The Order War (21 page)

In the early light, Beltar glanced at the two blue-clad bodies outside the watchtower. The dark-haired serjeant’s eyes were open, sightless. The other corpse lay facedown. Neither captive had revealed much about the Recluce engineers. Beltar raised a hand, and a hint of flame flickered around the bodies. Only white powder remained, drifting away on the wind.

“Much neater that way,” he muttered.

The shortest wizard frowned, scuffing a white-leather boot across the fire-hardened clay. “Don’t waste your strength.”

The third wizard rubbed his chin, eyes flicking from Eldiren to Beltar and back again.

“I’m not exactly a weakling, Eldiren.” Beltar looked to the other wizard. “What do you think, Jehan?”

“I doubt few have your powers, Beltar.” Jehan’s tone was dry. “Except perhaps Zerchas, and he always points out that wizardry has its limits.”

Beltar snorted and stepped through the open archway. He climbed the two-score steps of the watchtower. From the
open battlements, the entire city of Sarron was visible to the northwest, its pink towers glowing in the early morning light. The watchtower from where the three wizards surveyed Sarron cast a long shadow like an arrow toward the city. A faint cloud of brown smoke rose above the city, and early as it was, a line of figures stretched from the gate downhill toward the River Sarron.

“What do you plan?” asked Jehan.

“To bring Sarron down, of course.” Beltar’s mouth smiled, but his eyes did not reflect the smile.

Beltar turned and, eyes closed, stood motionless on the stones. A faint white haze shimmered around him.

Jehan swallowed, looked at Eldiren. Eldiren shrugged and looked toward the northwest and the city.

The ground shivered, once, twice. A faint wave rolled through it, lifting the beaten grass and the ripped clay of the battlefield in a swell, then the fields beyond, before momentarily disappearing from sight on the downhill slope that dropped away from the old tower.

The tower itself rocked with the beginning of another swell, and Jehan put out a hand to the battlement to steady himself. Eldiren glanced from Jehan to Beltar to the fields in the low valley that separated the tower from Sarron. The first series of swells crossed the green expanse.

Another set of shudders rolled from the tower, the swells seemingly growing in height as their distance from the White Wizards increased. The handful of horses held by the lancers below whinnied. Several skittered, as though they wanted to escape their holders.

“Hold, damn you…”

“…blindfold them…”

“Should have thought of that earlier…”

With yet another shudder, the land heaved again. One stone dropped from the tower to the ground, and a horse reared, its whinny almost a scream. A dull rumbling echoed from the ground beneath. To the northwest, the towers of Sarronnyn swayed. Faint cracks echoed back toward the wizards, barely audible above the scuffling of the horses, the whinnies, and the low curses of the lancers just beyond the tower.

With an even louder crack, sharp as a whip, a corner split from one of the distant towers. The section hung motionless for an instant before swaying out slowly and dropping down beyond Sarron’s city walls. A gout of dust marked the impact.

Beltar shifted his weight silently, and another set of tremblors raced through the ground toward Sarron.

The city walls wavered, rocking slowly back and forth, until more white-pink stones began to tumble.

Jehan swallowed again. Eldiren wore a grim smile. Beltar’s face was expressionless, but sweat collected on his forehead above his still-closed eyes.

With each successive tremblor, more stones toppled from the towers and walls, some of them crashing downhill toward the River Sarron, but most into the city. Thin plumes of smoke began to rise from behind the now-jagged walls. Soon the plumes were thicker, darker, and joined by columns of white smoke, until a heavy pall spilled over walls and city.

Another loose stone dropped from the watchtower, and Jehan glanced from the gap in the crenelation to Sarron itself even as an entire section of the city wall collasped like a waterfall of stone and a huge gout of dust billowed skyward.

The smoke over Sarron grew even heavier, blurring the lines of the battered walls, and the figures on the main road scurried like ants from a disrupted hill toward the river. The sound of distant shrieks, screams, and wails blended into a low, moaning buzz.

The sun had climbed well clear of the horizon before Beltar reopened his eyes and looked out upon the distant smoldering pile of rubble—rubble that still shivered with aftershocks, rubble that was crowned too often with tongues of flame. Greasy black smoke mingled with white smoke to pour into the sky, and flames licked at the horizon.

“Did you leave anyone?” whispered Eldiren.

Beltar turned. “Perhaps. Those away from the buildings and walls.”

“Why didn’t you do that in the battle?” asked Jehan.

Beltar turned and made a sweeping gesture over the ashcovered and churned earth of the hillside to the south of the
tower. “It’s almost impossible to destroy a braced earthwork.”

“But you could have sneaked around through the forest and destroyed the city. Their army would have surrendered,” pointed out Eldiren.

“Then we would have had thousands of angry armed men and women who had absolutely nothing to lose. Because they rejected our terms, we could destroy the city. That’s accepted by people. Destroying cities without fighting battles isn’t…at least not until you’ve fought more than a few.”

“But that’s crazy.” Eldiren shook his head.

“No. That’s war.” Beltar started down the stairs as hazy clouds began to gather around the smoking ruins of Sarron.

A faint smile crossing his lips, Jehan nodded before following the other two down the narrow steps of the watchtower.

Just around the bend in the road, past a copse of scrubby willows, stood something alive. Justen extended his senses, smiling as he caught the feeling of a horse. He frowned, trying to discern whether a rider also rested nearby, but he could sense nothing.

Carefully, he drew his cloak of light around himself and eased as silently as he could along the road…stopping, listening, and easing forward…stopping, listening, and easing forward…until he passed the willows.

When he was convinced that only the horse waited, he dropped the shield and looked. A chestnut gelding stood beside the road, grazing the short grass that grew on the side away from the marsh. Justen grinned, thinking about his already-sore feet, and eased toward the horse. He paused as he saw the dark stains across the saddle, on the blanket and the chestnut’s mane.

The gelding whinnied. Justen took another step and stopped. The chestnut whuffed and sidestepped away from the road and into the stubbled grainfield, backing away from
the hedgerow that seemed to start with the scrubby willows.

“Easy, fellow. Easy…now.” The engineer stepped forward.

For a moment, the gelding just watched. Then he lifted his head and sidestepped again.

“Easy…” Justen took a small step. So did the gelding. Justen tried again, but the wary chestnut continued to back away.

Finally, Justen reached out with a sense of order to reassure the skittish horse.

Wheee…eeee!
Almost as if Justen had burned him, the big gelding wheeled and galloped away across the stubble, puffs of dust rising as his hooves struck the ground.

Idiot! Of course you scared him. He’s a White mount
. The engineer frowned.
Will I have that trouble with any mount?
He shook his head. Not all the Whites had been equally chaos-tinged, and with the numbers who had been killed and wounded, there had to be some available mounts somewhere…didn’t there?

Two twisting turns in the road later, he encountered another mount, but the sense of Whiteness was so strong that the engineer just sighed and trudged onward, wondering if the Whites would have totally leveled Sarron before he could even get five kays down the road.

Justen paused and looked to the marsh and back to the road. The trail that skirted the marsh—the one he had taken the evening before—could not have been more than three kays long, yet the road twisted and turned so much like a lizard that its length was closer to twice the length of the trail. He took another deep breath as he sensed another horse.

A small bay mare grazed near the road, on the marsh side. Justen frowned as he saw the blood-streaked saddle. Pausing behind a scrub oak, he listened, but save for the distant vibrations of wagons and troops, he could hear nothing. Then he stepped forward.

The saddle pad was gray. Justen extended his senses, but there was no sign of chaos beyond a faint lingering hint of Whiteness, as if someone tinged with disorder had paused and departed. Nor could he sense anyone else near the horse.

Slowly, the engineer inched forward. The mare looked up for a moment. Justen paused. The mare whickered but did not move. She continued to regard Justen.

In the grass, between the road and the wall, lay a dark-gray bundle.

Justen frowned, then eased over to the wall, where he sat down for a moment.

“You all alone, now, lady?” he asked conversationally, looking toward the gray bundle that could only have been the mare’s rider. He touched the figure with his order-senses, but the trooper was dead…and had been dead for a time, possibly since the battle of the day before.

Unlike the other horse, the mare did not skitter at the pulse of order, although Justen had not directed it at her. Still, her steadiness was a good sign. He continued to sit on the wall.

“You’re the faithful kind, not like those others. You’re waiting for your rider to get up. But I don’t think it’s going to happen.”

The mare whickered again.

Justen slid to the adjoining stone, nearer to the mare and her dead rider.

“I wish you’d think about letting me get closer.” He eased across two more stones, so close now that his mud-smeared boots almost touched the outstretched hand of the dead Iron Guard.

Slowly, Justen leaned forward and half turned over the body. Despite the short black hair and the dullness of the dead face, the woman had been attractive…and young. Somehow, the broad, muscular shoulders and dark hair reminded him of Altara. The dead Iron Guard could have been the chief engineer’s sister. A black-tipped arrow was still clutched in her left hand, and her right shoulder and chest were caked with blood.

Justen forced his hands to be steady as he laid her on her back. He closed his eyes for a moment, thinking about black iron arrowheads—and of how proud he had been of their effectiveness and his craftsmanship.

Whuuuff…
The mare nudged his shoulder.

“All right, I’ll do what I can. But I’m going to tie you up so you don’t run away.”

He tied the mare to a sapling that grew at an angle from the wall, then searched the pack and saddlebags, but found nothing there that resembled a shovel.

You’re a damned fool
. He straightened the woman’s body and dragged it into a depression on the other side of the wall. He took from the trooper only her purse, containing five golds and a silver, her belt knife, which he placed in his own sheath, and her empty scabbard. Firbek’s blade stuck out of the Iron Guard’s smaller scabbard, but a too-small scabbard was better than none. Then he wrapped the dead Iron Guard in the ground tarp that had been rolled behind her saddle. He rerolled the blanket and replaced it behind the saddle.

You’re still a sentimental fool
. He began to pile stones over her covered form, looking up the road every time he set a stone in place. By the time the cairn was completed, he was drenched and shaking.

Then he looked helplessly at the water bottle stowed behind the saddle and laughed. The ration bag was empty except for a small, dried chunk of cheese and three battered biscuits. He attempted not to gulp them all down at once, but to chew them slowly between sips of the water.

“Best meal in days,” he told the mare as he untied her and eased into the saddle.

After turning the bay north, toward the smoking heap that had been Sarron, he glanced back, but his eyes blurred as the image of a younger Altara clutching a black-tipped arrow came to mind.

“Let’s go, lady.”

The mare sidestepped, then continued northward at an easy walk.

At the next stream, Justen stopped and let the mare drink. He refilled the water bottle at the same time and peeled a few last redberries from a small bush beside the stream. He was still hungry and shaky.

After remounting, he glanced toward the northeast. The smoke billowing into the sky was thick and gray.

Less than a kay beyond the stream, the road curved downhill and then up and to the right. Justen reined up, then looked at the patches of ashes on the backside of the hill and at the lumps of metal. He had almost reached the battlefield
without realizing it. On the far side of the depression lay the churned earth of the Sarronnese defenses, now blanketed in heavy gray ash.

Just beyond the curve in the road that led to the flat between the two hills, he could sense a wave of Whiteness, almost as though a barrier stretched across the road, a barrier that extended from the ironwood forests far to his right and almost to the marsh.

Scores of mounted troops held the road ahead—clearly a rear guard for the massive White forces that marched toward Sarron itself. Justen frowned.

What chance did he have, even if he could maintain a shield for the next five to ten kays, of passing through the Whites’ surveillance undetected? He sat on the mare, stroking her neck, considering his options.

Realistically, he’d have the demons’ of light own time trying to get through the next few kays, with at least one Chaos Wizard scanning the narrow space between the marsh and the forests, and probably part of the forests as well. Even if he did get through, then what? Sarron was a pile of smoking rubble, and the engineers and Gunnar were either dead or on their way to Rulyarth. But he would have known, somehow, if Gunnar were dead.

But if he didn’t try, he’d have to circle so far south and west that he might never catch up with the fleeing Sarronnese—or with the remaining engineers and Recluce marines.

Pushing that thought from his mind, he eased the light-shield around himself and the mare and stroked the mount on the neck even more reassuringly. “Now…it’ll be dark, but Papa Justen wants to go home.”

Whheee…

He stroked her neck, projecting what reassurance he could as the mare stepped delicately forward.

The ugliness of the White troops mounted as he urged the mare around the curve in the road, guiding her onto the shoulder, where he hoped the puffs of dust from her hooves would not be quite so obvious.

Straining, Justen could hear a few of the troopers’ muttered words.

“…waiting here…”

“…no damned loot…no women…”

“…Girta got all the luck.”

“…call being around Zerchas luck…”

The area on the marsh side of the road, less than ten cubits wide before it sloped steeply downhill, was empty of mounted troops.

Justen tried to breathe easily, quietly.

“Order! Archers!”

With the snapped command, the White lancers fell silent. Justen tried to pull up the mare.

Wheee…

“There! See the puffs of dust. There’s a Black spy!”

Through the unseen reddish-white fire, Justen could sense the presence of a White Wizard—not a terribly strong one, but the man didn’t need strength with as many troops as he had. The engineer wheeled the horse away and nudged her down the road, flattening himself against her back.

“Archers! Release in volley. Volley one!”

Thunngg…unngg…unnggg…

“Where, damn it?”

“What—”

“Horse high! Horse high!” snapped the wizard.

The engineer edged the horse as far to the edge of the drop-off as he dared, urging her back, away from the soldiers.

Thunngg…unnggg…unnnggg…

He could sense the arrows flying overhead, and more toward the center of the road, as he rode sightlessly around the curve and out of the line of fire.

“Hold! We don’t know what tricks he’s up to! Remember those traps in Spidlar! Hold…”

Justen took a deep breath when he finally let the horse drop into a fast walk and lowered the light-shield. He’d just been lucky that the Whites were afraid of an ambush.

After checking the empty road behind him, he turned in the saddle and looked downhill toward the River Sarron. Beyond the marsh to the south, there might be a bridge or a place to ford. While his knowledge of Sarronnyn’s geography was sketchy, he did know that the town of Clynya of
fered a crossing. He shook his head. Clynya was more than three days’ ride.

He studied the wave of unseen whiteness behind him once more, hoping that none of the rear guard were about to ride after him. He studied the winding road ahead, a way that would take well past mid-morning to even get past the marsh and to the point where the road ran along the river again.

The mare whickered, and he patted her neck. “Easy…easy. We’ve got a long way to go.” He just hoped it wasn’t too long.

He swallowed as he realized that they would be riding past the cairn of the dead Iron Guard again. He took a deep breath as the image of a laughing, dark-haired woman settled in his mind for a moment.

Order-tipped arrows? Wonderful craftsmanship?

He patted the mare and kept riding.