He rubbed his nose, then pulled the bench out so that he could sit as he called up the images he needed-and as he added to the rough maps he continued to draw. He had sketched in most of the side roads and trails that fed into the main road between Axalt and Elparta, and there were far more of them than he ever would have guessed before he’d begun his informal project.
He frowned as he looked at the blank glass, deciding against seeking Leyladin until he was finished with a drafting session and with scanning the nearby hamlets. That way, at least, he could end with a pleasant visage.
He found one more trail, winding through the rolling hills and leading almost to the main road where Jeslek and his forces massed a good forty kays to the southeast of Elparta along the hills that separated Gallos and Spidlar. After Cerryl added that to the map, he began to look for the latest supply wagons from Certis. Those were encamped somewhere in the Easthorns short of ruined Axalt. Finally, he began to scree the nearby hamlets.
The first two attempts showed still-empty hamlets. Even before the silver mists cleared on his third effort, a good four-, perhaps fivescore mounted armsmen wearing blue tunics or vests appeared in the glass, saddling their mounts and preparing to ride.
Cerryl couldn’t tell exactly where they were, but they looked to be on the road leading to the crossroads just beyond the hamlet where he’d made his headquarters-less than a half-day’s ride on what passed for one of the better roads in the area.
The brown-haired mage forced himself to finish checking the other locales before he returned to the image of the mounted armsmen. After studying the image again, he slowly stood and wiped his suddenly damp forehead. From what he could tell, no inordinate order or chaos accompanied the armsmen, and the glass wasn’t wrong. At least, it usually wasn’t.
You hope it’s not. He swallowed and walked out of the cot, glancing around the hamlet, the few buildings swathed in the orange of postdawn, lancers gathering beyond the cook fires for their rations.
“Ser?” asked the young lancer serving as a messenger.
“Oh…I need Hiser and Ferek. Right now.”
“Yes, ser.”
As the lancer scurried off, Cerryl massaged his clean-shaven chin. Even in the field, he hated the itchiness of a beard, although sometimes he skipped shaving a day or two with the white-bronze razor that Leyladin had given him years before.
Has it been that long?
Hiser was the first to arrive, his lank blonde hair flopping across his forehead. The older Ferek followed, brushing back thinning red hair streaked liberally with white.
“We’ve finally got visitors,” Cerryl said. “Probably fivescore Spidlarian lancers. They look like they’re on the road to the fork, maybe a half-day’s hard ride.”
“That’s more than we have.” Ferek looked speculatively at Cerryl.
Hiser nodded.
“I’m not really an armsman,” Cerryl ventured, “but it seems to me that we want to meet them somewhere that favors us, where they can’t easily ride around us and where they have to ride uphill to reach us.” He paused. “And where I can throw firebolts at them.”
“There’s that bunch of hills about two kays beyond where the road forks,” suggested Hiser.
Cerryl nodded. It might work. “Ferek…you get the men ready, and Hiser and I and a few lancers will ride out there now to see how we can best set up.”
“Set up…what’s to set up?” Ferek mumbled to Hiser as the two walked back in the direction of the corral and the lancers, some of whom were still eating.
Hiser murmured something, but Cerryl didn’t catch his words. The mage turned back to the cot, where he again called up the image of the Spidlarian lancers, now clearly riding southward. He let the image go, slipped the glass into its case, then stepped out of the cot. He walked down to the pole and post corral, stopping by the cook fire to grab a biscuit and some hard yellow cheese, which he wolfed down and chased with water. When he reached the corral, the gelding was already saddled and tied, waiting.
Hiser was mounted, as were five lancers.
“We’re ready, ser.”
Cerryl strapped the glass into a saddlebag and then mounted. The sun had climbed clear of the low hills to the east and blazed out of the clear green-blue morning sky, indicating a day that would be long and hot.
“Do you know how hard they’re riding?” Hiser asked.
“They’re walking their mounts.”
As they rode westward past the untended fields and meadows, Cerryl could hear Ferek’s voice behind them as he addressed the majority of the lancers.
“No more raids. These be armsmen, and lots of ’em. A good wizard helps, but he’ll not do everything.”
Not do everything? Let’s hope I don’t have to. Cerryl still recalled the battles in Gallos, when he’d been an apprentice. It had taken three wizards and three apprentices to defeat the Gallosian lancers. There were a few more Gallosian lancers there than here. But that battle still pointed out the limits of using chaos fire. The bigger the battle, the less use it was, because drawing chaos from the land and air exhausted the White wizard before all the armsmen on the other side were turned to ash.
The early-morning wind had died, and the morning was still and damp, although there had been no rain in several days. Cerryl shifted his weight in the saddle, his eyes on where the road forked ahead.
Cerryl, Hiser, and the quarter-score lancers took the north fork, the one that wound its way toward Kleth-eventually. After they had ridden up and down three of the long and gentle rises that barely qualified as hills, the day had gotten warm enough that Cerryl was sweating, and what little breeze there had been had long since died away. The road was empty, and the only tracks were those of Cerryl’s patrols.
In time, the seven reined up on the hillside that Hiser had thought might be suitable for what he had envisioned. The young mage glanced at the subofficer.
“See…this is the right place,” Hiser said. “We could form up on the right in that meadow…make them ride up-or charge down.”
Without speaking, Cerryl surveyed the ground to the northwest. Was Hiser right? Could they use the terrain to their advantage? How? Height wasn’t enough by itself. The road went through a narrower space between the two rolling hills. On the north side was an open meadow and on the south a woods or woodlot, thick enough to slow and split riders. Any decent officer would see that and go another way, and Cerryl couldn’t count on stupidity on the part of the Spidlarians.
“Let’s ride along the road to the next rise,” the mage suggested.
A brief frown crossed Hiser’s face.
“You were right about the place,” Cerryl said, “but if we wait here, it will be obvious to them. I’m wondering if the next rise looks like high ground but would show that we could be flanked.”
Hiser nodded. “So we’d form up and then give a little attack and fall back.”
“We might just fall back,” Cerryl said. “I’d rather avoid losing men we don’t have to lose. It would also give them the idea I don’t know what I’m doing.” You don’t, anyway. He concealed the wince at his own self-doubt.
“Make them hasty…you think?”
“Something like that, just so they don’t think too much.”
Cerryl rode down through the long and gentle slope of the meadow for nearly half a kay, noting that despite the lush grass, the ground appeared flat and firm.
“They could ride up this easy,” said Hiser. “Course…we could ride down easier.”
“Let’s hope they think so.” Cerryl turned his mount back uphill.
After dismounting near the single oak near the road-he thought it was an oak-Cerryl took out the glass and laid it on its case in the shadow of the tree, then motioned for Hiser to join him.