Colors of Chaos (52 page)

“He’ll send the levies… Cerryl made sure of that…”

“… over four thousand in the chest…”

“… help… for a while… so will the 5,000 Rystryr will send to Fairhaven…”

“… think he will?”

Jeslek laughed, harshly, jolting Cerryl out of his reverie. “He will. I made sure that someone told him about Lyam, the former prefect of Gallos, and about the late Duke Berofar. Rystryr will do exactly as he is told-for the next year or so. Rulers have such short memories. So we shall have to keep providing reminders.” Another laugh followed, softer than the first.

Do rulers have shorter memories, or do we just notice their faults because they are obvious? Cerryl didn’t know but strongly suspected the latter.

The sun stood clear of the eastern horizon, shedding a golden light across the green-blue sky, when the road widened slightly and Jeslek motioned for Cerryl and Fydel to ride abreast of him and Anya.

“Fydel, you and Cerryl will travel with the main body of lancers, and Anya and I will lead the van. Once we are another ten kays north on this river road, well away from Jellico, we will part. You two and Teras will care for the heavy wagons and the extra provisions. We will await you at Axalt.”

“Axalt?” asked Fydel. “We are headed through the Easthorns there?”

“That is the shortest way to Spidlar without traversing Gallos,” answered the white-haired High Wizard. “We shall assure ourselves that the road to and through Axalt will be clear for the Certan levies that will follow in another four or five eight-days, after the spring planting is complete.”

As Jeslek spoke, Cerryl glanced over his shoulder, back at the nearly vanished walls of Jellico.

“Axalt has never allowed lancers and armsmen…” Fydel’s voice trailed off as Anya’s pale eyes fixed on him from where she rode, half-turned in the saddle to follow the conversation.

“Axalt has not heeded our advice, nor paid any tariffs. Axalt has certain tariffs of its own to pay.” The High Wizard smiled. “Axalt will pay.”

Cerryl winced inwardly at Jeslek’s expression. The gray-eyed younger mage had a good idea of exactly what sort of tariffs the High Wizard meant to levy upon the mountain city.

Jeslek drew ahead of the other mages once more, momentarily, until Anya joined him, and the two rode silently in front of Cerryl and Fydel.

More than another kay passed before Cerryl eased his own gelding forward. “Who will replace Shyren in Jellico? Or has that been decided?” Cerryl finally asked the High Wizard.

Jeslek did not turn, nor answer immediately, but Cerryl continued to ride on Jeslek’s quarter until the High Wizard turned slightly in the saddle. “I have sent a summons to Gorsuch. He, at least, understands what happens when lands do not heed Fairhaven. Just as you now understand the need for rules in governing and in peacekeeping.”

Jeslek nodded curtly, then eased his mount farther ahead of Fydel and Cerryl, back beside Anya, and behind Senglat. The captain had moved up in the column and now rode behind the half-score of fore-riders, not really a true vanguard, at least not yet.

Why the mention of rules and peacekeeping on an invasion force? Cerryl frowned, teasing the thoughts back and forth and finding no ready answers, finding his thoughts more on a blonde healer as he wondered how Leyladin was, half-wishing he were still in Fairhaven, and fully wishing he could talk to her and to see her laughing deep green eyes and hear her words. Instead, he took a long and slow breath and shifted his weight in the saddle.

LXXXVI

Cerryl guided the gelding around the gray rock on the right side of the road, a pile of squarish irregular stones that was nearly to his mount’s shoulder and left but enough passage for little more than a single rider at a time. As he followed Fydel, he glanced up at the rock face to the north of the road that tracked the winding canyon cut by the river. The darker rock and the line of gray stone indicated that the rockfall was recent, and the second he and Fydel had encountered in the last kay of riding. Each time they had been required to stop while the trailing lancers removed enough rock to allow the supply wagons to pass.

The younger mage cast his chaos senses ahead, but he could find nothing he would not have expected and no sign of other riders, except for Captain Teras and the twenty-odd-score lancers and the wagons. The canyon walls were high enough that shadows cast by the not - quite - midmorning sun still covered the road. Occasionally, in sections of the road where pockets of chill remained, Cerryl’s breath steamed in the shadows.

Once past the rocks, Cerryl drew his mount alongside Fydel’s “Those rockfalls seem large.”

“You always get rock coming loose in spring,” Fydel answered. “The ice breaks it loose. It’s worse in the Westhorns.”

Cerryl looked back and up at the cliff. He still wasn’t sure that so much rock could have been broken loose by meltwater or ice. His eyes dropped to the cold foaming water to the left of the road-high, but still within its banks and comfortably below the level of the road. Only the brush within three or four cubits of the water had been flattened by an earlier and higher stream flow. That could change with a hot rain or a series of hot days. There was still all too much snow in the higher reaches of the Easthorns that flanked the canyon area they traveled.

Rawwwkk! A black vulcrow flapped off the end of a dead pine trunk that had fallen against an older and healthier fir.

“Scavengers…” muttered Fydel.

Cerryl half-stood in the stirrups, then settled back down and tried to get more comfortable in the saddle.

Neither man spoke for another kay or so-until they reached a third and far larger rockfall in a fractionally wider section of the canyon. The rock slide had ripped trees off the canyon wall and bought down chunks of granite from the left side of the canyon, filling most of the streambed and creating a small lake that stretched upstream. The new lake’s surface had risen almost to the level of the road itself.

“We need to get through here quickly.” Fydel turned and looked at Teras.

“We’re still waiting for the supply wagons,” Teras pointed out. “The water isn’t rising that fast. There’s enough water, and it’s near enough to water the horses. We’ve the space to gather.” He pointed ahead to the right of the road and an open and cleared space that had obviously been used as a staging point or a campsite, with fire rings and clay packed by all too many hoofs. “It might be a good time to stand down.”

A frown crossed Fydel’s face, but he nodded. “So long as we can mount up quickly if needed.”

“That we can do.” Teras nodded to the herald beside him, who took out his horn and bugled a call that Cerryl had come to recognize as the stand-down signal.

After taking advantage of his position at the head of the column and watering his mount, Cerryl rode farther up the road. He was glad to be able to dismount and stretch his legs in a different way and to refill his water bottles. He was also careful to chaos-boil them, even if he had to wait before drinking the water-and it was hot even then.

Fydel joined him, dismounting easily.

“Don’t know why you bother,” said Fydel. “The water isn’t that bad up here.”

“It can’t hurt.” Cerryl shrugged, still holding the chestnut’s reins. “Besides, I don’t feel right about those rock slides. Who knows what else might have fallen into the water?”

“You’ll never be an arms mage if you worry about that sort of thing.” Fydel laughed once.

You’ll never live to be an old arms mage if you don’t. “That could be,” Cerryl said.

After a time, the creaking and groaning of wagons filled the wider space in the canyon that was becoming a lake.

Finally, Fydel drew Teras aside. “As soon as the wagon beasts are watered, we need to move on,” Fydel ordered Teras. “The water is almost up to the road.”

“It will take a little time, but we’ll hurry best we can, Mage Fydel,” Teras answered deliberately.

The sun had risen well above the canyon walls before the wagons and their teams had been watered, fed, and rested, and the water from the new lake was lapping at the side of the road as Fydel and Cerryl rode westward through the stream canyon. The road still rose, if more gently than before, and the murmurings from the lancers were louder as the day progressed.

While they had seen signs of the passage of Jeslek’s force - hoofprints and droppings - no messengers had reached them, and outside of the sound of the stream and the intermittent calls of vulcrows and the infrequent squawk of a traitor bird the only sounds came from the force of lancers that Fydel and Cerryl led deeper and deeper into the Easthorns.

Then, after a narrow defile, the road curved and widened into what appeared to be a small valley. There, under a single crimson and white banner, a squad of White Lancers waited.

Cerryl nodded to himself as he saw the tumbled walls beyond and the trails of smoke that curled into the clear green-blue of the sky above. The rock slides that had obstructed the road had not been caused just by thawing and meltwater, and Axalt had definitely paid Jeslek’s tariffs.

“The High Wizard has made his point,” Fydel observed. “Others will heed what has befallen Axalt.”

“I wonder,” murmured Cerryl. “I wonder.” It had taken the disappearance and death of one duke and the destruction of two towers before the Dukes of Hydlen had understood the power of Fairhaven, and then only reluctantly. Would the devastation of one small mountain city really change the minds of the Traders’ Council of Spidlar?

“Mages Fydel and Cerryl?” asked the lancer subofficer who rode forward toward the white and crimson banners that followed the two mages.

“The same,” answered Fydel. “The High Wizard has continued toward Elparta. He would have you meet his forces just beyond the Easthorns. He also requests that you make prudent haste.”

“Prudent haste? That we can do.” Fydel nodded and cleared his throat, turning in the saddle to Teras.

While the two talked, Cerryl’s eyes took in the jumbled heaps of rocks that had once been walls, dwellings, warehouses… who knew what. The stench of death, while faint, was present and would grow, even in the cool under the clear skies. The scattering smoke trails whispered upward.

Cerryl thought he saw a crouched figure scuttle from one pile of rubble to another, but long as he looked again, he could see no other movement. Then, he wouldn’t have moved either, not after what Jeslek had done to Axalt. He turned back toward Fydel.

“There’s no reason to tarry here,” observed the square-bearded mage.

Cerryl glanced over the devastation. “No. I would guess not.”

Somewhat later, as the lancer column wound upward toward the end of the valley, picking its way through and around the rubble, Cerryl could hear the murmurings from the lancers who rode behind them.

“… didn’t leave much for us.”

“… didn’t leave much for anyone.”

Will Jeslek leave much for anyone? Cerryl eased himself into another position in the too-hard saddle and kept riding.

LXXXVII

From where he rode beside Fydel, leading the White Lancers and halfway down the hillside, Cerryl could see a hamlet ahead, little more than a gathering of huts in a depression between the rolling hills. From around the huts rose the smoke of cook fires, and farther out Cerryl could discern scores of mounts confined, either in rough corrals or on tie-lines. The hamlet itself lay perhaps ten kays westward from the end of the canyon that had led them from fallen Axalt into Spidlar.

Cerryl glanced back over the line of lancers, in the direction of the supply wagons still out of sight behind the hill he and Fydel were descending on the winding clay track that barely resembled a road. Behind them, the snow and ice of the Easthorns’ higher reaches almost merged with the puffy white clouds that had begun to drift in from the north.

Cerryl hoped the clouds didn’t bring rain-or not too much. He turned and studied the road ahead and the hillside that seemed to alternate between rocks, scrub bushes, and patches of grass-a land suited mostly to grazing, if that. He squinted, trying to see farther westward where several of the more distant hills appeared to be wooded, but the hills faded as the gelding carried him downhill.

A half-kay or so outside the unnamed hamlet, the road flattened and widened somewhat. With the more level ground came the scents of horses and smoke and other less savory evidences of human habitation.

In the hamlet itself, Jeslek and Anya stood outside a rough-timbered dwelling slightly larger than the handful of others, perhaps twenty cubits in breadth and ten deep and boasting a clay-chinked stone chimney. Cerryl could sense the residual of the chaos used to clean the dwelling

“So… you have arrived.” Jeslek’s sun-eyes glittered. “At last. We have been here near on two days.”

“We made prudent haste,” answered Fydel. “It took longer because of the rock slides and the rising waters. And the supply wagons you left for us to escort.”

“You passed through Axalt?” The High Wizard’s eyes traveled from Fydel to Cerryl and then back to the dark-bearded mage.

How else could we have gone? Then Cerryl realized, belatedly, that Jeslek wanted an acknowledgment of some sort. “We saw the destruction you wrought, High Wizard. Nothing remains of Axalt.”

Jeslek snorted. “I have sent a message to the Traders’ Council of Spidlar, suggesting that they heed what befell Axalt.”

“They will not,” said Anya, standing beside Jeslek, her flame-red hair fluttering in the light and chill wind that blew out of the Easthorns and across the rolling hills of southeastern Spidlar. “They scarce will have learned that we have arrived here. Nor will they credit all the levies to follow until they have seen them in battle.”

Jeslek gestured toward the cots and small barns behind him. “Battle? It will be eight-days before we see any battle. By then, we will have advanced half the distance to Elparta.”

“What would you have us do?” asked Fydel.

“Best you quarter with us,” offered the High Wizard, “though we will be here for but a few days, while we refresh mounts and make repairs.” Jeslek glanced at Teras. “You had best consult with Senglat as to where you should camp your force and rest their mounts.”