The Magic of Recluce - L. E. Modesitt [205]
Right-handed, I flicked the reins. “Come on. We really don’t have anywhere else to go, old fellow.”
Whheee.
“No, we don’t.” I extended my left hand toward the staff, still safe and waiting in the saddle holder. “Oooo…” The subjective heat flashed to my fingers even before they reached the black lorken of my staff.
Something was definitely waiting over the crest of the road.
I wiped my forehead, suddenly sweating in the cold glare of the winter sun.
Wheeee…eee…
“I know. There are evil types in front of us.”
Again, I tried to sense what lay over the hill-crest before me, whatever it was that Gairloch disliked. All I could feel was a sense of heat, of the fire that was Antonin’s trademark.
I glanced at the hillside to the left and right of the road. Did I really have to keep to it?
A quick survey answered that question. All those short and gently-sloping meadows ended in piles of jumbled rock at the base of rocky slopes that would have taxed a mountain sheep.
I looked again, realizing belatedly what had happened, shaking my head as I did. Once the pass had been a standard narrow gap—or just a solid wall of rock. Then, someone, something, a long time ago, perhaps as far back as when Candar had been united under the Wizards of Fairhaven, had blasted through. Not only had they built the wizards’ road, but they had rearranged the entire geography.
Maybe, just maybe, Magistra Trehonna had been right. I definitely didn’t like that thought.
With the help of the weather and time, the sheer facings had crumbled, leaving what seemed a narrow natural ravine running into the Westhorns. But any crumbled rock had been periodically removed from the road surface. Under Gairloch’s hooves was the same white road surface—the same wizard-stone—that paved the streets of Frven.
Not that any of that exactly helped as Gairloch and I proceeded toward the crest of the pass, toward that narrow gap in the sheer stone wall that towered hundreds of cubits upward.
Wheeee…
On the edge of the hard surface lay a brownish square, the tattered remains of a pack or something, and, in the higher grass behind…fragments of white. I swallowed.
Wheeeee…eeeee…Gairloch’s steps skittered.
“I know.” I chucked the reins again and looked up.
Ahead, arrayed a half-kay ahead, blocking the entrance to the narrow pass, was a troop. A white-clad, white-faced wizard troop of warriors…soldiers…at least they all had weapons that glinted in the near-noon sun.
I wiped my forehead again with the back of my sleeve.
In front of the silent, ghost-white apparitions rode a knight on—what else—a white horse. The horse, over four cubits at the shoulder, stood there in the sunlight. Neither the horse’s metal breastplate nor the knight’s unburnished plate armor reflected the sunlight. Knights had never enjoyed much success, except in service of chaos, because that much plate was a wonderful place in which to concentrate fire. Of course, this knight had probably served chaos far longer than he had ever wanted to.
A damned knight. In more ways than one, I knew. Behind him waited a pack of armed figures, not exactly men. Unhappily, each of those figures carried a sword which glinted and looked razor-sharp.
The knight’s helmet visor was down, and he carried a lance pointed in my direction. The lance looked to be a solid pole with a glistening white tip—chaos-tipped, if you will.
All of the predictability of Antonin’s tactics did not make them less effective.
The white horse lifted one hoof, then another, carrying the silent knight toward me at an even pace, no spring in his steps, and no wavering. The knight said nothing.
Wheeee…
“Easy…”
The white-haired, white-faced, white-clothed figures began to walk also, their armor creaking like unoiled doors, without rhythm, without order, their swords almost flapping to an