The Towers of the Sunset - L. E. Modesitt [26]
The ground before him slopes gradually uphill toward where he believes the road to be. With a sigh, he starts out again, plodding uphill. Here the trees are farther apart, creating patches of ice and frozen, exposed branches and bushes.
Creslin eases himself along and begins to unthong his skis, wiggling his toes and stretching first one foot, then the other, as the tension from the leather straps is lifted. Deciding to carry the skis until he can see whether the road in fact lies over the hill crest, he marches across snow that barely covers the toes of his boots and plunges through white-crusted surfaces into powder nearly to his knees.
After all his uneven progress, he arrives, breathing hard, on a level stretch. Less than two dozen cubits away is the road he had observed from the hills behind him. Creslin sets down the skis and ponders.
He first strips off the leather thongs, winds them into a ball, and places them in his pack. Then he hides the skis in a deadfall, for they would be a giveaway. The sword he leaves in the scabbard strapped across the pack.
Less than ten cubits from the road, he stands in snow halfway to his knees, snow that would have melted were it not shaded by the pines.
Terwhit . . . terwhit.
The call of a bird he does not know, for there are few birds indeed upon the Roof of the World, whispers through the bare branches of the oaks and the green needles of the pines.
Terwhit . . .
With the gentle echo of the unseen bird still in his ears, he steps toward the road, if he dares to call it a road—more like two clay tracks surrounding a center space of dirty white. The clay lanes represent the sun’s light upon the two wagon wheel tracks, melting them outward until each is nearly a cubit wide. The center snow is marked with irregular holes remaining from earlier footprints.
Creslin studies the road and the prints—just a single wagon and one rider, perhaps a pair of travelers walking, all of them heading to the west several days ago.
At least the day is pleasant, and walking on the cold and packed clay of the road will be a welcome change from slogging through the damp snow of the lesser mountains. He does miss the crisp cold of the Roof of the World and the easier strides across dry power.
“Do you?” he asks himself, recalling the powder-filled pits he had tumbled into. “Maybe not everything . . . “
He glances back along the winding road to the west. Nothing. His footsteps carry him from the snow that is little more than ankle-deep by the roadside onto the dark surface. Underfoot, the clay gives way, as if the mud is neither fully frozen nor completely loose.
He turns to the east, the sun at his back, and stretches out his legs. After so much time on skis, it will be good to walk for a while. The novelty will pale quickly, he knows, especially as the sun stands low in the western sky.
Are there any way stations on this road that should lead to Gallos? He does not know, nor does he know whether it would be wiser to use them or to avoid them. He does know that the coins in his belt pouch will not go far and that the heavy gold chain concealed within the belt itself is too valuable to display. Even a single link would betray his origin and make him a target. More of a target, he corrects himself.
At least the guards have not reached this far east. Not yet.
XVII
CLUNUNNNG . . . CLUNNGGG . . .
The impact of hammer and heavy steel chisel on cold iron echoes through the near-deserted smithy.
A red-haired woman kneels on the stone pavement, one wrist extended onto the anvil.
“That’s one, your grace.” The smith holds the heavy hammer and glances from the woman in traveling woolens kneeling before the anvil to the blond woman wearing the white of the Tyrant.
“Go ahead. Strike the other,” orders Ryessa.
The kneeling woman