L. Modesitt - Colors of Chaos

The Gallosian heavy lancers had moved onto the road behind Cerryl’s force, and from behind them came cadenced marching songs and the measured step of the Gallosian foot. The column plodded northward along the river road. The sun crept higher into the eastern sky, bringing more light and increasingly unwelcome warmth to the land, the road, and the riders. Nothing moved anywhere except the riders and the armsmen, northward toward Kleth.

As the sun climbed, Cerryl struggled to keep his eyes and senses on the road. The line of packed clay curved eastward in an arc that followed the river, then curved back westward. To the west of the road were fields, showing even shoots of green, green that Faltar and the others would sear as they had those already left behind the column.

As they rode around the curve to the west, Cerryl studied where the road ahead changed. As he had seen in the screeing glass, the last ten kays, those closest to Kleth, were almost like a White highway, with oblong paving stones, radiating a faint order, set edge to edge. The paved center of the road itself was nearly fifteen cubits wide, enough for two wagons abreast.

“Better here,” said Buar.

“Looks to be so.”

The paving stones looked normal enough, and the low stone walls were set back more than ten cubits from the edge of the paving stones. The walls were just a shade less than two cubits high, hardly tall enough to harbor the invisible knives that the blues had placed in more wooded areas. Not unless they can make them invisible or they’re aimed at the horses .

Cerryl rode at the front of the van, on the western side of the road, with a lancer between him and Buar, who rode the eastern point. As they neared the beginning of the paving stones, Cerryl tried to get a feel for the road. He could sense nothing out of the ordinary except the faint nagging order of the oblong paving stones-and that this part of the road was not new, but old. Had the entire road been paved at one time? Or had the traders run out of coins for paving?

“…like one of ours.”

“…don’t even think it.”

The gelding’s hoofs struck the paved way, and Cerryl continued to study the wall and the paving stones, yet all he could sense or see were the stones and the strong residual order they held.

“Riders ahead!” called one of the scouts riding but a hundred cubits ahead of the column and along the shoulder of the road.

Cerryl strained.

A small company of blue lancers appeared from behind a low hill, riding at an angle to the road. They reined up abruptly, drew bows, and loosed a double handful of shafts.

Cerryl raised a chaos barrier, struggling as he did to trace any possible order concentrations.

Whhstt! A shaft tumbled past Cerryl, its momentum killed by his barrier.

Thunnk! A second shaft plowed into a lancer somewhere behind the mage, who winced at the sound.

As quickly as they had halted and loosed their shafts, the blue lancers wheeled and rode northward.

Cerryl forced his senses onto the road, even as Teras sent forth a line of Gallosian cavalry to pursue the blues, who swung around the curve in the road that brought it more eastward. Cerryl’s eyes and senses picked up the Spidlarian lancers on the crest of the hill toward which the road curved and climbed-the lancers and something else. The Black mage-the smith.

Cerryl’s guts tightened. Why would the smith be with the blue lancers? Cerryl’s eyes surveyed the road, but it remained a road, oblong paving stones and all, a road flanked by a stone wall, nothing more. Even his senses could discern nothing besides the faint order of the stones.

But why is the mage here? Cerryl turned in the saddle. The columns marched along behind him and the vanguard, with Jeslek so far back that even the High Wizard’s banner was unseen. The riders and foot soldiers stretched two kays back toward Elparta, led by two squads of cavalry just behind Cerryl’s small group, cavalry under the purple banners of Gallos.

Behind the combined vanguard were the first Gallosian levies, and behind them was the first group of White mages-those headed by Ryadd. Around Ryadd, there Cerryl sensed the reddish white of chaos marshaled but for destruction and the tongues of chaos that leapt forth, blackening and shriveling the grass and the shoots in the fields beyond.

The Gallosian lancers slowed as they caught sight of the larger blue force on the top of the low rise.

Cerryl blinked. The Black mage remained with the lancers on the hill ahead. Why? Yet Cerryl could still find no sense of inordinate order, no sense of black iron-just the confusing order of paving stones and wall stones.

“Darkness!”

At the exclamation, Cerryl flicked his eyes to his right and back as a Gallosian lancer pulled a suddenly lamed mount out to the side of the column. The single laming did not slow the advance of the purple banners of Gallos, nor that of the white banners that followed, shimmering in the sun.

As the vanguard approached the long, gentle incline, the column slowed ever so slightly, and Cerryl felt mounts moving closer to the gelding. He had the insane urge to spur the gelding clear of the column, despite the mounted blue-clad lancers on the knoll ahead.

Teras bellowed another command, and another score of Gallosian and White Lancers pulled to the side of the road and began to ride forward to reinforce the first detachment sent after the blues.

CRRRRRuuummmmmpppp!!!! Earth, stones, bodies, blood…undefined shreds sprayed skyward. Cerryl felt the ground shiver under the gelding, wondering, his eyes darting over his shoulder, at the explosion behind him.

“How…?” demanded Buar, puzzlement and anger flashed across his face.

Cerryl opened his mouth, then shut it, ducking.

CRRRRRuuummmmmpppp!!!! A second gout of colored soil, stones, and flesh erupted into the sky.

CRRRRRuuummmmmpppp!!!! By the third gout of gore, Cerryl found his eyes seared from the pain that had blasted through him, and he tottered in the gelding’s saddle, glancing rearward again.

The first line of white banners had vanished, along with the second group of levies and the third. From pits below the knoll perhaps a score of archers appeared and began to fire upon the vanguard and the remaining Gallosian levies.

Cerryl stood in the saddle, urging the gelding forward. “Back off! Back off!”

The vanguard circled, then charged the knoll, right into the storm of arrows.

Cerryl’s mouth was dry, his orders to back off ignored.

Of the mounted Gallosians but two remained, and they rode back toward the decimated Gallosian levies, already retreating, back toward the green banners of Certis.

Cerryl glanced around, back at the bodies, at the suddenly organized and milling forces, at purple banners being reraised. Then he looked northward, at the now-empty knoll, empty as if the Black mage and the blue lancers had never been there.

What happened? How could it happen? Cerryl had never felt any strange type of order, or even an untoward concentration of order, but whatever the smith had done had been concealed beneath the paving stones. How could you have failed so badly?

He glanced toward the space where the young White mages had been riding, but…amid the carnage…nothing moved. Nothing. The sparks of power that had been mages-nothing.

Faltar!

How…? That question would not go away, not for a long time…if ever.

He swallowed again, his throat still dry. His eyes flicked back at the gap in the column, and his lips tightened. You were supposed to find such traps, and you and your lancers were supposed to be the ones who triggered them-not Faltar. Not even Myredin and Bealtur . Sweat ran down his forehead, burning his eyes, but he didn’t bother to wipe it away.