Colors of Chaos (Saga of Recluce)

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Lady healer…here.” The lancer extended a slab of mutton on a half-loaf of dark bread. “There’s cheese here, too. Whatever you need.” After a moment, he seemed to see Cerryl. “Ah…you, too, ser.”

  “Thank you,” Cerryl said.

  The two accepted the fare and stepped away to sit on a fallen log that had been dragged to one side of the cook fire.

  “I can see who the lancers value,” Cerryl added with a laugh, brushing away a large mosquito, once, and then again.

  “They value you,” Leyladin mumbled, “in a different way.”

  Maybe. Cerryl ate slowly, and Leyladin finished her meat and bread before he was half through his fare. He looked up. “Go get some of the cheese. There were some dried apples, I think.”

  “I didn’t know I was that hungry.”

  “Healing is hard work,” he pointed out. “Any use of order or chaos is.”

  Leyladin slowly stood and walked toward the makeshift serving table, a plank between two forked posts, where she sliced off a chunk of white cheese and took a handful of dried apples.

  “Anything else you’d like?” asked the lancer cook. “More mutton?”

  “No…thank you. I’m feeling better.” She offered a smile. “Thank you.”

  Cerryl stood and joined her, cutting himself some cheese. “A little more than an eight-day and still more than thirty kays before we see Kleth.”

  “Then another hundred-fifty kays or more to Spidlaria?”

  “More or less.” Cerryl brushed away another hungry mosquito, circling through the growing darkness toward him. “You worry about the killing? Going on and on?” How could anyone not worry about it?

  “I do.” Leyladin waved at another mosquito. “The old books talk about Black being ordered and healing.” She shook her head. “How is order any different from chaos when it’s used to kill? They killed more of us today than…I don’t know. Does it matter?”

  Cerryl finished his chunk of cheese and put his arm around her. “The goals matter. They have to.” Because power can be abused, by either Black or White? How do you ever know that you’re not deceiving yourself and abusing power? Are we doing the right thing?

  “We think so. I suppose they do as well.” Leyladin took another deep breath. “I need to lie down. I don’t know if I’ll sleep, but I can’t stand up much longer.”

  “I left my bedroll by the mages’ fire.”

  “I can offer to share my quilted ground cloth with you, ser.”

  Even through the darkness, Cerryl could sense the smile. “Those are the best words I’ve heard today. I would be most grateful to accept.”

  They walked slowly uphill.

  CXXIV

  WITH THE GROWING warmth of the day and the white-orange sun pouring down through the clear green-blue sky, Cerryl unfastened his jacket, shifting his weight in the saddle as he did. He rode slowly, letting the gelding walk another hundred cubits or so before he reined up. The lancers before him reined up as well, their eyes searching the spring green of the bushes beside the road and the damp clay of the road itself for fresh tracks.

  Cerryl tried to extend his senses, searching for any trace of black iron or chaos of some sort, wishing in some ways that Leyladin were alongside him. Her senses of order would have been useful. Then, she was safer with the reserves, especially with the scattered arrows that arched over trees—or from across gullies—anywhere there was no possibility of quick pursuit.

  The light breeze out of the north still bore a trace of chill along with the smell of damp soil and new growth. The higher parts of the ruts in the road had turned a lighter brown where they had begun to dry, but much of the road was the darker brown of damp soil and clay.

  Cerryl glanced toward the shoots in the fields to the west of the road, wiped the sweat off his forehead, and nodded to Hiser. “Another two hundred cubits—or three if it seems clear.” He glanced toward the woods that began somewhere short of a kay ahead on the left side of the road, then toward the thin line of trees perhaps 150 cubits downhill on the eastern side of the road. The trees stood a dozen cubits above the River Gallos.

  “Yes, ser.” Hiser flicked his mount’s reins.

  Cerryl did the same, and the two rode slowly northward.

  Patrolling the roads, again, and after almost two eight-days of plodding down the road to the west of the River Gallos, Cerryl had discovered nothing, not a single black iron trap.

  Of course, the moment you don’t, there will be something.

  All the traps had been on the river itself, as if the smith Dorrin had belatedly recognized where the true danger lay.

  Cerryl tried to use his eyes and his senses as they rode closer to the woods that began ahead on the west side of the road, the sort of place that would be ideal for another attack by the Spidlarians, for all that, they had not even seen a hoofprint in kays.

  Thwing! Thwing! A series of arrows flew past—except one that slammed into the lancer riding beside Hiser.

  Cerryl jerked his head around. Concentrating as he had been on seeking order foci, he really hadn’t sensed the approach of the blue archers.

  “There they are!” Hiser stood in the stirrups, gesturing toward the side trail that wound toward a gap in the woods ahead on the west side of the road.

  The narrow side trail…Cerryl’s eyes flashed toward the trail, his senses following.

  A half-score of riders started forward at a fast trot that threatened to become a gallop.

  “LANCERS, HALT!” Cerryl yelled.

  The riders continued, though Hiser reined up in confusion, glancing at Cerryl as if he could not believe his ears.

  Whsstt! Cerryl lofted a firebolt over the heads of the riders, far enough that it sprayed harmlessly across the damp clay. “HALT! You worthless dark shadows!”

  The lancers milled to a halt, and Cerryl took a deep breath and rode forward. “Back!”

  “…why’s he want to go first?”

  “…let him…be target…”

  One step at a time, Cerryl took the gelding onto the narrow trail, trying to keep eyes and ears and senses all searching.

  Thwinng! This time Cerryl ducked even before he heard the arrow, and he could feel where the archer might be.

  Whhhstt! The firebolt arced over the vegetation in the direction from which the shaft had come.

  “Aeiii…”

  Was there a line of greasy black smoke? Cerryl wasn’t certain, but there was no doubt about the sound of departing hoofs that followed the firebolt and the short scream.

  He kept the gelding to a walk, but there were no more arrows. As he had suspected, around the curve was something—something metallic and very ordered. He reined up and beckoned for Hiser to join him.

  The subofficer wiped the dampness from his forehead as he halted his mount beside the gelding.

  “There’s a trap about two hundred cubits ahead,” Cerryl said quietly. “I don’t feel anyone around, but we’ll have to go slowly.”

  Finding the trap was anticlimactic. Two thin wires so black as to be invisible, especially with dust raised by mounts in the air, ran across the trail. On one side, wedged behind a fallen tree trunk, was a black iron bar to which the wires were secured. At the other end of the wires was a second bar, nearly two cubits long, set in the fork of a tree.

  Once they had loosened the bars, two lancers slowly wound the wire around them while Cerryl studied the area with both his senses and his sight.

  Nothing. Nothing except a black-smeared section of ground on the trail fifty cubits beyond the trap, an area three cubits across where nothing remained but ashes.

  “Frigging blues…”

  The blue raiders had left nothing, except the first casualty they had taken in two eight-days. Cerryl eased the gelding back toward the main road until he found Hiser. The subofficer was strapping a body over a saddle—the lancer who’d been riding beside him.

  “What do we do, ser? If we could ride after them…”

  “We would hav
e lost more lancers.”

  “But we’re not getting to them.”

  Cerryl had no real answers. If they proceeded slowly, they’d lose some lancers to arrows. If they hurried, so as to keep the blues from having time to set things up, they wouldn’t lose as many to shafts, but every so often they’d lose a lot to traps. “We’re taking their land. Before long, they won’t have any place to run.”

  “Hope it’s not that long. Begging your pardon, ser.” Hiser gave the rope a last knot and swung into his saddle and gestured to the lancer with one arm bound from an arrow taken earlier in the day. “Muntor, you hang back and take care of the mount here.”

  “Yes, ser.” The sandy-haired lancer took the rope lead from Hiser.

  “Back to the main road, ser?” asked the subofficer.

  “Back to the main road,” Cerryl confirmed. Back to patrolling and being targets, and all because…because why?

  He shrugged. The answers that had seemed simple in Fairhaven seemed almost irrelevant along a booby-trapped river road in a war no one really wanted and yet one that no one seemed able to avoid, a war that seemingly sucked in more and more from Fairhaven—Leyladin, Faltar, and a half-dozen young mages without, Cerryl suspected, the real talents to see order traps or avoid the iron crossbow bolts that could prove fatal.

  Then…can you keep avoiding them?

  CXXV

  AFTER RUBBING DOWN the gelding, Cerryl walked slowly to the canvas awning—not really a full tent—under which the wounded lay. Leyladin was bending over another lancer he did not recognize. Even from where Cerryl stood a dozen cubits away, the light of the low afternoon sun on his back, he could sense the order she mustered.

  He wanted to tell her that she couldn’t heal them all. No healer could. Instead, he waited until she straightened.

  She walked toward him as if she had sensed him, a gentle smile in place. “I felt you riding in.”

  “You felt me?”

  “If you can find me in a glass, can’t I sense you when you’re near?”

  He reached out and squeezed her hand. “I’m supposed to meet with Jeslek and the others…”

  “The other Whites?” Her eyebrows lifted in a query.

  “That’s not my choice.”

  “I know. Sometimes, it’s hard.” Her eyes swept the area under the awning.

  “Because we create death and you attempt to heal?”

  “No.” The blonde cocked her head slightly to the side. “The Blacks are killing more than we are right now. The Guild needs order as much as chaos, and the old parts of Colors of White—they don’t say it in quite that way, but it’s there. These days, with Recluce the enemy…”

  “No one seems to understand that order also belongs in Fairhaven…” Cerryl’s eyes flicked toward the white silk tent set on a level grassy bench farther down the slope toward the gray water of the River Gallos.

  “You have to go. I know.”

  “I’m sorry. I wanted to see you.”

  A trace of a smile reappeared. “I’ll see you later.”

  He squeezed her fingers a last time before he turned and headed downhill, taking a deep breath.

  The smell of burning wood was everywhere—faint but omnipresent. He rubbed his eyes gently as he neared the tent—guarded by a pair of lancers.

  One nodded slightly. “Mage Cerryl?”

  Cerryl returned the nod and eased under the flap held up by poles as an awning. Anya looked up as Cerryl stepped into the tent. Fydel, Anya, and Jeslek sat around the camp table on stools. Cerryl took the last stool, across from Jeslek and between Anya and Fydel.

  “Good that you could join us,” said Jeslek.

  “It was a long day, ser. I just got back.”

  “How many more did you lose?” asked Anya.

  “None today.” After a moment, he added, “That worries me. I wonder what else they plan.”

  “They will indeed plan something else. The traders have told their field commander, Brede, the young giant from Recluce, to hold Kleth,” Jeslek announced quietly. The tent billowed overhead.

  Fydel nodded. Anya smiled brightly, and Cerryl smiled politely, with a deferential inclination of his head to the High Wizard.

  “Where is Sterol?” Anya’s smile suggested to Cerryl that she well knew the answer but raised the former High Wizard’s name for some scheming point.

  “In Fairhaven, I presume, which is fine with me. We really don’t need another set of schemers.” The High Wizard paused. “Your refusal of terms from the Council was brilliant, Fydel, even if you didn’t mean it that way.”

  “I’m so glad you found it so.” Fydel smiled.

  “It forced them to decide on an early defense, in order to plan their escape if it failed. Traders would always rather run than fight. This Brede of theirs is better than they deserve, young as he is, and they’ll squander his talent—and him. It’s a pity.”

  “A pity? You intend to spare him?” asked Anya, her tone almost idle.

  “Demon-light, no. After what he’s done to the levies…and the lancers from Hydlen and Gallos? Politically…that’s not wise.”

  “What about your elusive smith? Hasn’t he cost you even more than their commander?” Anya added, “Drawing wire…much good it will do…”

  “It cost us less than fourscore levies to get through his river traps, and we control the river all the way to Kleth. Brede is more dangerous.”

  “He’s only a soldier, no matter how good,” reflected Cerryl. “Your smith may have more tricks planned. He has carted some more black iron devices to Kleth.”

  “Perhaps…but they will not save Spidlar.” Jeslek smiled again. “We could lose nine of ten levies and still outnumber the blues. We should not have to spend anywhere near that number—but we could.”

  “The smith might cost us that,” suggested Cerryl.

  “How? You are losing but a handful of lancers for every ten kays of road you clear,” Jeslek observed. “I expect Eliasar on the morrow, and we are less than twenty kays from Kleth.”

  The last twenty could be the costliest, for both lancers and mages. “And almost two hundred from Spidlaria.”

  “Spidlaria does not matter, not now,” said Jeslek. “Once Kleth falls, we will have Spidlaria within a pair of eight-days—or sooner.”

  Anya’s smile was bright, hard, and particularly false. As Cerryl saw it, Anya reminded him of a viper or the drawings he had seen of the stun lizards of ancient Cyador.

  CXXVI

  A LIGHT MIST drifted from the low and gray clouds, cool but not cold, as Cerryl rode slowly down the west river road. A hundred cubits to his right was the line of trees marking the river. Ahead on the left side of the road was the hamlet where Jeslek had told Cerryl to round up whatever peasants he could find. Do you really want to do this?

  He wanted to shake his head, knowing that Jeslek would march the people ahead of the levies toward Kleth. The idea of using innocent people as shields turned his stomach. But so do Black traps using unseen wires to gut and kill young lancers.

  Cerryl glanced at the cots as the two companies of lancers rode up. The door to the first cot—a one-room thatched dwelling with a mud-brick chimney that rose a good two cubits above the topmost part of the thatch—was closed, and the single set of shutters was fastened shut.

  “Voyst! Check the doors,” ordered Ferek.

  Cerryl could feel the ironic smile creep across his face as the lancers checked cot after cot, only to find no one present.

  Ferek eased his mount up beside Cerryl. “We can’t be rounding up village folk or herders or anyone, ser,” complained Ferek, “not if there be none to round up.”

  Cerryl glanced around the hamlet. “Every building is empty?”

  “Yes, ser. Not a soul around. Not even a cat or a pig.”

  “Then we won’t find anyone in the next hamlet, either.” Cerryl’s ironic smile faded. “We’d better check one more, though. So we can tell the High Wizard that they’ve all fled.”

 
“You think so, ser?”

  “I’m sure of it.”

  The second hamlet, five kays farther north along the west river road, was as vacant as the first had been.

  “Let’s head back,” Cerryl told Ferek and Hiser. “There won’t be people in any hamlet or village from here to Kleth.”

  “That ’cause they knew what the High Wizard did to Elparta?”

  “I’d guess so.” Cerryl turned the gelding, and they rode back through a day that had turned warmer and damper, under clouds that were beginning to lift. He could feel the sweat building under his shirt, even though it was early in the spring yet.

  The road remained empty, with a deserted feeling, all the way back to the latest camp by the river, slightly less than fifteen kays south of Kleth. One of the barges was missing, being pulled upstream to Elparta to return wounded and bring back more supplies.

  As Cerryl dismounted by the tie-lines for the light cavalry, he saw Faltar walking toward the area where the cook fires were being set up. “Faltar?”

  The thin blonde mage turned. He had a bruise across his cheek and a short, scratchlike slash on his forehead. “Oh…Cerryl.”

  “What happened to you?” Cerryl tightened his lips as he saw the ugly purpling blotch. Is that because you worry that Faltar doesn’t have enough chaos strength for what he’s been tasked with?

  “Caltrops—hidden in shallow water where a little creek crossed the road.” Faltar started to shake his head, then winced, as if the movement hurt. “Can’t sense order under running water, and who would have thought…?”

  “Your mount?”

  “Went down, broke a leg. I went with her, most of the way.”

  “Caltrops—dirty nasty things,” murmured the dark-skinned Buar, riding up and dismounting. “Lost three mounts and a lancer. No arrows, though.”

  “Everything in war is dirty and nasty.” Especially if it happens to you. “Do you need Leyladin to look at that?”

  “No. I brushed the cut with a touch of chaos, and there’s nothing she could do about the bruises.” Faltar offered a crooked smile. “I do need to find another mount, though. I’m supposed to ride in the middle group of mages. You know, with Myredin, Ryadd, and the others? And Bealtur, of course. We get to fry the countryside.”