Arms-Commander (24 page)

Then…a flash of chaos flared across the Westwind pike line, and flames and ashes rose. When the flames died away, and the smoke and ashes had been blown clear, a large gap appeared in the framework of pikes. The Gallosian forces continued to advance, and a second chaosbolt transformed another section of the wooden piles into flame, ashes, and charcoal.

“They've got mages, ser,” offered Klarisa, her voice worried.

Saryn nodded. “Let's hope they don't have too many.” Arthanos had at least one white mage. That was why he was so confident. The mage—or mages—had to have determined that there were no mages among the Westwind fighters. And there were not, because, while Istril and Siret were in the valley, they were being held back for healing afterward. There was no point in wasting either in battle, because at most they could kill a single Gallosian, and then they'd be useless as healers for some time. While Saryn had some abilities along those lines, she'd certainly never faced a chaos-wielder, and she was kays away from the battle.

“How long now, ser?” asked the squad leader.

“I'd guess another quarter to half glass, but it depends on how fast the Gallosians move.”
And when Ryba signals.
Saryn glanced toward the hillock that Ryba had pointed out. While she could make out riders and mounts there, no one was signaling, not that Saryn expected a signal yet. The rear of the Gallosian forces was not yet far enough into the valley, and the cavalry and the footmen at the front had not yet even reached the smoldering and useless wooden pikes.

Ryba couldn't have foreseen the mages. She wouldn't have wasted the effort to build the pike frameworks, ruses or not.
Saryn frowned.
Or would she?

Ryba did not order a charge, and the mounted guards remained shielded by the crest of the hill—for the moment.

Saryn could see that Ryba had ordered the archers to fire again, because some of the cavalry fell, and there were places in the Gallosian lines where the advance slowed. Then, still shielded by the hill, the Westwind guards wheeled and began to ride to the southwest, directly toward the hillock from which the signal was supposed to come. The Gallosians continued to advance along the wide front, as if no one had noticed anything at all.

The cavalry on the meadows to the south of the road began to move more rapidly. That made sense, because they were higher and were the first to see the Westwind withdrawal. The lines of the Gallosian mounted forces became even more ragged, while the Westwind guards rode up the hillock and re-dressed their lines—in the staggered fashion that would allow them to fire shafts downhill at the attackers.

How long before Ryba signaled? Saryn glanced to the east end of the valley. Most of the armsmen in the main body of the Gallosian forces were well within where the avalanche would sweep—if Ryba's visions were right…if Saryn's judgments on where to place the weapons happened to be accurate…if she had calculated the fuse burn times correctly…

So many ifs…

The Gallosian cavalry hadn't reached the foot of the hill that held the Westwind contingent…not yet. Ryba hadn't signaled. How long should she wait? Saryn asked herself.

Her eyes focused on the Gallosian forces. Some were clearly being taken down by Westwind shafts, but the losses scarcely slowed the mass of men and mounts pressing toward the base of the hill.

A flash of something flitted past Saryn, and she immediately looked directly to the top of the hillock, concentrating intently. For a time she could see nothing. Then the light flashed past her again, and she realized that Ryba, or whoever was using the mirror, was sweeping the mesa, as if she could not see where Saryn and fourth squad were.

Saryn immediately moved to the fuse on the first penetrator, opened the leather bag, and removed the striker and the tinder. It took several strikes before the tinder caught, but once it did, she immediately slipped one of the fatwood splinters from her jacket and held it over the tinder, waiting until it was burning brightly. Then she lit the first fuse.

“Fourth squad! Back!” she ordered as she stood.

She walked swiftly to the second fuse and lit it, then the third and fourth, close together, and after them, the remaining three. Following her own advice, she moved back from the edge of the mesa and knelt, waiting, hoping that the weapons would work…and work as planned. If not, almost all of the Westwind guards would be overrun and slaughtered—unless they fled…and that would only prolong the eventual outcome…all that if Saryn could not trigger the avalanche necessary to wipe out most of the Gallosians.

She could sense the running reddish chaos of the fuses, and all felt as though they were burning at almost the same rate, and that they would trigger the penetrators at close to the same moment. Just before the fuses burned down to the penetrator casings, Saryn found herself holding her breath.

Whummmp! Whump! Whump!…

The entire mesa seemed to rock with the force of the explosions, but that was only the sound, Saryn realized, and all she felt was the slightest tremor from the stone beneath her feet. Small fragments of rock pelted down on and around her, and reddish dust puffed up from the north side of the mesa. A faint rumbling growled away from her, then subsided.

Saryn could sense that most of the overhang remained in place, although some of the stone had fragmented away.

Now what?

She had no more explosives, not to speak of, and no more penetrators in which to place them, and certainly not enough time to do either. But she
had
to do something. She had to.

She didn't even look into the valley. There was no time for that. She walked quickly to the edge of the crevice, just opposite the largest bulge in the overhang, stopping just a yard or so back from the break in the stone. She tried to feel the junctures of order and chaos. Four of them were gone—the ones targeted by the first, fourth, fifth, and sixth penetrators. The second juncture was there, but so weak that it was more like a tangle of strands of order and chaos.

Saryn had no idea how to break the bonds holding the mass of rock to the mesa, but she had to find a way…and quickly. She'd changed the flow of the order-lines around the penetrators to protect them from the lightning. Could she change the flows around the junctures so that the order and chaos didn't intertwine?

She immediately reached out with her senses to the weaker juncture and began to ease the dark gray strands away from the pinkish gray ones. The effort was more like trying to move water with a rake or fan air with a small leafless branch…or part hair with a toothless comb.

Still, after a moment, the weaker tangle separated, but the strands immediately reformed—flowing around the single remaining juncture, which began to vibrate. Saryn turned her efforts to the remaining juncture, pressing harder, smoothing, parting the currents, or the strands, edging the flows away from each other, and yet, as she did, she realized that the separate flows became stronger, as if parallel flows of order and of chaos were stronger. As each dark strand separated from what seemed to be its complementary pinkish gray one, Saryn could sense a growing reddish white ball of chaos growing around the disintegrating juncture, yet somehow contained—if barely—by a ball of grayish order.

As the last strand flowed away, Saryn could feel the chaos flaring toward an intense whitish red…and she instinctively flattened herself on the stone, yelling, “Down! Everyone! Get down!”

The explosion that followed shook the entire mesa, and was so massive and loud that Saryn heard nothing at all. Just silence, and pressure.

Then a second blow hammered her into the rock, and her skull felt like it was being split in half. At the same time, rock fragments pelted down and kept pelting down. Although her eyes were closed, Saryn felt as though scores of invisible needles were jabbing through them and into her brain.

Then…she felt nothing.

Dampness on her face brought her back.

“Ser…ser…”

Someone was pressing a damp cloth across her forehead, and she was lying on her back.

“I'm…all right.” She wasn't. Not exactly. Her head was splitting, far worse than when she had tried to manipulate where the lightning struck, and her eyes were tearing so badly that she could see almost nothing but blurred colors and figures.

Slowly, she sat up. “It broke loose, didn't it?” She looked at the guard she thought was Klarisa.

“Yes, ser.”

Saryn struggled to her feet. Even without her numbed senses, she could feel the fear in the squad leader. She blotted her eyes. After several moments, she could see, if intermittently, since her vision blanked out with each unseen hammerblow on her skull, but she could tell the large section of the mesa was gone. Where the crevice had been was the mesa's edge.

Klarisa looked at Saryn, then down at the valley.

Saryn turned. The entire middle section was shrouded in brown-and-gray dust.

Shrouded…a good word
.

“Ser…what did you do?” the squad leader finally asked.

“What had to be done.” Saryn looked down into the slowly clearing dust, watching as the higher ground of the hillock finally emerged. While it was surrounded by tumbled rock, stone, and earth, fighting continued on the slopes, where at least a company of the Gallosian cavalry had managed to ride high enough to avoid being swept away by the tide of rock and stone.

Saryn felt helpless, but there was nothing else she could do, only watch. Even if she had been down in the valley, her head throbbed so much that she knew she wouldn't have been any good in a battle, or not much. Had Ryba guessed that? Saryn frowned. That couldn't be, because if Saryn hadn't had to use her skills to help the penetrators, she wouldn't have had the headache…but then most of Arthanos's army would have escaped.

The end of the fighting did not last that long, endless as it seemed to Saryn, and, finally, Saryn could see a few Gallosians—both mounted and on foot—scrambling onto the rocks below the hillock, trying to escape the remaining guards. She turned her head away, not really wanting to think about the casualties—on either side.

“Ser? It looks like the Marshal won…didn't she?” asked Klarisa.

“We survived…and they didn't.”
For now.

Would it always be like that? Winning by destroying massive forces and taking huge losses in the process? Why, when everyone would have been better off without such battles?

Abruptly, she looked back toward the easternmost part of the valley—and saw nothing. As her vision returned, she made out a company of Westwind guards emerging from the forest on the northern side of the road and bearing down on the ten or so supply wagons that had not been engulfed in earth and rock. The remaining Gallosians were scattering.

“Klarisa, we need to mount up and head down there. We can't do any more here, and they'll need us.” Saryn walked back down to the upper camp and her mount, without an answer to her questions.

By the time Saryn and fourth squad had descended from the mesa and ridden down the next set of slopes, then made their way along the road until they had nearly reached the western end of the mass of churned rock and earth and sand—a half kay west of the hillock—the sun had dropped behind the western peaks and ridges, and the entire valley lay in shadow. Because her vision continued to vanish unpredictably, Saryn was forced to rely on Klarisa.

Ryba rode up to meet Saryn, easing her mount to a halt, almost stirrup to stirrup with the younger woman. “I knew I could count on you. You had trouble, didn't you?”

“Yes.” After the ride, and the events of the past two days, every part of her body ached, her head and eyes most of all. “We managed. How about you?”

“All told, we lost thirty-one guards.” Ryba's voice was hoarse.

“How many of the Gallosians survived?”

“We don't know for certain, but no more than a few hundred. A handful rode north and managed to get onto a few higher places, and the last two companies—his rear guard—managed to escape. I didn't have second company chase them. The wagons were more valuable.” Ryba frowned. “It's going to be the demon's own time getting them over or around that mess you created. It might take days.”

“What about our wounded?” Saryn lost her vision again, with another thunderclap inside her skull.

“There are another forty or so, but the healers tell me that most of them will make it.” Ryba's voice was hoarse. “The ones who died—they were more than a tenth of all those at Westwind, and that doesn't count the wounded. Gallos has to lose nine or ten thousand men before it's a serious loss. Every loss is still serious to us.”

“They won't try again, not soon.”

“Thanks to you, no. Not for another few years, or a generation at most, before some other younger son or hothead decides that having a land ruled by women is insufferable to the mighty male ego.” Ryba's voice dripped with acid bitterness.

At that moment, Saryn's vision flickered back, and she saw the heavy dressing on Ryba's upper left arm. “You were in the front lines, weren't you?”

“Second line, but one company of theirs was good. Not as good as us, but much better than anything we've seen.”

“One of those special companies,” suggested Saryn.

“In the end, it didn't matter. They all died, too.”

“All of them?”

“They couldn't face the fact that they weren't that special. Not one would surrender. There seems to be a certain disgrace to being bested by a woman at arms.” Ryba snorted.

“So…you didn't spare anyone?”

“I'm not that cruel, no matter what Arthanos told his men. There are close to a hundred wounded and fifty who did yield. We took their weapons, and let them have two of their wagons and sent them back to Karthanos. I also sent a message with them, suggesting that peace would be far less costly than war. I also said we had no intentions on his lands, but that we would suffer none on ours, nor on traders or others who wished to travel the Westhorns.”

“Will he get it?”

“I had Istril with me. I gave it to a wounded undercaptain. She said he was honest and would deliver it.” Ryba's smile was twisted. “We will see.”

“What about their mages? How many did they have?”

“Two, I think. Chaos-fire isn't that effective against an avalanche.” Ryba paused. “I'm going to take two squads, along with the wounded, and head back to Westwind first thing in the morning with Siret. I'm leaving you in charge here to manage getting the Gallosian wagons to the road and acting as our rear guard.”

“I can do that,” Saryn said dryly.
But I'll need someone who can see all the time.

“I know. I need to think about the Suthyans.” Ryba laughed, sardonically and hoarsely. “We can't block every road in the Westhorns, or we won't have either travelers or trade.”

Saryn looked pointedly at Ryba's bound arm, only to find that, again, she saw nothing except a sparkling blackness punctuated with what felt like blows to her skull and eyes. “Are you sure you're all right?”

“It's only a slash. Istril says that it will heal but not to use it for a while.”

“Please don't.” From the pallor Saryn had seen briefly in Ryba's face and the tiredness in her eyes and posture, Saryn had the impression that the Marshal's wound wasn't just a slash. She couldn't use her own senses to tell, not at the moment, and she wondered how long it would be before she regained her own abilities.

“I doubt that I could. If you'd look things over and take charge, I'd appreciate it.” Ryba paused. “Hryessa and first company are east about a hundred yards.”

As the Marshal turned her mount, Saryn tried to extend her senses, since her sight had not returned, and before dizziness and pain washed away her perceptions, felt another locus of chaos, and a splint of sorts, on Ryba's lower right leg.
Second line?
As she forced herself to try to relax, Saryn had her doubts about that.

She had to wait for a time before her sight returned, and she could urge the gelding forward, riding toward several wagons and what looked to be a camp ahead on the right side of the narrow road.

Hryessa was mounted, and when she caught sight of Saryn, rode to meet the arms-commander, easing her mount around the end of one of the wagons. As the captain neared, Saryn reined up. She could see several guards stretched out in the wagon, one with a dressing that covered her entire upper face.

“Arms-commander, you are back. When the top of the mountain exploded, we feared that none would survive and return.”

“It wasn't as bad as it looked,” Saryn replied. “How bad was it here?”

Hryessa reined up close to the arms-commander. “It was terrible, but our guards, they were magnificent. The Gallosians were beasts. Some had sabres smeared with poison, and others…” She shook her head. “I worried that the Marshal waited too long, but she did not. If she had called for you to bring down the rocks any earlier, there would have been many more Gallosians who escaped their fate.”

“Where did you come up with that last company to take the wagons?”

Hryessa grinned. “We used barely trained junior guards, but they were led by first squad. The Gallosians in the rear were not thinking after they saw their army disappear under the rocks.”

“Was that your idea?”

“I offered it to the Marshal. She agreed. It was a long wager, but we need the supplies.”

“I'm certain we do. The Marshal will be taking two squads and the wounded back tomorrow. We have the task of salvaging everything we can and getting those supply wagons from the other end of the valley here.”

“I already have guards searching for the best path through the woods.”

Saryn smiled. “You're ahead of me.”

“Is that not what a captain is for, ser?”

“A good one, and you are,” Saryn said with a laugh she did not feel, as her vision vanished again, and she swayed in the saddle.