“Might be a good idea.”
Kharl urged the gelding forward.
Demyst was right. Kharl and the five other riders reined up just above the jagged upthrust gray rocks before the patrollers had stopped riding the road. There were far more than Kharl had realized-a good three companies. The mage turned in the saddle. “Jeka?”
The former urchin and weaver rode slowly toward Kharl, then reined up. Kharl thought that she was far more graceful on horseback than he was, even though she’d only ridden twice in her life.
“You want something, ser?”
“You said you wanted to be helpful. We need some help.” Kharl pointed to the southeast. “We’re going to see if they attack us here. We don’t want someone sneaking up the back side of the hill on us. Can you ride over to the edge of the woodlot there, on the higher ground, and keep watch. If they start something like that, ride back, but don’t come out of the woods. Just call out and let us know.”
“I can do that.”
“Thank you.”
“You want me to go now?”
“Be best if she does, ser,” suggested Demyst.
“If you would,” Kharl said to Jeka.
She turned the horse and rode steadily up the gentle slope until she was riding beside the trees.
After watching her for a long moment, Kharl turned his mount uphill toward the nearest part of the woodlot. By the time he had had tethered his mount well back in the woodlot, remembering to pull out his provisions bag, all three companies of mounted patrollers were drawn up on the flat to the north of the narrow road. Kharl hurried back downhill and into a position behind the rocks. Behind the patrollers, surrounded by two squads of lancers in the tan uniforms of Hamor, were the white wizards-three from what Kharl could tell.
“Like as they were waiting for us,” muttered Alynar from the rear.
Kharl had no doubts that they had been, not after having felt one of the wizards tracking them. He still didn’t understand why the patrollers and wizards were going to attack him. “If they waited,” he murmured, “we’d have to come to them.”
“Ser,” said Demyst, with a crooked smile, “they don′t know that. Best we don’t tell them.”
Still, Kharl wondered as he peered out through a gap in the gray rock. He would have liked to have gotten closer to the barracks as well. Something was happening behind the patrollers, with the carts, but Kharl couldn′t see exactly what it was. The mounted patrollers, their lines dressed, moved forward slowly across the flat, but less than a third of a kay before halting once more. That left them at the base of the slope, a quarter kay downhill from Kharl and his small party. Kharl could see that these patrollers also had rifles-every last patroller.
Thwump! Soil and rock and mangled vegetation exploded from the ground less than a hundred cubits below and to the right of Kharl.
“Cannon,” murmured Demyst. “Friggin’ cannon.”
What could Kharl do about cannon? If they tried to reach their mounts … at least some of them, if not all of them, might get shot … or run down. And Kharl couldn’t do magery on the run, either.
Thwump!
The second blast was to the left, but more like seventy cubits away.
Kharl forced himself to concentrate on the cannon. While they were too far away for him to affect with his order-senses, he had felt the mixture of chaos and order that had accompanied the shell and the explosion. Was there any way to channel that? To turn it back?
He could sense the expansion of chaos and the near-instant flight of the next shell-and it landed less than fifty cubits directly in front of the rock outcropping. Soil and rock fragments sprayed above his head.
“Ser?”
“I’m working on it!” Kharl snapped. There had been a channel of order and chaos, the path that the shell had taken.
Kharl watched and waited, sensing the next shell.
The moment before it exploded, he focused all the energy, order and chaos, back along the flight path.
What seemed like a brownish red streak flashed back at the cannon, half-burying the weapon in rock and soil, and hurling the cannoneers aside. Kharl sensed at least one death, but focused his efforts on the second weapon.
This time, he not only returned the explosive force, but boosted it with a touch of released chaos-enough so that the second cannon, and the shells beside it, exploded in a gout of flame.
Cannoneers fled from the third and remaining cannon.
Kharl sat down, slightly light-headed. He took a swallow of the cider and tore at the bread. After several mouthfuls, he looked over at Demyst. “Tell me if, or when, they start to ride uphill.”
“Yes, ser.”
Kharl kept eating, biting a chunk out of the hard cheese, glad that there had only been three cannon, and that the cannoneers of the third had fled. The effort of handling just two shells had almost exhausted him.
“Those Hamorian lancers, the ones in tan,” Demyst said, “they’re riding across the flat up behind the patrollers.”
Kharl could sense the growing mass of chaos on the flat below the slope. He took a last swallow of the cider and stood. Most of the light-headedness had subsided.
As he looked down through the rocks, he could see the patrollers beginning to spread out into a wider line, with more space beside each rider. None of them moved forward.
Kharl could sense three white wizards, but the three had linked somehow.
A single trumpet triplet sounded, and the patrollers started riding uphill. Their tactics were simple enough. Each patroller rode, then slowed and fired, then rode more quickly. The erratic nature of the advance would have made it difficult for anyone with a rifle or a crossbow to fire back effectively. But since Kharl and his small group had neither, the only effect was to make them to keep their heads down. And with fire coming from such a wide front, Kharl couldn′t erect a hardened air shield that would be strong enough and broad enough to protect them-not without exhausting himself within a fraction of a glass.
Whhssttt! A chaos-bolt arced uphill, aimed directly at Kharl. Caught half-off guard, he could only deflect it, but he was ready for the second one, and using the linkage back to the white wizard, he turned it back.
Instead of slipping inside the white wizard’s shields, it splashed across the linked shields of the three.
Kharl swallowed. He hadn’t thought about that effect. The back-linkage didn’t exist for the other two, and by linking their shields, they effectively blocked his technique.
Whhstt! Another firebolt flared uphill.
Knowing that the whites’ shields would hold, Kharl just redirected the chaos across the first rank of the patrollers, who were within three hundred cubits of Kharl.
Death voids washed across Kharl, and he staggered. He’d never gotten used to dealing death, not really.
Whhhsttt!
Whhhstt!
The firebolts kept coming, one after the other. Kharl kept throwing them aside and across the ranks of the patrollers.
“That’s the last of’em, ser!” announced Demyst. “The patrollers, I mean.”
Kharl was well aware of that. He was also aware that he was light-headed, and having trouble seeing.
The three white wizards and their Hamorian lancer guards hadremained beyond his own effective range for unbinding order and releasing chaos-or for hardening air. If they kept flinging firebolts, sooner or later, they’d break through his defenses. Kharl couldn′t think of what else he could do. He couldn’t make his way downhill undetected.
He stopped. He didn’t have to make his way downhill undetected. With the patrollers and the cannon gone, all he needed was to get closer to the white wizards.
After diverting another chaos-bolt, Kharl turned to his left and scuttled from point to point behind the rocks until he was at a gap that he could take straight downhill.