The Magic of Recluce - L. E. Modesitt [101]
Justen shook his head. “Some are, like Freetown. Hydlen and Gallos stretch over three hundred kays north and south. Kyphros is even bigger, and it’s the only duchy that actually would qualify as a true kingdom. That has bothered the Prefect of Gallos ever since the previous autarch carved out the realm from the surrounding kingdoms.”
The names of Gallos and Kyphros were familiar, but that was about all. There was something else about Kyphros, but I didn’t recall what at the moment.
We rode past a second rough hut, this time on the south side of the road, again with a split-log fence enclosing another wooden trough, and black-faced sheep indistinguishable from those behind the fence on the north side of the road.
The tops of the gentle hills contained ample trees to supply the rails for the fences, as well as logs in numbers far greater than necessary for the few buildings likely to be found in Weevett or those in Howlett. Even Vergren—the smallest capital in Candar, famed only for the diversity of its wool products—would not have made a dent in the lumber that could have been taken from the heights of the hills, especially since a fair number of the trees were red or black oak.
In time, as we rode, the huts appeared more frequently, changing from little more than log hovels into rough-planked houses with thatched roofs.
By now the sun stood high and white in the sky, but the ground remained as frozen as ever. While my breath no longer resembled steam in the chill air, I alternated placing my ungloved hands under my tunic to warm them.
Justen rode with his cloak open, without gloves, and without any sign of discomfort. My buttocks were sore, my hands chapped and chill, and my legs threatened to cramp, even with repeated standing in the stirrups to stretch them.
As we traveled down another of the unending gentle hills, the packed red road-clay merged, over a kay or so, into a packed sand-and-pebbles surface frozen into shallow ruts. Gairloch’s hooves clicked on the smooth small rocks, and I worried about his catching a stone in a hoof.
The roadside lands bore the winter-stubble of maize and the turned soil of recovered root crops; the farm houses came closer together. In time we descended toward a small river, the first I had seen larger than a stream since I had landed in Freetown. Though the river was surrounded by some low brush, I could see no trees along the streambed either to the north or the south.
Where the road flattened near the bottom of the hill, it also straightened and ran arrow-like to an ancient stone bridge across the river.
“The bridge marks the edge of Weevett,” observed Justen.
“Is that important?” I was bored with the same-looking huts and houses, with the sullen people who looked away from us, and with the rolling gray and brown of hill and valley after hill and valley, sheep after identical and smelly sheep.
“In a way,” answered the gray wizard, “since the countess’s soldiers do not have the right of summary justice within the towns of Montgren.”
Summary justice? Again, I nearly winced. Justen kept reminding me of exactly how little I knew, and how many pitfalls Candar possessed.
Even before we crossed the bridge into Weevett, the rank odor of concentrated sheep and wool wafted from the west to greet us. That, combined with another ill-defined rancidity which I did not ask Justen to explain, turned my travel bread breakfast into a leaden mass squarely in the middle of my guts.
Uuurrrppp…I winced at the burp, but Justen didn’t even smile; he was guiding Rosefoot around a small wagon pulled by a mule. A woman in shapeless herder’s gray trudged beside the mule, edging toward the animal as she heard us but not looking up, not even as Rosefoot delicately stepped around her.
Whufffff…That from the mule as greetings when we resumed the center of the road just before the bridge. Beginning perhaps half a kay beyond the bridge, cottages clustered together on both sides of the way.
“We’re expected at the Weavers’ Inn.”
“Expected?”
Justen smiled a thin smile and