L. Modesitt - The Chaos Balance

“Does no one here ever sleep?” grumbled Sylenia, throwing back her blanket with a disgusted gesture.

“Actually,” Nylan said, “we were sleeping while you were out exchanging sweet words with a certain armsman.”

“Sleeping you were not, not even when I returned.”

Nylan flushed.

…walked into that one… Ayrlyn shook her head and headed for the provisions bag.

As Ayrlyn used her dagger on the remaining squash bread, Nylan hacked off several slices of the hard yellow cheese. Even more than an eight-day old, the orange bread was better than that turned out by the Lornian armsmen’s cooks. On the other hand, the cheese, tough as it was, remained a definite improvement over wasol roots.

“The cheese, it is hard.”

“It’s what we have.” Nylan refrained from comparing cheese and wasol roots. “The bread is still good.”

Ayrlyn grinned, then erased the expression as she handed a slab of the orange stuff to Weryl, who sat on the end of his cot, eyes fixed on the food.

“Food.”

“You can eat,” Nylan told his son, and followed his own advice.

When they had finished their quick breakfast, the engineer looked to the redhead. “Can you find out where the Cyadorans are-without using too much effort?”

Ayrlyn’s eyes glazed over, and Nylan waited…but only briefly.

“They’re camped on the bluffs four or five kays south, and they’re beginning to form up.”

Nylan nodded. “The chimes were right, then?”

“Looks that way.”

The two began to strap on their blades.

Then, Nylan picked up Weryl, holding him tightly. His eyes burned, and he swallowed. How long he held his son, he did not know.

“Nylan…” …need to go…

“I know.” The engineer lifted his head and looked into the green eyes. “You be good for Sylenia, you understand?”

“Good, da?”

“He always be good,” said the dark-haired nursemaid. “Greedy, mayhap, but good.”

Nylan set the silver-haired child on his cot, but Weryl’s arms stretched out again. “Da?”

“He has to go, child.” Sylenia picked up the boy. “They both must go…and Tonsar.”

Nylan and Ayrlyn eased out into the yard under a dark green-blue sky barely turning orange in the east beyond the roofs of Rohrn. The clank of harnesses, the whuff ing and chuff ing and neighing of mounts and the low murmurs of wary armsmen filled the space between the stables and the barracks.

As they crossed the yard toward the stable, the dark-cloaked figure of Fornal pointedly turned his back to the angels, and began to talk to Lewa. Nylan frowned.

“He doesn’t want to see us.”

“I wonder why.”

“Because he can’t deal with us. He knows we’re the only hope, but we stand for change and for a lot of things he finds hard to accept. And he’s smart enough to know that there’s no point in making a point until there’s a reason to,” suggested Ayrlyn.

“After the battle, if we have an ‘after.’”

“Something like that, but there will be. And we’ll have to deal with that, too.”

“So…we’re disposable if we win?”

“I don’t know,” Ayrlyn admitted. “Gethen’s hard to read, and there’s Zeldyan. She’s not happy with Fornal, either.”

Huruc offered a half-gesture, half-salute as he rode past.

Both angels returned the gesture.

“Some people still think we exist,” Nylan noted.

“The better ones.”

Nylan tried not to breathe too deeply, not when the front of the stable smelled of manure, horse urine, damp straw, and other even less appetizing items, but his nose twitched and his mouth curled.

“Pretty rank,” Ayrlyn confirmed.

Like their choices-rank: Ryba’s feminist dictatorship-clean, ordered, and oppressive; Lornth’s honor-bound, backward, and filthy male autocracy; or Cyador’s chaos-founded, clean, male-dominated, and all-controlling empire.

“We have another choice,” she pointed out. The forest…more home than anything…

“Not unless we defeat Cyador.”

Still, his thoughts held the small and clean cottage that had seemed more homelike than most of Candar. Had it been more homelike than Sybra? He wasn’t certain, and that comparison would have to wait.

Their mounts were near the front of the stable, for which Nylan was glad, having the feeling that matters got even ranker deeper in the recesses of the ancient structure.

They groomed and saddled the two mares quickly and silently, although Ayrlyn ended up helping the always-slower Nylan. By the time they led their mounts out to the comparatively less odorous yard before the stable, the sun peered over the roofs of Rohrn. Only a dotting of distant white clouds marred the green-blue sky-to the west.

“Angels!” boomed a burly mounted figure. “I have not my orders from you.”

Nylan couldn’t help but grin. “Tonsar.”

“Lord Gethen, he told me to find you. And to do as you ordered.” Tonsar’s voice lowered slightly. “Sylenia-she told me the same, and she was not gentle in her words.”

“She has gotten a little more forthright,” Nylan observed cautiously.

“She speaks her mind, and you men…” Ayrlyn shook her head and mounted.

Nylan followed her example and climbed into his saddle. “Was I complaining? Did I say a negative word?”

“You didn’t have to.”

The chimes rang again, longer, more loudly.

“Ah…angels…my orders?” Behind Tonsar was at least a squad of armsmen, mounted. Nylan could see Sias’s long face.

The engineer paused, fingering his chin. “Actually, it’s pretty simple. You’ll need a squad or so just to keep anyone from bothering us while we work. It’ll be easier if we can get out of Lornth, but we don’t need to be on top of the enemy.”

A figure in black galloped out of the barracks yard, holding a huge blade high. A good tenscore armsmen cantered after him.

“There goes the great armsman,” muttered Nylan.

“Don’t be bitter.”

“We are ready,” announced Tonsar. “We will shield you while you destroy the white demons.”

“Let’s go.” Nylan turned the mare after the departing armsmen, but let her walk quickly. He doubted that a canter or gallop would make any difference, except to leave him sore.

The Lornian forces were drawing up to the southeast, less than a kay beyond the last houses that could have been deemed a part of the town. There was no wall, as was the case with any town the angels had seen in Lornth.

Gethen and Fornal had arrayed their armsmen in four squares, with Fornal positioned with a small mounted guard before the two squares to the right, and Gethen before those to the left. Nylan rode to a point even with the front rank of the squares and midway between the second and third squares.

Gethen glanced in their direction.

Nylan shifted his weight in the saddle, watching as the lines of white, the shimmering round shields reflecting the sunlight, formed a semicircle on the flat that had been fields and meadows, a semicircle of destruction that was more than two kays away from the outskirts of Rohrn, and more than a kay from the Lornian forces. The white troops and lancers stretched from the river bluff due south of the town all the way to the northwest road that led to Lornth itself-an arc of nearly a hundred and twenty degrees filled with armsmen and weapons, without a gap.

“Here?” asked Ayrlyn, reining up.

“As good a spot as any.”

“Never have I seen so many armsmen…” whispered Tonsar.

Nylan hoped never to see so many ever again, either. “You better get your squad set up.” He swung out of the saddle.

Ayrlyn followed his example.

“Someone will need to hold our mounts,” he told Tonsar.