L. Modesitt - The White Order

“It did you good. Who else has a patent to grub the tailings?”

Syodor shrugged, then grinned. “No man has a better consort. No man.”

“You’ll not be turning my head, either.” Nall set the large tin bowl filled with steaming root stew before Syodor, then turned back to the cookpot and filled a smaller bowl with the wooden ladle. “Cerryl, here you go. You want more, let me know.”

“Thank you, Aunt Nall.” Cerryl offered a smile.

“No brew for you, thanks or no,” Nall replied with her own knowing smile. She took the smallest of the tin bowls and filled it, setting it on the table. Then she slipped onto the bench beside Cerryl.

Cerryl took the biscuit and nibbled one corner, then took a mouthful of stew with the wooden spoon he’d carved himself. Another corner of biscuit followed the stew.

“Hot. . and filling. Brew’s not too bitter, either.” Syodor smiled at Nall.

“Been a long day for you. Some brew might set well.” Nall smiled. “There’s enough for a night or two more.”

“You be not having any, I’d wager.”

“Not to my taste.”

Though Nall smiled, Cerryl could sense the lie, the same kind of lie Nall always told when she gave something special to him or to Syodor and took none herself.

“Dylert, he said he needs a boy at the mill,” Syodor said slowly to Nall, but his eyes crossed the table to where Cerryl sat on the bench beside her. “Wants a serious boy. Cerryl’s serious enough. That be certain, I told him.”

“Sawmill be a dangerous place for a boy,” answered Nall.

“Mines were a dangerous place for a boy,” Syodor said. “I was younger than Cerryl is, back then.”

“You were stronger,” Nall pointed out.

“I’m stronger than I look,” Cerryl said quietly. His gray eyes flashed, almost like a jungle cat’s, with a light of their own.

“Be no doubt of that, lad. You look like a strong wind would carry you all the way to Lydiar.”

“He’s not even half-grown,” protested Nall.

“Got to grow up sometime. We’ll not be here till the death of chaos.” The former miner looked intently at his consort.

“Syodor! No talk like such around the boy.” Nall made the sign of looped order.

“Chaos is, Nall.” Syodor took a deep breath. “I see it all the time. Watch the tunnels crumble. Watch the folks sneak around mumbling about who courts darkness. Or who knows which white mage.”

Cerryl’s eyes slipped toward his pallet and the hidden book he could not read.

“You know, Cerryl, the mines here, they’re older than places like Fairhaven. .”

Nall’s mouth tightened, but she only cleared her throat, if loudly.

“Older than the trees on the hills,” Syodor added quickly. “When my grandda was a boy, the duke sent folk here, and they mined the old tailings piles, and then they dumped all the leftovers and the slag from their furnaces into the piles we got now.”

“Furnaces?” asked Cerryl, mumbling through the last of his second biscuit. “What happened to them?”

“The duke took the iron fixings back, and the bricks, well. .” The gnarled man laughed. “See the hearth-that’s got some of the bricks. So’s the west wall. Good bricks they were, ’cept some broke easy ’cause they got too hot in the furnaces.”

“Bricks, they got too hot?” asked the youth.

“Anything can get too hot, if there’s enough fire or chaos put to it. Too much chaos can break anything.”

“Anyone, too,” added Nall quietly.

“That, too.” Syodor sipped the last of the brew from his mug. “Ah. . miss this the most from the days when I had two coppers a day from the mines. Now what have I. . a patent to grub that any new duke can say be worthless.”

Nall nodded in the dimness of harvest twilight.

“Shandreth, I saw him this morning,” Syodor said after a time. “Said he’d be needing hands for the vines in an eight-day. Said you were one of the best, Nall.”

“Two coppers for all that work?” she asked.

“Three, he said.” Syodor laughed. “I told him four, and he said you were worth four, but not a copper more, or he’d be coinless ’fore the grapes were pressed.”

“Four. . that be a help, and I could put it away for the cold times.”

“Aye. . the cold times always come.” Syodor glanced at Cerryl, his jaw set and his face bleak. “Remember that, lad. There always be the cold times.”

For some reason, Cerryl shivered at the words.

“These be not the cold times, lad.” Syodor forced a smile. “Warm it is here, and with a good meal in our bellies.”

Cerryl offered his own forced smile.

CERRYL GLANCED OVER his shoulder, down the long, if gentle, incline toward the road that led from Hrisbarg.

Syodor pointed. “Over the hill, another three kays or so, the road joins the wizards’ road. A great road that be, if paved with too many souls.”

“Paved with souls?”

“Those displeasing the wizards built the great highway.” Syodor grunted.

Cerryl studied the distant clay road again, nearly a kay back from where he trudged on the narrower road up the slope to the sawmill. To the right of the road was a gulch, filled with low willows and brush, in which ran a stream, burbling in the quiet of midday. Puffs of whitish dust rose with each step of Cerryl’s bare feet and with each step of Syodor’s boots.

“How much longer?” asked the youth, looking ahead. The roofs of the mill buildings seemed another kay away-or farther. A trickle of sweat ran down the side of his face, and he wiped it away absently.

“Less than a kay. Almost there, lad.” Syodor smiled. “This be best for you. Little enough Nall and I can offer. Be no telling when this duke will come and take my patent, and open the mines one more time, and leave us with naught. Too old, they’d be saying I am, to be a proper miner.” He snorted softly. “Too old. .”

Cerryl nodded, sensing the strange mixture of lies and truth in Syodor’s statement, knowing that Syodor was truthful in all that he said, but deceitful in some larger sense. So Cerryl concentrated on putting one foot in front of the other.

“Stand aside.” Syodor pointed toward the oncoming horse team and the wagon, then touched Cerryl’s shoulder. “Back.”

Cerryl stepped onto the browning grass on the shoulder of the road to the sawmill and lowered the faded and patched canvas sack to the ground. His feet hurt, but he did not sit down.

His gray eyes fixed on the four horses. Though each was a different color, all were huge, far bigger than those ridden by the duke’s outriders or the white mounts favored by the lancers of Fairhaven. He’d seen the white lancers only once. When he’d gone to Howlett right after spring planting with Syodor and Nall, a company had ridden through, not looking to the right or left, every lancer silent.

The wagon driver grinned as he passed, and waved to Syodor. “Good day, grubber!”

“Good day to you, Rinfur!” Syodor waved back.

The long and broad wagon was piled high with planks and timbers, set between the wagon sides and roped down, and on the side board was a circular emblem with a jagged circular gray sawmill blade biting into a brown log. Under the oval of the design were symbols. Cerryl’s lips tightened as his eyes ran over the symbols-the letters he could not read.

He stood there long after the wagon had passed, the sun pressing down on him through the cloudless green-blue sky.

“Cerryl, lad? It be but a short walk now.” Syodor’s voice was gentle.

“I’m fine, Uncle.” Cerryl lifted his pack and stepped back on the road, ignoring the remnants of the fine white dust that drifted around them in the still hot air.