L. Modesitt - Cyador’s Heirs

For all the differential in force size, Lerial doubts that the Meroweyans will attack, but he waits to see what they will do.

The two forces face each other, one in dull golden brown and one in forest brown. After some time, perhaps as long as a tenth of a glass, a horn sounds. The first two ranks of the Meroweyans hold fast, but all the other riders begin to turn their mounts.

Are you just going to let them go? For a moment, Lerial is tempted, until he recalls all the burned hamlets, the thousands who are dead and the thousands more homeless … and the thought of letting the Meroweyan survivors ride away, as if they had done nothing wrong, is not something he can accept. Nor will it send the right message to Casseon.

He order-reaches out to the ground beneath the middle of the Meroweyan force, seeking a piece of something, something small from which he can more easily separate order and chaos. Almost, immediately separated flows of silvered black and golden red shoot skyward, unseen except by Lerial, followed by brilliant pinpoints of light that all cannot fail to see.

A chaos shield flares in the middle of the Meroweyan force.

In less than a moment, lightning flashes everywhere, crisscrossing and turning Meroweyan riders and their mounts into pillars of flame and then instant columns of ash-except for the small area protected by the wizard’s shields.

Lerial creates more order-chaos separation, focusing it on the wizard’s shields and simultaneously creating stronger protective order coils before second company.

Lightning rages against the chaos shield, focused chaos against disordered but latticelike chaos … and Lerial can feel a tension, as if every hair on his head and body is standing erect, while everything and everyone around him is fixed in place, unable to move.

Then … then, a brilliant flash of light sears across Lerial’s eyes, momentarily blinding him, as the chaos shield disintegrates, revealing to his senses, but for a moment, a woman in brilliant white, with red hair that is the essence of fire.

The brilliance vanishes. Everything is cloaked in a darkness so profound that Lerial can see nothing, nothing at all. The blackness fades slowly into dark gray, and progressively lighter gray until Lerial is looking southward over what once had been a sweep of tall grass, taking in the yards and yards of smoldering grass, the charred remains of what had been men and mounts … and a circle of fine gray ash, and nothing else, that had held a chaos wizard, one lone woman.

How could you have known? Yet he understands that, woman or not, in the end, he could do no different. For all that, he feels like he should somehow mourn, not even knowing what he might be mourning.

Amid that devastation he can make out the three Meroweyan wagons, of which little remains but the iron wheel rims, the iron axle bearing rings, other iron parts he cannot identify with charred wooden remnants that might have been anything. He can feel, through his recurrent pounding headache, that Bhurl and Fhentaar have reined up several yards away, but not approached nearer, whether out of deference or fear, he cannot tell.

“Angel-flamed … never see anything like that…”

“Might give Duke Casseon something to think about…”

“Might. Too bad Moraris couldn’t see this,” Fhentaar continues in a low voice to Bhurl.

“He’d have asked the captain to spare the wagons so he could trade them,” returns the other squad leader.

Moraris would have said something about capturing them, that they would have been worth something … After that vagrant thought, Lerial just sits in the saddle and looks across the charred ground. His eyes burn, and his head still throbs.

He feels tired … and like sowshit.

What else could you do? You could have lost half the company if you’d charged them with sabres. And yet … to strike them down with lightning … But they used chaos-fire against both the Verdyn Lancers and the Verd itself.

None of that makes him feel any better.

On sixday evening, second company stays in some of the houses in Ironwood that have not yet been reoccupied. Lerial does not bother with detailing Lancers to bury the remnants of the Meroweyans. There are likely no remnants to speak of, and after all his men have done, that is something that the locals can do-or not-as they wish. He sleeps, if not well, with troubling dreams that he cannot recall once he is fully awake. While the throbbing in his head has eased, it has not eased that much, but at least his eyesight is not blurred.

After eating a mixture whose ingredients he does not wish to know for what passes as breakfast, Lerial meets with the squad leaders, and then effectively acting as squad leader for first squad, with those rankers. Then he begins to groom the gelding, under skies that are largely clear, except to the southwest. He also notices a faint acrid smoky odor, the same one that, he realizes, he has smelled ever since he loosed the lightning the afternoon before. Yet the air is clear, without a sign of haze or smoke. Immediately after he grooms and then saddles his mount, a thin man in a faded brown shirt and worn brown trousers approaches … just before Lerial is about to order the company to mount up and begin the return to Escadya.

“You’re the captain here?”

“I am,” replies Lerial warily, trying to be pleasant despite the headache that remains far from entirely fading.

“Mite bit young for that, aren’t you?” The man shakes his head. “What happened to those cess-swilling Meroweyans? They be back any time soon?”

“Almost all of them are dead. Those that aren’t are wounded or captives in Escadya.” Lerial pauses, then adds, “There might be a few wandering around here and there, but they’d likely be near Escadya … maybe Faerwest.”

“You’d not be stuffing my ears now, would you?”

“No. Most of them are dead.” Lerial’s voice comes out flat.

“How’d that happen, if you don’t mind my asking?”

Lerial does, especially with the annoying, almost whining, tone of the man’s speech that seems to worsen the pounding inside his skull, but he manages a smile. “The Meroweyans lost almost ten companies in the skirmishes with the Verdyn Lancers on their march toward Verdell. Some of the Lancers lured one army into a trap at Faerwest, and the elders burned them up in a huge fire. I understand the fire also destroyed the town. The other army, the one that came through here, attacked the Lancers just south of Escadya. More than half the invaders were killed by lightning. The others were killed, wounded, or captured by the Lancers. We destroyed the last two companies just outside the road gates south of Nevnarnia yesterday afternoon.”

“‘Destroyed.’ Big word for a young fellow like you.”

Lerial smiles faintly. “Go and see.”

Abruptly, the man edges back, then nods his head. “Be thanking you.” With that, he turns and walks quickly away.

Lerial watches him for several moments, then mounts. Second company needs to get back to Escadya.

A glass later, as second company is riding northwest on the main road, empty except for them, he is still pondering why the man, clearly a resident of Ironwood, had so suddenly decided to cut his inquisition of Lerial short. Had it been the certainty in Lerial’s voice? Or something else?

He glances up as the light seems to fade, realizing that a cloud must have crossed the sun. Now there are clouds. His smile is wry. The smile fades as he realizes he still smells the bitter acridity of smoke, if faintly.

Riding beside Lerial, Bhurl clears his throat. “Been thinking, ser. Might there be many chaos wizards in the Heldyan forces?”