Ordermaster

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “Unless the Hamorian fleet shows up in the harbor,” Kharl said dryly, “with more white wizards.”

  “I’ve been thinking; ser. Those patrollers had rifles-the ones in the south. They were shooting well, more like trained lancers. Have we ever seen patrollers with rifles anywhere?”

  Kharl felt that he should have seen that. “You think that they offloaded their troops somewhere, then left, and that the lancers were wearing patroller uniforms so that folks wouldn’t think that Hamor was playing too big a part?”

  Demyst, his mouth full of lace potatoes, nodded.

  “You’re right. He had more patrollers there than we ever saw on the streets, and they could use those rifles. They were trained, better than I’ve seen except with the Hamorian lancers,” mused Kharl.

  “That’s because they were Hamorian lancers, I’d wager,” said Demyst.

  “It was all planned from the beginning, then,” Erdyl said. “The cloth came from Hamor ...”

  All the pieces fit. Kharl just wished he’d seen them earlier. But it was another case where his lack of experience showed-all too clearly.

  “If that’s so,” said the undercaptain slowly, “they can’t land any more lancers soon.”

  “We don’t know how many more white wizards there are,” Kharl said. “There were three in the south before, and that doesn’t count the one that killed Ostcrag. He’s probably with Egen. I count four of them with the rebel forces.” At least.

  “Handled three of ‘em yesterday,” Jeka pointed out. “Didn’t have any lancers with you, either.”

  “I’ve never faced four at once,” Kharl said. “Two or three, and I almost didn’t make it. We can’t trust Osten much, either, especially if we win.”

  Erdyl frowned, momentarily, then nodded.

  “Can’t trust none of them,” observed Jeka. “Never could.”

  “No. That’s the problem.”

  “Not if you do away with them all.”

  “That’s a bigger problem. There are no heirs, and there’s no one else who’s sufficiently well known to take over without blood in the streets. Who will take over the West Quadrant? Lord East? Lord North? The Emperor of Hamor?”

  “You’re a mage,” Jeka pointed out.

  “That’s a problem, too. People don’t like mages as rulers, not since Fairven. I’ve seen how folks here in Brysta feel about blackstaffers and order-mages-and they’re considered the good mages.”

  “A good mage is a trusted advisor and a feared ruler,” Erdyl said.

  “Hated,” Kharl suggested, recalling Charee’s repugnance at Jenevra- and Jenevra had been little more than a girl. “You mean ... you’d put Osten up as Lord West?” asked Jeka. “Really would?”

  “Does anyone have a better idea? We don’t want Egen or Vielam, and we don’t want the Emperor of Hamor or one of his tools.”

  Jeka looked away.

  Kharl couldn’t blame her. Once he would have felt the same way. But he’d seen the other side. When Egen had turned against him, most of the people he had known and trusted had refused to stand up for what was right. Only Tyrbel and Gharan had. And Jeka, especially Jeka. Wassyt the miller and Werwal had done what they could without making it public. Everyone else had gone along.

  He frowned. That wouldn’t have happened in places like Reduce or Southwind. He’d seen that. Even in Austra, there were men of power-like Hagen-who had risked everything to do what they thought was right. Why was Nordla-or the West Quadrant-different?

  He wasn’t sure he had an answer.

  He also worried about Werwal, since he hadn’t seen or heard from the renderer; but he couldn’t be in all places, and he didn’t have enough retainers to send them through a city where anything could happen at any time.

  Lost in those thoughts, he said little for the remainder of the meal. No sooner had he stood than Jeka slipped away the moment his eyes left her.

  After dinner, Kharl walked into the kitchen to talk to Fundal and Khe-laya, because he had worried about provisions for the residence. “Do we have enough for the next eightday or so?”

  “That’d be tight for full meals, ser,” Khelaya had answered, “but there’s plenty to fill stomachs.”

  “You can pay more if you can find what we need.” After what he’d told Fundal earlier, Kharl thought he needed to say something about prices.

  “Good to know,” Fundal replied.

  When Kharl returned to the dining area, he saw no one. Erdyl and Demyst were sitting on the front portico, but Jeka wasn’t there.

  He’d known he’d upset her, but he’d wanted to explain in private why he didn’t have any good choices in the matter of whom he supported. Yet he didn’t want to chase her all over the residence.

  He shouldn’t have to do that, should he?

  Besides, unfortunately, he needed to figure out how to deal with the white wizards. If he could work out a better shielding for his innate order, so that they could not sense where he was, he might be able to surprise at least one of them. Musing about that, he walked toward the library.

  LXXXIV

  Although Kharl had stayed up until late in the evening, working on and refining a shield to hide the concentration of order around him, he was up early, still worrying about Jeka. When he came down for breakfast, she was not anywhere on the first floor of the residence. Enelya was in the kitchen, helping Khelaya with the egg toast. “Have you seen Jeka this morning?”

  “No, ser. Didn’t see her none last night after supper, either.”

  “Thank you.” Kharl turned and walked up the back stairs to the third floor. He could sense that she was in her room.

  He knocked.

  “Go away.”

  “I wanted to talk to you last night.”

  “Don’t want to talk.”

  Kharl stood there. What exactly was he going to do? He didn’t want to hammer down the door. That wouldn’t help. “I’m not going away until you let me in.”

  “Can’t bust in here with horses.”

  “I don’t want to break in. I want to talk to you.”

  Jeka said nothing.

  “Do you think I’d want to do anything to hurt you? Do you think I lifee what’s happened?”

  There was still no answer.

  “Do you want patrollers and lancers and mages tearing up all of Brysta-and then Sagana, and wherever else they’ll go?”

  Jeka opened the door and stepped back. “Just talk.”

  Kharl stepped inside, slowly. The room was neat-spotless. He almost said so, but realized that wouldn’t be good at all.

  Jeka seated herself cross-legged on the bed. She was wearing faded gray trousers and an equally faded blue shirt. She was barefoot.

  Kharl pulled the side stool out and straddled it, facing her.

  “You didn’t say you were going to .. .” Jeka shook her head.

  “It’s not good,” Kharl admitted. “Everything else is worse.”

  “That’s what you say.” Her green eyes flashed.

  “I’ve made mistakes,” Kharl admitted. “You know that. Do you think I like making Osten the next Lord West?”

  “Another mistake.”

  “It might be. But. .. bad as he might be, the choices are worse. You see how folks feel. Did anyone stand up for you in Sagana when the tariff farmer turned out your mother and tried to get you sold to a pleasure house? Did anyone want to buy my barrels after Egen put out the word on me? I was the only one who even stopped to see if Jenevra was hurt-“ “Jenevra?”

  “That was the blackstaffer girl that Egen raped, then had killed while I was fighting the fire.”

  “Oh.” Jeka’s brows knit together for a moment.

  This time Kharl was the one to be silent, much as he wanted to say more.

  “Shouldn’t be that way.” Jeka sighed.

  Kharl kept waiting.

  “You being a mage. Guess I thought. .. don’t know what I thought.”

  “I can do some things ... I’ll do everything I can to ma
ke sure Egen doesn’t hurt another girl, doesn’t murder another person. I can’t change the whole land. People have to want to change.”

  “Osten. He doesn’t want to change.”

  “He will,” Kharl said. “I told him that if he wasn’t a better lord than his sire, I’d come back and kill him. I told him that was something I could do.” He grinned ruefully. “That was why he tried to hit me with his sabre. It broke.” “Told him that?”

  Kharl nodded. “Wasn’t all that smart, I guess. If we win, he’ll try to kill me if he thinks he can. But I wanted him to know that he couldn’t be like his sire or his brother.”

  “You’d come back and do that?”

  “I came back for you,” Kharl pointed out.

  “Not just me.”

  “No. But I did.”

  Jeka uncrossed her legs and reached for the scuffed shoes. “Need to eat. So do you.”

  “Once this is over, we need to get you some boots.”

  “See about that, then.” But there was a faint hint of a smile.

  As he headed down to breakfast, following Jeka, Kharl realized something else. He still hadn’t seen Werwal or his consort. There was no one he felt comfortable sending to the rendering yard. If he went, he’d need to take at least Alynar or Sestalt, and that would leave the residence poorly protected with Osten’s lancers coming into the city. Jeka was good at sneaking around, but Kharl didn’t want her where he didn’t at least have a chance to protect her. He didn’t want to send anyone, in fact, until he knew that Brysta would remain relatively orderly.

  Everything he did, he felt, was some sort of compromise between what ought to be and what could be. Belatedly, as always, he realized, that was why Lyras wanted to stay away from the Great House and the Lord of Aus-tra. There was always conflict, a need for compromise in ruling, and in law, as the clerk Jusof had pointed out to him in Valmurl. Law was not justice, and given people’s differing feelings about what they deserved, and what they wanted, it couldn’t be.

  That was another reason why he shouldn’t ever try to be more than he was, a mage and a lord. He’d just make matters worse-or tear himself up inside-or both. He’d precipitated the second revolt in Austra by trying to second-guess what Ghrant had needed. Now, in less than a season, he’d created swaths of death and destruction just trying to do his job as envoy to the West Quadrant.

  Still, he fretted about both Werwal and Jeka, for very different reasons.

  LXXXV

  As Kharl had suspected, Osten’s forces were not ready on sevenday, although Kharl had been able to sense the approach of Egen’s white wizards by late in the day. By sunset, he felt as though they were still well south of Brysta proper, south even of the barracks on the south side of the city.

  Early on eightday Kharl and his group rode out to join Osten’s forces. The day had dawned with a hazy sky, but Kharl had the feeling that it would clear. That meant that Egen was more likely to attack, since the white mages preferred not to fight in the rain. By midmorning, all of Osten’s forces were moving southward on the ring road, less than a kay from where it joined the south road. The lancers led the column, and the armed foot brought up the rear, with the supply wagons trailing, and having a hard time of it in the muddy clay left by the combination of summer-end rain and the mounts and men traveling before them.

  Kharl and his small party rode just behind the vanguard, in the second body of troops, following Osten and his personal guard-lancers clad in a blue so dark it was almost black, with a thin piping of silver-gray. Osten had detailed-not quite grudgingly-two squads of lancers as support for Kharl. Kharl’s trousers were mud-spattered, and there were even a few splotches on his sleeves, although those had dried quickly even under the hazy morning sunlight.

  The ground on both sides of the road held low hills, but the those on the eastern side were higher and presaged the more rugged hills to the south. Kharl could just make out, over the tops of the woodlot trees ahead to his left, the beginning of the long ridge to the north of the southern patroller barracks.

  “How far away do you think Egen is?” asked Demyst.

  “About four kays south of here, close to the barracks where we were before.” Khaii’s order-senses gave him a rough idea. Over the past day, he had pondered whether he should have destroyed the structures, but at that time, he’d been more worried about the eastern fort and whether more white wizards might appear. If he had, he certainly wouldn’t have had the strength for at least another day to deal with the eastern fort, and who knew what those patrollers might have been able to do?

  “They moving?”

  “They don’t seem to be.”

  “Waiting for us to come to them.”

  Kharl nodded as he sensed two scouts who rode back toward Osten. He just hoped that Osten would tell him what they had discovered, although he had more than a few doubts about Osten’s judgment. Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, he wished he had been faced with better choices as to whom he needed to back on behalf of Lord Ghrant.

  After perhaps a quarter glass, a lancer pulled his mount from the column ahead and began to ride back toward Kharl.

  “Lord Osten wants something, I’d wager,” offered Demyst, riding beside Kharl.

  “All lords do,” Kharl said dryly, realizing as he spoke the words that he’d condemned himself as well. His wry smile was brief.

  The lancer turned his mount to ride on the shoulder, alongside and matching pace with Kharl and his escort. “Lord Kharl, Lord Osten would like you to join him.”

  Kharl eased his mount forward and onto the shoulder, where he rode past the rear of Osten’s guard until he neared Osten himself.

  “Lord Osten ...”

  The blond lord turned his head. “Join me.”

  Kharl eased his mount beside Osten, momentarily conscious of just how much bigger he was than Osten.

  “Lord Kharl,” Osten began, “what can you tell me about the would-be usurper’s position?”

  “I do not have scouts, as you do, but the main body of his forces, and three or four white wizards, are somewhere ahead. I would judge about three kays.”

  For a moment, the narrow-faced Osten was silent. Then, he nodded. “Almost exactly two and a half kays ahead. His wizards or his patrollers killed one party of scouts. The two who just returned tell me that we face three companies of mounted patrollers and two companies of patroller foot, with almost ten companies of regular Nordlan lancers. The entire rebel force has retaken the southern barracks area.”

  “There was nothing to stop them. The barracks were empty, and they took everything with them when they retreated earlier.”

  “All the supplies?” Osten’s voice was disbelieving.

  “All of them except some cannon powder, but the cannon were damaged in the battle.” Except one. And Kharl wasn’t about to mention that.

  “The scouts did not report cannon.”

  Kharl nodded, waiting to see what Osten would say next.

  “They have blocked the road, and hold the flat to the east and the high ground to the west. They have fixed crude pikes across the road to block our lancers there or to force us into the marshy part of the flat or uphill against the patrollers with rifles.”

  “Most of the patrollers are probably Hamorian lancers in patroller uniforms,” Kharl suggested.

  “That is like him. Ungrateful wretch!” Osten spat to the side away from Kharl. “I found it hard to believe that he could have trained so many in a year, even with ...” The lord-heir let the words trail away.

  Kharl noted that Osten had yet to refer to his brother by name. “He didn’t. That way, the emperor-“

  “The white demon can claim that he only supplied a few wizards and some training to the men of the would-be usurper. That is so like Hamor. Be that as it may, what great aid do you offer us?”

  “The hills to the west are not at all that high, and the slopes are gentle. That is where the white wizards are. If they were not there, you could take
the hills and flank ... the usurper. Then he and his men would be trapped against the ridge and the marshy ground.”

  “You want me to send men against the wizards?” Osten’s voice turned scornful.

  “No. I intend to deal with the wizards-with the two squads of lancers you loaned me, of course. We’ll circle behind them and attack them from the west. From what you’ve said, and from their positions, they expect you to attack. They plan to use the wizards to kill as many lancers as possible before you can reach them.” Kharl smiled politely. “What I suggest is that you ready your men for such an attack, and take a great deal of time doing it. When I have dealt with the white wizards, you take the hills to the west and begin to encircle them.”

  “What about the rifles?”

  “They’ll go when the white wizards do.” If I am successful.

  “Pardon me, ser mage. What happens if you are not successful?” Osten’s voice was cold.

  “You have lost nothing but two squads of lancers, and your enemy is that much weaker,” Kharl pointed out. “You hazard little. From where his forces are set, he cannot attack quickly.” “When will you begin your attack?”

  “When we get there,” Kharl said flatly. “You will see chaos-fire and much else.”

  Osten offered an excessive half bow from the saddle. “We await your efforts, Lord Kharl.”

  “Thank you, Lord Osten.” With a smile he did not feel, Kharl turned his mount, his shields ready for any treachery, although he did not believe such an attempt would come until later.

  As he rode back northward to his own small detachment, when he passed the last rank of lancers, he infused a small mass of order into the saddlebags of one of the lancers. When he later cloaked his own order, he hoped that the white wizards would perceive the order in the saddlebags as him-or as his failure to shield himself adequately.

  Even so, Kharl couldn’t help but wonder what new tactics the white mages with Egen might try. He had no real idea, but he did know that almost every time he had faced one of the Hamorian mages, they had done something he had not anticipated. That might also reflect his own lack of training and experience. From what Whetorak had revealed, Hamor trained its envoys extensively, and Kharl would have been surprised if its mages had not also had some type of instruction. He could have used some of that himself, rather than having to discover everything by trial and error.