Ryba couldn’t have foreseen the mages. She wouldn’t have wasted the effort to build the pike frameworks, ruses or not. Saryn frowned. Or would she?
Ryba did not order a charge, and the mounted guards remained shielded by the crest of the hill-for the moment.
Saryn could see that Ryba had ordered the archers to fire again, because some of the cavalry fell, and there were places in the Gallosian lines where the advance slowed. Then, still shielded by the hill, the Westwind guards wheeled and began to ride to the southwest, directly toward the hillock from which the signal was supposed to come. The Gallosians continued to advance along the wide front, as if no one had noticed anything at all.
The cavalry on the meadows to the south of the road began to move more rapidly. That made sense, because they were higher and were the first to see the Westwind withdrawal. The lines of the Gallosian mounted forces became even more ragged, while the Westwind guards rode up the hillock and re-dressed their lines-in the staggered fashion that would allow them to fire shafts downhill at the attackers.
How long before Ryba signaled? Saryn glanced to the east end of the valley. Most of the armsmen in the main body of the Gallosian forces were well within where the avalanche would sweep-if Ryba’s visions were right…if Saryn’s judgments on where to place the weapons happened to be accurate…if she had calculated the fuse burn times correctly…
So many ifs…
The Gallosian cavalry hadn’t reached the foot of the hill that held the Westwind contingent…not yet. Ryba hadn’t signaled. How long should she wait? Saryn asked herself.
Her eyes focused on the Gallosian forces. Some were clearly being taken down by Westwind shafts, but the losses scarcely slowed the mass of men and mounts pressing toward the base of the hill.
A flash of something flitted past Saryn, and she immediately looked directly to the top of the hillock, concentrating intently. For a time she could see nothing. Then the light flashed past her again, and she realized that Ryba, or whoever was using the mirror, was sweeping the mesa, as if she could not see where Saryn and fourth squad were.
Saryn immediately moved to the fuse on the first penetrator, opened the leather bag, and removed the striker and the tinder. It took several strikes before the tinder caught, but once it did, she immediately slipped one of the fatwood splinters from her jacket and held it over the tinder, waiting until it was burning brightly. Then she lit the first fuse.
“Fourth squad! Back!” she ordered as she stood.
She walked swiftly to the second fuse and lit it, then the third and fourth, close together, and after them, the remaining three. Following her own advice, she moved back from the edge of the mesa and knelt, waiting, hoping that the weapons would work…and work as planned. If not, almost all of the Westwind guards would be overrun and slaughtered-unless they fled…and that would only prolong the eventual outcome…all that if Saryn could not trigger the avalanche necessary to wipe out most of the Gallosians.
She could sense the running reddish chaos of the fuses, and all felt as though they were burning at almost the same rate, and that they would trigger the penetrators at close to the same moment. Just before the fuses burned down to the penetrator casings, Saryn found herself holding her breath.
Whummmp! Whump! Whump!..
The entire mesa seemed to rock with the force of the explosions, but that was only the sound, Saryn realized, and all she felt was the slightest tremor from the stone beneath her feet. Small fragments of rock pelted down on and around her, and reddish dust puffed up from the north side of the mesa. A faint rumbling growled away from her, then subsided.
Saryn could sense that most of the overhang remained in place, although some of the stone had fragmented away.
Now what?
She had no more explosives, not to speak of, and no more penetrators in which to place them, and certainly not enough time to do either. But she had to do something. She had to.
She didn’t even look into the valley. There was no time for that. She walked quickly to the edge of the crevice, just opposite the largest bulge in the overhang, stopping just a yard or so back from the break in the stone. She tried to feel the junctures of order and chaos. Four of them were gone-the ones targeted by the first, fourth, fifth, and sixth penetrators. The second juncture was there, but so weak that it was more like a tangle of strands of order and chaos.
Saryn had no idea how to break the bonds holding the mass of rock to the mesa, but she had to find a way…and quickly. She’d changed the flow of the order-lines around the penetrators to protect them from the lightning. Could she change the flows around the junctures so that the order and chaos didn’t intertwine?
She immediately reached out with her senses to the weaker juncture and began to ease the dark gray strands away from the pinkish gray ones. The effort was more like trying to move water with a rake or fan air with a small leafless branch…or part hair with a toothless comb.
Still, after a moment, the weaker tangle separated, but the strands immediately reformed-flowing around the single remaining juncture, which began to vibrate. Saryn turned her efforts to the remaining juncture, pressing harder, smoothing, parting the currents, or the strands, edging the flows away from each other, and yet, as she did, she realized that the separate flows became stronger, as if parallel flows of order and of chaos were stronger. As each dark strand separated from what seemed to be its complementary pinkish gray one, Saryn could sense a growing reddish white ball of chaos growing around the disintegrating juncture, yet somehow contained-if barely-by a ball of grayish order.
As the last strand flowed away, Saryn could feel the chaos flaring toward an intense whitish red…and she instinctively flattened herself on the stone, yelling, “Down! Everyone! Get down!”
The explosion that followed shook the entire mesa, and was so massive and loud that Saryn heard nothing at all. Just silence, and pressure.
Then a second blow hammered her into the rock, and her skull felt like it was being split in half. At the same time, rock fragments pelted down and kept pelting down. Although her eyes were closed, Saryn felt as though scores of invisible needles were jabbing through them and into her brain.
Then…she felt nothing.
Dampness on her face brought her back.
“Ser…ser…”
Someone was pressing a damp cloth across her forehead, and she was lying on her back.
“I’m…all right.” She wasn’t. Not exactly. Her head was splitting, far worse than when she had tried to manipulate where the lightning struck, and her eyes were tearing so badly that she could see almost nothing but blurred colors and figures.
Slowly, she sat up. “It broke loose, didn’t it?” She looked at the guard she thought was Klarisa.
“Yes, ser.”
Saryn struggled to her feet. Even without her numbed senses, she could feel the fear in the squad leader. She blotted her eyes. After several moments, she could see, if intermittently, since her vision blanked out with each unseen hammerblow on her skull, but she could tell the large section of the mesa was gone. Where the crevice had been was the mesa’s edge.
Klarisa looked at Saryn, then down at the valley.
Saryn turned. The entire middle section was shrouded in brown-and-gray dust.
Shrouded…a good word.