“Not unless we defeat Cyador.”
Still, his thoughts held the small and clean cottage that had seemed more homelike than most of Candar. Had it been more homelike than Sybra? He wasn’t certain, and that comparison would have to wait.
Their mounts were near the front of the stable, for which Nylan was glad, having the feeling that matters got even ranker deeper in the recesses of the ancient structure.
They groomed and saddled the two mares quickly and silently, although Ayrlyn ended up helping the always-slower Nylan. By the time they led their mounts out to the comparatively less odorous yard before the stable, the sun peered over the roofs of Rohrn. Only a dotting of distant white clouds marred the green-blue sky-to the west.
“Angels!” boomed a burly mounted figure. “I have not my orders from you.”
Nylan couldn’t help but grin. “Tonsar.”
“Lord Gethen, he told me to find you. And to do as you ordered.” Tonsar’s voice lowered slightly. “Sylenia-she told me the same, and she was not gentle in her words.”
“She has gotten a little more forthright,” Nylan observed cautiously.
“She speaks her mind, and you men…” Ayrlyn shook her head and mounted.
Nylan followed her example and climbed into his saddle. “Was I complaining? Did I say a negative word?”
“You didn’t have to.”
The chimes rang again, longer, more loudly.
“Ah…angels…my orders?” Behind Tonsar was at least a squad of armsmen, mounted. Nylan could see Sias’s long face.
The engineer paused, fingering his chin. “Actually, it’s pretty simple. You’ll need a squad or so just to keep anyone from bothering us while we work. It’ll be easier if we can get out of Lornth, but we don’t need to be on top of the enemy.”
A figure in black galloped out of the barracks yard, holding a huge blade high. A good tenscore armsmen cantered after him.
“There goes the great armsman,” muttered Nylan.
“Don’t be bitter.”
“We are ready,” announced Tonsar. “We will shield you while you destroy the white demons.”
“Let’s go.” Nylan turned the mare after the departing armsmen, but let her walk quickly. He doubted that a canter or gallop would make any difference, except to leave him sore.
The Lornian forces were drawing up to the southeast, less than a kay beyond the last houses that could have been deemed a part of the town. There was no wall, as was the case with any town the angels had seen in Lornth.
Gethen and Fornal had arrayed their armsmen in four squares, with Fornal positioned with a small mounted guard before the two squares to the right, and Gethen before those to the left. Nylan rode to a point even with the front rank of the squares and midway between the second and third squares.
Gethen glanced in their direction.
Nylan shifted his weight in the saddle, watching as the lines of white, the shimmering round shields reflecting the sunlight, formed a semicircle on the flat that had been fields and meadows, a semicircle of destruction that was more than two kays away from the outskirts of Rohrn, and more than a kay from the Lornian forces. The white troops and lancers stretched from the river bluff due south of the town all the way to the northwest road that led to Lornth itself-an arc of nearly a hundred and twenty degrees filled with armsmen and weapons, without a gap.
“Here?” asked Ayrlyn, reining up.
“As good a spot as any.”
“Never have I seen so many armsmen…” whispered Tonsar.
Nylan hoped never to see so many ever again, either. “You better get your squad set up.” He swung out of the saddle.
Ayrlyn followed his example.
“Someone will need to hold our mounts,” he told Tonsar.
“Sias!”
“Yes, ser.”
“Don’t worry, Sias,” Nylan told the young former apprentice as he handed over the mare’s reins. “You won’t miss a thing.” In fact, you just might see too much.
The engineer let his senses range over the ground, just trying to get a feel, trying to extend his links to the distant forest, and to the order-chaos boundaries that felt all too far away.
“This is going to get nasty,” he said in a low voice. “All that distance…hope we can do it.”
“It already is nasty,” Ayrlyn pointed out.
“So how do you plan to stop them, ser angel?” Gethen, flanked by a pair of hard-faced armsmen, and followed by the square-faced Huruc, reined up beside Tonsar. “You had told us to leave this spot for you. Will you rout them on foot?”
“Do you really want to know?” blurted Nylan. “I apologize, ser Gethen,” he added quickly. “We hope to raise the forces of the forest to stop them before they attack. Or before most of their forces can reach us.”
“Before?”
“Why not? There’s not much doubt about what they intend, not after what they did to Jerans and southern Lornth.” Nylan swallowed, his mouth dry.
“No.” Gethen’s words were cold, colder than his eyes.
A series of horn calls echoed from the south.
“Do what you must do,” said Gethen gruffly. “The white demons are raising their banners. We will hold while we can.” With a stiff nod, the older regent turned his mount toward the armsmen arrayed to the north of where Nylan and Ayrlyn stood. Stood alone amid the mounted host.
Nylan swallowed, or tried to. His throat felt dusty, dry.
Ayrlyn handed him a water bottle.
Another series of horn calls stabbed the day, and a faint rumbling, and trembling of the ground began.
Whhstt! A firebolt arced into the air and exploded.
“We’d better…”
“Just do it!”
Absently, Nylan corked the water bottle, bent and set it on the dusty ground that had been a meadow, and pushed his senses to the south, well behind and beyond the white and red blotches that represented the slow-advancing Cyadoran forces.
Reflected light flashed from the Cyadoran shields, and Nylan closed his eyes, concentrating, feeling, seeking.
The power he sought seemed so distant…so far south.
“We can do it.” Ayrlyn’s words and presence warmed him.
He tried to relax, to extend his tenuous probe, but much as he pressed, that distant link eluded him, flitted from his mental grasp.
The ground vibrated with the impact of hoofs and feet, and the horns echoed toward Rohrn again.
Another blast of fire soared out of the south and splashed across the meadow before the Lornian forces. Little balls of fire rolled toward the mounted armsmen, each leaving a long charred line behind it before dying away. A gust of wind carried the odor of burned grass northward, and Nylan sniffed inadvertently.
The engineer tried to wrench his attention back to that distant and continual barrier struggle between order and chaos, even as yet another fireball hissed toward the Lornian armsmen.
For a moment, less than an instant, Nylan touched the dark bands of order, bands binding the very soil in place over the ancient rocks, slowly infusing those artificial planoformed established boundaries with the mixture of order and chaos that ran through the forest and through much of Cyador and southern Lornth.
Then…the link snapped, and he stepped sideways, off-balance.
“Again…” whispered Ayrlyn.
After another deep breath, the engineer tried once more, this time conceiving of the link as a network, an underspace connection. For a longer instant, his thoughts held the dark bands of order, but the chaos lines eluded him, snapping back so hard that he staggered where he stood, then sat down roughly.
“What the frig…the angel doing?” came a hissed whisper.
“Silence!” ordered Tonsar.
Nylan stood, helped up by Ayrlyn. Somehow he needed to stand.
A huge white fireball arced toward the Lornian forces, shattering in midair and spraying liquid flames among the mounted armsmen of the first square, the one farthest left of the two angels.
“Aeeeeiiii…no…no…” The screams of dying men seemed like whispers against the growing thud of hoofs and the underlying shrieks of chaos lifted by the mages to the south.