From where he stood on the road Cerryl glanced up at the two subofficers. “Ferek…have the men stay down on that side of the hill-just below the crest. I don’t want the Spidlarians to see them.”
Ferek’s salt-and-pepper eyebrows lifted.
“I want to give them a little surprise. I can’t if they see our lancers.”
After a moment the older subofficer nodded, then turned his mount.
“The same for your company, Hiser.”
“Yes, ser.”
Cerryl rubbed his forehead, then stepped toward the gelding to repack the glass. He found his hands trembling. When had he last eaten? He tended to forget that mustering either order or chaos-or using the glass to spy out the enemy-required that he eat more often.
Tiredly he pulled a stale, hard biscuit from his saddlebag and chewed slowly, moistening his mouth with occasional swallows from his water bottle, his eyes on the trail road. Abruptly he shook his head and remounted, turning the gelding back down the road, just far enough that he could barely see the trail on which he hoped the Spidlarians continued to ride toward him.
He fumbled out another road biscuit and crunched on it, until all that remained were crumbs. Unhappily, the headache remained also, if slightly diminished.
A whispering sound intruded on Cerryl, the faintest of whispers, and he pulled himself more erect in the saddle. No longer was he sore each evening from riding, but even all his recent riding experience hadn’t made him any less susceptible to fatigue.
Cerryl motioned to the subofficers for quiet, watching the trail road, waiting as the lead Spidlarian scouts appeared, followed by a vanguard of perhaps half a squad. Shortly, as the scouts disappeared from view under the short bluff, Cerryl began to gather chaos to himself as he eased the gelding uphill.
Whhhstt! A firebolt arched out toward the angled trail, splashing across the damp clay well back of the lead Spidlarian scouts, but short of the main body of riders. Cerryl eased the gelding back downhill a few dozen cubits and flattened himself against his mount’s neck and mane, trusting that the opposing lancers would ride a few dozen cubits farther.
As the sounds of mounts grew louder, and as Hiser and Ferek glanced worriedly at him, Cerryl rode back uphill and out onto the downslope that led to the narrow bluff overlooking the trail-just in time to see several scouts point in his direction.
A half-score mounted archers spurred their mounts along the gentle slopes that flanked the bluff overlook, angling their mounts in toward him.
You waited too long. Cerryl mustered chaos once more and focused it on the two leading lancers-into a narrow beam of lance fire.
Both archers went down, vanishing into ashes, leaving a thin line of black smoke rising into the clear afternoon sky.
Whhsttt! Cerryl followed the light lancer with another firebolt, one that sprayed across the lancers behind and downslope of the archers.
Greasy black smoke seemed to puddle around the front lines of the blue-clad lancers, swirling back upon itself in the damp and still air.
An arrow hissed past the mage’s shoulder, and Cerryl jerked around in the saddle to see another pair of archers renocking their bows from mounts less than a hundred cubits to his right-almost as high on the grassy inclines to the west of the bluff as he was on the center.
His mind felt as clumsy as frozen hands had on cold mornings at the mill as he struggled to raise more chaos and fling it against the two bowmen.
Whhstt! Small as the firebolt was, the White mage’s aim was good enough to turn one archer into flames and ash and send the second spurring his mount down the grassy slope. The retreating archer tried to beat flames out with one hand and guide his careening mount with the other.
Squinting into the afternoon sun, Cerryl ignored the smell of burned flesh and focused on the blue-clad lancers nearly half a kay away on the trail road, lancers who seemed to be turning.
After a deep breath, Cerryl launched another large firebolt.
Wwhhhssttt! The globe of fire arched sedately over the grassy slope and dropped, splashing chaos fire across the second line of Spidlarians and their mounts.
Cerryl reeled in the saddle, points of light flashing before his eyes and his head throbbing. When he could see, he found that Hiser had ridden up beside him.
“They’ve turned, ser. You killed another half-score.”
Only another five score to go. Cerryl nodded slowly. “Send a scout to watch the trail on the far side. We need to make sure that they’re actually moving back.”
“Yes, ser.” Hiser rode back toward where his company had been mustered, waiting.
The gray-eyed mage struggled to get to his water bottle, his fingers trembling so much that he had to concentrate totally on unstoppering the bottle. He drank slowly, and the water seemed to reduce his shakiness and the frequency of the flashes before his eyes, but not the headache or the boneweariness he felt.
The sun was clearly nearing late afternoon, hanging over the low hills to the west, when Hiser returned.
Cerryl glanced up, taking in the sun and the shadows cast by the scattered trees and bushes. Had that much of the day gone?
“They’re going,” announced Hiser. “One of the scouts says they’re heading back along the road to Kleth.”
“For now,” Cerryl said. For now. He took a long and deep breath. One thing was becoming increasingly clear. Chaos fire was far more suited to either ambush or defense, not to direct-on attacks, not unless he could count on the enemy remaining massed in one place, and that seemed unlikely, to say the least.
The constant use of chaos, even on a small scale, seemed to be close to unworkable-at least for him-no matter how much order or chaos he could handle at longer intervals. He didn’t even want to think about why he was out in the backlands, fighting off Spidlarian armsmen with far too few White Lancers for the task, needing to muster chaos all too often-or about the lengthening separation from Leyladin.
XCV
IN THE ORANGE-TINGED light that followed dawn, Cerryl looked down at the glass on the rough-planked trestle table, rubbing his eyes. Over the past three eight-days, he hadn’t slept that well, not with the constant tracking of the Spidlarian forces and his efforts to keep them away from the supply road, especially with another set of Certan wagons moving out of the Easthorns and toward Elparta.
Because he knew he would never get back to it with all the screeing facing him, he permitted himself the luxury of a quick look in the glass for Leyladin, seeking that distant focus of order somehow faintly gray, rather than the pure black of Dorrin the smith. Was that because she lived amidst chaos? Or for some other reason? Why is there no mention of gray anywhere, not in any of the books or by any of the senior mages? Even as a warning?
The mists cleared from the glass, and, almost as if she had been waiting, the red-golden-haired healer smiled from where she sat in a green dressing gown at the writing table in her silk-hung room. The room still amazed Cerryl, but he smiled as well, even knowing that she could not sense his expression, because he was cheered by her smile. After a long look, he let the image go and looked at the blank glass on the table for a moment.
Finally, after taking a swig of water from his nearly empty bottle, he began to concentrate, scanning one by one the hamlets that bordered the supply road. All were vacant, as they had been since spring.
Cerryl rubbed his forehead once more, again wondering where the Spidlarians had gone. He stood and walked to the hearth, where he took a water bottle off the shelf and took a deep swallow. After that, he went back to the table and the screeing glass.
In time, he found the Spidlarian force, breaking camp in a higher meadow amid leaved trees, rather than evergreens. From what he could tell, they had doubled back north and west, midway between Fydel’s patrols and those of Cerryl, but more than forty kays north of the Axalt-Elparta road.