Ordermaster (75 page)

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 lightheaded, and having trouble seeing.

The three white wizards and their Hamorian lancer guards had

remained 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.

   
He almost stepped through the gap when he saw the squad of lancers flanking the white wizards, all three mounted. Wearily, Kharl called up a sight shield, and moved through the rocks and down onto the grass, trying to move in a zigzag fashion, and not trip because he could not see, except through his order-senses.

   
He could only hope that by the time the wizards explained to the lancers where he was and the lancers got out their rifles, he'd be close enough-

   
He stumbled and pitched forward, releasing the sight shield for a moment to right himself, and catch a glimpse of a flatter slope to his left.

Crack! Crack!

   
He thought he felt something fly by, and he staggered back to his right, heading downhill, covering yet another fifty or sixty cubits.

Whhsst!

He parried/deflected the firebolt, and kept moving.

   
Sweat was running into his eyes, and he was seeing flashes across the darkness through which he stumbled and shambled downhill. He could tell he was getting almost close enough.

"See that dust! Fire there, or charge him! Do something!"

   
Kharl half jumped, half flung himself sideways in his own private darkness, then charged downhill, reaching out toward one of the lancers closest to the wizard on the left.

The vibration in the ground told him he didn't have much time.

   
Desperately, he reached for a chunk of soft iron in the lancer's cartridge belt, using his senses to unlink it.

Eeeeeeee. ..

   
A terrible whining screeched at him, through him, as he fumbled at unlinking the iron in more cartridges ... as many as he could.

Then chaos flared, and with his last strength, frantically, he tried to throw up his own shields. Redness, whiteness ... ... and hot blackness flashed over him, and swallowed everything.

LXXX

When Kharl woke, he was flat on the ground looking up. It was late afternoon. That he could tell from the light, despite the drizzle that sifted through the trees.

   
"Did yourself in, almost," Jeka said, sitting on the gnarled root of a tree, looking down at him.

   
"I... didn't have ... much choice." His head was splitting, and flashes flared across his eyes. Slowly he sat up, looking around the clearing in the woods. His face was dry. He looked at Jeka, who had her jacket across her arm. Her blue shirt was damp across the shoulders.

   
She looked away for a moment, before she spoke. "Brought you up here out of sight. Not that there was anyone down there left to see anything."

   
"The whole flat is burned grass and ashes," said Erdyl. "I've ... never seen anything like that."

"Hope you don't see it often," added Demyst.

Jeka extended an uncorked bottle to Kharl. "Better drink."

"Thank you." He took it and drank the cider, slowly.

"I don't think Egen was down there, ser," offered Erdyl.

   
"I don't think so either." Kharl lowered the bottle. "In a while, we'll move closer to the barracks, but I'd wager they're empty."

"They'd just leave?" asked Erdyl.
t

"Without any white wizards to back them up? I think so."

Demyst nodded.

"Then what?"

   
"We sneak north to the other fort. That's the one with the cannon that guards the main east road. If there are any cannon or powder left there, we destroy it."

"Just like that?" asked Jeka.

   
"Like this." Kharl gestured downhill, in what he hoped was the right direction. "Then we see what's left." He didn't like where matters were pointing him, but another effort like the last would get them all killed.

"What about the fort at the quarry? The one in the south?"

   
"That's where most of the regular armsmen who will probably support Egen are. That's where most of the white wizards are. I'd like to see if we can drag up some lancers to help before we take them on." Kharl didn't want to consider-not yet-dealing with the southern forces without some sort of support.

"You gonna throw in with Lord West?" asked Jeka.

   
"Osten, I hope," Kharl admitted. "He may not be any better than his sire, but he can't be any worse than Egen."

"Some choice," muttered Jeka.

   
"You have a better idea?" Kharl took another swallow of the cider. Jeka handed him some bread, and he began to eat. He mixed the bread with some of the hard cheese as well.

   
After a time, he looked up again. "We might have some influence on Osten-or even Ostcrag, especially if we get rid of Egen and the Hamori-ans. Egen doesn't listen to anyone. I don't think he ever has."

   
" 'Sides, pissprick doesn't deserve to live," Jeka pointed out, more practically.

Kharl had to agree with that.

LXXXI

JXharl's guess had been right. There was no one in the southern barracks. All the buildings were deserted-except for one elderly groom who could only say that everyone had left "soon after the big battle" and that they'd all headed south on orders from Overcaptain Vielam. While some gear had been left, there were no provisions, and no rifles or cartridges. There were bags of powder in an iron-lined, stone-walled magazine building well away from the others, but nothing besides cannon shells and powder.

   
The quick departure confirmed Kharl's secondhand impression of Vielam, both of his abilities and his courage, since Vielam couldn't have

been in the force that faced Kharl. It might also reflect Vielam's intelligence in assessing the situation, Kharl reflected.

   
Kharl and the others settled back into their saddles and rode northward. Less than a kay from the deserted barracks area, they turned from the south road onto the ring road that led northward to the east road. Like the south road leading out of Brysta, it was packed clay, turned sloppy by the rain, but there were few tracks, and nothing to indicate that any large body of lancers had traveled in either direction, or that armsmen had marched the road recently. Hadn't Vielam sent any messengers northward? Was the eastern road camp or barracks even held by Egen's forces?

   
Kharl shrugged. In a sense, that didn't matter. If all of Egen's forces were already regrouping in the south, then finding Ostcrag or Osten might well be easier. If they weren't, Kharl needed to do something to neutralize the camp ahead.

   
As he rode along the ring road that he had once walked with Jeka, fleeing a white wizard before he'd even known he was a mage, that journey seemed ages ago, for all that it had been slightly less than a year before. So much had changed, and was still changing.

   
After a glass or so, he turned in the saddle and called to her. "It's faster riding."

"Sorer, too," she responded, with a faint smile.

   
Erdyl looked puzzled, and, after turning to watch the road ahead, Kharl extended his order-senses to hear what his secretary might ask.

".. . why did he say that?"

   
"Been this way before, time back. He can tell you," Jeka said pleasantly.

"How did you come to know him?"

"Better if he told you." Her voice remained pleasant.

Kharl couldn't help but smile at Jeka's responses.

   
Less than two glasses later, Kharl turned his mount off the ring road, a good kay before it intersected Angle Road, and followed a lane that looked to head east. After less than a kay on the lane, half a kay away to the north, across the hills, he could see the south side of Vetrad's sawmill and lumber barn.