place. “I felt you riding in.”

“You felt me?”

“If you can find me in a glass, can’t I sense you when you’re near?”

He reached out and squeezed her hand. “I’m supposed to meet with Jeslek and the others…”

“The other Whites?” Her eyebrows lifted in a query.

“That’s not my choice.”

“I know. Sometimes, it’s hard.” Her eyes swept the area under the awning.

“Because we create death and you attempt to heal?”

“No.” The blonde cocked her head slightly to the side. “The Blacks are killing more than we are right now. The Guild needs order as much as chaos, and the old parts of Colors of White -they don’t say it in quite that way, but it’s there. These days, with Recluce the enemy…”

“No one seems to understand that order also belongs in Fairhaven…” Cerryl’s eyes flicked toward the white silk tent set on a level grassy bench farther down the slope toward the gray water of the River Gallos.

“You have to go. I know.”

“I’m sorry. I wanted to see you.”

A trace of a smile reappeared. “I’ll see you later.”

He squeezed her fingers a last time before he turned and headed downhill, taking a deep breath.

The smell of burning wood was everywhere-faint but omnipresent. He rubbed his eyes gently as he neared the tent-guarded by a pair of lancers.

One nodded slightly. “Mage Cerryl?”

Cerryl returned the nod and eased under the flap held up by poles as an awning. Anya looked up as Cerryl stepped into the tent. Fydel, Anya, and Jeslek sat around the camp table on stools. Cerryl took the last stool, across from Jeslek and between Anya and Fydel.

“Good that you could join us,” said Jeslek.

“It was a long day, ser. I just got back.”

“How many more did you lose?” asked Anya.

“None today.” After a moment, he added, “That worries me. I wonder what else they plan.”

“They will indeed plan something else. The traders have told their field commander, Brede, the young giant from Recluce, to hold Kleth,” Jeslek announced quietly. The tent billowed overhead.

Fydel nodded. Anya smiled brightly, and Cerryl smiled politely, with a deferential inclination of his head to the High Wizard.

“Where is Sterol?” Anya’s smile suggested to Cerryl that she well knew the answer but raised the former High Wizard’s name for some scheming point.