“I won’t try that again.” Something else perhaps, but with greater care.
“Good. Go get something to eat and then lie down and get some sleep.”
“Now?”
“Now. They don’t look like they’ll attack soon, and you need the rest.”
Lerial decides against arguing.
LIX
When Lerial wakes early the next morning, his eyes are irritated and itching and the smell of smoke is everywhere. He cannot believe how long he has slept. Then, again, the way he had felt when he fell asleep … maybe he can. Even so, the first coherent thoughts he has are about what had happened the day before and how he might somehow change the pattern he constructed so that the order doesn’t flood back to him. But how will you know if it will work?
He doesn’t have an answer to that question, and he has scarcely pulled himself together and has just finished eating barely warm ghano-egg hash of some sort, washed down with extra-tart greenberry juice, when Altyrn arrives by the cookfire in the middle of the small clearing.
“You’re looking better this morning. Are you?”
“Yes.” Considering how he’d felt the evening before, being able to stand and eat without feeling like a stiff breeze would push him over meant he was feeling much better.
“Good. I’ve got another mission for second company. Second company, not Captain Lerial.”
“Yes, ser.”
“Late last night, Casseon’s forces sent out mages in the darkness to burn gaps in the forest protections-”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“So you could go out there in the darkness and try to kill yourself again?” asks Altyrn.
“Why didn’t the forest just keep burning?” asks Lerial, not really wanting to answer the majer’s question.
“It burned enough. The elders have ways of slowing it. Before long, once the embers and coals cool, the Meroweyans will try to move through those openings. At the same time, the forces near here look to be forming into a large body. They’ll likely be the ones to attack through the burned out area-”
“Where we were?”
The majer shakes his head and opens a map, handing it to Lerial. “Hold this. They gave up on that and moved half a kay east. The other two groups have split, a larger one farther to the west and the smallest one to the east. For the moment we’ll have to do what we can, and leave the rest to what the Verdyn can do without us. Casseon can’t have that many mages, and he has two less now. A wayguide will take you and second company to one of the hidden paths in and out of the Verd near the smaller force to the east.” Altyrn points to the map. “Here is where you’ll be. Here is where the companies you’re going to attack are. Once you get the signal that the mage has left to burn another entrance to the Verd, you’ll leave the woods and get as close to the companies escorting him as you can. The companies escorting him. Not him. Send one squad to ride through the lines and then race through the lower ground here. If you set your archers here, they should be able to cut down a fair number of them before withdrawing. Then keep riding east until you reach somewhere here. There should be a wayguide there to see you in through another narrow passage. Keep the map. You’ll need it.”
“You’re doing this sort of thing with the other companies?”
“Just third.”
“Where will we get more arrows?”
“There are some carts on the way. Once the Meroweyans moved away from the battle sites, the elders sent out youths to gather any that they could find, whether whole or broken. The Meroweyans weren’t that interested in picking them up.”
“What did that cost them? The youths?” asks Lerial.
“So far, nothing.”
“Don’t they have archers?”
“Casseon probably does. He likely didn’t send many north. Massed archers aren’t that useful in wooded lands, except at close range and from behind trees, and the Meroweyans don’t like to fight that way. They’re also wary of ambushes. So they’re leaving the youths alone. For now, anyway. That will change.”
Lerial wonders what the majer knows that he can make such a statement so confidently … and sadly.
After Altyrn leaves, Lerial slips the map inside his jacket and passes the word to the squad leaders, then goes over the majer’s plan with them, deciding that second squad will make either an attack or a feint to draw the Meroweyans, whichever looks to be effective without excessive casualties, depending on what Lerial sees once they encounter the Meroweyans. The point is to kill them, not to get our Lancers killed.
After that, while he and second company wait for the carts with the arrows, Lerial studies the map that Altyrn has given him. At the same time, in the back of his mind, the same thoughts with which he had awakened keep coming back. How can you change the patterns so that the order doesn’t come back to you personally?
Abruptly, he realizes a simple fact-he’d never really directed the coil away from himself. He’d been so focused on capturing the chaos-bolt with the coil that he’d never considered what might happen. He shudders. It could have been so much worse.
Then he takes a deep breath and eases out the silk pouch that holds the lodestone, concentrating on it, and trying to see if he can not only replicate that coil pattern, on the smallest scale, but also find a way to split the order on the return. Except … Why split it? You never been able to raise enough order to do things like shields. Why can’t you divert it into a shield of some sort, so that when the next firebolt comes …
For the next half glass or so, until Lerial hears the creaking of carts approaching, he is very busy trying out various tiny order patterns with the lodestone. He thinks he might have something … but that will have to wait while he makes sure that all his rankers are as armed as they can be.
Right after all the arrows are distributed and Lerial gets the reports from his squad leaders, Altyrn rides up, accompanied by a white-haired older man in the near-uniform brown garb that most men of the Verd seem to wear.
He always seems to know just when to be where. “Second company stands ready, ser.” Second company may be ready, but its captain isn’t. Not yet.
“Excellent. This is Wayguide Smathyl. Smathyl, this is Captain Lerial.”
“Pleased to meet you, ser.” The older man inclines his head politely.
“And I, you.”
“Smathyl will be guiding second company to a point where you can leave the Verd some distance east of the main body of the eastern Meroweyan force that appears to be readying itself for an attack through the burned area about half a kay east of here. I’ll leave you in his hands, Captain.”
“Yes, ser.”
“You and your men can ride double file for now, but when we get to the hidden way, there will only be space for one horse at a time.”
“Whatever is necessary, Wayguide.”
“If you’d follow me, then.”
“By squad! Double file!” Lerial orders. “Forward!”
After less than two hundred yards following the main road north, the wayguide turns onto a path barely wide enough for two mounts abreast. From the dust raised on the path, Lerial suspects that other companies have ridden the same way earlier. That thought is confirmed when after almost half a kay, they pass an opening to a small clearing. There, Lerial sees several companies standing down and waiting. He thinks he sees Kusyl, but he is not certain. After that, there is little dust raised by second company on the path, although they only ride another three hundred yards or so, where the wayguide reins up and dismounts beside a thornbush thicket.
“If you would hold the reins, Captain.”
Lerial leans forward and takes the reins, then watches as the guide walks to one side. He cannot see exactly what the guide does, but part of the bush rolls aside, revealing a narrow path.