“I’ll tell them.”
When the young subofficer returned from arranging his men, he watched as Cerryl took out the screeing glass and set it in a darker space between two oak roots.
Cerryl scanned the silver-framed image in the glass, but where the lower road bordered the steeply sloping meadow remained empty, with no sign of riders-or anything else.
Hiser glanced at Cerryl.
“Not yet.”
Cerryl checked the glass periodically until, sometime slightly after midday, a single rider in blue trotted down the lower road, his head turning from side to side as he studied the meadow without halting. The scout passed on and disappeared around the curve where the lower road entered the woods to the west.
Before long a second scout followed.
Cerryl let the image lapse and straightened from studying the glass, half-leaning against the rough bark of the old tree.
“It can’t be long,” suggested Hiser in a low voice.
“Midafternoon,” said Cerryl.
After a time, the scouts returned, heading back toward the main Spidlarian force, Cerryl surmised. Before long, another scout appeared, this one studying the meadow and then riding up through the tall grass to the top.
Cerryl held his breath, but the chaos-altered ground supported mount and rider. The scout studied the road, and the hoofprints that led eastward, and rode to the east for close to half a kay before returning and descending the grassy slope to the lower road. He also vanished, headed back toward the main body of Spidlarian lancers.
As Cerryl had predicted, the full column of mounted Spidlarians eventually reached the sloping meadow slightly past midafternoon. The long column halted at the base of the meadow.
Finally, yet another pair of scouts rode up through the grass and up onto the main road. One turned west, the other east. They also returned and rode down the meadow to the main body.
As the glass showed the Spidlarians re-forming to climb the grassy slope, Cerryl could at last hear the sounds of voices, low voices, more like the intermittent and muted hum of insects. When the riders in the column turned, so that they presented a wide front in riding up the sloping meadow, Cerryl released the image in the screeing glass and extended his perceptions, removing the last order props that supported the top layer of grass and soil, beginning near the main road at the top of the slope.
“More than I thought…” murmured Hiser.
More than you thought, either. “That’s why we needed something different,” answered Cerryl, finding sweat dripping from his forehead in the sweltering afternoon, despite his position in the cooler and darker woods. He waited, his head throbbing, deciding not to undermine the lower part of the slope yet. That should wait.
Abruptly he shook his head. He wasn’t thinking. Sitting in the woods wouldn’t help much if some of the Spidlarian lancers did avoid his chaos-ooze trap. And how would he know when to remove the order supports on the lower section?
“We need to mount up…have the lancers ready for any that do manage to get up the slope.”
Hiser nodded. “I thought so, ser. The company is ready.”
Cerryl packed the glass in quick motions and untied the gelding from the sapling beside the oak, mounting hastily and heading toward the road. Now it won’t matter, but you should have thought of that earlier. Why didn’t you? Because you’ve used so much order and chaos that you can’t think?
He snorted as he urged his mount northward.
He could hear the faint first screams of Spidlarian mounts as they plunged through the thin crust of soil and grass, screams that were cut off as horses and riders were swallowed by the chaotic ooze.
Cerryl spurred his mount toward the main road and the top of the rise overlooking the meadow and the lower road, where he reined up and tried to grasp the situation.
Perhaps two-thirds of the blue lancers had pulled up short of the upper ooze-filled part of the sloping meadow. The remainder had apparently vanished into the churning dark ooze in the midpart of the deep meadow grass.
Cerryl took a deep breath and forced himself to concentrate, ignoring his already-pounding head and sliding his order senses to the lower part of the meadow, well behind where the bulk of the remaining blue forces were struggling to quiet scattered and spooked mounts and turn to retreat.
A dozen riders at the eastern side of the Spidlarian line started back toward the road-right over the area where Cerryl had removed the bonds that held both soil and clay together.
All dropped into more of the quicksand bog-like chaotic ooze that replaced the tall grass. One rider climbed to the top of his mount’s saddle and flung himself sideways. He fell flat onto the dark mass and lay there scrambling for an instant before vanishing under the dark brown ooze.
To the west, almost a score of riders rode sideways toward the woods, getting beyond the trapped chaos ground just before Cerryl completed the encirclement.
Whhhssttt! Cerryl arched a firebolt over and downhill from the blue lancers, forcing them to turn away from the chaos fire and smoldering grass and shrubs at the edge of the meadow. “You need to get them,” the mage gasped at Hiser, even as he flung a second firebolt down across the meadow. “Stay close to the trees.”
Whhhsttt! One blue lancer screamed as the flames engulfed him and his mount, but the rest of the score or so struggled uphill and through the woods.
Cerryl struggled to finish undermining the slope, now that the remaining Spidlarian lancers were surrounded by the ooze trap.
Don’t think about it…just do it.
Hiser’s men swept down through the thinner trees on the western side of the meadow.
Whhssstt! Cerryl launched another firebolt below the escaping Spidlarians-to ensure they kept coming uphill-and then another-at the Spidlarians themselves.
Whhhsttt! He shivered in the gelding’s saddle, casting a last firebolt to aid Hiser’s company before the two groups of lancers met among the thinner trees.
Despite the flashes of light across Cerryl’s eyes and the blurring of his vision, the odor of burning flesh, the cries, and the screams of wounded mounts-those were enough to confirm his accuracy. He sat on the gelding, just holding himself in the saddle as he heard the clash of blades below him.
He began to see again-if intermittently-enough to make out when the last of the blue-clad lancers slumped in his saddle. Enough to see that Hiser’s men led four empty-saddled mounts back up through the trees.
Cerryl forced himself to scan the killing ground.
Three horsemen galloped downhill along the eastern edge of the meadow, close to the trees. Cerryl wasn’t sure where they had come from. Returning scouts perhaps, now trying to flee the carnage?
One scout turned his mount slightly westward, toward the ooze-covered ground, as if to avoid a fallen limb or something else. The horse jerked forward, issuing a scream, and then both mount and rider vanished into the dark brown ooze that extended even closer to the woods.
Neither of the remaining riders even looked back at the scream.
Cerryl forced himself to take a deep breath before casting forth the narrow focused fire lance that he’d hidden for years from Jeslek. The first beam lanced through the trailing rider and caught the leg of the leading horse, who went down in a heap.
The surviving blue lancer vaulted clear of the falling mount, somehow, but Cerryl’s second fire lance caught him before he reached the trees.
Swaying in the saddle, Cerryl rode slowly along the main road, looking down at the dark mass of ooze that had swallowed over a hundred riders and mounts, both looking to see destruction and hoping he needed to raise no more chaos and devastation.
Hiser rode to meet him at the midpoint of the road above what had been a meadow. “Ser? There were but three left.”