The Magic of Recluce - L. E. Modesitt [68]
I looked for the less muddy side of the road, and nudged Gairloch toward the right onto a patch of grass that rose above the churned road-edge mud.
“Geee—haaaa!”
Crack!
A chill accompanied the coach, almost like a cold wind, that blew softer, yet colder, as it approached.
Crack!
“Gee—haaa!”
The hoarseness and the mechanical nature of the coachman’s call twisted every nerve in my spine as the coach rumbled along the level center of the road toward me.
The coach itself was of polished white oak, varnished heavily until it was nearly gold, supported not by iron springs, but by heavy leather straps. Even the axles and wheels were totally of wood. Yet the coach’s workmanship could not be obscured by the mud streaks upon the wood or by the mist and water droplets which sprayed from it on its headlong journey toward Freetown.
“Gee-haaa!” The coachman never looked aside as he drove past.
Behind the coach rode two men, seated side-by-side on chargers that mirrored the chestnut gelding I had seen at Felshar’s. All the horses moved at a quick trot, as fast as seemed possible for a longer trip.
Both soldiers wore the shiny gray slickers like the coachman’s, but shorter, more like jackets that allowed them to use either their white lances, secured in holders like the battered lance cup which held my shorter staff, or the white-scabbarded swords they bore.
The soldier closest to me glanced from under the hood, but his scrutiny was mechanical, as though he had not even really seen me, or as though he had seen a figure and passed on that information as he watched—although his mouth did not appear to open.
For the moment that the coach passed, midday seemed more like a stormy night. Then all that remained was a dissipating sense of disorder, the soft rumble of the wheels fading away, and a hoarse “gee-haaa!”
I shook myself and chucked the reins, hoping that Isolde had completed whatever she had to do and had found the black ship that doubtless waited unseen somewhere near the harbor.
Tamra—I hoped her procrastination hadn’t left her open to the chaos-wizard that had ridden in the white-oak coach, but there wasn’t much I could do. Not then. I swallowed, wiped the water off my forehead, and watched the road, noting absently that the coach’s passage had left only the faintest of indentations on the road.
Splatt…splatt…The cold rain gusted in icy drops from an ever-darker sky, and I looked for some sort of shelter, but the road stretched straight ahead, level, for at least another five kays, bordered by the same tumbled stone fences, the same withered grasses; and the same distant and scattered sheep. Not one house nor homestead had I seen since crossing that first hill outside of Freetown. Yet the sheep indicated that someone lived somewhere—and that said that no one wanted to be close to the road I traveled. I shivered again.
Wheeee…eeeee…Gairloch tossed his head and droplets flew back onto my cloak and face.
“I know…it’s cold and wet. But there’s no place to stop.”
Wheeeee…
“No place. Nowhere…”
So we kept plodding along the road.
No wagons, no more coaches, and a steady beating flow of water from overhead. Finally, when my cloak was nearly soaked through, its treated leather heavy on my shoulders, we reached the first low hill at the end of that near-deserted meadow valley. By then, the rain had eased to a mere chilling mist.
Some scattered pines bordered the road, and the stone walls lapsed into tumbled low piles of rock. On the hilltop, more of a hillock really, sat another pile of stones, the remnants of what had clearly once been an extensive farm or estate.
There was no immediate sense of chaos or disorder, only a feeling of age…and maybe under it all some sadness, although my father, Kerwin, and Talryn would all have assailed me for ascribing an emotion to a description of order or its lack thereof. At least Gairloch couldn’t comment on sloppy logic.
From that second hill, the terrain became less ordered and more wild, with hills covered mainly with pines, although a few