L. Modesitt: The White Order

Viental released his hold on the log.

Brental reclaimed his goad. “Ge-ahh!”

The log cart creaked forward and into the mill, and Cerryl stepped back into the doorway to try to finish getting the sawdust out of the door tracks before Brental brought the cart back.

Viental half-shrugged, half-flexed his broad shoulders, swinging his arms. “Heavy, that one.” He grinned at Cerryl, yellow teeth flared out of the ginger beard braided below. “Ever think you could lift that, mill boy?”

Cerryl shook his head.

“Best you know that. Not one in a score dozen be lifting as I do.”

“Not one in score of scores as bald, either,” called the lumber wagon driver from where he stood beside the lead horse.

“Rinfur. . I don’t see you handling the logs.”

“I don’t see you handling the teams. You have to be smarter than the horses.”

“Someday I be strangling you with that tongue.”

The teamster grinned. “Not while I run faster and ride better.”

Viental shrugged, then grinned. “And talk longer.”

“Go see your sister,” suggested Rinfur amiably. “You do whenever you feel like it anyway.”

“So? No one else lifts as I do.”

Cerryl and Rinfur exchanged glances. Viental disappeared for days on end, always returning with the explanation that he had had to help his sister. Dylert refused to pay for the missing time but said nothing.

“That right? Even the mill boy knows that. Right, Cerryl.”

“No one lifts like you do,” Cerryl agreed.

“See?”

Rinfur continued checking the harnesses.

Cerryl’s eyes flicked up to the house and then to the trees beyond, gray-leaved, almost brooding under the hazy clouds and waiting for winter and the snows and cold rains. A gust of wind stirred the leaves that had fallen, lifting a handful, then dropping them.

The mill boy frowned. Why did the trees drop but half their leaves every fall? No one had been able to tell him-just, “That be the way it is, boy. Always been so.”

There was too much that had always been so.

With a gust of wind, Cerryl shivered, not because of the chill but in anticipation of the cold rain he felt would fall before night. His eyes went uphill once more.

Behind the house, Erhana dipped a bucket into the well. Cerryl smiled. Close up, after all the practice with the scraps of mirrors and the flat sheets of water, he could do without either and catch glimpses of people just beyond his sight.

He watched, first with his senses, then with his eyes, as Erhana carried a bucket of water from the well up the steps and onto the porch, each step precise.

“Better start sweeping,” said Viental. “Dylert be coming from the second barn.”

Cerryl picked up the broom.

CLANG! CLANG!

At the first bell, Cerryl peered out from the blankets, shivering. His breath was a white cloud that billowed into the air.

“Darkness,” he murmured, trying not to move, not to let any of the cold air slip inside his blankets. There were no cracks in the heavy planked walls; the door fit snugly; and the window door was shut tightly-frozen shut, Cerryl suspected. But his cubby room had no hearth, not even a warming pan, though Dylert had sent him back down to bed the night before with two fire-warmed bricks.

Clang!

Cerryl clambered out from the blankets and began to shiver. His feet were cold and stiff as he wedged them, one by one, into his boots. Then he struggled into the patched canvas-and-leather jacket Nall had made for him. It was getting harder to tie shut. Had he grown that much over the fall and early winter?

He lifted the two warming bricks-cold as ice-then tucked them under one arm. He opened his door, stepped outside, and shut it quickly, trying to keep the little heat in the room from escaping. Beside the path that led across to the mill and then up to the house the snow was more than knee deep, sparkling despite the lack of direct light in the moments before dawn.

The smoke from the house’s kitchen chimney was a thick white plume that climbed through the still air into the clear dark green-blue sky of predawn. A smaller plume escaped from the chimney at the far end of the house, the one Cerryl thought was the hearth for the millmaster’s bedchamber.

One foot skidded on the packed snow of the path, and Cerryl staggered, trying not to let the bricks slip from under his arm as he tried to catch his balance. He walked uphill carefully, eyes on the slick and icy surface, hands thrust inside the bottom of his jacket. Even the porch steps were slick, with a thin coating of the more recent snowflakes over the ice.

Cerryl stamped his boots on the porch planks, trying to knock off all the snow, then reached for the boot brush. He could feel his toes jammed against the ends of the boots. He needed new boots, but the nine coppers he had saved wouldn’t pay for them.

Bundled in a heavy leather jacket and leather trousers, Erhana opened the door. “Come on! Breakfast is ready, and you’ve a lot to do, Da says.”

Cerryl stepped into the kitchen, letting Erhana close the door. For a moment, he stood there, letting the warmth fill him. Then he walked to the hearth and set the bricks by those brought up by Rinfur. “Thank you,” he said, nodding toward Dyella.

“Little enough,” answered the millmaster’s consort with a smile. “This be going on, and you all sleep in the kitchen.”

Cerryl slipped onto the middle of the bench, with Rinfur on his left. Viental, once more, had left to see his “sister.” Dylert sat at the end of the table, eating his gruel. On his right sat Erhana, still wrapped in her leather jacket.

Dyella ladled the steaming gruel into the chipped bowl in front of Cerryl. “Seen your uncle recently? Before the snow, I be meaning,” she asked pleasantly. “Or your aunt?”

“Aunt Nall, she stopped by coming back from Shandreth’s vineyard last fall.” Cerryl took a sip of water from the cracked cup that was his. “I saw Uncle Syodor an eight-day ago, before the snows started. He’d been helping Zylerant raise a barn.” He quickly swallowed some more of the gruel, welcoming the warmth, and took a small bite of the muffin beside his bowl. He held the muffin for a moment, enjoying its warmth on his cold fingers.

“They see you a lot more regular than some,” observed Dyella, adding another ladle of the hot gruel to Cerryl’s bowl.

“They’ve been good to me,” said Cerryl. “Good as they could be.” He ignored the glance from Dylert to Erhana, as well as Dyella’s raised eyebrows as she glanced at the millmaster. Instead, he concentrated on eating, and before he could finish the last of the porridge in the bowl, Dyella had added more.

“You be needing this today. No sense in wasting it. Forgot Viental was gone.”

“Thank you, Dyella.” Cerryl smiled.

Rinfur cleared his throat. “I best be checking the horses, ser. Extra grain, you think?”

“Half cup, no more,” said Dylert. “No telling when I can get another barrel. Not in this weather. Can’t hardly get to the road, except with the sled, and that’s not much for carrying.”

“Half cup each, that be it.” The teamster stood, stretched, then fastened his jacket and tromped out of the kitchen and onto the porch.

Erhana, despite the heavy coat, shivered as the chill air washed over her. “Cold out there.”

“Be thankful you only have to fetch water, child,” said Dyella.

“I have to get more?”

“I have to cook, if you want to eat,” pointed out her mother.

“Mother. .”

Cerryl smothered a grin by looking down at his bowl.

“Erhana-not another word.”

Cerryl slowly ate the second bowl of hot gruel, saving the rest of the muffin, but he finished the last bite of the warm muffin all too soon.