The Order War (28 page)

The dark-haired engineer paced along the heavy-timbered wharf, glancing back at the puffs of white smoke floating into the sky from the stacks of the
Pride of Brista
. Her eyes flicked down the pier toward the warehouses, past the two Hamorian traders and the sleek lines of the powered schooner that had no nameplate and bore black rigging and canvas—a smuggler if any vessel deserved the name.

Wagons continued to roll up to all four ships, disgorging goods.

“ ’Ware the wagon! ’Ware the wagon!”

Altara moved back out of the path of the carter, then stepped farther aside as two women, dressed in dark-blue leathers and carrying blades, escorted their consorts and three children along the rough timbers. Behind the family came three handcarts, heaped cubits high with bales and bags. And behind the carts followed three hard-faced guards, each woman bearing double blades and a pack.

One of the guards nodded to Altara, and the engineer returned the nod, her eyes flicking back toward the head of the pier.

Puffs of smoke rose from the tall stacks of the two-hundred-fifty-cubit-long Hamorian steamer:
Empress Dafrille
. Altara frowned at the order-tensions radiating from the boilers, then sighed as she saw Gunnar’s blond and gangling figure striding down the pier. She stepped aside for another wagon, this one laden with rolls of Sarronnese carpets destined for one of the Hamorian ships.

“…loose the sling!”

“…bound for Atla in Hamor…”

Altara peered over the bustle of people and cargo toward Gunnar and waved.

The weather mage waved in return and kept walking, disappearing for a moment behind another wagon, this one filled with wooden crates.

Gunnar shook his head as he approached.

“Not any trace of him?” asked Altara.

“No. He’s alive. I think I’d know if he weren’t. But wherever he is, it’s a long way from here.” Gunnar hopped on a bollard to avoid a careening hand truck loaded with three crates, then dropped back to the pier beside Altara.

“You took long enough.” She glanced toward the
Pride of Brista
, where two sailors on the pier were beginning to help single up the lines. “We need to hurry.”

“I climbed the bluff over there. I thought the height might help. Besides, we’re not leaving until later.” Gunnar dodged as a heavyset woman rolled an empty handcart back toward the head of the pier.

“The port-master is clearing the piers so two more steamers can berth. Everyone’s being pressed to load more quickly.” Altara threaded her way along the edge of the pier, not looking back to see if Gunnar followed.

“Everyone’s given up.”

“Wouldn’t you? The Tyrant’s dead; the heir’s a sickly fifteen-year-old, and there’s no real army left. Sarron’s a pile of rubble, and the Whites are three days from Rulyarth.” Altara snorted. “You’ll notice we’re not staying, either.”

“Some help we were.” Gunnar stopped short of the gangway of
The Pride of Brista
as a hefty stevedore rolled an empty hand truck down.

“We couldn’t do it alone. You and Justen wiped out about an entire army between you. What else did you expect to do?”

Gunnar shrugged helplessly.

“You two Blacks, get on board. We’re lifting the gangway,” called the second from the deck.

Altara and Gunnar exchanged glances. Altara nodded at Gunnar, and the sandy-haired man stepped onto the plank. The engineer followed.

With a last deep breath, Justen halted at the top of the stony rise. He chewed slowly on the chunk of green cactus, gently brushed aside a flake of dried skin from his blistered face, and eased himself onto a lighter-colored stone that seemed flat. The too-big blade in the two-small scabbard banged against rock and his bruised leg.

“Ooooo…” Even now, in the early morning, the stone had picked up enough sunlight to be uncomfortable. He turned his head and looked back to the north. Heat wavered off the gray stones that covered the rows and rows of hills, each hill like the one behind it. Then he studied the hills before him. Was the faint line on the horizon the high forest of Naclos…or another mirage?

He blinked, wiping his forehead. The ground seemed to shiver, and he sat on the hot stone and took the water bottle from his belt, swallowing about half of the remainder and studying the bottle before replacing it in his belt. How much longer could he could keep finding water?

Some of the dizziness abated. In time, he stood and eased downhill, placing each booted foot carefully on the loose rock, looking for an overhang or a shady spot before the full heat of midday, or, equally important, for one of the small, green tub cacti and the moisture it would contain, or for another pocket of rock water, or a small sinkhole.

According to his all-too-rough calculations and his own
sense of direction, the high forests of Naclos were still days away. All that lay behind him or ahead of him was stone, the endless gray stone of the Stone Hills, a dry ocean of rock.

“Ocean of rock, ocean of stone…can’t drink either one.” He laughed hoarsely, then continued to slog along the partly shaded dry washes that headed roughly southward, his eyes and senses alert for water or for the few edible cactus fruits.

One foot…and then the other…one foot…and then the other…while overhead, the white-orange sun blazed through the clear blue-green sky. One foot…and then the other…

“The Whites have taken both Rulyarth and the harbor. Suthya is surrounded on all sides.” Claris rubbed her forehead for an instant, then sipped from the black glass goblet on the Council table.

The roar of surf from the beach below the Black Holding provided a background for the cold drizzle that fell beyond the closed windows. Only two of the oil lamps in the wall sconces were lit.

“You can see why I felt that any significant commitment of resources to the Tyrant was premature at best.” Ryltar brushed back a wispy lock of brown hair.

“Ryltar…” The third counselor coughed, then moistened her thin lips. “Our handful of volunteers cost the Whites dearly. Perhaps more would have saved the Sarronnese.”

“Jenna, dear, have we learned nothing in the centuries since the Founders? The great Creslin himself could save only those who were willing to save themselves, and that was with all his power. The Sarronnese were not willing to fight, not the way Southwind would, or even Suthya.” Ryltar lifted his goblet, then set it down without drinking.

“And now Suthya and Southwind stand alone, each sepa
rated by a Sarronnyn held by the White devils. Not exactly promising, you must admit.” The black-haired and broad-shouldered older woman shook her head, then took another sip from the goblet.

“Let’s be honest, ladies. Where would we have gotten enough troops to have made a difference in Sarronnyn? Without leaving Recluce itself defenseless? All told, we have…what? Score forty marines? Another score twenty students with some skill at arms? We have not exactly pursued the art of land warfare.” Ryltar smiled.

“Why it is that your reasoning always leaves me queasy, Ryltar?” Jenna glanced outside as a flash of lightning overpowered the glow of the oil lamps. “Perhaps it’s because you have been the one who has continually opposed increasing the number of marines. Or increasing the iron-ore shipments from Hamor.”

Ryltar shrugged. “I don’t deny it. One must pay for such expansions, and I have always opposed increasing tax levies.”

“Let’s not get into that this evening,” suggested Claris. “The point is that Fairhaven has taken another step in its master plan for conquering Candar. The question is what we intend to do about it?”

“Ah, yes. The great master plan.” Ryltar smirked.

“Ryltar…” Jenna sighed.

“We still have to face the facts. First, our ships will stop Fairhaven from ever being a threat to us, even if all of Candar falls. Second, as we just discussed, we scarcely have the trained troops to make much of an impression. And where would we send them? To Suthya, already surrounded? To Southwind—which Fairhaven may wait years to attack, if it ever does?” Ryltar turned in the dark wooden armchair and stared at the oil lamp beside the painting of the silver-haired man that hung on the inside wall overlooking the table. “What can Fairhaven really do to us?”

“Destroy our basis of order—”

“Jenna,” interjected Claris, “we’ve discussed this time after time, and you won’t change Ryltar’s mind tonight or any other night. Do you have any specific ideas?”

“Fine. Just—Oh, never mind.” Jenna paused. “At least the engineers could forge a huge supply of those black iron arrowheads and we could send those to the Suthyans.”

“How would we pay for them, and for the iron?” countered Ryltar.

“I suspect, given their effectiveness, the Suthyans would willingly pay for such weapons,” added Claris dryly. “That’s a good idea.”

“I don’t like it. We’re not supposed to become arms merchants to the world.”

“We’re not. And, as you like to point out in regard to armies, we couldn’t ever build that kind of force…but we could send a few thousand arrows.” Jenna smiled sweetly.

“I don’t like it, but…” Ryltar smiled grimly “…it’s far better than sending our people to die. We did lose more than half of those ‘volunteers,’ you know.”

“I know. Including your nephew, if you consider what he did a loss.”

“Jenna…”

“I beg your pardon, Ryltar.”

“I accept your apology, fellow Counselor.”

Another flash of lightning from the storm on the Eastern Ocean flared through the Council Room, and the windows rattled with the thunder that followed.

“I think that’s enough for tonight,” suggested Claris. “I’ll talk to Altara and Nirrod later in the eight-day about the arrows.”

Ryltar stood, nodded, and departed silently.

Jenna gathered several documents and slipped them into a leather folder.

“You were hard on Ryltar.” Claris glanced from the windows to the younger woman.

“He’s hard to take. Doesn’t he understand?” Jenna shook her head. “Sometimes I think we never should have stopped the practice of exile. The whole idea of the trial posed by dangergeld makes sense. Some people just can’t understand what we have and stand for without seeing the alternatives.”

“It would take a danger greater than any we have faced to get people to agree to that.”

“That’s why there’s a Council,” snapped Jenna. “To make the unpopular decisions that have to be made.”

“Jenna…”

But the youngest counselor had already taken her folder and stalked out.

When he finished anchoring the blanket in place, Justen eased into the shade and scraped away the hotter sand until he reached the cooler rock and clay. After checking for insects and spike rats, he unfastened his belt and laid the blade aside, then pulled off his boots, ignoring the blisters on his feet. Keeping chaos from the open sores was not a problem, but he had no real strength with which to heal them.

Finally, he turned and leaned his back against the stone before opening the quarter-full water bottle. He drank half, saving the rest for when he started out again at twilight, and carefully recapped the bottle.

His eyes had scarcely closed when he saw the tree again.

Once more, Justen put his arm out to the lorken, except that now the black-barked trunk was surrounded not by a carpet of short green grass, but by sand that burned with the heat of the sun. He tried to step forward, but the sand burned through the soles of his boots.

“Keep trying to find this tree, and it will find you.” The slender young woman with the silver hair, still dressed in brown, and still barefoot, appeared in the heat beside the dark and massive trunk that radiated coolness and order.

He tried to speak, but his tongue was so dry that he could not.

“The path to finding the tree, and to finding yourself, will be yet more difficult.” Her voice chimed with the sad and muted silver he recalled from the last dream.

“More difficult…” Justen mumbled through thick lips. “More difficult?”

“The order that is truth is colder than the Roof of the
World in winter, drier than the Stone Hills, and farther than Naclos for a White mage.”

The tree and the woman faded, but the hot sun flared, and Justen woke with a start to find that something had shaken a corner of his blanket awning loose and that the heat of the sun fell on his uncovered forearm with the force of red-hot iron.

He eased to his feet and crawled outside his makeshift awning to reset the rock that had held one corner of the blanket in place. His bare feet burned before he managed to get back behind his shelter.

Even when he finally drifted off into another period of uneasy dozing, his feet still felt hot and his eyes gritty, but no more images of trees or of the silver-haired woman came to him.

As the slightly cooler air of twilight fluttered the blanket that served as his awning and sunshade in the afternoon, Justen leaned forward, trying to moisten his lips with a too-dry tongue. Once more, with his inability to find enough water, his eyes felt gritty and swollen, and they burned as he forced them open.

He fumbled for the water bottle, then concentrated to steady his hands as he drank the last from it.

After shaking the sand from his boots, he eased them on and stood up, glancing to the west. From the orange glare, he could tell that the sun was close to setting.

Next, he shook the blanket clear of the boulder. His hands trembled again when he rolled it up. The first time he tried to slip it into the leather loops and strap, he fumbled, and it unrolled onto the sand.

“Darkness…” He coughed and tried to swallow, but his throat was so swollen that he would have choked had there been any moisture in his mouth to swallow.

Finally, he had the blanket rolled up, and he began plodding southward again, along another dry gully.

Even before the orange of sunset had faded, he stumbled and fell on his knees. A sharp-edged stone cut through his trousers and bruised and gashed his right knee, which began to throb dully.

Slowly, he picked himself up, looking for a cactus or some sign of water. Seeing neither, he kept walking.

Scritttch…

At the sound of the spike rat, his eyes slowly focused on the low boulder where the rodent had been, but his feet continued to move. Then the toe of his left boot caught, and he felt himself falling forward.

For a long time he lay on the hard, rocky ground.

Scrittchh…scrittch…

Something tugged at his trousers. Finally, he rolled on his side in time to see the spike rat skitter out of sight behind a rounded stone.

A little later, as twilight faded into darkness, he gathered enough strength to sit up, and finally to stand.

“Got…find…water.”

He stood in the midst of water, cool water flowing through the Stone Hills, yet he could not open his mouth and drink. All he could do was to put one foot in front of the other.

Then he could no longer do even that, and he slumped beside a rock.

“…how it ends?” Had he spoken the words, or thought them? Did it matter?

Still, the wondrous water flowed through the hills, the water he could not touch or drink, though he watched it and sat amidst its swirls and dancing spray.

“Gunnar…Krytella…”

The dead Iron Guard rode the bay mare through the shallows toward him, but the torrent carried rider and horse away. A black lorken began to grow from the middle of the streambed, and its blackness oozed over him.