LXXVI
IN THE LATE early morning, the sun hangs just over the Accursed Forest, its towering trees revealed and then obscured by the scattered and white puffy clouds that scud westward. A cooler breeze blows out of the northeast, reminding Lorn that the season is spring, where summer heat is followed by chill and then by rain or mist … and then by wind or more heat, before the irregular cycle begins once more.
To Lorn’s right, the two squads of lancers are spread in a long line abreast, searching the deadland for signs of Forest activity beyond the ward-wall. To his left is the ward-wall, that seemingly unchanging low rampart of chaotic permanence that stretches northwest to the horizon, reflecting as it has for generations the vision and the skills of the Firstborn. And the power of the Accursed Forest.
The low clopping of hoofs and the breathing of lancer mounts are the only sound beside the sighing of the breeze that is slowly changing into a cold wind. Lorn hopes the chill will be dry, and not one that leads to cold rain or sleet.
He looks to the wall and notes the chiseled marker: N 480 E. They have another ten kays to ride before they reach the midpoint of the northeast ward-wall-and the granite structure housing a chaos tower that does not work.
His shifts his weight in the saddle and glances once more to his right, out at Olisenn and the first squad, riding methodically across the deadland, looking for signs of growth Lorn doubts they will find.
As the sun rises, so does the wind, and the cold air, sweeping off the winter heights of the distant Westhorns, chills more than the spring sun warms, but the Second Company’s lancers ride steadily northwest.
After covering another two kays, Lorn glances toward the wall, and both his eyes and chaos-order senses study it. The chaos pulses through the cupridium cables are less regular. Does that mean another fallen trunk? A breach in the wall itself? Trouble with a chaos tower? Or his own imagination?
He shivers as another cold chill washes across him-that of someone using a chaos glass to scree him. Maran? Or a higher-level magus from the Quarter of the Magi’i? He maintains a faint smile until the chill fades.
Is the screeing because of what he senses? Or is what he senses independent of the user of the chaos-glass?
Whatever it may be, he must wait. Still, Lorn gestures for Kusyl to ride closer.
With a puzzled expression, Kusyl follows Lorn’s gesture and guides his mount almost beside Lorn’s gelding. “Ser?”
“Do you think we should space the men farther apart when we go five abreast?” Lorn asks. “Say another cubit or so apart?”
Kusyl frowns. “Too far, and there is a greater risk that their lance fires will strike each other if leopards or cats get too near.”
Lorn nods, his eyes on the wall ahead, waiting until he can make out the faintest hint of darkness where the ward-wall touches the horizon. Finally, he turns once more to Kusyl. “There’s another tree trunk down, across the ward-wall up ahead. I can just barely see it.”
Kusyl stands in his stirrups and squints. “I see nothing.”
“In a kay or so you will,” Lorn assures the junior squad leader.
They ride nearly another kay and a half before, abruptly, Kusyl peers forward. “There is a trunk. You have good eyes, Captain.”
“It’s in knowing what to look for,” Lorn replies. “I didn’t know what that was when I started. Let’s form up on the road, and send a messenger out to Olisenn. He might have seen it, but he might not yet.” After a moment, he adds. “We can ride five abreast on the road for a while, until we get nearer the tree.”
“Form up on the road!” Kusyl orders. “On the road, five abreast!”
“ … not another fallen tree …”
“ … would draw unlucky bastard of an officer …”
“ … more angel-fired cats … stun lizards …”
“ … don’t know that …”
“ … by Steps of Paradise, I do … better believe I do ….”
Lorn ignores the mutterings, keeping a pleasant smile on his face as he lets the gelding carry him forward.
“Formed up, ser,” Kusyl reports. “A messenger is riding out to first squad.”
“Good. We’ll move out from the wall once we get within a half-kay of the trunk.” Or sooner if the chaos-net of the ward-wall is gone.
Lorn scans the area ahead as the second squad rides forward, checking the ward-wall, the area around where the trunk spans the wall, and the crushed green crown of the forest giant farther to his right. While he sees small creatures scurrying from the Accursed Forest down the trunk to the crown area, Lorn cannot be sure what they might be, otherthan they do not seem to be large enough to be stun lizards or the giant cats.
Some three hundred cubits from the trunk, Lorn raises his hand and reins in the white gelding. “Squad halt!”
In the silence, he studies the ward-wall, noting to himself that the chaos-net has vanished. While the fallen trunk is not so large as the one they had encountered on the first half of the patrol, even from where he is reined up, he estimates that the diameter is still greater than fifteen cubits.
Beyond the trunk, he can see the bulk of the non-functioning midpoint chaos tower.
“Don’t usually see’em this close to a chaos tower,” offers Kusyl.
“That’s our luck,” Lorn offers. “Send another messenger out to Olisenn. Have them form up five abreast and ride toward the crown. We’ll wait here a moment while I write out the message to send back to the Engineers. Then we’ll ride toward the crown, say, a hundred cubits off the trunk.”
“Yes, ser.”
Lorn finishes the message as quickly as he can and hands it to the squad leader. “Here.”
In turn, Kusyl rides to the rear of the column and turns the scroll over to a thin lancer, who immediately turns his mount and heads back toward Eastend. The squad leader rides back to Lorn and reports, “On its way, ser.”
Lorn nods. Both men know that the Engineers will not arrive until late the following day, if then. “Let’s see what this trunk holds.”
“Yes, ser. Lances ready! Forward at a walk!”
The horses’ hoofs powder the dead soil, not quite crunching the lifeless ground, turning up white streaks of the stones and stones of salt once poured onto fertile soil.
They have covered no more than fifty cubits, and are still close to two hundred cubits from the trunk, when two of the giant cats bound from the trunk, one to the left of the line of lancers, and one to the right. Both animals angle toward the lancers, running at speeds that seem to halve the distance with each breath.
“Discharge at will!” Both Lorn and Kusyl shout the orders near-simultaneously.
Hhssst! Hssst! Firelance bolts flare toward the cats, and all appear to miss.
“Short bursts!” Lorn adds.
Hssstt!
One cat falls, growling, before the firelances converge on it. The other cat dashes sideways at an incredible speed and sprints northward through the gap between the two squads, heading away from the lancers.
“Hold your discharges!” Kusyl orders. “This one’s dead, and you’ll need’em!”
The fallen cat seems slightly smaller than the one that had escaped the firelances, although it is hard to tell with most of the forward part of its body charred.
“Lances ready,” Lorn orders, urging the gelding northwest, edging along the trunk toward the crushed mound of vegetation that had been the crown-a circular matted mass clearly smaller than that of the tree they had encountered on the outward patrol.
Perhaps fifty cubits short of where the tree’s crushed upper branches begin lies a separate branch, nearly two cubits across, Lorn judges, and more olive colored and without smaller branches, almost like a huge vine torn from the Forest.
The branch undulates along its entire length, creating salt smears on the dead soil, and the lizard-like triangular head of a serpent rises beside the darker gray-brown of the tree trunk. The jaws open, extending wide enough to swallow a man.