“The rain?” asks Lerial.
The majer nods, then goes on. “Without the support of the chaos-fire, they lost almost two companies. That was between what we could do at the bridge and what Kusyl’s fourth squad did to the companies trying to cross to the south.”
“That’s not bad,” says Lerial.
“Not bad, but not exactly all that good, either. Our three companies at the stream still lost more than a squad, mostly wounded, but most of the wounded won’t fight again this season … or this year. We’re whittling them down, but they’re also taking a toll on us.”
“It comes down to who can whittle better, then,” says Lerial tiredly.
“Or whether one side or the other can come up with a way to decimate the other without suffering equal casualties.” Altyrn looks at Lerial.
“I haven’t figured out how to do that, ser.” Not yet, anyway.
“One thing you should figure out,” replies Altyrn dryly, “is that you need to strip off that soaking uniform and wrap yourself in a warm blanket. Let the fire dry the uniform and your boots. There are some things we still need to go over, but they can wait until you do that.”
Lerial nods, then sits on an old straight-backed chair to pull off his boots. Even that minor chore leaves him feeling tired, but in a few moments he is indeed wrapped in a threadbare but warm and dry blanket that Altyrn has had waiting.
He cannot help but think about Alaynara … and about Altyrn’s indirect suggestion that somehow he needs to find a way to make more of a difference. He knows the majer is right, because the events of the past eightdays have made it more than clear that, when he cannot use order, he is anything but successful as a company commander.
But if there aren’t any white wizards around to provide chaos … what can you do?
He has to find a way … not only to save the people of the Verd … but to survive.
LXXII
When Lerial wakes on a cloudy oneday with the rain still falling, if in more of a continual drizzle than a downpour, he is slightly stiff and sore, but otherwise he feels well enough physically, but he could have done without the nightmares about seeing second company being overrun because he hadn’t anticipated what the Meroweyans did in time to save his rankers and squad leaders. The fact that, in the dream, he had struggled unsuccessfully to use order didn’t help his state of mind. The dry uniform was welcome, but, as he dressed, he kept thinking about how poorly he had judged the speed of the Meroweyan advance—and that his order skills are almost useless in battle unless a chaos wizard attacks his company.
You have to do something about that. You have to.
“That’s a serious face you’ve got on, ser,” says Kusyl, moving from the back room to stand in front of the low fire.
“Yesterday was serious,” replies Lerial dryly.
“That was yesterday. Can’t do anything to change what happened.” Kusyl shrugs. “A man’ll go out of his mind thinking about what he might have done … should’ve done … could’ve done…”
That’s easy enough for you to say.
Kusyl turns to Lerial. “Might not be my place to say … but you got handed a sowshit stew, ser. Couldn’t be a duke’s son anywhere in Hamor, except here, standing there a few yards from men and wizards that’d love to kill you. Not you as an heir, just love to kill a Cigoernean officer. Thing is … you do what officers’re supposed to do. You’re going to frig it up at times. Everyone does. Doesn’t matter. Matters what you do tomorrow.” The undercaptain grins. “You think too much about yesterday, you won’t be ready for tomorrow.”
“He’s right about that, you know,” adds Altyrn, who shakes the rain from his oiled waterproof, standing just inside the door.
Lerial knows they’re both correct, but he has trouble not dwelling on the past. You always have, whether it was your father or Lephi. He doesn’t know from where that thought came, but it feels true, and he can’t help but express a slight sardonic smile. “I think you two have made your point.” He manages a grin.
“Good,” replies Altyrn. “There’s a fairly hot breakfast in the house next door. You might get over there before Shaskyn eats everything.”
“That’s a good idea,” says Lerial. The growling in his guts agrees with Altyrn’s suggestion. “I’m on my way.” He knows part of his hasty departure is because he is indeed hungry, but part is because he doesn’t want to talk about why he should put yesterday behind him, much as he knows he must.
Breakfast is indeed warm, and welcome, especially if he doesn’t deal with the thought of chopped ghano, mixed with acorn bread and some sort of eggs, all held together with the bluish cheese. After he eats, he checks with his squad leaders, goes over what arrows and weapons are left, and then reports to Altyrn.
The majer accepts his report and asks, “What are you going to do now? You can’t keep checking on your rankers every glass.”
“Try to figure out some things … and see if I can do them well enough to practice them.”
Altyrn nods. “I’ll let you know if anything changes. I doubt the Meroweyans are going to want to ride and march through this.” He gestures toward the window. “They might surprise us, but the scouts will let us know.” He pauses. “Do you need the fire?”
“Not now, ser. I might not at all.”
“Good. No offense, but you’ve turned some chambers into ovens.”
Lerial just nods and sits on the only chair in the main room except for the one Altyrn has pulled up behind his narrow table. He needs to think.
It’s not as though ordermages can’t manage chaos, reflects Lerial. It’s that it unsettles them or … He isn’t sure exactly what, but healers deal with chaos, if in a different way, all the time. So it is the way of handling it. He can direct chaos through his patterns. He’s proved that. But to handle it without just redirecting chaos drawn and concentrated by a white wizard … that’s another thing. He doesn’t even like the idea. But … he’s already had to do things he doesn’t like in the slightest, such as killing people and ordering rankers into places where some will be—and have been—killed.
For a time, he goes over what might be possible, but, in the end, much as he worries about it, he needs to look into the clouds. He stands and makes his way to the front door. There is a slight overhang that mostly shelters a narrow area just outside. Lerial slips outside, closing the door behind himself. He does notice, in the gloomy light of a drizzly morning, that the plank siding of all the dwellings in Bherkhan, those that he can see, has an oil finish, but the finish is almost a tan color. Does every hamlet pick a different shade of oil? It does appear that way.
Lerial pushes away the thoughts of oil and directs his senses to the clouds above. There is a flow of order and chaos, a pattern, or rather two patterns, because there is one set of flows inside the cloud … and a different flow outside, and yet the two interact. There is also more order in the cloud than in the air around it, and Lerial thinks it should be the other way around … except … a cloud is a structure, while the air is more like chaos. He uses his order-senses to follow the patterns of a section of the clouds just to the east, because he can see them, at least he can see them as well as he can see anything, while staying under the overhang of the roof and not twisting his neck.
The two patterns … they’re almost like the order line coil creates a related chaos coil … of sorts. Except that the comparison isn’t quite right, and Lerial cannot think of a way to make it so. But what would happen if you nudged the flow inside, because that’s more like order?
Lerial does so, and the chaos outside the center of the cloud strengthens, as if more is flowing to join that already there. He keeps watching. Is the patch of sky to the east darkening? It certainly looks that way.
Then, there is a small flash of … something, as if chaos had flowed one way, and order rebounded along the same path … or maybe it had been the other way. Lerial cannot tell because it has happened so fast, but the thunder that follows suggests that whatever
he did triggered a small bolt of lightning.
The rain to the east intensifies, for perhaps a tenth of a glass before stopping. The clouds there, or now more to the south, because they are slowly moving southward, begin to thin, so much so that, for perhaps a tenth of a glass, hazy sunlight filters through that thin film, but before long the order-chaos patterns in the clouds reassert themselves, and a more uniform drizzle dribbles down on Bherkhan once more, except, Lerial notices, the drizzle is finer and lighter than before.
Of course! You changed the patterns, and the clouds rained harder, and that left less water in them … Lerial nods, even as he finds himself grinning. And you did something that created lightning, if only in the air.
He takes a deep breath, knowing he has a great deal of effort … and work ahead of him … if he can even make what he has in mind work, but if he doesn’t …
He doesn’t even want to consider those possibilities. Instead, he sends forth his order-senses once more.
LXXIII
Twoday dawns bright and clear—and by midmorning the air is too warm to be merely springlike, as Lerial recognizes as he stands in the sunlight outside the officers’ temporary quarters, trying to use his abilities to separate order from chaos in clear air, a task he is finding difficult, but not impossible, as a small cloud begins to form in the air several hundred yards above him. Interestingly enough, the more he makes the separation, the easier it becomes.
He looks up to see Altyrn riding toward him, followed by Juist. From the majer’s bearing, and the hint of chaos swirling around him, Lerial can sense that the majer is worried, if not upset, and he releases his hold on the small cloud above him, looking at it for several moment as it drifts southward in the light and warm breeze, still holding its shape. Even though it contains comparatively little moisture, if slightly more than the air around it, while he knows it will dissipate, the process is going to take longer than he has thought it would.
He walks swiftly toward Altyrn.
Even before he has completed dismounting, the majer addresses Lerial. “Muster your company and be formed up in half a glass. The scouts have reported that the Meroweyans are less than five kays away. They’re not moving that swiftly, but they’re headed here.”
“We’re withdrawing, ser? Where?”
“All the way to Escadya.”
“That’s almost fifteen kays, isn’t it?”
“We need the distance and the time. We’re going to have to let the people do what they can. We still don’t have any war arrows to speak of and only a few handfuls of spears that the rankers have made in the last day. There’s been no word from Juist or Denieryn. Facing well over a thousand armed Meroweyans with four Verdyn companies that contain only three companies’ worth of rankers and no weapons except sabres and a few lances that are useless in this kind of fighting is something I’d rather not do.” Altyrn’s voice is edgy, something Lerial has not heard before.
“I wasn’t questioning, ser. What else can we do that makes sense right now?”
“I know you weren’t.” Altyrn’s brief smile vanishes. “I had to tell Elder Klerryt about his daughter.”
“He’s here?”
“He and the other elders are already on their way to Escadya.” Altyrn pauses, then adds, “What made it worse for him was that she didn’t have to serve. She was older and had already done her service as a woodland warden. She was the one who insisted. She told her father that if some offspring of the elders didn’t serve, how could they insist that so many other young people should.” Altyrn offers a sardonically wry smile. “I thought you might understand that.”
Belatedly, Lerial understands some of what Alaynara had meant by saying that practicality included who people were. She thought you knew … and you had no idea. “Her experience was why she was so good an archer, I imagine.”
“Did you talk to her much?” asks the majer.
“Some. About the same as the squad leaders.”
“It might help if you wrote a letter to the elder. Not the specifics of what happened. I told him those.”
“Just about how good an archer, how good a leader she was?”
Altyrn nods as he ties his mount to the short hitching rail. “Not immediately, but when you have time.”
Once the majer walks toward the door, Lerial strides toward the small dwellings holding second company, marveling about the fact that, with roughly eighty rankers left out of slightly over a hundred, it is the closest to full strength of all of Altyrn’s companies.
Almost exactly a half glass after Altyrn has informed Lerial of the Meroweyan advance, all four companies are on their way. The main road is damp, but not all that muddy, as they leave Bherkhan, but by the time they have ridden two kays, the packed clay is almost dry.
Since Lerial has not had a chance to write the letter to Klerryt, as he rides beside Korlyn, he thinks about Alaynara … and what he could say about her. All the things you would like to say—that she was kind and perceptive, or that she understood more than she expressed—all those things would likely convey the wrong meaning to her father. And all the other things that you could say—that she was capable, intelligent, decisive, and a good leader and archer—convey so little of what she was. Lerial also knows that what he had seen in Alaynara might not even be understood by her father. Some parents understand … and some do not. That is something he knows all too well.
In the end, he knows he will write about those things that express the obvious, then, later, if he meets Klerryt, he will feel his way and perhaps say more … or nothing beyond what he will write.
“Ser?” Korlyn finally ventures after Lerial has said nothing for almost a glass. “How many companies do the Meroweyans have left? Has the majer said?”
The squad leader’s normally cheerful round face reflects concern, the first time Lerial has seen that. Or is it the first time you’ve taken the time to notice? “He’s only said that they have over a thousand men in the force moving toward Escadya. I don’t know how many are in the other force, the one to the west. We haven’t heard anything from Juist or Denieryn.”
“That’s not good, is it, ser?”
“It’s neither good nor bad.”
“But…?”
“If it were truly bad, I think the elders would know and would have told the majer. What it likely means is that Juist and Denieryn have withdrawn, just as we are, and that they haven’t fought another battle or skirmish.” That’s what you hope, anyway.
“Like to think that, ser.”
Lerial laughs softly. “So would we all.”
“You think they’ve got more of those wizards?”
“I’d be surprised if they don’t. They have less than when they started, and maybe we can see if they’ll have even fewer.”
“That’d be good.”
Lerial just nods to that, and Korlyn refrains from pressing.
By the fourth glass of that afternoon, Lerial and second company are riding back into the very area in Escadya where he had spent eightdays training Lancers in blade skills and trying to learn what he could about commanding a company. He glances at the sky once more, but it is clear. Of course. Once you’ve finally figured out how you might handle clouds … there aren’t any. But that also reminds him of how dangerous putting off doing things can be, no matter how pressed he feels.
Once the troopers are settled back in the barracks they left eightdays before, Altyrn summons Lerial and the other two company officers to meet in a corner of the mess hall.
When Lerial enters and looks around, he can see—and sense—that it is totally empty, except for the four of them … and likely has been for some time. As he seats himself across the table from the majer, to the left of Shaskyn and then Kusyl, he says, “Everyone is moving out of Escadya as well?”
“Not everyone,” replies Altyrn. “Several hundred people will likely stay and try to hamper the Meroweyans in some way, and some are working on fashioning more spears. There are two wagons full of war arr
ows, and a cart with spears that just arrived. When we finish here, you need to have your companies re-arm. If the Meroweyans proceed as they have, we will have tomorrow to prepare our defenses for their attack. The people here have been working to create more pit traps in the woods flanking where we will make a stand. We will use the same sort of defenses as at the stream, except they will be on the low ridge just west of Escadya itself, the one that crosses the small meadow that the road runs through…”
Lerial listens intently as Altyrn outlines what he has planned.
LXXIV
When he rises on threeday morning, Lerial immediately checks the sky, but sees only high hazy clouds, although, with the tall trees surrounding the Lancer training grounds, he cannot see any that might be near the horizon in any direction. You’re just going to have to practice with the air as it is, clouds or no clouds.
By seventh glass, second company is at the low ridge—really a gentle rise that is no more than two or three yards above the flat meadow to its southwest, so low that the main road just goes right over it, although time and the passage of people, wagons, and horses have worn down a short stretch near the top of the rise. Lerial has to question how four undersized companies are going to defend a rise that extends close to half a kay.
“You have a doubtful look,” Altyrn observes, as he and Lerial wait for Kusyl and Shaskyn to ride up and join them.
“I have several questions,” Lerial admits. “How can we possibly defend this? And why won’t they just find a way around us?”
“The answer to the first question is simple,” replies Altyrn blandly. “We can’t. We’re only going to use the position to inflict as many casualties as possible before we withdraw.”
“They must know that by now.”
“They may.”
“Then why won’t they just avoid us?”
“For two reasons,” replies Altyrn. “First, it’s not a good idea to put yourself where you might be surrounded, and the Meroweyans can’t be certain that we might not have more forces around Verdell. Second, every military leader knows that until you defeat and destroy the forces that oppose you, you can’t control or govern a land. Some can’t even when they do destroy all organized armed forces that have opposed them, but that’s another question. Ask me about that some other time.”
Cyador’s Heirs Page 52
