Anya stepped from under the small tree where she and Jeslek had been sitting on stools. “You were supposed to round up the peasants and hold them at the hamlet.”
“I can’t round up what isn’t there.”
“You didn’t turn up any peasants? Did you warn them off?” asked Anya.
Jeslek stood, blinking as he stepped forward into the sun. “I doubt Cerryl would do something that foolish, Anya. Would you, Cerryl?”
Cerryl ignored the High Wizard’s sarcastic tone. “Someone else warned them. Spidlarian lancers, I’d guess, from the tracks.”
“And you just turned around?” asked Anya.
“No, we checked the next hamlet and some of the cots beyond that. They were all empty.” The younger mage gave an apologetic smile he didn’t feel. “All of the hamlets and villages from here to Kleth are empty, I suspect.”
“Cerryl has a feeling for such, Anya. I am quite sure that he is correct. We will have to adjust our attack accordingly, and I am most certain Cerryl will be of great assistance.” Jeslek turned his eyes on Cerryl. “You may go. I will summon you later.”
“Yes, ser.” Cerryl turned, ignoring the coldness in Anya’s eyes and the set to her jaw.
Jeslek had always been devious and self-centered, but he appeared to be developing a streak of almost wanton cruelty. Did being High Wizard do that? Sterol had been far more direct…and trustworthy. And Cerryl hadn’t cared much for Sterol, but he cared far less for what Jeslek seemed to have become. That would get worse, too, long before they reached Spidlaria or even Kleth.
CXXVII
THE MIST ROSE off the edges of the River Gallos, shrouding the far bank as Cerryl squeezed Leyladin a last time.
“Remember what Kinowin said,” she whispered. “Do what you must do, but no more.” Her lips brushed his cheek as she stepped back, still holding his hands in hers.
That will be hard. “I understand, but it’s going to be hard.” He released her hands and stepped away from the shadows of the healer’s tent, walking downhill toward where the others were gathering, feeling her green eyes on his back.
Faltar nodded to Cerryl but did not speak. Cerryl nodded back, offering a smile of encouragement, one he wasn’t sure he felt.
Standing by the High Wizard’s tent, Anya surveyed the group, then turned and murmured something Cerryl could not hear. Clad in whites that shimmered in the gray of predawn, Jeslek stepped from the tent. His red-rimmed but still glittering sun-gold eyes raked across the mages assembled there. A half-pace back stood the squat Eliasar, his face impassive. Behind him was the goateed Bealtur, who glanced away as Cerryl looked toward him. On the gradual slope above and behind the mages were the captains and overcaptains, some in the green of Certis, some in purple, some in gold and red, and one in the cyan of Lydiar.
“Today, we begin the advance to take Kleth,” began the High Wizard. “The blues are gathered there, and once they have been crushed there is no other bar to our redemption of Spidlar. Eliasar or Anya or I have talked to each of you about your duties, but I will parse them out again so all know what the others’ tasks are.”
As Jeslek paused for a moment to let the words settle on the group, the faintest tinge of orange light glimmered on the eastern horizon.
“The heavy cavalry of Gallos will be the van proper…” Jeslek’s eyes flicked from the overcaptain with the broad purple sash downward to Cerryl. “Cerryl, since we have no peasants to march before the levies, you and your light lancers will patrol the road before the main part of the vanguard. Your task is to detect any Black sorcery. Buar will work with you.”
Cerryl nodded.
“Behind the van will follow the first of the heavy levies, those of Gallos, then the first section of White mages. They will burn the fields back away from the road.” Jeslek snorted. “There will be no cover and no crops. Let them suffer.” His voice rose ever so slightly. The sun-gold eyes glittered with the same intensity, despite the red that rimmed them. Chaos smoldered around the High Wizard, more chaos than ever, so much chaos that Cerryl’s own eyes wanted to twist away from Jeslek.
“Then the lancers of Certis and the Certan foot…”
Cerryl continued to listen, but his thoughts drifted from the High Wizard’s words. At times, the whole purpose of the Guild seemed fruitless. How could anyone bring prosperity to lands where rulers and greedy traders wouldn’t even pay for the roads that brought them prosperity? And how could Jeslek think that mere destruction would force them to change their minds?
“…you know your orders. Carry them out.” A line of fire sparkled upward toward the orange-tinged puffy clouds and dark green-blue sky.
Cerryl turned and began to walk toward his lancers, where dust already rose and mixed with the smell of horse droppings and cook-fire smoke.
“Lot of horse and foot out here-good thing they don’t have mages to throw firebolts,” said Ferek, looking down from the saddle.
They’ve got a Black mage who might do worse-except I don’t know what that might be. “We’ll have to make sure they don’t have something else hidden.” Cerryl turned as he saw Buar approaching.
“Do you know what we’re seeking?” asked Buar.
“No-except that it will have order surrounding it, as if it were black iron or something like that.” Cerryl finished checking the girths, which seemed tight enough, not that he was the most expert of horsemen, if far, far better than a year before. Then he mounted. “Are we ready?”
“Yes, ser.” Both Hiser and Ferek nodded as they spoke.
The dampness from the winter ice and the melted snow and ice had vanished days earlier, and the horses’ hoofs already raised dust as Cerryl’s lancers turned northward on the west river road.
“Doesn’t the road get better?” asked Buar, drawing up beside Cerryl.
“Four, five kays up, or so,” Cerryl answered, trying to get his thoughts off more distracting subjects-like Leyladin and the growing chaos around Jeslek and the shortsightedness of various Candarian rulers. “That’s where it widens.”
Two scouts rode past the column on the shoulders of the road, leaving low dust trails in the still morning air. Two scouts, Jeslek’s concession to some prudence.
The Gallosian heavy lancers had moved onto the road behind Cerryl’s force, and from behind them came cadenced marching songs and the measured step of the Gallosian foot. The column plodded northward along the river road. The sun crept higher into the eastern sky, bringing more light and increasingly unwelcome warmth to the land, the road, and the riders. Nothing moved anywhere except the riders and the armsmen, northward toward Kleth.
As the sun climbed, Cerryl struggled to keep his eyes and senses on the road. The line of packed clay curved eastward in an arc that followed the river, then curved back westward. To the west of the road were fields, showing even shoots of green, green that Faltar and the others would sear as they had those already left behind the column.
As they rode around the curve to the west, Cerryl studied where the road ahead changed. As he had seen in the screeing glass, the last ten kays, those closest to Kleth, were almost like a White highway, with oblong paving stones, radiating a faint order, set edge to edge. The paved center of the road itself was nearly fifteen cubits wide, enough for two wagons abreast.
“Better here,” said Buar.
“Looks to be so.”
The paving stones looked normal enough, and the low stone walls were set back more than ten cubits from the edge of the paving stones. The walls were just a shade less than two cubits high, hardly tall enough to harbor the invisible knives that the blues had placed in more wooded areas. Not unless they can make them invisible or they’re aimed at the horses.
Cerryl rode at the front of the van, on the western side of the road, with a lancer between him and Buar, who rode the eastern point. As they neared the beginning of the paving stones, Cerryl tried to get a feel for the road. He could sense nothing out of the ordinary except the faint nagging order of the oblong paving stones-and that this part of the road was not new, but old. Had the entire road been paved at one time? Or had the traders run out of coins for paving?