Cob spat. “He hasn’t come out to fight because he doesn’t need to. He can do this again and again—”
“If he could do it so easily, he would have before.” Gird spoke slowly, feeling his way into the truth. “He sent his soldiers, his patrols, because that was easier, until we blocked the road that he needs. Besides, he hasn’t followed it up. If he could, I think he would; he’s not a stupid man.”
“You know him so well.” Cob rarely indulged in sarcasm; Gird thought it was the pain of his foot.
“I met him, last year,” Gird said. Cob stared at him. “When I came to visit the barton—what I thought was their barton. It was a trap, but not for me alone.”
“And you met the sier?”
Gird nodded. “Met him and—” He did not want to tell Cob all the details of that meeting. “He’s—an interesting man,” he finished lamely. Cob gave him a long look.
“It should make a good story sometime. If we live to hear it.” He tried to shift his legs, and bit back a groan. “Last thing I needed—damn that rock!”
What bothered Gird most was not knowing what else the sier could do. If he could dry up a river and then send water out a well, breaking the ground around it, what could he do with fire? Could any one of Gird’s cookfires turn into a huge inferno? Could the sier move hillsides the way he had moved water? Or call a whirlwind? If he could move water at such a distance, could he influence men directly, even kill? Twenty-three dead now—in minutes—at no risk to the sier or his army. He shook his head as if flies were after him; this would not do. He needed to know more.
Selamis, called back from the nonfighters, stared at the sodden ring of destruction in apparent shock.
“You’re a lord’s son,” Gird began, Selamis’s eyes came back to him, wary now. “I met one of their priests, who said they’d had great powers before, but now these were waning. He said one reason the magelords bred with our people was in hopes of getting more mages. Do you know anything about that?”
Selamis didn’t answer for a long moment, his eyes roving across the mud and rubble. “I never saw anything like this,” he said finally.
Gird grunted. “Did you ever see the lords use any magic?”
“Yes. My fa—they could make light. Some of them did, anyway. I saw one call someone once, I suppose you’d say. A quarrel among servants, almost a brawl, and when he came they all quieted, even smiled. Not like they were hiding the anger, like they didn’t feel it.”
“What did he do?” Gird had not missed the change in Selamis’s tone when he spoke of servants.
“He gave his judgment, scolded one—but they didn’t mind. They couldn’t, with that feeling.”
“You felt it too?”
“Partly. It was—” Selamis seemed to struggle for the right words, his hands waving a little. “It felt good,” said finally. “Peaceful, like a hot afternoon. Safe.”
“Mmm.” Gird thought what that could mean for a commander. To have his soldiers feel safe, confident—he remembered that the brown man, the sier, had given him a feeling of confidence. He had thought he didn’t want to kill the sier because of his own attitudes; had the sier been influencing him? And if he could do that, could he make others feel fear and confusion? He asked Selamis.
“I never saw anything like that,” he said. Gird eyed him thoughtfully. Something about the man seemed odd. He was only ten years younger than Gird, but seemed younger than the other men his age; Gird kept wanting to call him “lad.” Was that his magelord blood? Arranha had said the lords discarded their halfbreeds who had no magical talent: was that why Selamis had been fostered away?
“Did you ever do any magic?” he asked bluntly. Selamis’s eyes widened, then narrowed.
“No.” It was a flat no, inviting no more questions. Gird ignored that.
“That priest I met, he said bastards with magic were adopted in, and those without fostered away as small children. You talk as if you stayed with the lords longer—did they think you might have it?”
Selamis reddened, and turned away. “I have no magic. I am only a bastard, and my father sent me away—he never said why. I hadn’t done anything wrong—” But to be a bastard, Gird thought, without the talent they hoped to breed in you. He didn’t like the whine under Selamis’s words. A few years of luxury too many; perhaps he thought he should have had it forever.
“What about fire? Could they make something burn, something far away?”
“Like this?” Selamis looked around. “I don’t know. Light a fire, yes, by touching the wood, but I never saw anyone do it from a distance. Except—” His brow furrowed. “—the priests of Esea, in Esea’s Hall, once. They said it was the god lighting the fire on the high altar, but I always thought it was the priests; they had that look, that concentration.”
So Selamis had been to Esea’s Hall—with his father? Gird did not ask; he had more immediate worries.
“Is there any effort to it? Does it tire them?”
Again a curious expression crossed Selamis’s face, caution mixed with something else Gird could not interpret. “I think so. I remember hearing that.”
“So if one man, say, did that with the water, then he might be too tired to do more today?”
“He might.” Selamis pursed his lips. “They said it was like any other strength—a weak man would be exhausted from lifting what a strong man could carry easily. The man who did this might have been able to do more, or this might have been the work of more than one using all their strength.”
Gird scrubbed at his face; he felt he had been awake forever. “And you could not say which, could you?”
“No.” Selamis looked around again. “Did you lose the maps, in that?”
Gird had forgotten his maps and the records he had found in the guardpost. “I—must have.” They would be crushed under the rocks, soaked and blurred, even if he could find them. He glared at the rubble. “Now what will I do—I can’t draw maps!”
“I can,” Selamis said. “My hands are almost healed—and I remember the maps well enough. Let me look; I might find something.” He stepped carefully onto one of the tumbled stones.
“Go ahead,” Gird said. He didn’t think Selamis would find anything useful, but there was always a chance. Others had picked through the rubble salvaging what they could; though most of what they found was smashed beyond repair, some weapons survived intact.
Around midmorning, two of his scouts returned to say that at least sixty foot soldiers were on their way, carrying pikes. With them were a score of bowmen. Gird could just see the dustcloud. He had only a few bowmen worth the name, although his yeomen had been practicing with the bows taken at Overbridge. He had plenty of time to withdraw, but he did not want to withdraw. He still had almost twice as many yeomen as the reported force, and thirty of the good pikes. Unless the sier could make the river itself flood, they should be able to hold the bridge, at the least. He sent all his wounded west, to stay with the other noncombatants.
“You’re sure about this?” Cob asked. Gird could feel the attention of others; he wished Cob had not asked.
“Sure enough,” he said. “He wants it, or he wouldn’t have done all that. We thought it was important before; now we know it is.”
“But if he has more magicks—”
“We’ll pull back. Ordered retreat—” He had never actually done that, but the gnomes had told him how it should work. “They can’t take us with sixty, even with good pikes—”
“Alyanya’s grace,” said Cob, wincing as someone bumped his foot. He had tried to insist that he could stay. Gird insisted that he go. He wished he could do the same with Rahi, who was perfectly healthy, but he knew better than to try. She had taken all his ideas about women, and her individual situation, and recast them into something that he did not yet understand. It was hard to think of her as his daughter, although the memory of her as a child and young woman still lived in his heart. He knew she had killed, now—he had been told, after Overbridge, about Rahi—but he still thought of her with her bag of herbs, her poultices.