Ordermaster (24 page)

   
Kharl said nothing. It seemed as though, with each success he had, matters just got worse.

"What do you suggest, ser mage?" Hagen looked at Kharl.

   
"That we attack," Kharl said tiredly. "There's little to be gained by waiting."

"Attack? Just like that?" An ironic tone colored Hagen's words.

   
"Attack," Kharl repeated. "Most of the rebel armsmen and lancers were with Hensolas, you said. Fergyn doesn't have that many left."

"We may not, either, not after attacking."

   
"Do you think these white wizards-especially the powerful one- will let me just ride up to wherever they are and attack them?"

"Why will they meet us?"

"Because Lyras is going to be with the attacking force," Kharl said.

Lyras paled. His swallow was audible in the stillness of the chamber.

   
"These two wizards have never sensed me, not up close, and most whites don't seem to be that good at locating blacks. Lyras will show some

order-magery, and I'll do what I need to do while they're concentrating on our force."

   
"That could be dangerous," Hagen said. "They could wipe out our entire force."

   
"If I can't do what I need to do, you can order a retreat. Or Casolan or Norgen can."

   
"It's best, I think, if I'm there." Another grim smile crossed the lord-chancellor's lips. "One way or another."

Kharl understood.

   
Hagen rose. "We may not need to ride out until fiveday, but you should be ready tomorrow, mages." His eyes went to Lyras.

   
"Yes, lord-chancellor." Lyras's voice carried resignation. He looked to Kharl. "Ser Kharl."

"I will see you both in the morning," Hagen added, in dismissal.

Kharl inclined his head, then turned and left the study. Lyras followed.

   
Outside, in the corridor, the older mage turned to Kharl. After a moment, he said, "You have learned much, ser Kharl, but do you think you can face one of the most powerful mages from Hamor?"

   
"I can certainly face him," Kharl said, with a laugh. "Whether I can prevail... that is another question. If I can, it is best to end this now. If I cannot, then it is also for the best."

"For the best?"

   
"We could retreat, and harass, and attack, and in a year all of Austra would be in flames, and most would be starving." Kharl did not add that there was already too much blood on his hands, and too many deaths weighing upon him. At times, his mouth, his food, everything still tasted of ashes.

"You are saying..."

   
"I am saying that there are worse things than being conquered. I would rather not live under the emperor. I will do my best so that does not happen. What we do does not affect us alone. Already, Lord Ghrant has lost more than half his lancers and armsmen, one way or another. Hundreds of women are already widows, and thousands of children are orphans. How many will there be in a season, in a year? What sort of land will Lord Ghrant have then, if he has any at all?"

Lyras looked away.

XXVI

For all of his words to Lyras, Kharl was worried. Just how would he be able to stand up to a mighty white wizard? He was wagering on his ability to make something out of a few words in The Basis of Order and out of the few abilities he had perfected.

   
Unlike most black mages, he had learned little about healing, no matter how he had tried, and he could barely sense what the weather might do, let alone change it or influence it. He had no idea how to help things grow, the way Lyras and the druids did. He could not feel what was deep beneath the earth, nor in the water. All he had learned was how to sense order and chaos, to harden substances, especially air, to create shields against chaos, and to release chaos by unbinding order.

   
After he and Lyras parted outside of Hagen's chamber, Kharl had gone to the top of the north tower, but he had been unable to discover a way to put into action the words in The Basis of Order.

   
Still thinking about Hagen's revelations and his own too-proud words to Lyras, Kharl had left the tower and walked slowly through the corridors of the Great House. He crossed the rear courtyard and made his way out to the smithy, an armorer's smithy, although the forge was shared at times by the estate smith and the farrier. If the forge happened to be hot, perhaps studying the chaos within the coals might give him some hints. Besides, he had spent enough time in his quarters, and sitting down for any length of time would just leave his leg stiff again.

   
The armorer was not using the forge, but the farrier was, shaping a horseshoe. The horse to be reshod was a dun mare, one that Kharl thought might be the mount that Lady Hyrietta often rode. Since he had returned to Valmurl, he had seldom seen the dark-haired lady with the heart-shaped face, or Lord Ghrant's two sons, even at a distance.

   
The farrier glanced at Kharl, nodded, and went about his business, thrusting the tongs holding the shoe into the forge.

   
Kharl stood in the doorway to the smithy, letting his senses range over the forge fire. The energy of the forge was what he would have called hon-

est chaos, without the reddish overshades of the chaos-fire spewed forth by the white wizards. Or by what he had done in unbinding order to release chaos.

   
The farrier's hammer struck the horseshoe on the forge, and Kharl sensed the change in both order and chaos within the iron. There was a flow, an ordering, in the metal... but why? Kharl continued to follow the farrier's actions for a time. He could sense the slight ordering in the shoes, and he could tell that the mount's feet would be protected by more than the shoe, if only slightly. But why?

   
He frowned and let his senses take in the farrier himself. There was the faintest sense of blackness about the man. In a way, Kharl decided, the farrier had a touch of the order-mage within him. Only the slightest touch, but a little. Did all the best crafters have a trace of order-talent? Kharl wouldn't have been surprised at that, but that observation and its application would have to wait.

   
As he took in the smithy, and especially what was happening with the horseshoes, he began to pick up the pattern, a faint pattern, but it was there. There were ties between the farrier and the horseshoe, and even though the farrier had added but the slightest trace of order from himself to the shoe, there was a link. Kharl tried to follow that link, but it was so delicate that even reaching out to touch it shattered the connection, and it was so faint that the farrier didn't even seem to feel it.

   
After a while longer, Kharl nodded and stepped back, thinking as he began to walk back through the warm noon sunlight toward the small dining room. The Basis of Order had been right. There was a connection or a tie. That suggested that the linkage might be used. Could it be a way back through the white wizard's shields? How could he find out?

   
He laughed, briefly. There wasn't any way to find out, not short of trying, and failure could be costly, and probably deadly.

   
He turned toward the small dining room. Whatever might happen, he needed to eat, and he needed to make sure he had plenty of provisions on the ride-or campaign-against the rebels and the Hamorians.

XXVII

Fourday found Kharl back in the saddle before dawn, in the green-and-black uniform of an Austran armsman, riding with Undercaptain Demyst and his squad on a side road at the south edge of the Nierran Hills, not all that far from Lyras's cottage. Kharl smiled briefly as he recalled the meeting with the older mage in the small cottage of red sandstone, with its glass windows and green-painted shutters and front door. Lyras had offered refreshments, hospitality, and almost no advice, except how to determine where Kharl's skills might lie. While he had always suspected the reason for that, Kharl was truly beginning to understand why. Handling of order-or of chaos-had to come from understanding, and that could never be taught, only experienced.

   
There was barely enough space for two mounts abreast on the clay track that wound under the sandstone cliffs on the north side of the fast-moving and swirling dark waters of the rod-wide stream. The road was no more than two cubits above the spring runoff. Immediately to the south of the stream were low meadows, some of which were still partly underwater, and beyond them a long sloping expanse of firs along the north side of a narrow ridge. South beyond the ridge, Kharl knew, were the open hills that rolled down toward the northeastern part of Valmurl. Those hills held kay upon kay of orchards and berry patches.

   
Once again, Demyst rode alongside Kharl. The square-faced captain looked morosely ahead, into the lighter gray sky to the east. "This circles north of the main road, comes out where the stream joins the Fahsa. That's a bit west of Ghalmat. Should be there well before the rebels." Demyst paused. "Should be. No telling until then, though."

   
"The Hamorians are still somewhere to the east of Ghalmat," noted Kharl. "They're not moving that fast." He could sense the two focal points of chaos, even though they were several kays to the south and east. Both were far stronger than the white wizards he had faced before, although the lesser chaos-focus was not that much stronger than the last white wizard.

But that was the lesser of the two, and he had no idea if the two might even be hiding part of their power, the way the last white wizard had, and as Kharl was attempting.

   
Kharl could also sense Lyras and the comparatively faint but solid black order around the older mage. Lyras was stronger than he claimed, Kharl was convinced, but still nowhere near as powerful as he needed to be-not if the older mage had to hold off the oncoming white wizards if Kharl failed. Then, Kharl himself wasn't exactly a youth, either, he reflected.

"What about Lord Fergyn?" asked Demyst.

"I can't tell. He doesn't have a white wizard with him."

   
"You think this'll be as bad as the last time, ser?" asked the undercap-tain.

   
"No," Kharl replied. "If we're fortunate, it will only be about twice as bad." As soon as he'd spoken, even before the undercaptain shook his head, Kharl wished he'd been less truthful and more tactful. But why did people ask such stupid questions, then get upset when they got a truthful reply?

   
Truth, again. Always seemingly what people claimed they wanted, but only when it confirmed what they wished to believe. "It might not be that bad," Kharl said quickly, "but they do have two powerful white wizards and a company of heavy Hamorian horse." Demyst already knew that, but it wouldn't hurt to repeat it.

"What did Lord Ghrant do to Hamor, that they'd send such against us?"

   
"He did nothing. Hamor wants to rule the world. The emperor thinks that, if he can unseat Lord Ghrant, he can rule through Lord Fergyn. Even if we win, it will take years to rebuild Austra, and Lord Ghrant will be in no position to move against Hamor in trade or other matters."

"Some folks, they never seem to have enough."

   
"Usually, they're already the ones who have more than most," Kharl replied, thinking of Egen and Lord West.

   
"Saw that growing up. Biggest orchards belonged to old Khosen, but he was always trying something to get more."

   
"It's like that." Kharl nodded, trying still to gather in a sense of the white wizards without actively using or creating excess order.

   
The road began to angle more to the southeast, and the steep cliffs on the north, to Kharl's left, gave way first to hillsides of red sand, scrub, and fir, then to lower hills covered by an older forest, mostly of evergreens.

   
They covered another kay or so before the edge of the sun, tinged white-orange by the mists hanging over both valleys and hills, rose over the old forest to the east of the narrow road. Ahead of them the narrow way curved even more southward, following the stream as it angled southeast toward a low gap between the hills to the north and east and the ridge-line to the south. Beyond the gap, according to the maps, was where the stream met the River Fahsa, roughly half a kay west of Ghalmat. Hagen had called Ghalmat a hamlet of but a few hundred people that basically served as a center for the berry patches and the orchards that covered the surrounding hills and ridges.

  
As they neared the gap between the ridge and hills, a lancer rode toward them, then slowed as he approached. Kharl recognized the scout by face, but not by name.

   
"Undercaptain ... ser ... there's no one in the town. Not more 'n a few, anyway. The rest were clearing out when I got there. They must have heard about the Hamorians."