L. Modesitt - The Chaos Balance

“Is not that why the Lord Protector of Cyador told us to clear the area around the mines?” asked the balding captain.

“Yes, Miatorphi.” Piataphi lowered his voice. “We still have to maintain that area. It is one thing to destroy or drive out everyone; it is another to hold it-as his great-grandsire found out. That is why we must strike quickly and annihilate everyone.” He coughed again as the following wind swirled down more smoke. “Let us ride up with the van until the wind changes.”

He guided his mount to the clear left side of the white stone high-way, then urged it to carry him ahead of the exhaust gases from the mighty wagons.

The mare was breathing heavily as she carried Nylan out of the narrow space in the rocky defile where the road finally leveled and started back down once more.

Nylan glanced ahead, where the orange white sun had just dropped below the Westhorns, and where the shadows cast by the peaks to the west had cloaked the road and the wooded valley ahead in gloom. The smith shifted his weight in the saddle and, as his eyes adjusted to the dimmer light, rubbed his forehead in relief from the glare he had been facing for what had seemed so long.

“It’s hard riding into the sunset,” he said, half over his shoulder to Ayrlyn, whose chestnut followed.

“Gaaa-dah!” answered Weryl, windmilling his arms.

“By this time of day, any riding is hard,” Ayrlyn snorted. “Even your son thinks so.”

“He has sense. Tell me again why doing this is a good idea.”

“Because all the other ideas are worse,” suggested the flame-haired healer.

“That has some merit, but not the sort of thing you read about or see on trideo screens.”

“We saw our last trideo screens a long time ago,” she pointed out, “but you’re right. Fictional characters always have one good choice. They just have to find it.”

“And us?”

“The least of terrible choices, and sometimes all choices are bad.”

The smith straightened his legs, easing himself up in the saddle, prompting another set of arm-windmills by Weryl. Ahead appeared two crude long walls, forming a half-roofed triangle that faced a stone-ringed firepit. To the left was an overgrown path-leading presumably through the trees to the stream. Nylan could smell the dampness from the marshy flats beyond the structure, borne on the cooling light wind out of the west.

“That looks like a rough sort of way station,” Nylan said.

“It is,” said Ayrlyn. “We used it once, I think. There are lots of mosquitoes on the path to the stream. I remember that.”

“Should we go on?”

“There’s not much else. The road gets rocky and narrow beyond the valley, and winds away from the stream.”

“Great. I hate mosquitoes.”

“It’s quiet,” said Ayrlyn, as they rode toward the triangular shelter.

Nylan strained his ears, in between Weryl’s interruptions, but could hear nothing, not even the normal whirrs and insect chirps. His eyes went to the road, and he frowned, then pointed. “Hoof prints, there.”

“They’re more recent,” Ayrlyn said, standing in her stirrups and scanning the area behind the shelter.

The smith’s eyes flicked to the structure, but no one lurked in the back, and the flat area around the fire seemed untouched in the growing dimness. He studied the trees again, but the thick foliage revealed nothing.

Twirrrppp…twirrrppp…

Nylan didn’t recognize the annoyingly cheerful bird call, and only saw a flash of yellow-banded black wings. “What’s that bird?” He felt there was something about it he should remember.

“They’re noisy.” Ayrlyn frowned as though she were trying to recall something as well.

The yellow and black bird perched on a shrub on the other side of the rock-circled firesite, its head cocked in a perky attitude. Twirrrppp…twirrrppp…

Nylan started to extend his senses beyond what his eyes could see when he heard the faintest of clinks, and his hand reached for the blade in the shoulder harness, realizing all too late that he should have drawn the blade first. The bird was a traitor bird!

“Daaa-dah!” Both Weryl’s chubby hands grasped at his arm.

“No.” Nylan eased his hand free and grasped the blade. “No!”

Whhsstt! One arrow hissed past his shoulder, and he lurched forward, before he stopped, the reflex halted by Weryl’s strangled yell and bulk in the carrypak.

A line of fire creased Nylan’s left shoulder, and he spurred the mare in toward the shelter, hoping that he could use the log walls as a barrier to the archer, and knowing that he was too close to flee without becoming an even better target.

Hoofs thundered out of the woods toward the two angels. Awkwardly, Nylan struggled to get his blade free, hampered by Weryl’s very presence and the boy’s anger at being nearly squashed-and two very active and windmilling arms. He didn’t look at Ayrlyn, having his hands full in trying to turn the mare and raise his own blade.

Five riders burst up the path, led by a tall and bearded man on a roan, who wore brown leathers and swung a hand-and-a-half blade like the crowbar it resembled toward Nylan’s head with a yell. “Haaaiii!”

All too conscious of Weryl on his chest, Nylan somehow parried the first brigand’s wild cut, half-ducking as the man rode past and toward Ayrlyn. He barely managed to get the blade back up before the second and third riders were on him.

The second rider, in gray, missed with a slash, and the third, in tattered brown leathers, lifted a rusty blade with a black-toothed smile.

Desperately, Nylan threw his first blade, as he had learned through much trial over the past two years. Then, trying to yank the mare away from the two with one hand, he struggled with Weryl, the mare, and his unsteady seat in an effort to clear the second shortsword from the waist scabbard. The mare skittered sideways.

“Get him, Skittor…get-”

“Watch the other.”

A wave of whiteness swept over Nylan, leaving him momentarily blind, as his thrown blade slammed through the second brigand. He tried to duck, again hampered by Weryl and the carrypak…and by his son’s whimpers and flailing arms.

A slash of fire and a dull ache slammed the smith’s left shoulder-the off-center blade of the third bandit-and Nylan half-slumped in the saddle before somehow jerking the second blade clear of its sheath. He had to stop them-if not for himself, for Weryl.

Another dull impact slammed across the top of his left thigh as he brought the dark gray blade up in time to parry a third half-wild slash. Despite the pain-blinded and intermittent images relayed by chaos-stressed eyes, he managed to block another flurry of weak slashes before his eyes cleared enough and his blade, following Ryba’s and Istril’s training, brought down the third brigand.

Fighting white flashes like renewed knives in his eyes, he turned the mare back toward the road, where a single rider slashed at Ayrlyn.

The man barely had a chance to look up in surprise before the Westwind shortsword cut through him.

Then…Nylan clung to the saddle, effectively blind, with his eyes providing but scattered images that strobed against the increasing darkness of the twilight, while he struggled to keep his fingers around the heavy blade in his right hand.

“Daa…daaa…wah-dah?”

“Your daddy’s hurt.” Ayrlyn’s voice came from a great distance, although the smith knew that she had reined up beside him.

“Wah-dah?”

Nylan forced another deep breath…and another, telling himself to concentrate on breathing, hoping that no more brigands showed up.

“I’m having some trouble seeing, but you don’t look like you can see at all. I’m going to tie up my mount, and help you and Weryl down. Can you hold on for a moment?”