Arms-Commander

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Ryba merely nodded. “Arthanos and his army are moving westward along the route we anticipated. He could make the valley in two more days, but it might be three.”

  Saryn forbore to point out that Ryba, not Saryn, had been the one to foresee which of the three approaches the Gallosians would take. Instead, she said, “I thought I’d leave Klarisa here to light off the penetrators. That way—”

  “You need to be here,” Ryba interrupted. “Everything depends on the penetrators, and no one else has your skills.”

  “But as your arms-commander, I’m totally out of touch up here.”

  “I can rely on you, and none of the other guards really understand explosives.”

  All of what Ryba said was true, but it wasn’t the whole story, Saryn knew. “What else?”

  “I can’t be certain matters will work out unless you’re here. Besides, I’ll have both the captains you trained.”

  “What exactly do you have in mind?” asked Saryn.

  “A barricade across the road that will appear after we’ve cut off their advance company. It will look like a picket of pikes.”

  “Placed so as to slow them down and put them in a battle formation, where the easiest ground to flank us is south of the road on the sloping meadows where no one can hide?”

  “Approximately…yes.”

  “How many men does he have?”

  “He couldn’t fill all the companies, it appears. There were still around eight thousand. There are a few less now. I’m having the best archers pick off as many officers and squad leaders as they can from a distance. That should give them the impression that we don’t have the troops to fight a massed battle. It will also keep outliers close to the main formation.”

  Saryn turned and glanced back at the valley below and to her right. Not surprisingly, what Ryba planned wasn’t all that different from what she’d had in mind.

  “We had an interesting morning,” Ryba said.

  Saryn didn’t like the way Ryba said “interesting,” but she just looked back at the Marshal. The circles under the Marshal’s eyes were dark, and a tracery of fine lines radiated from the corners of those eyes. Fine silver hairs were interspersed with the short jet-black. With a jolt, Saryn realized that Ryba was no longer young, something she had known, but not really felt. Not until now.

  “We captured two Gallosian scouts. The older one was the obnoxious, dominating-male type. The younger one was just worried. Scared, even. The obnoxious one decided to tell me that Arthanos would torture me within a digit of my life for all that I’d done, and that I ought to let him go. Before he started talking, I’d thought about it, because releasing him would have confused them and showed a certain arrogance. But then…he spat at me.”

  Saryn winced.

  “I changed my mind,” Ryba continued. “Instead, I took off the battle harness and the dagger, and had them remove his scabbard and check him for hidden weapons. Then I told him that he could go free if he bested me, but that I’d kill him with my hands and feet if he couldn’t. He couldn’t wait to charge me. I smashed his knee, broke one arm, then the other. I could have broken his neck, but that wouldn’t have done what was necessary. So I crushed his throat and let him suffocate. It didn’t take very long.”

  “And you sent the other one back?” asked Saryn.

  “I told him that was what an unarmed woman could do to the most experienced armsmen. Then I had Murkassa take him—and the broken body of the arrogant one—down to where he could ride and report to Arthanos. I told her, while he listened, to kill him if he didn’t ride straight to the Gallosian lines.”

  “You’re trying to infuriate them even more, aren’t you?” asked Saryn.

  “Fury weakens. It impairs judgment, and it burns out strength too soon. Besides, I’m tired of men who seem to think that might makes right but only when they have the might.”

  “They may kill the younger scout because he didn’t fight,” Saryn pointed out.

  “They may. That’s his problem and theirs.”

  Saryn saw no point in commenting on that. “You still haven’t said when I’ll know to light off the fuses on the weapons.”

  “We’ll flash you with the mirrors. Just long flashes. From there.” Ryba pointed to a low hillock on the south side of the road not far from the southern end of the mountain meadows.

  “Won’t the signaler have to get clear?”

  “That hill is higher than it looks from here.”

  “What if there’s no sun?”

  “There should be,” replied Ryba. “But if there’s not, we’ll torch a fire with a column of smoke—heavy smoke. I brought some oil mixtures that do that. Just make sure that they explode at close to the same time.”

  “I’ve timed the fuse burn rates, but it’s still a guess. Some of the fuses have to be longer than I’d like.”

  “I’m sure you’ll work it out. Remember, Saryn, the future of the Legend lies in your hands.”

  The future of the Legend?

  “The Legend of Westwind and the hope of women on this forsaken world,” Ryba added.

  “It rests more on you,” Saryn replied. “You’re the one who created Westwind.”

  “And you’ll help save it. You’ll see.” Ryba smiled, a trace sadly, then turned her mount. “We need to get back down. You understand why I came, I trust?”

  “Yes.” To make sure I’ll detonate the explosions that will destroy more than eight thousand men and who knows how many mounts.

  “Sometimes, there are no good choices, no matter what those who might follow will say.”

  As she watched the Marshal ride slowly downhill, Saryn shook her head. She had never envied Ryba, and she certainly didn’t now.

  XXXV

  Even by midmorning on fiveday, Saryn was getting a bad feeling about the line of thunderstorms to the northeast. They looked darker than most, and she could hear the distant rumbling of thunder. Also, thunderstorms that formed earlier in the day were more severe. So far she’d had no word from the Marshal as to the progress of the Gallosian forces, but no news meant that Arthanos wasn’t all that close. Not yet, anyway.

  By just before noon, the line of thunderstorms had reached the other side of the valley opposite the mesa, and rain was beginning to fall there. Saryn had been careful to place the penetrators on rock high enough not to be flooded but low enough that they weren’t anywhere near the highest points on that part of the mesa. But still…she looked toward the oncoming ominous clouds and the sheets of rain that looked black in the gloom cast by the thick and towering clouds blocking the sun. The penetrator casings were iron, and there were far more lightning flashes than she’d yet seen in a mountain thunderstorm.

  There certainly wasn’t time to move the penetrators off the mesa, not when it had taken most of a day to get them up there, and with the intensity of the oncoming storm, Saryn wasn’t certain that anywhere would have been safe. Probably she should have waited to cart them onto the mesa, but she’d always hated to be forced into doing anything at the last moment.

  Now…by being too prepared, she might lose everything.

  Could she use her skills with the “flow” of order to draw or keep the lightning bolts away from the penetrators? How? Was it even possible?

  What was a lightning bolt? She didn’t see how it could be order. Was it some form of chaosbolt, like those flung by the white mages?

  She walked hurriedly eastward toward the mesa, angling her path so that she reached a point just a few yards down from where the rock surface flattened into the mesa top and a handful of yards back from the cliff overlooking the valley. The gusting chill winds whipped at her, and she had to refasten her riding jacket. Then she sat down on one of the tumbled rocky chunks and concentrated on the nearest edge of the thunderstorm, no more than a kay away.

  At first, all she could sense was a swirl of chaos. Rather than probe, she just let her senses absorb the swirling winds and water droplets. Before long, she began to grasp that, for all the c
haos, there was a pattern there, and an interplay between order and chaos.

  Cracckkk! A blast of energy slammed somewhere down into the valley, but it was close enough that for several moments Saryn heard nothing. Then tiny high-pitched bells rang in her ears before her hearing began to return.

  Scattered rain droplets began to pelt her, and she tried again to absorb the pattern or patterns within the approaching thunderstorm. Somehow the water droplets collected or embodied order. That order was tossed up by chaos high into the storm, then dropped, only to be hurled upward once more. With each cycle, more order was gathered…and so was more chaos, except the chaos, she realized, was being drawn from the ground or rocks beneath the storm.

  That’s it! Lightning is chaos cloaked in order…and it actually flows in both directions at once. Somehow…somehow, she had to create enough of an order-barrier around the weapons so that the order strength of the storm wouldn’t draw chaos from the mesa and through the iron casings of the penetrators, but from a point at least a few yards away from them.

  She began to scramble over the rocky ground and bare rocks in the direction of the weapons. She didn’t want to get too close, but she just couldn’t handle order flows from a distance. Nylan might have been able to, but she didn’t have his skills.

  She stopped well over fifty yards from the weapons, dropping behind a block of red rock that offered protection from flying iron or lightning—she hoped. The rain droplets were falling faster and harder, and another roll of thunder shook the air. Saryn forced herself to concentrate.

  First, she tried to sense any order-pathways around where the weapons were. There were only three, and they were faint. There didn’t seem to be much chaos, either. But she could sense a distant rush of it moving from the north end of the mesa, as if it accompanied the wall of rain that had begun to sweep toward her and the weapons. All Saryn could think of was to try to braid the three faint order-pathways into a loose pattern around the penetrators. That might divert the buildup of chaos to another higher area of the mesa. If she could make it work…

  She kept trying to reinforce those order-barriers while, all around her, a sort of pressure built, not order, but not exactly chaos, either. She felt as though she were being pressed into the rock, even while water poured down on her.

  Crack! Crack! Crack!…

  Scores of miniature lightning flashes—or slender reedlike stalks of order and chaos—flared across the higher rocky hump to the south of the waterproof-covered penetrators. The bitter smell of ozone—something she hadn’t expected to smell again after she’d left the Winterlance—filled the air around her. At the same time, her ears reverberated. When the reverberations finally died away, and the rain subsided to something more like a shower, there was a deep silence—except that in the distance, she could hear the faintest roll of thunder. She glanced up and to the southwest. Another lightning bolt flared against a ridgeline of a peak perhaps three kays away, but the sound she heard was so faint that the lightning strike should have been more like ten kays away.

  Soaked as she was, she needed to check the penetrators, especially the fuses, to make sure that the wind hadn’t ripped them out of their oiled leather. So she extended her senses again—or tried to—except an unseen hammer slammed into her skull so hard that she staggered…and almost fell. For a moment, she just stood on the wet rock, water dripping off her, trying to gather herself together.

  She’d seen Nylan collapse after using his skill with order too much, but that had been to destroy thousands. All she’d done was to divert a lightning bolt some twenty or thirty yards.

  All? And just how much power is in one of those? She winced. She hadn’t thought of it in quite that way.

  After a moment, she edged toward the waterproof-covered weapons. They looked untouched, and there were no signs that the lightning had struck close. She certainly hadn’t seen or felt it, but she could have missed a strike amid that last set of blasts. She paused. If any had been struck, shouldn’t it have exploded? Or could the powder be slow-cooking?

  She wished she could use her senses to check the penetrators, but even the thought of using them at the moment brought on a throbbing in her skull. Finally, she hurried toward the still-mostly-covered weapons. They were cool to the touch, and no water, or anything else, had gotten to the oilskin-covered and rolled fuse cables. After repositioning the waterproofs, she stepped back and glanced up. The northern sky was almost clear—a crystalline greenish blue, and the storms were already well to the southwest.

  As she turned and walked carefully back over dampened, red sandy soil and rain-slicked red rock, she couldn’t help but think about Ryba. After ten years of being Ryba’s arms-commander, Saryn had come to assume, if tacitly, that Ryba’s visions were true. What if they were not? And even if they were—this time—would what she saw always come to pass? Was that why Ryba kept most of them to herself? Somehow, Saryn doubted that Ryba had foreseen everything that had happened with Nylan.

  She kept walking through the scattered droplets that were tapering off to nothing, making her way off the top of the mesa and down toward the upper camp. As she neared the twisted trees, she could see that a Westwind guard waited, her mount breathing heavily from the ride up the hills and over the shoulder.

  Saryn waved and hurried toward the woman.

  As Saryn drew closer, the guard said something, but Saryn couldn’t hear the words. She stopped and looked closely at the guard. “I’m sorry. I didn’t hear that.”

  “A message from the Marshal, ser.”

  Saryn only heard some of the words, but by watching, she got the meaning—or close enough, since the guard then extended a folded sheet of paper.

  “Thank you.” Saryn took the small square of paper and read Ryba’s precise script.

  Commander—

  Arthanos will reach the pass at the end of the valley no later than noon tomorrow. So far, he has lost almost two companies of cavalry.

  Under the words was Ryba’s seal.

  Saryn could only hope that she didn’t have to deal with another thunderstorm, especially at the time when the Gallosians finally reached the valley.

  XXXVI

  Saryn woke just after first light, cold, stiff, and sore. Her head still throbbed, if faintly, and her uniform was damp. The sky was as much gray as green-blue. Thankfully, Klarisa had detailed one of the guards to bring up the coals into a small fire. As she stood close to the flames, Saryn silently thanked the squad leader for the warmth. Three others from fourth squad stood around the fire, none close to the arms-commander.

  Although it had not frosted, Saryn suspected that it had been almost that cold. The brisk wind out of the west made the air seem even more chill, though summer was almost upon the Roof of the World. But then, full summer wasn’t all that warm on a mesa top in the heights of the Westhorns. With a west wind, Saryn reflected, they were less likely to get a thunderstorm, but the valley below would be warm by afternoon, possibly almost hot—at least by angel standards, cold as it was before sunrise.

  “Ser,” Hoilya ventured, “how long will it be before the Gallosians reach us?”

  “I’d guess today. It might be as late as tomorrow.”

  “Just as soon they get here,” murmured one of the others. “Colder up here than doing picket duty at the stables…”

  Not as cold as it will be if we don’t get more quarters built and get people out of the stables. With that thought, Saryn turned from the fire to look down-slope at a rider she had just sensed, a guard pushing her mount as much as possible. That urgency suggested the guard bore news of Arthanos. Saryn waited, since the rider could cover the remaining distance far faster than could Saryn.

  “…wager she’s going to tell us the Gallosian bastards are on the way…”

  Saryn wouldn’t have bet against the guard’s aside.

  When the rider finally neared, Saryn stepped away from the fire and walked several yards to meet her. “Greetings.”

  “Ser, the Marsh
al sent me. The Gallosians were less than ten kays from the east end of the valley when they made camp last night. They should reach the valley by late morning or midday. The Marshal requests that you be ready to act on her command by midmorning.”

  “Thank you. Once you’ve rested a moment, you can leave your mount and take one of our spares. You can tell the Marshal we will be ready for her command.”

  Saryn turned to call for Klarisa, but the squad leader was already hurrying toward Saryn.

  “We’re to expect the Gallosians by midmorning. If you’d show the messenger which spare mount she can take to return to the Marshal, and then muster your squad up at the weapons. We need to lower the penetrators and set the fuses.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Saryn turned and ran, if carefully, up toward the top of the mesa, then toward the northern edge, stopping when she could see the east end of the valley. The sun was beginning to clear the peaks to the east, and she had to squint to scan the thin line of brown that was the road, but there were no riders in sight, and she didn’t see dust farther to the east. The thunderstorm of the afternoon before hadn’t lasted that long, only enough to dampen the top of the ground, and the Gallosian army would raise some dust.

  She doubted that the Gallosians were that close, since most commanders wouldn’t begin a day’s march through mountains in total darkness, and Arthanos would have had to start in darkness to reach the valley by sunrise. Even so, she and fourth squad couldn’t waste time.

  Why can’t anything be easy? She shook her head. If they’d already placed the weapons the day before, the storm would have soaked them and the fuses. By avoiding that problem, they faced the difficulty of having to lower and position the penetrators on short notice. That didn’t take into account the various ailments she had from having to protect the weapons from lightning. At least all the ropes and harnesses were ready to go. She took a last look at the eastern end of the valley, still in shadow, then hurried to the weapons cache. The last members of the squad slipped into the formation before the still-covered penetrators as she neared.