A Wizard In Chaos Read online

  A Wizard In Chaos

  The Fifth Chronicle of

  Magnus D'Armand, Rogue Wizard

  By Christopher Stasheff

  ISBN: 0-812-54928-7

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  CHAPTER 1

  The roar of battle filled Cort's ears, deafening him. He couldn't even hear the bellow as the enemy soldier swung his broadsword. He only saw the man's mouth gaping.

  Cort caught the blow on his shield. It jarred his arm all the way to the shoulder, but he couldn't hear the blade ring. He pivoted and stabbed crosswise at the foeman's sword arm. The man rolled back, catching Cort's blade on his own, but was too slow trying to return the stroke. Cort let his blade's rebound help him in swinging up, over, and down at the man's shoulder. The soldier's mouth widened in an unheard scream as he fell away.

  Even in the thick of battle, Cort felt elation that he hadn't had to kill the man. He stood in the forefront of his men on guard, waiting for another enemy boot soldier to fill the place of the one who had fallen-but surprisingly, no one came. Instead, three of the enemy turned and ran from the unceasing blows of Cort's own soldiers. He stood a moment, staring in disbelief. Then a grin of triumph split his face, and a yell of victory from all his platoon split the air. The raw energy of it seemed to strike the enemy in the back and push them on; they ran, then ran faster as Cort's men redoubled their yelling.

  Young Aulin leaped forward to chase, howling like a madman.

  "Stop him!" Cort cried, and Sergeant Otto leaped after Aulin, two soldiers following him. They caught the boy and sent him spinning back into line. Thanks be, Cort thought. It was the third rule of battle every new recruit had to learn: Never chase a routed enemy. Too many of them had been known to turn and fight when you had come too far from the safety of your own lines.

  Watching the enemy run, Cort could only think that it was no surprise. They'd been raw farm boys, probably pressed into service by their boss on a week's notice, when he'd found out the Boss of Zutaine had hired the Blue Company to march against him. They hadn't stood a chance against seasoned professionals. It was a wonder they had lasted half an hour!

  "We're not just going to let them run, are we, lieutenant?" his master sergeant growled.

  "Of course not, Sergeant Otto," Cort replied, "but we wait for the captain's signal."

  A bugle rang out, its clear high note piercing the shouting. The Blue Company responded with a massed cheer and started forward.

  "Advance!" Cort told the master sergeant, and the man turned to bawl the order to the platoon. They marched forward, picking their way over and through the bodies of the fallen. Cort knew the sight would trouble him horribly when the battle lust had faded, but for now, his heart sang high with the knowledge that boot after boot had attacked him and fallen, but he still walked!

  They came to the top of the rise, and- Cort saw the bullies in the distance, spurring their way past their own soldiers, knocking them aside in their haste to escape. Their bouncers followed hard on their heels, also mounted-but far ahead, the Blue Company's reserves came charging down from the pine forest where the captain had hidden them. They had carefully worked their way around the hills and behind the enemy's lines. Now they proved their worth, surrounding the bullies, catching the reins of their rearing warhorses and pulling their heads down, then hauling their masters off their backs. More troopers cut off the bouncers and unhorsed them, too. They let the boots go, running past the Blue Company on either sidecommon soldiers brought no ransom. Now and then, a boot slowed as if realizing he should defend his masters, but half a dozen Blue Company pikemen turned, bellowing, to change his mind, and the boot ran on in the midst of his fellows.

  "No ransoms for us this time," the master sergeant grumbled.

  "You weren't thinking of hiding a bouncer away to ransom on your own, were you?" Cort asked with a grin.

  "No, of course not, lieutenant!" Sergeant Otto said quickly. "You know me better than that!" Actually, Cort knew the man well enough to be sure that was exactly what Otto would have done if he'd had the chance, and never mind that ,a lowly noncom couldn't hold a man of higher rank prisoner. The bouncers' armor alone would have been worth a year's pay for the master sergeant, though the noncom probably would have kept the horseman's sword. "Share and share alike," he reminded Sergeant Otto. "Whoever captures the bullies and bouncers the Blue Company ransoms, we all share equally." They almost never caught a boss, of course.

  "I know that!" Sergeant Otto said, then realized Cort had been saying it for the benefit of the three new men who had survived the battle. "After all, the reserves may have caught them, but we're the ones who fought the battle and drove the bullies and their bouncers into the reserves' arms!"

  He took a cue well, Cort thought. "We'll have our turn at being reserves, sergeant. Let's just hope that we don't have to charge the enemy to turn the battle when our time comes."

  "I'll hope indeed," Otto said with a grin. "There's a farm I'd like to buy, lieutenant, but it's back home in the Domain of Evenstern, not here on a battlefield!"

  The recruits behind him forced an uneasy laugh. They were still marching, but the enemy boots had fled into the pine forest themselves, and the Blue Company held the field.

  "There he goes!" Otto pointed at the top of a bald hill, where a horseman, silhouetted against the sky, had turned his horse and ridden down out of sight in the midst of his bodyguards.

  Cort nodded. "So the Boss of Wicksley loses the day-and we lose the boss."

  Otto shrugged. "Didn't think we'd catch him, did you, lieutenant? Bosses always make sure they'll be safe, no matter who loses."

  "He might be caught yet," Cort disagreed, "if he tries to rally what's left of his men."

  "More likely he'll ride home to his castle and bar his gates against the Boss of Zutaine." Otto was as tactful as old noncoms have to be, when they're trying to educate brash young officers-not that Cort was new to the trade anymore, having survived a dozen battles. He was a veteran now, so Otto paid him respect as well as tact. "Of course, if Zutaine besieges him, we won't be in on it."

  "No, the boss will just use his household troops," Cort agreed. "Can't have a mercenary captain taking Wicksley Castle away from him, can he?" He was very much aware of the new soldiers behind him listening wide-eyed, soaking up every bit of knowledge of soldiering that they could. "A captain does become a boss now and then, but the bosses don't want to let it happen any more often than they can help."

  "Suits me." Otto made a face. "I hate siege duty. Give me a clean death in battle, say 1, not a lingering one from disease or petty quarreling." He was still aware of the learning going on behind him.

  The bugle blew again, and Cort quickly said, "Halt," before Sergeant Otto could turn and bawl it to the troopers.

  It never occurred to Cort to wonder why foot soldiers were called "boots" if they fought for a boss, but "troopers" or "soldiers" in a mercenary army, or why their horsemen and junior officers were called "cavalry" and "lieutenants" instead of "bouncers." It was just the way it was, just the way it had always been, just as the men who commanded the mercenary armies were "captains," not "bullies," and the men who ruled a whole district with its dozen o
r so bullies were called "bosses."

  It did occur to him to wonder which of the bodies on the ground were alive, and which dead. "Winnow the bodies, men! Cart the live ones to the surgeons, and bury the dead."

  "Why bury them if they're not Blue Company troopers, lieutenant?" one of the new men asked, frowning.

  "Because their bodies will rot and spread disease through all of us! Plant them and let them make next year's crops rich, men! And remember the songs your village sage taught you. Sing them while you lower their bodies down and cover them up. We don't want their ghosts walking, any more than their diseases, or the Fair Folk summoning them forth to be mindless slaves!"

  The raw soldiers blanched, and turned to start hunting.

  "It'll keep them from having the shakes for a little while, at least," Cort told his master sergeant. "Yes, but the weakness will be worse when it hits, for having seen so many dead bodies in a single day," Otto predicted. "At least they should lose their stomachs pretty early on, so we'll have an excuse to send them off to rest."

  Cort remembered his first battle and shuddered. "I suppose they have to go. through it all, don't they?"

  "If they want to stay in this trade, they do," Otto returned. "Of course, after today, all three of them may decide to resign and take their chances with their boss's draft."

  "I wouldn't blame them for a second," Cort said grimly.

  "Then again, today they've seen how the boots were driven on in front of the bouncers, to take the worst blows and the highest death count," Otto observed.

  "And seen how you and I led our men and took our chances right along with them," Cort said. "I wouldn't blame them for quitting, sergeant, but their chances for living will be a lot better with us."

  Otto nodded. "You've lived almost four years since you joined up, sir, and I've lived nearly ten. We've both seen comrades fall all around us, but nowhere nearly so many as if we'd stayed home and fought for our bullies. No, all in all, I'd rather be a sergeant than a brute."

  Cort knew that "brute" was only the bosses' name for a noncom, but he appreciated the double meaning anyway.

  "But you, sir, you've seen how the bouncers may be wounded and captured, but seldom killed." Otto looked up at his young master with a glint in his eye. "Your chances for long life are better with a bully instead of a captain, at least until you start your own company. Why stay?"

  "Because I'd rather have a quick grave than a long prison term while I waited for my bully to save up the ransom money," Cort answered shortly.

  That wasn't it, of course, and by Otto's approving nod, he knew the sergeant knew it. It was simply that Cort couldn't have brought himself to have driven plowboys before him to their deathsand Otto knew that, too.

  He turned away, wrenching his mind away from his embarrassing lack of hardness. "You take half the men and search our ground to the east, sergeant; while I take the rest to the west."

  "Yes, sir! Ho! Squads one and two! With me! Squads three and four! Follow the lieutenant!" Cort started off, back toward the knoll where the Blue Company's flag stood, eyes on the ground now. Even from this distance, he could see the occasional plain rough-woven tunic of a serf who hadn't been a soldier. His mouth tightened in a grimace; he tasted bile. There were always a few plowboys who didn't move fast enough and were ground to mincemeat between the two armies. There were always a few serf women whom the soldiers found right after the battle, when blood lust and plain lust were both high, and those women were ground up in a different way, before an officer or bouncer could stop it-if he wanted to stop it. It was tragic, but there was no help for it; it happened so often that it was just part of war.

  Over the horizon from Cort, in a pasture screened on two sides by woods and on the third by a mountain, the great golden ship came spinning down to the ground, light as a ballerina, in the middle of a pasture. It was so noiseless that even the cows sleeping nearby didn't look up.

  The ramp extended, sliding down from the ship to the ground. Gar led the mare down its slope, Dirk following with the stallion. They had caught and tamed the two horses in a wilderness a thousand miles away, but had only been gentling the beasts for two weeks. They were still half-wild, but Gar was a projective telepath, so the mare went quietly under his spell. The stallion jerked his head against the bridle, though, rolling his eyes.

  "Spare a thought for my mount!" Dirk called. Gar glanced back, and the stallion quieted. They came down onto firm ground, and both horses seemed to relax, though their flanks still quivered. "Not bad for their first spaceship ride," Dirk said. "Did you have to keep them hypnotized the whole way?"

  "Probably not," Gar said, "but it was only a fifteen-minute hop, so I kept them in trances just to be on the safe side." He raised his voice a little. "Back to orbit, Herkimer. Stay tuned."

  "I will await your communications, Magnus," said the resonant voice of the ship's computer. It called its owner by his birth-name, not the nickname he had won on his travels. "Good luck."

  The ramp drew back in, and the huge disk rose silently, spinning away into the night, until it was only one more star among many.

  "How far to the nearest castle?" Dirk said. "About a dozen miles, but there was a battle going on there this afternoon, and the troops seemed to be celebrating as we were coming in for a landing," Gar answered. "We might do better to head for the nearest town."

  "Let's hear it for city lights." Dirk mounted.

  So did Gar. They rode off side by side toward the dim track that Herkimer's night-sight program had shown them.

  "How about this," Dirk suggested. "We ride together until we're sure the way is reasonably safe, then split up to spy out the lay of the land and what's on it."

  "My instincts are against it," Gar said, frowning. "There're too many evils that can happen to one of us alone."

  "Yes, especially on a planet like this, founded by a group. of very idealistic, quasi-religious anarchists. I guess they managed to stay peaceful, living under colony domes, long enough to Terraform the continent."

  Gar nodded. "Then, when the land was ready for the seeds of Terran plants, they opted for the primitive life, going out to farm and live in small villages of prefab huts, with no government higher than a village meeting." He sighed. "How could they possibly have thought it could last?"

  "They figured they could all just imitate the saintly lives of their sages," Dirk reminded him, "and that would keep them from hurting one another or offending one another-or so say the historical notes in the databank. Voila! No need for government!"

  "Not exactly hardheaded realists, then."

  Dirk nodded. "I'll bet they were determined not to depend on hightech agriculture or sophisticated birth-control techniques."

  "But they did depend on human nature being considerably more virtuous than it is," Gar said darkly.

  "So they fell back into a medieval standard of living."

  "They were probably idealistic enough not to mind the hardships," Gar sighed. "I wonder what went wrong?"

  "What went wrong?" Dirk asked. "Just look at those pictures we took from orbit! Castles on the hilltops with people in satins and furs walking the courtyards, packs of men in armor on horseback, and people in rags plowing the fields! What do you think went wrong?"

  "Well, yes, that much is obvious," Gar admitted, "but I'd like to know the details. They do seem to have strayed into some form of government."

  "Only locally," Dirk said grimly. "How many battles did we spot from orbit? A dozen?"

  "Seventeen," Gar admitted. "None of them very big, though."

  "Tell that to the men who died in them! And if we just happened in on a day when seventeen battles were in progress, what are the odds that it was an ordinary day?"

  "Fairly good," Gar agreed, "though coincidences do happen . . ."

  "But not very often. Look at it this way-their ancestors got what they wanted: no government. They just didn't expect it to result in open season for robbers."

  "Oh, come now. Isn't that go
ing at it a bit strong, calling the local aristocracy robbers?"

  "How do you suppose they got those castles? And how can they be aristocracy if there's no king or queen to grant them their titles?"

  "Why, they appointed themselves, of course," Gar said mildly. "That's what my ancestors did."

  "But forgot to appoint a king," Dirk reminded him, "so there's no one to keep them from chewing each other up every year or three, and the common people with them." He shook his head. "No matter how you slice it, there's too much trouble for the two of us to ferret out together-it'd take six months! If we're apart, we can cover twice as much territory and find twice as many problems-or twice as many solutions. Who knows? Maybe we just came down during a dynastic quarrel, and all we have to do is help the right side win."

  "Assuming we can define `right,' under these circumstances," Gar said dryly.

  "Whichever candidate will be best for the people."

  "Easy to say, not so easy to see. Besides, you don't really believe the situation is that simple:"

  "No, I don't," Dirk sighed. "The peasants are in too much misery to have been oppressed by war for only a year or two. But it could be we're near the end of the local version of the Hundred Years' War."

  "Even five could do it," Gar said grimly. "My friend, if I say it's too dangerous to split up, and I'm the one with the psi powers, then it's really dangerous."

  "It was pretty dangerous where I grew up," Dirk pointed out, "especially since, if I'd been caught, I wouldn't have been only a runaway churl-I'd also have been guilty of treason. But I survived, and I hadn't even met you."

  Gar rode in silence, his face stony.

  Dirk recognized the reaction to a telling point. "Besides, I'm the one who doesn't have a virtual ESP arsenal, so if I'm suggesting we split up, I've got to be fairly sure I'll be safe."

  "Not necessarily; I know your dedication," Gar countered. "Still, I'm your friend, not your master. If you want to go, I have no business trying to stop you."

  Dirk looked up sharply, wondering if he detected hurt, especially since his big friend's face was still stony. "Don't worry, old son," he said gently. "We can stay in touch with these new toys Herkimer made us." He touched the thick iron brooch that held his cloak. Underneath the enamel, it was an integrated circuit with a minuscule audio pickup; the whole surface acted as a loudspeaker. "Of course, we don't want the peasants getting frightened by talking brooches, so if I need you, I'll chirp like a cricket."