The Order War (11 page)

“You think the Whites already have the city?” Krytella asked.

Gunnar shook his head. “The traces aren’t that strong. But if they get here, I don’t think there will be much resistance.”

“Why not?”

Justen could have answered that easily enough, but he took another sip of the dark beer, more bitter with its hints of chaos than it should have been, and an illustration of the answer.

“Order, especially, needs a focus. If you start bribing or removing the people around whom order would build…” Gunnar shrugged.

Justen nodded. Gunnar had explained even more clearly than he could have.

Krytella paused and took another sip of redberry. The three sat silent for a time, occasionally sipping from their mugs.

“Would you like anything else?” The serving boy batted the long, sooty eyelashes at Krytella.

The blatant nature of the come-on twisted Justen’s stomach, especially when he realized that the youth was not chaos-driven, at least not beyond the normal desires of young men.

“I should think not, thank you.” Krytella offered a smile, patently false, but the youth batted his eyelashes back in return before bowing and departing.

“This place
is
different,” admitted Gunnar.

“I can see why Creslin didn’t want to come here,” added Justen, trying not to grin as he baited the healer.

“If that’s the way you feel, well…” mused Krytella “…I think it makes me glad we’re helping the Legend.”

“Are we?” Gunnar asked.

The soldier at the farther table set her third mug on the corner of the table, then stood and walked with exaggerated
care toward the open doorway to the square. The serving boy reclaimed the mugs and the coin that rested beside them.

“I would hope so.” Krytella lowered her voice. “The Sarronnese haven’t been able to slow the Whites, and that’s why they asked for Firbek and the marines to join them on the north road that leads to Middlevale. I wanted to go with you and Justen, but Ninca said someone has to stay.”

“I wasn’t exactly given much choice.” Justen’s voice was wry. “And no one can tell me exactly what I’m supposed to do, except to try to figure out some way to help. Gunnar here can at least use the winds to spy out where the Whites are, or to bring in a fog or something.”

“I’m sure you’ll do just fine, Justen. Dorrin was very successful at that,” Krytella reassured him.

“That was centuries ago. Who knows how successful he really was?”

“You sound somewhat skeptical, Brother.”

“I’m always skeptical of legends and tales of long-dead heroes.”

The scraping of a chair interrupted the low-voiced conversation as the two traders rose from their table and left. Justen glanced around the near-empty public room, vacant now except for them—and the long-lashed serving boy, who waited by the doorway to the back room. “Everyone else has left.”

“I’m done,” Krytella said. “I hope your feelings about Sarron were worth the overpriced redberry.”

“Probably not.” Gunnar swallowed the last of his drink.

“The beer wasn’t bad,” Justen added. “Bitter, but not bad.”

“How you can drink that…” muttered Gunnar.

The healer shook her head but said nothing, ignoring even the last flirtatious smile and batted eyelashes from the serving boy.

Only a handful of hawkers remained in the square outside the Silver Shield, and even those were packing their wares into cases or packs as the three headed back toward the main gate—except for the carpet merchants, who had rolled their wares into long, heavy tubes. Although the tannery wagon
had long since left, Justen could still smell a lingering odor of solvents and manure as they passed the barred door of the leather shop.

The gate guards scarcely looked at the three leaving Sarron and walking down the causeway behind an empty farm wagon pulled by a single swaybacked chestnut.

Gunnar jumped aside to avoid a steaming pile of just-delivered dung. “It doesn’t pay to follow horses too closely.”

“Not on foot, anyway.” Justen shivered as once again he felt the miasma of chaos that seemed to lurk beyond the pale pink granite walls of Sarron, like a too-early winter fog seeping out of the Westhorns and across the unharvested green of the land.

“Are you cold? You aren’t sick, are you?” asked Krytella.

“I will be if you’ll take care of me.” He forced a semi-lecherous grin, then let it drop away as he caught the worried expression on his brother’s face.

The sound of a single horse echoed through the twilight, and the three glanced downhill toward the rider in black who swung past the farm wagon.

“Healer!” Firbek reined up. “The chief engineer needs you. One of the engineers got an arm caught in the mill.”

Something about the marine bothered Justen, even though he could sense that the man told the truth.

“Give me a ride.”

Krytella took the marine’s hand and swung up behind the saddle with a quick boost from Gunnar. The two brothers watched as the heavy-laden horse headed back downhill.

“Where are the other two healers?” asked Justen, brushing away an unseen mosquito. He swatted again, too distracted to try to set up a ward against the hungry insects.

“They were requested to visit the Tyrant. Apparently her daughter, the heir, had some difficulty that Ninca thought they could help. In the interests of harmony and goodwill, the chief engineer agreed.” Gunnar motioned toward the enclave. “We probably ought to get back.”

Justen nodded, and they began to walk more quickly downhill.

“You felt it, too, didn’t you?” asked Gunnar.

“What?”

“Firbek. He doesn’t feel quite right. It’s not chaos, but it’s…something.”

“I’ve always felt that way about Firbek.” Justen laughed harshly.

“You may have a reason. Still…” Gunnar shrugged. “We’ll have to watch him when we head into the Westhorns.”

The brothers kept walking.

Justen rubbed the muscles above his right knee, then his left. Finally, he slipped one foot out of the stirrup, flexing it and trying to reduce the cramping. Even with all the riding he’d done lately, he wondered if he’d ever get used to horses.

He glanced down the sloping hill to the right, where the stream that eventually fed into the River Sarron wound its way through the rocky foothills of southeast Sarronnyn. To his left rose the Westhorns, their heights still glittering in the summer air with ice that even the Great Change had not been able to erase. Sarron itself lay nearly five days behind.

How had he gotten into this mess? His limited experience on horseback had certainly not prepared him for so many days in the saddle. The gray plodded around another narrow turn in the road. And why was he here? With Quentel’s right arm shattered and useless for seasons, if not forever, why was he riding with armed soldiers who certainly knew far more about the business of slaughter than he could ever pick up in watching a fight or two?

A chill breeze whipped down the canyon and ripped at his jacket. He shook his head.

“Cold, isn’t it?” asked Yonada, the black-haired officer who rode up beside him.

Justen turned and shifted his weight in the saddle. “It’s not the chill. It’s the riding.” His gloved fingers brushed the
black staff in the lance holder, feeling the warmth of order even through the leather and even as his head throbbed at the evasion he had voiced. Somehow, the evasions and the little deceptions bothered him more than they used to. Was it because of the closeness of the Whites?

“You get accustomed to it.”

The carts behind Justen creaked. He turned in the saddle, swaying somewhat, to make sure that the rockets and the launching frame remained securely lashed in place.

Yonada followed his look, licked her lips. “I can’t believe you can ride so close to all that powder.”

“You are.” Justen grinned.

“Only because you are, Engineer. How can you be sure that some White Wizard won’t touch it off?”

“I can’t. But not one of them has been able to touch powder held in black iron since Dorrin came up with the idea centuries ago.” Justen looked forward to the beginning of the column, where Gunnar rode beside Dyessa, the angular force leader, who reminded Justen of a handful of iron rods not quite fully welded together.

Just before the two disappeared around the switchback, Dyessa smiled at Gunnar in response to whatever he had said.

Justen shook his head.

“That wizard, he must be something.” Yonada flicked the reins gently. “Dyessa almost never smiles.”

“Oh, he is.”

“You know him?” The black-haired Sarronnese officer laughed. “I suppose that’s a stupid question. You’re both from Recluce.”

“Recluce isn’t that small. It takes a solid six days to ride from one end of the island to the other. That’s almost as far as from Rulyarth to the Tyrant’s palace in Sarron. There are lots of people I don’t know. But the wizard’s my brother, Gunnar.”

“Younger?”

“Older,” corrected Justen with a wry smile. “Air Wizards always tend to look younger. Why, I don’t know.”

Yonada’s horse edged closer to his, and Justen studied the road as they neared the switchback around which the others
had disappeared. To the right of the road, the stream had cut a channel only a handful of cubits wide. Just beyond the switchback, the water dropped into a narrow gorge of dark, reddish rock almost thirty cubits deep. The canyon narrowed until the road was barely wide enough for but a single cart—hemmed in on the left by a sheer ledge that rose nearly a hundred cubits and by the gorge on the right. Beyond the gorge and the rushing water was another sheer wall rising to a greenish-blue sky, partly obscured by hazy white clouds.

Even at midday, the road was shadowed and cool, although Justen occasionally felt a gust of warmer and moister summer air probing the depths of the canyon from somewhere.

“We’re almost there,” the Sarronnese offered.

“Where?”

“Middlevale.” Yonada took a deep breath. “This could be—” She broke off in mid-sentence.

Justen caught a hint of raw fear behind the words. What was it about the Whites that so bothered the Sarronnese? The fact that the Sarronnese viewed the invasion as a White crusade against the Legend?

Beyond the switchback turn, the road narrowed even more, then opened onto a small valley with steep walls of reddish rock. Middlevale was hilly, perhaps two kays long, filled with rocky, shrub-covered hillocks and scrub oak. A small inn, with but two chimneys and a single story, hunkered just off the dusty road between two larger hillocks not more than half a kay from Justen. From a stripped sapling between the hut that served as a stable and the inn itself flew the blue ensign of Sarronnyn.

Justen pursed his lips and turned to Yonada. “I don’t understand why you didn’t defend the eastern gap there.” He pointed to the far end of the valley and to the narrow defile from which the White forces would presumably emerge.

“We tried that idea when we were forced out of Westwind. But the Chaos Wizard just loosened the rocks in the narrow canyons—and Derla’s whole force was smashed. The Whites can’t do that on open ground.”

“If they drop rocks, doesn’t that block the way for them later?”

“They just blow up the rocks. It takes a while and slows them down, but they can do it. We can’t.”

Justen nodded. He hadn’t fully considered all the things that a Chaos Wizard could do in mountain warfare.

Two riders galloped across the valley, raising thick dust that hung behind them like a red fog. Justen squinted to make out what was happening as the scouts reined in near the middle of the Sarronnese forces, two parallel lines of foot levies in roughly parallel lines perpendicular to the road, reinforced in the center by the horse troopers. On each flank were additional cavalry, carefully positioned behind copses of scraggly trees.

“Over there!” Firbek stretched in his stirrups and pointed toward a taller hillock in the midst of the Sarronnese forces. “We need to set up there. Get that cart moving!”

The marine ranker on the cart snapped the traces, and the cart groaned past the inn and toward the hillock pointed out by Firbek.

A thin, bearded man—broom in hand—and a gray-haired woman watched silently from the doorway of the inn.

“Why don’t they leave? There’s going to be a fight here.” Justen looked back toward the center of the Sarronnese troops, where Gunnar, Dyessa, and the bulk of the reinforcements had joined up.

“I don’t know. Everyone was told to leave. Where there’s a battle, the Whites burn everything to ashes.”

The battle ensign dipped twice, and three short blasts from a trumpet followed.

“Strike two! Strike two!” Yonada stood in the stirrups and gestured. “Form up.” She lowered her voice and turned to Justen, pointing to the hillock where Firbek stood amid the brush and red rocks. “I’ll see you there later.”

Justen watched as Yonada’s squads peeled away. He rode alone toward the marines, feeling almost useless…and somehow vaguely regretful that the friendly Yonada was gone. And he wondered why he was riding into a battle for no really good reason—just to observe? His fingers brushed the black staff, and he smiled faintly at the warmth of the order residing there.

What was he supposed to discover? A new weapon, as if
he were some second Dorrin? And who knew whether any of the stories about the great Dorrin were really true? Justen hardly felt comparable to the venerated ancient smith. At least Gunnar could ride the breezes and tell the Sarronnese leaders where the enemy forces were.

Justen tried to send his perceptions out beyond the valley, but he could sense nothing past a few hundred cubits. He nudged the gray, who did not move until he knocked his booted heels into her flanks. Then she ambled toward the hillock where Firbek wrestled the rocket launching rack off the cart. Justen dug his heels into her flanks again, and she lurched into a trot, forcing him to grab the edge of the saddle and hope his staff didn’t bounce out of the lance holder.

Great engineers didn’t have to hold onto saddles, did they? Justen hung on until the gray slowed down to a walk at the beginning of the hill’s upslope. He reined in near the top and looked eastward.

What seemed like a stream of white-coated figures issued from the defile at the far end of Middlevale and poured into the flat plain.

The Sarronnese trumpet sounded again, and the foot soldiers dropped to a kneeling position behind hastily heaped piles of earth and sand, holding long pikes ready to lift.

The blue cavalry dropped blindfolds over their mounts’ eyes.

The White forces marched forward several hundred kays, then halted—out of bow range.

Hssttt!

A firebolt flared from amid the white banners waving behind a cluster of head-high, pink-gray boulders to the right of the east entrance to Middlevale.

The gray under Justen whimpered and sidestepped, and the engineer urged her partly back down the hillock, where he dismounted and tied her to the same scrub oak as Firbek’s mount. Then he scrambled back up the rocket emplacement.

Another firebolt flashed from the area of the white banners, dropping just short of the front line of the Sarronnese. Even before it had hissed into a blackened spot on the sandy earth, another fireball arced into the Sarronnese lines.

A scream echoed across Middlevale.

A heavy roll of drums thundered from the east end of the valley, and the White foot and lancers began to move forward as another fireball smashed into the left side of the thin Sarronnese line.

“Rockets ready!” snapped Firbek.

Justen frowned. The Whites were well beyond the normal range of the ship-to-ship rockets. He edged up to Firbek. “The rockets aren’t accurate at that distance.”

“Strike the first!” ordered Firbek, not even looking at Justen.

Whhstt!
After heading straight from the small launcher, the rocket neared the White lines, then curved to the right, past the soldiers in gray, and exploded in a gout of flame against a boulder.

“Another one!” snapped Firbek.

The two marines lifted another rocket into the black iron tube.

“It’s too far,” Justen said.

“We can’t get any closer.” Firbek turned toward the woman marine with the striker. “Strike it.”

Whhssttt!

The second rocket flared straight toward the Iron Guard, then twisted upward, exploding in a shower of iron fragments and flame.

The White lancers rode forward at an even pace, carrying white-bronze lances with tips that glistened with fire. Justen scanned the lines, noting that the Whites outnumbered the Sarronnese almost two to one.

Another roll of drums, and the White lancers charged.

A staccato trumpet command warbled from the Sarronnese side, and the pikes came up, except at the far left flank.

The lancers peeled away from the pikes, all but those directly in front of the marine position, where nearly a full squad angled through and began cutting the pike-holders down from behind. The left flank began to crumple.

“There. Lower the launcher!” Firbek jabbed toward the White lancers.

Hhhsttt!
The firebolt exploded in front of the launcher, and one of the marines flared into a charred pillar, toppling forward on the crest of the hill.

Ignoring the sickly odor of burnt meat, Justen grabbed the left-hand wheel on the launcher and began to crank while the woman marine slipped another rocket into place.

“Strike it!”

Justen released his hold on the wheel and concentrated, trying to sense the air around the rocket, but the missile curved into the stony ground and cartwheeled into a fir, turning the tree into an instant torch.

Hhhssttt!
A firebolt flared from the higher stretch of road on the far side of the valley and washed across the leading row of the Sarronnese to the left of the gap in the line so quickly that none of the four even screamed as they turned into dark ash.

“Do something, Engineer!” bellowed Firbek.

“Cover!” ordered Dyessa.

The Sarronnese scattered for boulders, for low, rocky rises in the uneven valley floor, even for the few tree trunks.

The Iron Guard horse formed up into strike squads at the far end of the canyon.

Justen glanced around, searching for Gunnar, but his brother was nowhere to be seen.

“Another rocket!” demanded Firbek.

Justen and the remaining marine adjusted the launching frame, then dropped behind it as a firebolt washed harmlessly over the black iron.

As soon as the flame subsided, Justen lowered the launcher until it was pointing directly at the nearest lancers, then forced himself into a semblance of detached calmness. This time, he concentrated on the rocket itself, trying to add a touch more order to the casing, a sense of smoothness, a sense of direction. He continued to pour order into the metal even as the marine touched off the fuse.

Crrrummpp!
The fourth rocket exploded where it had been aimed—right in the midst of the lead squad of the White lancers—casting black iron shards into dozens of bodies. The White lancers, even those barely touched by the shrapnel, flared into points of flame.

A wave of whiteness flowed back from the destruction and swept around Justen. He staggered and put a hand out to the launcher frame to steady himself.

“You all right?” the marine asked.

Justen forced a nod against the internal chaos and straightened up.

Of the entire White lancer squad, only a single figure remained, and it wheeled its mount and galloped back toward the swelling lines of soldiers in dark gray: the Iron Guard, waiting like a storm on the horizon of the Eastern Ocean. Even on the left flank, the White lancers had peeled away, although Justen had not seen why.

For a long moment, the battlefield seemed frozen, motionless.

Then another set of drum-rolls rumbled from the east, and the white-clad foot began to march forward, away from the Iron Guard, almost like breakers preceding a wave.

“Another rocket!” ordered Firbek.

Justen again smoothed the flows and forces around the rocket and then watched as a whole section of White forces flashed into flame with the missile’s explosion. But the white-clad wave continued onward, rolling toward them even as Justen struggled to remain upright against the white backlash.