The Order War (15 page)

Justen nodded at the safety precaution, then mounted the gray.

A firebolt flared around the mule, which tottered forward three steps before collapsing.

Arrows arched over the hilltop.

“Keep moving!” ordered Firbek.

“You move!” Justen flung himself off the gray and tried to remove the canvas from the dead mule. As if he were moving through deep snow, he untied the rockets, one by one, until he could lift the canvas off and then get it over the gray’s back.

Hssttt…

He retied one rocket, then another…

…hsssttt…

…and another…

White arrows flew by his shoulder.

…and another…

…hssttt…

With a sigh more like a sob, the engineer grabbed the gray’s reins and began to run, using the hillock as shelter from the direct attack of the White Wizard.

Behind him, the drum-rolls mounted. Beside him trotted three blue-clad soldiers. Ahead, he could barely make out the cart and the two marines riding into the canyon between two lines of archers and troops waiting to cover the retreat, if necessary.

Another wave of arrows dropped around them. One slammed into the woman beside Justen, pinning her arm to the dirt. Justen reached down and absently snapped the arrow, then lifted her onto the gray, right on top of the rockets, even as he pulled out the shaft and handed her a scrap of canvas.

“Bind it with this.”

The soldier looked at him blankly.

“Wrap it if you want to live!” he ordered, flicking the reins to keep the gray moving.

“Tough little bastard…” muttered the soldier to his left.

Tough? Justen hadn’t even lifted a blade or his staff, and he felt like chopped meat. The ground seemed to sway underfoot, and his head ached as if it had been beaten with a truncheon. He coughed and kept walking until he, the gray, and the wounded soldier were in the canyon.

There, since the bedraggled column was still moving, he kept walking, leading the gray.

“Engineer!”

Justen looked up at the sound of the voice. A Sarronnese officer whom he did not know was leading a riderless horse, a dapple.

“Mount up!”

Mechanically, he climbed into the empty saddle, still holding the gray’s reins.

“Thanks…fellow. But I’ll walk with mine.” The wounded soldier slipped off the gray, shivering as her fingers touched the black iron. She trudged slowly downhill.

Justen eased the dapple around them, still leading the gray. Making his way down the canyon, his head cleared slightly and after a time, he looked back at the winding column.

What could he do to stop the Whites? It would not be that long before they wiped out the wounded, took their arms and supplies, and looted the dead.

What Gunnar could do with wizardry, perhaps he could accomplish with order-mastery and the powder in the rockets, since his senses indicated that the Whites were not immediately upon the heels of the remaining Sarronnese.

On the way in, he had studied at least a handful of places in the narrow canyon where a rough dam might be erected, especially the place where the stream had turned abruptly at the granite face—if he recalled the spot correctly.

Less than half a kay into the canyon, Justen paused at a narrowing in the walls and studied the first outcropping. A frown followed as he noted the depth of the pooled water below. While the deep water stored order, it was also likely to swallow the amount of rock that might be forced loose.

As he rode, he discovered that either he had caught up with the marines or they had slowed to wait for him. They rode on silently.

Once Justen reached the narrow granite wall that he recalled, he guided the dapple and the gray off the road and onto the narrow streambank, where he studied the canyon walls again. What he had in mind still seemed possible.

“Why are you stopping, Engineer?” Firbek circled back.

“I’m going to build a dam.”

“With what? Magic?”

“Hardly. The rockets, for one thing.”

“I need those rockets.” Firbek put his hand on his blade. Farther downhill, Deryn had reined up the cart. Beside her, Fesek sat on his mount. Both looked impassively over the intermittent flow of soldiers, most of them wounded, at Justen and Firbek.

“So do I.” Justen smiled, and his fingers closed around the black staff. “And I saved them. I also helped forge them.”

Firbek glanced from Deryn, still cradling her shattered left arm, to the gray and the canvas holding the rockets. Then he laughed. “Fine! Do what you will.” He looked at Deryn. “It’s his decision.”

Justen watched for a moment as the three turned their mounts and the cart back onto the dusty mountain road to follow the Justen forces back down to the foothills and the river. Then he tied the horses to a scrubby root protruding from the loose rock. If he used the tree…

“Engineer…what are you doing?” Zerlana, surrounded by a half-squad of heavily armed cavalry, reined up beside him. “We’ll need those rockets on the plains.”

“Begging your pardon, Commander. They will do more good here.”

“Would you explain?”

Justen shrugged, then pointed to the boulder-strewn slope to the right of the road. “Most of those stones are fairly loose.”

“We all know that. Every spring we have to clear the road. But the White Wizards will just blast apart those few boulders you can bring down here.”

“Not if I can get enough of them in the streambed.”

The commander studied the road. “You can’t raise the stream more than three cubits, I’d guess. How would that help?”

“Would you want to bring your forces through three cubits of icy water?”

“Can you do this?”

“I don’t know.” Justen shrugged. “It’s worth a try. If it
works, they’ll have to use the road that leads from their highway, and that goes to Cerlyn, which puts the Whites a lot farther from Sarron.”

“And if it doesn’t?”

“You lose some rockets and one engineer—at most.”

“How much help could you use?”

“Three people. Any more would just get in the way.”

Zerlana rode downhill toward a group of light horse that had reined up just at the turn when she had stopped next to Justen.

The engineer stood by the dapple, absently stroking the gelding’s neck, while his perceptions ranged across the sides of the canyon, seeking out weaknesses in the rock and the thin soil cover.

Before he had finished sensing the rock and soil faults, three mounted soldiers rode up, two in blue leathers, one in gray.

“The commander said you needed help.” The hard-faced blonde with a razor-thin, blood-edged cut along the right side of her jaw reined her chestnut in, almost on top of Justen. “What are you doing?”

“Blowing up the hillside to make a dam once our people get downstream.”

“Our people?” asked the brunette. The woman in gray said nothing.

“Anyone I fight for is my people.” Justen held in a sigh.

“How long will this take?” asked the hard-faced blonde.

“Most of the afternoon.”

“That’s too long. The Whites will be here before you’re done.”

Justen shook his head. “Hardly. They haven’t left the battlefield. They’ve got some cleaning up to do.”

The brunette snorted. “Didn’t like those black arrows, they didn’t. Wish we’d had more.”

“When the commander reports to the chief engineer, there will be more forged.”

“Not enough.”

“That’s what we’re here for. This buys more time to forge weapons and gather troops,” Justen reminded the three. “What I need from you are boulders from up there that look
and feel not too steady, like they might move with a huge push. We need some way to mark them…”

“Here’s some white cloth. It’ll last for a while, anyhow.” The blonde’s laugh was nearly a cackle.

Justen nodded. “While you’re doing that, I’ll be moving the rockets into place.”

He thrust a small iron pry-bar, taken from the canvas that held the rockets, into his belt, then unloaded four rockets from the gray. Using the tree root, he levered himself onto the lower ledge, from where he scrambled onto the sparsely grassy rocky incline. Cubit by cubit, he struggled up as far as he could go.

“This one looks like it might move, ser,” offered the brunette.

Justen put a hand on the boulder, a time-smoothed monolith that protruded from the hillside, letting his senses surround the granite. He shook his head. “This is still attached to the ridge below. Let’s try that one over there.”

“It’s not as big.”

“They have to be able to move.”

After three tries, Justen found two boulders that seemed to fit his needs. After using the pry-bar to gouge out a long hole on the upslope side of the larger boulder, he placed two rockets inside and gently tamped in the sandy soil as well as he could, leaving only the twisted fuses exposed.

“Get up behind that rock! All of you!”

He used the striker, then scrambled for cover, slipping and scraping the side of his face as he clawed his way behind the ridge rock that the brunette had thought would move.

Crummppp…uumpp…

Sand exploded from the boulder, and the stone rocked, then settled.

“Darkness…” Justen eased over to the boulder, ignoring the blood on his cheek, and touched the granite, then shoved. The blonde’s shoulder joined his, and the boulder groaned forward…and began bouncing downhill, carrying several smaller rocks and some sand with it.

The next boulder also took two rockets, but it fell onto the road itself, although one of the smaller rocks tumbled into the stream.

By the time he had returned for more rockets and carted them up the steep slope, falling only twice and scraping his face once again, Justen’s blacks were soaked from his waist up. A quick look at the sky confirmed that the hazy clouds remained in place.

More rocks, more holes, and more rockets resulted in a growing pile of stone in the narrow gap where the canyon turned.

After splashing their faces clean, the four sat by the stream to rest. Shortly, Justen stood.

“Let’s get the horses around the bend. Then we’ll muscle these rocks into some sense of order.”

“This is worse than fighting. You can only die there. Here, you get tortured.” The blonde shook her head.

Justen shrugged. “It hurts me, too.”

The replacement mount—more heavily muscled than the gray—a pulley, the three soldiers, and Justen managed to wrestle the larger boulders into a line across the narrow point in the canyon before the sharp bend. With the stones in its bed, the stream had risen enough that it lapped at the edge of the road.

“Now we’ll drop some more stones. Smaller ones.”

The three exchanged looks. The blonde shrugged. So did the woman in gray.

After a moment, the brunette grinned. “All right, Engineer. We’ll help you drop more stones.”

When there were only four rockets left and the sun had dropped well below the canyon rim, Justen straightened up. “Let’s go down and finish.”

The four waded through calf-deep water before they could climb over the makeshift berm, or dam. The three climbed onto perches above the road, since water was flowing across the roadbed.

“Shit. No wonder no one ever took Recluce…takes too much friggin’ work.”

“Better than listening to Dyessa or Zerlana bitch about…”

“Dyessa…miss her. Good sort for a field leader.”

Justen looked toward the three, but they said nothing.

“Miss her? What happened?”

“Demon-damned wizard got her, I think, there at the last charge.”

The engineer pursed his lips, then swallowed to moisten his dry throat. Dyessa herself had been right. Why was he so surprised that individuals died?

Finally, he stood and walked back to the low berm, where he stopped and studied the bank above the stream. Then he unstrapped the launcher and carried it to a flat spot, settling it carefully in the heel-deep water. He adjusted it, aiming it right above the stream.

“Why are you doing this now? Why didn’t you start with this?” The blonde in the blood-smeared and tattered blue leathers coughed after she spoke.

“You need the bigger rocks to hold the smaller fragments and dirt.” Justen touched the striker, extending his perceptions to smooth the flow of air across the rocket.

Whssttt…crummpp…

With the second rocket, a solid wall of rocks, sand, soil, even roots, fell into the stream, turning the clear water reddish-brown. Almost instantly, the water began to seep onto the road.

Justen carted the launcher down below the dam and aimed the next rocket toward the bulge overhanging the road. Although a considerable mass fell with that rocket, he used the last one to bring down more material.

Then he strapped the launcher onto the dapple and stood panting, his blacks soaked with water and sweat, his face scraped and bloody. He grinned.

“You look like crap, Engineer. Why are you smiling?” Even as she questioned, the trooper in gray grinned. Then she mounted.

Justen struggled into the saddle, patting the gray on the neck. “That’s a girl. Just get old Daddy Justen back to Sarron.”

“…tough little bastard…”

“…sort of like him…”

Justen looked back at the low dam, sending his senses into the rocks and earth and the few limbs. It wasn’t as massive
or as solid as Gunnar’s work, but it would hold, at least for a year or two, and that would be enough time to force the White armies onto the southernmost route, the one through Cerlyn.

The two White Wizards walked up the hill. The boot heel of the shorter touched a dark object in the dust. He jumped slightly at the hissing sound.

“Another one of those black iron arrows?” asked the larger and stockier man.

“The darkness-damned things are everywhere.”

“Tell me about it. You don’t have to send a dispatch to Histen asking for another two thousand lancers.”

“They didn’t…not that many, did they?”

“Jehan, I’d guess they had about score forty of those black arrowheads. Do you want to guess how many they’ll have forged by the time we get to Sarronnyn by the southern route?” Zerchas took a deep breath as he reached the hilltop, where he turned west and studied the low water blocking the western exit from the valley.

“The Iron Guard could take this road.”

Zerchas looked mildly at Jehan, who in turn looked at the cart tracks in the ground.

“Can you tap the chaos springs?”

“Me?” Zerchas snorted. “Maybe the late, great Jeslek could have, but that Black engineer’s dam is founded in cold running water laid over solid granite. Send Histen another message and get one of those hotheads, like Beltar, out here. Let him deal with the order recoil. I’d rather not, thank you.”

“You think there could be that much of a problem?”

“Do you want to try it, O great Jehan?”

“Ah…I think not.”

“Then don’t ask me to.” Zerchas’s eyes went vacant for a time.

Jehan glanced downhill at the coach and the detachment of White lancers that surrounded it, then toward the slowly spreading lake, and finally back toward the eastern end of the valley, where the gray banners were being furled and the tents struck. He moistened his lips.

Zerchas cleared his throat. “That dam’s not all that well built. Once we get into Sarronnyn, a small team could drain it easily from the other side. If the water had settled some, and if we had the materials, we could send a boat down there now.”

“We don’t—”

“I know. We’ll just have to take the longer route. The road’s better anyway.”

“Everything’s taking longer. The way things are going, we’ll be at winter’s doorstep before we even reach Sarron.” Jehan spat downhill, his spittle hissing as it struck a fragment of black iron.

“I doubt that. The Sarronnese have lost nearly half of their army already.”

“They’ll draw more levies.”

“Sarronnyn has never been that well equipped for war. The whole idea of the Legend is against war.”

“What about Westwind, or Southwind?”

“One’s long dead, and the other’s dying.” After taking a last look at the shallow water, Zerchas turned and began to walk downhill. “Let’s go. You need to get that message off to Histen. Ask for Beltar by name.”

“As you wish.”