“I…just did…what…they did…all last year.” So you want to be like them? Cerryl leaned forward in the saddle, emptying his guts on the grass by the shoulder of the road. Then he straightened, ignoring the churning in his empty stomach. He steeled himself and concentrated, removing the barriers he had built, letting order flood back into the ground. The ooze shivered, once, twice, and slowly seemed to solidify.
On his mount beside Cerryl, Hiser gave a shudder. “Terrible…no one will guess what lies buried there.”
“Terrible…” murmured another lancer.
Cerryl was less sure of that. Armsmen, lancers, even mages died in wars and skirmishes. Was any one death less terrible than another?
Crack! A line of lightning flashed to or from the hillside where he had incinerated the last of the Spidlarian lancers. The ground shivered, and a light and acrid mist drifted from the foglike clouds that had formed over the battle area.
Cerryl’s eyes burned, and stars flashed across whatever he could see. He turned the gelding, hoping he could ride long enough so that they could rejoin Ferek and his company.
“You be looking like darkness, ser.”
“Probably.” Cerryl felt like darkness, if not worse, barely able to stay in his saddle. Yet he had neither lifted a blade nor repulsed one. He wanted to shake his head, wondering what Eliasar and the other arms mages might have thought. But he rejected the gesture, feeling that his head might roll off his shoulders if he moved it suddenly.
He could have used a healer-especially a certain healer.
As he followed the subofficer back toward Ferek’s company, back toward the camp and the bedroll he knew he needed, he could not help but overhear some of the lancer comments.
“…blues were stupid.”
“…see why the High Wizard left him.”
“…patrollers said he was tough.”
Cerryl didn’t feel tough, just exhausted-and stupid and lucky. He’d made too many mistakes in trying to execute his plan and had to use far too much chaos as a result. He wondered when the next attackers would arrive-and from where. And if he would ever learn the best way to handle situations where he was overmatched in forces.
Why don’t they just pay their tariffs? We all lose this way. He shivered as he rode, his vision so blurred he was almost blind. Why? Why can’t they see?
Neither the late-afternoon heat, nor the clouds that had begun to break up, nor the stench of death in his nostrils provided any answer.
XCVIII
CERRYL LOOKED DOWN at the glass on the trestle table, a table narrower than the table he had used in the last cot he had appropriated. Both table and cot were newer as well-but not much-and equally battered. The glass had turned up blank, as had every other attempt he had made for more than an eight-day.
He massaged his forehead, then closed his eyes, becoming more aware of the mixed odors of manure and cook-fire smoke drifting in through the open cot doorway on the warm early-morning breeze. With the smoke came the odor of cooked mutton-always cooked mutton. Cerryl even missed the hard cheese, now that the last of that had been eaten.
No sign of any more Spidlarians…why? After nearly a season of chasing the blue lancers, there were no more to be found. One battle-and that wiped out all that they could send to southeast Spidlar? Or were they mustering a far larger force? It couldn’t be Cerryl’s failure to scree, not when he could still call up Leyladin’s image or that of the red-haired smith Dorrin in Diev.
Cerryl opened his eyes, trying to ignore the faint headache that never seemed to fade completely anymore. Then he stood and stretched.
A message to Jeslek, that was what he needed to write and send off, stating the apparent situation and asking if the High Wizard needed Cerryl and his lancers. He walked slowly to the cot doorway and then across the hoof-packed clay toward the cook fires. The hard biscuits he had eaten at dawn weren’t enough, and he needed more to eat. He would have to choke down the strong-tasting mutton, like it or not.
“Some mutton, ser?” asked the lancer cook.
“Yes, thank you.” Cerryl took the fat-dripping chunk, leaning forward as he chewed off a tough mouthful to keep the grease from his whites.
“Any sign of more Spidlarians?” The broad-shouldered Hiser stepped toward the slender White mage.
Ferek turned from where he stood on the far side of the cook-fire ring, gnawing on a chunk of the dark meat, waiting for Cerryl’s answer.
“There aren’t any close. They’re all around Elparta, or downriver at Kleth.”
“Don’t make sense,” mumbled Ferek. “We’re easier pickings than the High Wizard and all those Certan levies.”
“There aren’t that many around Elparta,” Cerryl said.
“Beats me, then, why it be that the High Wizard hasn’t taken the place.”
“He’s trying not to level it, I’d guess,” Cerryl said.
“Didn’t stop him none at Axalt,” pointed out Ferek, with a hoarse laugh that cracked.
“Mayhap that be why,” answered Hiser. “Having the river and the piers’d make our task the easier.”
Cerryl took another bite of the mutton, wondering whether that were the entire reason. Or had the Black armsleader been more difficult to find and subdue than Jeslek had initially calculated?
“He don’t take Elparta soon, and we’ll be here like all winter and then a fair piece.” Ferek’s voice was dry. “We be not getting many of the lancers and levies from Hydlen, either.”
“Those in Hydolar care only for their own lands and coins,” Hiser said, adding after a laugh, “and everyone else’s women.”
“Sons of clipped-coined cutpurses, every one,” Ferek declared, “’cept those who like their sows better than their women.”
Cerryl shook his head, if minutely. A long and hot summer going nowhere was leading to a long fall and winter, with short supplies and shorter tempers among the lancers.
XCIX
CERRYL STOOD IN the doorway to the one-room cot that served as meeting place, bedchamber, and rain shelter. In the dim light of the late-summer twilight he reread the scroll that had arrived earlier in the afternoon with the messenger from Jeslek.
While there may appear to be no Spidlarian forces near the road and lands you hold for Fairhaven…when the Black Isle is involved, appearances may be indeed deceiving…We should never be so deceived…
Your skills and presence are not required for the taking of Elparta, and it would be foolish for the Guild to hazard all of its brethren in Spidlar near Elparta unless such is required by events…
I remain convinced that events do not yet require the massive use of chaos against Elparta…Until summoned, you are to remain near the midpoint of that portion of the main road lying between the Easthorns and the present position of our forces…to secure it for safe usage by all those who answer to Fairhaven, and to ensure that all who use the road do answer to the White City…
An inquiry, and you get assigned another twenty kays or more of road to patrol? Cerryl glanced up from the scroll and massaged his forehead with his left hand. From what he gleaned from the lancers who had brought Jeslek’s scroll, the White Lancers and the Certan levies had advanced to within thirty kays of Elparta and the river-or closer. But they had been there for nearly three eight-days, and nothing had happened. Jeslek had not pressed an attack, nor had the arms commander of the Spidlarians.
Why not? Jeslek had never hesitated to employ force against others when it served its purpose, or his. Did he lack the levies he had been promised by the prefect of Gallos and the Duke of Hydlen?
Cerryl’s fingers went to his chin. Groups of Certan levies-and supply wagons-had passed every few eight-days, but not a single armsman from Hydlen. Gallosian levies would have come to Jeslek directly from the south-if any had.