L. Modesitt - Colors of Chaos

“Now? Not quite twenty-five-score lancers. Only ten-score footmen.”

“And Jeslek insists that we will have 250 score after the turn of spring?”

“More like 300.”

“If it’s like last summer, we’ll lose nearly half-and that’s without whatever that smith can do.”

“It won’t be like last summer. We’ll just burn everything, if that’s what it takes. We’ll march people in front of us again. Let them kill their own.” Fydel offered a mocking smile. “Was that what you wanted me to see?”

“Yes.” Cerryl returned the smile. “Before Jeslek returned. So that we both know you know what the smith is doing.”

Fydel’s smile faded. “You think you’re clever, Cerryl. So did Myral, and Kinowin. One’s dead, and the other’s dying. Clever doesn’t set well in the Guild. Sverlik thought he was clever, too, and the old prefect filled him with iron arrows. Jenred was another clever one. He was so clever that Recluce is around today and everyone calls him a traitor.”

Cerryl forced a smile. “I’m not clever, Fydel. If I were clever, you wouldn’t know what I did. Anya’s the clever one.”

“We aren’t talking about Anya, little mage.”

Cerryl raised his order shields, just slightly, ready to divert any chaos that the dark-bearded mage might raise. “We were talking about clever, Fydel.”

Fydel turned his back to Cerryl, then looked over his shoulder and added, “Jeslek doesn’t like clever. I don’t either.” He turned and lumbered out, his white boots heavy on the wood floor of the front room and foyer.

Cerryl stood in the silence for a short time. Amazing how much less friendly Fydel has become as you’ve become more accomplished . He smiled ruefully and sadly, then blinked several times, before bending his head forward, trying to stretch all-too-tight neck muscles.

He glanced down at the polished wood of the table, smeared at the edge where Fydel had rested his big hands, and at the mirror glass upon it. He still hadn’t been able to find Leyladin in the glass, and his stomach turned at the thought that something might have happened to her.

With a deep breath he walked to the foyer and took his leather riding jacket off the polished walnut peg, pulling it on in quick movements. At least, he could ride down to the piers and the trading gates and check on the latest progress on the wall. You can do that. You can’t find the woman you love, but you can get walls and piers built. And kill people to keep others in line .

His lips tightened as he marched out to the small stable to groom and saddle the gelding.

COLD AND GRAY, leaden, the River Gallos swirled past and under the refurbished piers of Elparta, around the forward stone pillars sunk into the riverbed, half-rushing, half-almost-thudding against the stone groins that contained the water and supported the rear of the piers.

Cerryl stood on the southernmost of the refurbished piers, where the wind blew out of the west, nearly straight into his face, disarranging his thin brown hair and surrounding him with the metallic odor of river, mud, and the hint of rotten vegetation.

Already the fast-moving clouds from the west covered more than a quarter of the green-blue sky, and the air seemed more chilled than it had at dawn. Another storm .

Behind Cerryl, the trading gates stood open. There was no reason to close them, given the state of the river wall, where the work crews still toiled, some two hundred cubits farther north, to rough-repair the city walls. Two squads of lancers waited, mounted, by the open trading gates. With them were a half-dozen spare mounts, since Cerryl had no idea how many might be accompanying Jeslek and who, if any, might need a mount.

According to Cerryl’s screeing at midmorning, the five barges should have already been nearing Elparta. He wished he could have gotten a better image in the glass, but all the water around the barges made screeing difficult, sometimes impossible, with the shifting blackness of order that running water seemed to create. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, then glanced sideways at Fydel.

Fydel continued to look southward-upstream, ignoring Cerryl’s momentary scrutiny.

Cerryl turned and walked a few steps back toward the wall, then out to the end of the pier once more, passing Fydel.

“The High Wizard will arrive.” The square-bearded mage offered a smile closer to a smirk. “Jeslek wears best in his absence. Especially for those who would be clever. Do not be so eager for his return.”

It wasn’t Jeslek-but there had been something about the barges in the glass, something…and Cerryl had not been happy to discover that he still could not find Leyladin in the glass. An eight-day before she had been riding somewhere with her father’s traders, and now-now she had vanished. Did that mean she had taken a sea voyage? Cerryl turned and walked back toward the gates, then back to the end of the pier. Jeslek might know about Leyladin. The High Wizard had to know.

Cerryl paced the pier a dozen times or more before a call rang out from the lookout on the south Tower: “Boat ho!”

The gray-eyed mage strained, watching the leaden water, squinting for some sign. Then the barge appeared. A thin green and gold banner flew below the ensign of Fairhaven-a trader’s banner. Cerryl smiled. Had Leyladin managed to send something else? What? He shrugged-it didn’t matter. That she had was what counted, because that meant she was all right.

You hope . He pushed away the thought as Fydel walked across the rough-sawn planks to stand beside him.

“Best we seem pleased,” said Fydel, almost dryly. The older mage gestured upriver at where yet another barge had appeared. “Perhaps we should be. The High Wizard has doubtless brought us more than flour and salted pork.”

Cerryl nodded. Although he enjoyed good food, he also remembered the lean years at the mines, and the past winter’s fare, while plain, had been far better than that of the winters of his early youth.

On the upper level of the wide-beamed barge, above the mounts in tight stalls, above the bales and crates, stood the High Wizard. Cerryl swallowed. On Jeslek’s right stood Anya, but on his left, a pace removed, stood a figure in green. Leyladin’s short golden hair fluttered above her shoulders in the chill wind, and Cerryl felt his own pulse thundering in his ears, in his entire being. He edged forward on the pier, closer to the bollards.

As the rivermen jumped off the lead barge and snaked heavy hemp lines around the crude log bollards, Cerryl glanced at the second and third barges, packed with armed footmen, looking better than the levies of the summer before, if not as professional as the White Lancers. But his eyes went back to the blonde healer and the smile that made the cold day of late winter an early spring.

“A surprise for you, I see.” Fydel laughed. “Were there such for me.”

Cerryl couldn’t help feeling a touch of sadness for the square-bearded mage, foolish as Fydel was to be attracted to Anya. “It comes when you do not expect it.”

“For some.”

Cerryl stepped almost to the edge of the pier planks as the boatmen tied the barge in place.

Jeslek was the first onto the pier. Although ruddier than when he had left Elparta in early winter, he appeared thinner, if not quite gaunt, and some of the circles beneath his eyes remained. “Fydel, Cerryl-you have made much progress.” The sun-gold eyes merely sparkled, and he nodded as he surveyed the rebuilt piers and the river wall.

Leyladin vaulted over the gunwale of the gray-timbered barge, and Cerryl leaped forward to steady her. He caught her arm, and they stood there, on the heavy crude planks of the river pier, less than a cubit apart, as if neither could believe the other’s presence.