L. Modesitt - The Chaos Balance

Infrequently scattered points of reflected starlight dotted the smooth dark surface of the river-wider than Nylan recalled. Even centuries after the Old Rationalist planoforming, the chaotic white-red hints of violence seethed beneath the ground and beneath deep and slow-flowing river waters, the unseenline between what had been and what now was as clear and implacable as ever.

And I…we’re…going to harness that?

“Yes,” answered Ayrlyn.

“I’d better start working out the practical details.” Especially since I haven’t the faintest idea how .

“I have every confidence in you.”

“Thanks.”

Riding two by two between the stone walls, they reached the top of the span, where the echo of hoofs seemed to reverberate into the night. Yet no lights appeared in any buildings on the north side of the bridge.

Downstream, the fractionally darker shadows that were piers loomed above the north side of the water, and a solitary dog barked…and barked. Nylan tried not to stiffen, wondering who would come to investigate, but no lights appeared near the piers and the dog and the clack of hoofs began to echo off the brick buildings once they entered the town proper.

“It’s spooky.” Ayrlyn’s voice was low. “Like the world outside their walls doesn’t exist at night.”

“They have to shut it out,” whispered Nylan, “but that makes it easier for us.”

The open-columned marketplace was empty-yet unbarred and unguarded, and across the street, the water splashed quietly down the sculpted tree fountain, water holding the faintest glow. Some sort of chaos?

“The town still doesn’t smell,” Nylan said.

“You want it to?”

“No. The only thing I’ve been able to smell is harvested beans, and a dampness around the river. No flowers…no garbage…no…nothing…”

“It does seem odd.”

“Better no smell than the smell of Lornth by the old wharfs,” suggested Sylenia dryly.

Nylan wondered. Cyador was clean and ordered, but how high was the price for such cleanliness-and how much force had been required, and still was?

Too much…

But how many people preferred order at any cost?

So numerous were the horses that the entire countryside rumbled like a massive drum. The white uniforms spread across the mottled brown and green of the grasslands so that the hills looked as though early winter had fallen upon them.

Behind the lancers and their horses came the foot, rows upon rows, white and well dressed out even for all the kays they had marched. Behind them rolled the legions of wagons-supply wagons, armorers’ wagons, and the glistening wagons of the marshal’s equipage.

Behind the van rode Marshal Queras, Majer Piataphi, and the white mages. Triendar squinted from beneath a broad and floppy white hat. Themphi’s face was red and blistered, while Fissar bounced in his saddle.

The van had slowed at the ridge line that overlooked a lower-lying and greener valley.

“There are the grasslands barbarians!” announced Queras.

On the far north side of the valley stood a settlement, flanking a large pond or small lake. To the west, above the grassy swale that connected the two ridges, waited a dark mass of riders under the fir tree banners of Jerans.

As the Cyadorans watched, the Jeranyi horse wheeled, formed a wedge, and then plunged down through the swale and up onto the west end of the ridge, toward the left flank of the advancing Cyadoran Mirror Lancers, the drum of hoofbeats echoing on the sunbaked grasslands.

“To the left!” ordered Piataphi, spurring his mount toward the van that had begun to turn.

The white-bronze trumpet sounded its triplets, and the shields lifted, flashing light spears into the Jeranyi ranks, and the white lances leveled as the massed Cyadoran force slowly swung around. Light spears winked from the polished shields, turning the front ranks of the Jeranyi into a blaze of reflections. Majer Piataphi reached the front rank of the lancers and lifted his sabre again.

The day filled with the clash of blades and lances, sabres and shortswords, and the dark knot of Jeranyi appeared ever smaller as the lines of white-clad armsmen swelled, as did the clangor.

Themphi stared as bodies fell from bloodstained saddles; Triendar shook his head ever so slightly, so slightly that the floppy hat barely moved. Fissar, pale white, looked at the small lake, well away from the blood, and swallowed convulsively.

From her mount beside Nylan’s, Ayrlyn raised her eyebrows. “You all right?”

“Sorry.” Nylan flushed at the growling from his stomach. “Sylenia’s culinary inventions have definitely kept us from starving, but the side effects are…” Rather than finish the sentence he never should have begun, he glanced to the west, at a hillside that had rapidly become all too typical, a patchwork of brown and black and gray.

So far, all the holdings that they had passed since entering southern Lornth were ashes, black lumps in the midst of blackened grass that stretched for kays around even the most humble of hovels. Four days of scattered ashes and cinders, and more scattered ashes and cinders.

“We’re eating, and we don’t have to stop to forage,” Ayrlyn pointed out.

Nylan wished he’d said nothing.

“Might have been better,” Ayrlyn grinned.

“You would eat ashes were it not-” began the nursemaid.

“I’m sorry. I know.” Nylan sniffed the air as the mare carried him up the long incline. “Something’s burning.”

“Grass.”

“More than grass. More than just a holding.” The engineer glanced at Ayrlyn.

The redhead’s eyes glazed over, and she half-slumped in the saddle.

Nylan slowed his mare to match the slower pace of the half-attended chestnut that Ayrlyn rode.

“Gwasss…wadah, pease?” Weryl coughed after his request.

“You are not thirsty,” Sylenia informed her charge.

Nylan suspected that Weryl just wanted to talk, but, precocious as his son appeared to be, his vocabulary was still rather limited. So he asked for water, and more water.

“There was a town ahead. Clynya, maybe, but it’s hard to tell.” Ayrlyn shivered and straightened in the saddle.

“Hard to tell?” Although he asked, Nylan had a feeling that he knew what she meant.

“Exactly. You know.”

He did-the town had been burned the way the holdings they had ridden past had been.

They reined up at the top of the hills and looked northward. Nylan glanced across the blackened expanse, kays and kays, on each side of the river. Smoke still swirled up from blackened heaps. Was the smoldering mass on the right side of the river all that was left of the barracks where they had stayed?

Along with acridness of ashes and cinders came the odor of charred meat. Only the thin plumes of grayish smoke moved in the afternoon heat, rising in thin spirals-except for a single figure that might have been a dog darting along what had been the road through Clynya.

“Clynya? This be Clynya?” asked Sylenia in a choked voice.

“We think so.” Nylan studied what had been the barracks and the stable, where even the collapsed sod roof seemed, if his eyes were reliable from the distance, to smolder.

“They are demons…”

Nylan nodded, absently wondering again how a people who could build such clean and advanced homes could so consciencelessly destroy whole towns and their inhabitants. Ayrlyn had once said that technology enabled mercy, but the Cyadorans seemed less merciful than their lower-tech neighbors, rather than more.

“Because they don’t believe outsiders are real people.” Ayrlyn cleared her throat.

“And because they understand that force is the only true arbiter?”