“Keep riding! Same pace!” echoed Demyst. “Blades at the ready! At the ready!”
Kharl waited, knowing what was about to happen.
The Hamorians thundered toward the Austran squad, still moving forward at a fast walk. Then, when the lancers in tan were but fifty cubits from Kharl-or less-an enormous firebolt arced in over them.
Kharl smiled grimly, and hardened the air before him, into the slippery tube shape that turned and focused the chaos back on the charging Hamorians.
Whhhssst!
The chaos-fire flared across the close-packed Hamorians, so quickly that there were not even screams as men and mounts turned to burned meat and charcoal, then ashes and blackened forms. The reddish white emptiness of a score or more of deaths shivered through Kharl, and he swallowed, trying to regain his concentration.
“ … demon-spawn!”
“Friggin’ sowshit!”
“Quiet! Keep riding!” snapped Demyst.
Within moments, the squad was through and past the ashes and blackened remnants of the fallen Hamorians.
For all his success so far, Kharl knew his strengths and resources were limited.
Another trumpet sounded, and Kharl glanced beyond the Hamorian forces at the hill where Hagen and Lyras held out-so far. He could sense an enormous gathering of power-of mighty raw chaos. Then, a firebolt, more like wave of fire, washed over the front of the hillside. When the fire subsided, the hillside was black and gray-bare except for a few tree trunks at each side. The thornberry patches that would have slowed lancers had vanished into powdery ash.
Kharl found himself momentarily awed at the power and the amount of chaos released, far more than he had seen from other white wizards.
But the remaining Hamorian lancers did not charge. They remained on the flat to the east of the slope, their lines dressed.
Fergyn’s lancers rode northward, and re-formed.
Kharl could see all too well what was about to happen. Both Austran forces would fight-and tear each other down-until either Fergyn was repulsed and defeated or until the lord-chancellor was. Either way, the Hamorian casualties would be far less.
What could Kharl do?
Hssst!
Kharl barely managed to get just an order shield up. Stupid! He needed to concentrate on one wizard at a time. He and his squad were less than thirty rods from the lesser wizard and his personal guard. He forced his eyes and his senses on the nearer wizard, trying to find the line of chaos that had to be there.
Hssst!
This time, Kharl managed to deflect the chaos-bolt back toward the white wizard, forcing the white to use his shields against his own chaos-fire. Two Hamorian lancers and their mounts, out to the side of the white wizard, went down in flames. One of the mounts screamed-an agonizing cry that went on and on.
Kharl ignored it, concentrating on the wizard, feeling, using all his order-senses, as the other drew upon chaos, seemingly from deep withinthe earth, formed it, and hurled it toward Kharl, now less than ten rods from the white wizard.
Kharl caught the chaos-tie between that ball of chaos and the wizard who had cast it, but lost the tie before he could fully sense it, when he had to throw up another order shield. If only he had a moment more, but the closer he got the less time he had, and yet, from a distance, he could do nothing.
Ahead, he could sense another huge wave of chaos bursting across the hillside-and this time, the redness of Austran deaths flashed across him. He could also sense more Hamorian lancers turning, raising lances, but Kharl forced his concentration back to the nearer wizard, watching the man in white. As Kharl rode ever nearer, this time, he caught the tie and link, but, again, he was too slow, and had to release that link-barely in time-to throw up another order shield. He was drenched in sweat and breathing heavily, and he had not even lifted a cudgel or a staff-or anything.
He forged his attention into a narrow line, ignoring the oncoming Hamorian lancers, waiting. As the white wizard drew upon the chaos of the earth deep beneath, Kharl seized the linkage and created an order shield within the channel, throwing the chaos back upon the white wizard, within the wizard’s own shields.
Whhhsst!
Kharl flung up his own shields, around him and the squad, as an expanding blast of chaos radiating from where the lesser white wizard had stood.
The impact of that force against his shields jerked him back in the saddle, braced as he was. The reddish white voids of scores of deaths washed across Kharl, and tears streamed down his face from the pain and the brightness of that explosion.
Kharl shook his head, blotted the dampness from his eyes with the rough fabric of his uniformed sleeve. Everything around him was faint, washed out, but he immediately began to look for the other white wizard, both with eyes and order-senses. The lancers who had been charging Kharl were gone, seared into ashes or less, and perhaps half the Hamorian forces had already died. That didn’t matter, not so long as a single white wizard remained.
Kharl could feel another massive wave of chaos rising, and it was not directed at the hillside, where Hagen and his forces held out, crouched andhiding behind the sandstone ridge-those that had survived thus far. It was directed toward Kharl and no other.
Find the link … don’t think of shields … Find the link, Kharl kept telling himself. Let the chaos flow back along that link … and return to me. Let it flow. He kept concentrating on the wizard facing him.
For a long moment, he could see-as if they were less than a rod apart-the smooth-skinned wizard with the angular face, and the deep black eyes that had seen more than Kharl ever wanted to see.
Then … that vision was gone, and reddish-tinged white chaos fountained from beneath the ground, rising skyward in a plume, unseen except by the two mages and the white wizard. The earth trembled, then rocked beneath the gelding’s hoofs. Somewhere, another mount screamed.
Kharl kept concentrating, reaching for the link between wizard and chaos, between power and the depths from which it came beneath the earth. He had eyes and senses only for that link, even as he rode forward, ever closer to the figure that glowed eerily in more chaos than Kharl could ever have imagined, could ever have wanted to imagine.
Time seemed frozen, with chaos towering over him, ready to fall and crush him.
Kharl struck, twisting through that undefended back linkage, opening it and letting all the chaos that had been gathered from the depths rush to and through the white wizard.
As the whiteness of that chaos burned more brightly than the sun for that instant, Kharl threw up an order shield, one that held all the strength and will that remained in him, one to block out the fires that seemed hotter than any forge, any boiler, any sun.
NO!!!!
Kharl shuddered under the assault of will and chaos, under a wave of heat that stopped somewhere short of him, but still burned. The very earth groaned, twisted, and heaved. Sheets of flame flared skyward from the ground.
As fire flared everywhere, as Kharl could feel himself toppling in the saddle, and someone grabbing for him, he also realized something else. The greater white wizard had been a woman. How he knew that … he did not know, but the thought flashed through his mind, just before the blackness slammed across him.
Somewhere in that hot blackness, ashes and death sifted down across him, and distant voices he could not make out called out in languages hecould not understand. Then, there was a silence, and he could feel that he was on his back.
“Eyes moving …”
The first thing Kharl felt was water, warmish water, across his forehead and face, as he lay on his back on a hard surface-the road, he thought.