The Chaos Balance

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “We’ll need to bury the ones they left,” Fornal continued. “Huruc?”

  “Ser. We’ll take care of it.”

  “Away from the stream,” Nylan added.

  “Yes, ser.”

  “We will use the house. The larger squads will turn the barn into a barracks,” suggested Fornal. “The shed there-that should work for your squads.”

  Nylan glanced toward the long shed-gap-planked, like half the outbuildings he’d seen in Lornth-but the woven-grass-thatchlike roof seemed relatively sound. If they remained in Kula into the winter, the ventilated planks would need work, but were probably an advantage in the summer.

  Ayrlyn raised her eyebrows, and she and Nylan exchanged glances, before she answered. “It needs some work.”

  “Everything will need work,” answered the coregent. “Best we start now.” He turned in the saddle. “Huruc!”

  “Ser?”

  “Have them clear out the barn. The angels are taking the shed for their… squads. The four-five-of us will share the house.”

  Fornal turned his mount toward the barn, directly behind and to the west of the dwelling. Nylan and Ayrlyn, with Sylenia following, rode toward the shed to the right rear of the house.

  Beside the shed were three bodies, bloated. Nylan swallowed. No wonder Fornal didn’t worry about the holders returning.

  He turned in the saddle. “Sylenia?”

  “Sers?”

  “You find which room in the holding we get and do what you can to make it habitable. Take Weryl with you. All right?”

  “Yes, ser.” The black-haired woman nodded.

  “We’ll be out here, trying to get the squads settled.” And taking care of some basic sanitation problems. Very basic. “Just tie your mount near the house for now.”

  As the nursemaid turned her mount, Ayrlyn said in a low voice, “This is just getting worse.”

  “You had that feeling, didn’t you?”

  “Degraded Rationalist superiority complex, but I’d hoped otherwise.”

  “They haven’t changed. Anyone else is less than human.” That was the problem with the Rats, Nylan reflected, always misusing logic to prove their superiority, and to justify their attempts to eliminate any competition. Somehow, he’d hoped that he and Ayrlyn wouldn’t keep having to fight the Winterlance’s battles again in Candar, but it looked like the same problem occurred everywhere there were humans.

  “No. They haven’t changed. They won’t.” Ayrlyn’s voice was heavy. “And you know what that means.”

  Nylan did. Again… people who respected only superior force. His nose itched. Ayrlyn rubbed her nose, swallowed, and tried to stop a sneeze simultaneously. He still sneezed.

  After tying their mounts to a well-kept rail fence by the shed, Nylan and Ayrlyn stepped into the sheep shed. Nylan’s boots sank into the combination of animal waste and dust.

  “Darkness-”

  “Not too bad. Seen worse,” offered Tonsar as he neared on foot, leading his mount. The thirty-odd trainees and troublemakers remained mounted, well back from the shed.

  “Let’s get this mess cleaned out,” Nylan said quietly. “Use whatever it takes to get the floor down to bare earth, and then sweep it clean before anyone puts a pallet down. Oh, there are three bodies behind the shed, and a couple of dead sheep. They need to be buried-at least a hundred cubits from the stream-downhill.”

  Tonsar glanced at Nylan. “The men, they likely be tired.”

  “Better tired than sick in two days, and they will be if they try to sleep in that muck. Or with decomposing bodies within a score of cubits.”

  A faint sigh escaped Tonsar’s lips. “Yes, ser.”

  “Tonsar… we’re not…” Nylan shook his head. “More men die from sickness than from enemy blades. I can’t stop a lot of the blades, but I do know some things to do to keep them from getting sick.”

  “We’ll also make sure that they get clean water,” added Ayrlyn. “So they don’t get the flux.”

  Tonsar looked skeptical.

  “We are healers, remember?” said the flame-haired angel. “And if that doesn’t convince them… well… does someone else want a blade through his chest?” Her words were bitter, and Nylan understood why. He felt the same way.

  “No, ser angels. It will be done.” His voice was tired.

  “We’ll be working here, too,” Nylan said. “I’ll set up the anvil and a temporary forge under that overhang there. I’ll need some stones or bricks-”

  “Yes, sers…” Tonsar repeated.

  “If I’m repairing and sharpening blades, Tonsar, they can carry stones.”

  Ayrlyn nodded. They both knew there were times to lead by force, and by example. He hoped they’d picked the right times.

  LXI

  AS THE MORNING cookfires were being banked, Nylan swallowed the last of the bread, then stood. The bench was hard. He was still amazed that someone could bake even half-decent bread over a cookfire. Certainly, .poor Kadran hadn’t been able to. “The bread’s not bad.” As he followed Ayrlyn toward the shed where Tonsar would be mustering their would-be armsmen, his eyes went back to the front stoop of the dwelling where Sylenia continued to feed Weryl, then to the spot under the sheep shed’s eaves where stones and broken bricks formed a rough forge. Nylan hoped it wasn’t too rough, but he’d not had a chance to even think about forging, not yet. And he’d dreamed about trees again, ancient trees filled with both order and chaos.

  “So far, the cheese isn’t, either.” Ayrlyn paused. “What’s bothering you? You’ve been star-systems away ever since you woke.”

  “Trees…” Nylan admitted.

  Ayrlyn turned to face Nylan. “Trees filled with whiteness and darkness?”

  “Order and chaos?” The smith nodded.

  “Strange… so did I. I wonder…” She shook her head, then looked toward the dying cookfires. “Well… our charges are waiting.”

  Nylan followed her eyes to the cooking area set up between the shed and the barn. Then he looked back to the group of would-be armsmen who stood outside the partly converted sheep shed, most still finishing off their bread, hard cheese, and spiced mutton stew. The engineer had trouble with hot mutton for breakfast, but all the Lornians seemed to relish it.

  “I know,” Ayrlyn continued. “Mutton for breakfast. Does it cause strange dreams?”

  “It is a good and filling breakfast,” offered Tonsar cheerfully. “No one dreams badly on mutton.”

  The engineer shook his head as Tonsar walked closer. “Ready to start the training? You have them organized into groups, like we asked?”

  “Yes, ser.” Tonsar frowned. “They be not happy with the idea of wooden blades.”

  “They’d be a lot less happy if we used cold iron,” said Ayrlyn.

  “Wood is for young children… they think.”

  “Darkness save us-and them-from stupid male vanity,” muttered the redhead. “They’d rather play with iron and die.”

  Tonsar gulped.

  “Most don’t want to be here, and the rest hate everyone.” Ayrlyn looked at the ragged grouping. Already, although the sun had barely cleared the horizon, heat waves were shimmering off the dust-covered clay.

  “That is true,” admitted Tonsar, “save they fear you both.”

  “Better to be feared than loved,” quipped Ayrlyn.

  “I guess.”

  “Don’t guess,” said Ayrlyn soberly. “Remember Ryba. This isn’t the time for kindness.”

  “It doesn’t seem like many times are,” answered Nylan. “Not here in Candar anyway.”

  “I’ll be watching your back,” Ayrlyn continued.

  “You get to do the second set,” Nylan said. “We have to get the point across that either one of us is deadly.”

  “You could kill one a piece,” said Tonsar.

  Nylan wasn’t sure he was jesting. “No. That lets them off too easily. They need to suffer.”

  As Tonsar studied Nylan to see if he were joking, Ayrlyn rol
led her eyes.

  The silver-haired angel managed to keep a straight face.

  When it appeared as though most of the armsmen, save the obvious stallers, had finished eating, he nodded to Tonsar. “Line them up.”

  “Line up!” bellowed the burly subofficer. “Now. Dersio! That be you! And you, Ungit!”

  “He sounds like every other noncom,” said Ayrlyn.

  “But they’re worse,” answered Nylan, almost under his breath. “This will be worse than a dozen Mrans.”

  “I hope not. We can’t afford to kill that many.”

  Nylan took a slow breath and walked toward the group, his eyes focusing on the front row. He stopped and took another long look before he spoke. “I’m not one for beating around the bushes.” Nylan glanced across the score of dubious and unfriendly faces. “You’ve all been assigned to Ayrlyn and me because you’ve been judged as untrained or as troublemakers. I frankly don’t care about what others think. If you follow instructions and work hard, I can give you a much better chance to survive and go home.” He shrugged. “If you don’t want to, fine. You’ll be dead meat for the Cyadorans in the first skirmish, and I won’t have to worry about your being a problem.”

  He took one of the wooden wands from Tonsar. He and Ayrlyn had managed to rough-craft eleven, and he wished they had more. There was no safe way to train this lot with real weapons, not without killing or maiming most. “This is a training blade. Why do we use wood? Because you live through your mistakes. It stings. Sometimes, it even hurts, and once in a while you still might get injured. Hopefully, the pain will help you improve.”

  “Easy for him to say…”

  Nylan looked across the red dirt toward the big rawboned youth with the scraggly beard. “You said something?”

  “Begging your pardon, ser, but you’re not all that tough, ser.”

  Ayrlyn glanced at Nylan and shook her head. The engineer knew what she was thinking, and agreed, even though he hated what would come next. Some people never learned until it was beaten into them or they were killed.

  “Fuera-it is Fuera, isn’t it? Take the wand and see how you do with it, then.” Nylan tossed the wooden wand to the youth.

  Fuera scooped the wand up and started toward Nylan, waving it wildly.

  The smith edged aside, easily avoiding most of the wild slashes, parrying a few, before knocking the wand out of the man’s hand.

  “Pick it up.”

  Fuera glared, but picked up the wand and charged toward Nylan.

  Nylan cracked him across the back of his wrist, and the wand dropped a second time.

  Fuera turned with a bellow and charged Nylan.

  The engineer, triggering full step-up almost unconsciously, dropped his own wand and blurred, ducking aside, and letting the few moves he knew nearly automatically take hold.

  The youth went over Nylan, almost in an arc, and hit the ground with a dull thud. He lay still for a long moment. Nylan bent and picked his own wand back up, then walked over and tapped Fuera on the shoulder, hard enough for it to smart. “Get up and pick up that wand. You don’t get to quit because your pride’s hurt. If I’d been using those crowbars the professionals in Lornth use, you’d be dead or maimed for life.”

  The youth glared at Nylan, then scrambled to his knees, gathering his strength for another charge. Nylan forced a smile, waiting in step-up. With a bellow, Fuera charged again. The score of recruits stood silently. Nylan flashed aside, using his elbow to club the youth into the ground, then he stood, waiting, as the brown-haired would-be armsman rose drunkenly to his feet.

  “Pick up the wand, or not, as you please,” Nylan said. “I’m trying to teach you enough to keep you alive. You seem to want to die young.” Snickers ran through the onlookers. Fuera charged Nylan. This time the smith stepped inside the bearlike rush, and using open palms, dropped the youth onto the clay with two quick blows. Fuera did not rise. “… never saw… so fast…”

  “… Coulda killed him easy…”

  “… friggin‘ mean bastard…”

  Nylan let the murmurs die away before he turned to the others. “I would prefer not to keep making this point. In a fight, I wouldn’t have bothered. Fuera would have been dead with about one blow.” He looked at the unconscious man, then at the others. “One reason why he’s still alive is that we’re short of fighters. Now… is there anyone else here who would like to prove that he’s the toughest, meanest, and nastiest idiot in Lornth?” Nylan’s green eyes raked across the group of the nearest nineteen arrayed in a rough arc.

  Each man looked away as Nylan fixed his eyes on each in turn.

  LXII

  LEPHI LEANED FORWARD in the silver-trimmed malachite chair. His brown eyes were flat as the slim, balding, and white-haired wizard walked across the polished white stones, then bowed. “You summoned me, Your Mightiness?”

  “I did. Have you a solution for the Accursed Forest, Triendar? One that does not cost me the double handful of white mages remaining? Or more troops that I do not have?”

  “Has Your Mightiness rediscovered the secrets of the iron birds? Or how to make iron feathers that reflect the sun? Or perhaps you have found the means to create the ice lances of the ancient angels to place upon your fireship?” Triendar’s voice was mild, even.

  Lephi raised his hand. “Do not mock me, Triendar, unless you wish…”

  The white-haired wizard bowed again. “I do not mock Your Mightiness. What you have asked of me is as easy as what I have asked of you.”

  “You are the wizard, not I.”

  “Can I lift myself into the sky, Sire? Can I turn the Great Western Ocean into steam and leave the fishes gasping on dry sands and seaweed?” Triendar bowed once more.

  “I set you a task, and I bid you leave until you can return and tell me it is done.” Lephi’s voice was hard and flat, but his hands gripped the armrests of the malachite throne so hard that they trembled.

  “Very well, Your Mightiness. I shall not return.” Triendar bowed once again.

  Lephi raised his right hand, then lowered it. “What mean you that you will not return?”

  “Your Mightiness,” offered the white wizard. “All of us are bound. You cannot fly. I cannot turn all the seas to steam nor hold back the Accursed Forest without white wizards and fire and men with torches and mattocks. You can bid and command all that you desire. You can have the Archers of the Rational Stars turn me into a target, but I cannot do what I cannot do, and I will not deceive you into thinking it is so.”

  Lephi’s hands gripped the armrests again, tightly, and for long moments there was silence. Not even a whisper nor a sigh caressed the cold white polished stones.

  Finally, the Lord of Cyador spoke. “You have always been honest, and you risk your life to be honest. I cannot say I am pleased, but I cannot ask more of any man nor wizard.” Lephi paused. “Bring me a plan. Tell me what you can do with how many wizards and how many men. Tell me how many it will take-forever, is it not-to keep the forest in check?”

  Triendar bowed a last time. “It will be done, Your Mightiness.”

  After the white mage left, Lephi wiped his forehead, then crumpled the perfumed white towel and dropped it beside the chair, where a girl in white silently retrieved it.

  “At least… I will bring back the fireships… and the fire cannon.” He smiled. “Then, then they will all fear great Cyad again.”

  LXIII

  NYLAN RESET THE last stone in the forge bed, then paused and wiped his forehead with the back of his forearm, glancing out at the training yard.

  “Rather be here than there, ser,” said the lanky blond barely into manhood from where he pedaled the grindstone.

  “You get a chance at both, Sias,” Nylan told his semivolunteer apprentice. “Tomorrow, you get to try it all on horseback.”

  Sias groaned.

  “Watch the blade,” the engineer cautioned. “Even a healer can’t grow back missing fingers.”

  Between the two of them, they’d manag
ed to sharpen and clean most of the ill-assorted blades belonging to the two-plus squads of levies that he and Ayrlyn had been assigned. If only upgrading blade skills and horsemanship were that easy!

  Still, it had to be possible. Nylan had learned both-albeit with the help of order-field skills and hard-wired reflex speed-ups the locals didn’t have. So had the refugee women of Westwind, without his hard-wired advantages or the strength or the conditioning of the levies.

  “Are the white demons really six cubits tall?” asked Sias innocently.

  “You know they’re not, unless you mean on horseback on top of a dwelling. Who’s been spreading that nonsense?”

  “At night… there are whispers.” Sias took the blade and carefully wiped it with an oiled cloth, before returning it to its scabbard and picking up another.

  The drum of hoofbeats drowned out Ayrlyn’s orders for a moment as two squads of levies and a squad of the professional armsmen followed Fornal down the lane and toward the road to the south.

  Nylan coughed. As usual, the light summer breeze was just strong enough to lift the ubiquitous grit and red dust- this time from Fornal’s departing force-across the training yard, but not strong enough to cool anything.

  The coregent’s scouts had reported in the night before. The Cyadorans had built a rock and earth barrier around the mines, with reinforced gates, and a tall watchtower on the highest point of the hill. Most of the Cyadoran troops were already housed in earth-walled barracks. Cooler than tents, no doubt, reflected the seated smith.

  So far, the white forces remained within the compound, except for scouting, raiding, or foraging missions. And they had begun to produce copper again, if the smoke and fires from the furnaces were any indication.

  Fornal hoped to confirm that-and pick off any Cyadoran forces that he could. Nylan hoped the Cyadorans didn’t pick off Fornal.

  A burly figure walked from the barn toward the makeshift smithy, and Nylan nodded to himself as he straightened and walked from behind what would be the forge bed.

  Huruc surveyed the makeshift forge, his eyes dropping to the anvil wedged in place between two timbers sunk into the clay. “Your smithy looks ready.” He gestured toward the dust on the hillside. “Let us hope ser Fornal brings back only nicked and damaged blades.”