The Magic of Recluce - L. E. Modesitt [173]
Except for that time I rode openly, without shields, feeling that the locals wouldn’t care who rode by, and that using order might call more wizardly attention to me than necessary.
Late on that second day we came to the first bridge over the Southbrook, a structure half-timber, half-stone, which required three spans to cross the slow-flowing water. But it was past mid-morning the next day before we reached the second bridge—a single stone span.
With that second bridge over the Southbrook came the reminders of war.
The odor of smoke drifted toward me first, faint, like the leftover burnt wood smell in an uncleaned fireplace that has stood unused over the summer. Acrid, like charred leather, like the hides left from burning diseased animals. Pervasive, like the unseasonable clouds and fog that had clung to Freetown.
Wheee…eeeee…Gairloch tossed his head.
“I know. If it smells that bad to me, it’s worse for you.”
His steps clattered on the paving-stones of the bridge, echoing into the morning. The echoes rebounding from the stone walls of the bridge were the only sounds. Even the insects were hushed, and not a single birdcall warbled or whistled through the air.
I shivered.
Beyond the bridge, the road began to wind and climb toward the not-so-distant hills beneath the Little Easthorns. Everything was relative, I supposed. Without having seen the Easthorns, I would have found the dark slopes on the horizon impressive. Now they just appeared as another barrier.
The hills belonged to the autarch, which meant that we were nearing the border between Gallos and Kyphros.
With the wind from the south came more of that lingering acrid-sweet odor of ash and charred hide. Gairloch whuffed again as he carried me southward over the stone bridge and onto the packed-clay highway heading uphill. The browning grasses beyond the road edge were damp, and not with dew. Gairloch’s hooves left clear imprints in the dark-red clay of the road. Whatever rain had fallen the night before had not carried much beyond the Southbrook or the hills of the Little Easthorns.
The sky was a crystal blue and cloudless, promising one of those late fall days that reminded me more of summer than the approaching winter.
Yee-ahh! Yeee-ah! The distant call of the vulcrows echoed through the stillness of the morning. Ahead and slightly to my right, over the crests of perhaps three hills, circled two of the black birds.
My hand edged toward my staff, which I had not bothered to conceal. The sun was a white-yellow point in the sky, somehow not really connected to the damp road clay, the circling scavengers, or to me.
Gairloch was thirsty, and I pulled up on the reins and guided him back off the road and down toward the shore of the placid river, stopping on a sandy stretch not much wider than Gairloch’s length. From a half-submerged log, a small turtle glared at us, then scuttled off his perch.
Ploppp…Only a faint rippled pattern even marked that the turtle had been there.
I dismounted, looping the reins over the saddle, and let Gairloch do his own drinking.
Yee-ah! Yee-ah!
My eyes returned to the vulcrows circling in the distance, but the calls had come from closer birds. Closing my eyes to what I could see with my eyes, I cast out for the vulcrows and the source of their interest.
With my still-sharpening sense of place, I could sense Gairloch placidly chewing leftover green grass by the river bank, and almost could I feel the color of the grass. Then…it could have been my imagination.
Beyond Gairloch, beyond the near hills…someone…something…was out there. I tried to project my senses beyond Gairloch, beyond the river, more toward the hills ahead, in the direction of the vulcrows’ calls.
…darkness, and shiny brass, and blued steel…
The prefect’s soldiers. Waiting ahead.
Turning my attention behind me, back into Gallos, I searched…and found more darkness, more brass and blued steel, riding up from behind me on the road that would lead them and me onward into Kyphros and into more death on both sides. Wonderful!