Colors of Chaos

XI

CERRYL WIPED HIS forehead. Even in the shaded part of the rampart area of the guardhouse he was hot, and summer had yet to come. The afternoons were getting wanner and warmer, and it would be at least another eight-day, from what he’d heard, before Kinowin split gate-guard duty into two rotations. With his luck, he’d probably get the hot late-afternoon duty.

Creeaaakkkk…He glanced out along the White highway to the north. A single cart rolled toward the gates. The gray donkey pulling it was led by a white-haired woman who plodded down the road almost as methodically as the beast.

Cerryl couldn’t sense any medallion on the cart, and he leaned over the rampart. “Gyral?”

“Yes, ser?” The lanky detail leader glanced up.

“Do us both a favor and yell to that woman. Tell her that if she doesn’t have a medallion and she gets close to the gates, I’ll have to destroy her cart and take her donkey. Just tell her to turn around and take one of the farm roads-or something. Or that she’ll need to get a medallion right now.”

The White Guard frowned, then grinned. “You know her?”

“No. I just don’t like taking things from old women. Maybe she doesn’t know the laws.”

“I don’t know, ser. Some of them are pretty stubborn. I’ll try.” Gyral marched away from the two other guards toward the approaching peasant.

Creaaakkk…The cart carried several stacks of woven grass baskets and some of reeds. The woman made her way toward the gates, aided by a long wooden staff half again her height.

Gyral squared his shoulders. “Woman! You can’t use the White roads without a medallion. If you come to the gates and you don’t have the coppers for a medallion, then we’ll have to take your cart and donkey.”

“The roads be for all. That be what you White ninnies are always saying. I be one of the all, and I need to sell my baskets so that my family can live till harvest. And no spare coppers are you a-getting.”

“You can’t bring the cart in on the highway,” Gyral answered. “Not without a medallion.”

“There be no other way. Like as you know that.”

“We’ll have to take your cart and baskets.” Gyral stepped backward.

“You and who else, young fellow?” The crone raised the walking stick and brandished it, waving it at the detail leader.

The lancer backed away and glanced toward Cerryl.

Cerryl gave an overlarge shrug and called down, “If that’s the way she wants it!”

Donkey, cart, and woman creaked toward the gate with no sign of slowing.

“You have to stop,” announced Gyral.

“I belong not to your White City, and, by the light, I’ll sell where I please. The land gives me those rights, not some man who wears white and rides in a gold carriage.” The crone swung the staff at Gyral and the guard beside him. Both backed away, although they had their shortswords out.

“Stand back!” snapped Cerryl.

Even the crone looked up.

Cerryl concentrated, trying to form a fireball that was part firelance, one that would strike the staff and not the woman.

Whhssst! The end of the staff vanished in flame, and then white ashes drifted across the stones.

The crone held a piece of wood no longer than a short truncheon, one that flamed. She dropped it on the granite paving stones before the guardhouse.

“Darkness and the Black angels take you!” The woman clawed at her belt, and a dark iron knife appeared as she launched herself at Gyral.

Whhhsstt! The firebolt enveloped the old woman, and when it subsided where the crone had stood was a faint greasy spot and a pile of white ashes that drifted in the light breeze.

“Stupid woman…mage tried to give her a chance.”

“Don’t buck ’em…not if you want to live…”

Cerryl leaned against the rampart stones, faintly nauseated. He straightened. “Unhitch the donkey and put it in the stable. Unload the baskets. They might be useful somewhere.”

When the cart stood alone below the guardhouse, Cerryl loosed a last fireball, and, once more, only ashes remained, ashes and a few iron fittings that prisoner details carried away. The highway was empty again in the hot afternoon, and Cerryl sank onto the stool in the shade.

He wanted to shake his head. Even when you tried to explain the rules or help people, some of them just didn’t believe. The taxes weren’t new. They’d been there since the time of Creslin, something like three centuries or more, and there were still people who disputed them, who refused to accept the laws unless you used overwhelming force on them. Or, like the old woman, people who turned the words to what they wanted them to mean and then attacked when their interpretation was denied.

He hadn’t had any choice at the end. Even for him, the rules were absolute. Anyone who attacked a gate guard died. Had he made it worse by trying to warn her? Or telling her she needed to pay for a medallion? Would it have been the same either way?

He wiped his forehead again, then glanced obliquely toward the sun, blazing in the green-blue sky. A long time until sunset-too long.