Colors of Chaos

CXI

CERRYL REINED UP by the south gate to Elparta, where the heavy wooden gates had been rebuilt and replaced on the gate pillars. The damp wind seeped through the oiled leather of his white jacket. He shifted his weight in the hard and cold saddle as he studied the river walls, the tumbled stones still sprawling away from the low wall cores that had been shifted and tilted in places by Jeslek’s use of chaos on the River Gallos. The tumbled section ran northward to the middle river gates and then farther downriver to the north city gates.

After a moment, Cerryl turned to Hiser, mounted and waiting on his left. “We need to work on those…the river walls.”

Most of the houses on the hill where he and his lancers were quartered had been repaired and reshuttered, if crudely. So had the dwellings in the area to the north and east of the south gate-not a hundred cubits from where he surveyed the river and where Fydel had quartered the majority of the White Lancers remaining in Elparta.

“What about the other houses?” asked Hiser.

“They’ll have to wait.” Besides, if we get the walls and all the piers back, come spring, there will be people returning and paying crafters to rebuild-or doing it themselves.

“Ought to wait,” grumped Ferek. “Fools, all of ’em.”

Fools? Or just fearful? “Perhaps. It doesn’t matter. Finishing the piers and then the gates and the river walls comes next. Without trading facilities, the city will suffer more in the years to come.”

“Should suffer,” murmured Ferek under his breath.

Cerryl ignored the comment. “Tomorrow, have them start on the river side, all the way past the barracks houses, up to the trading gate-the middle one. After that, we’ll see.”

“That be several eight-days’ work.”

“I imagine so.” Cerryl flicked the reins. “We’ll go by the Market Square on the way back. Didn’t you say people are showing up to trade?”

“Some,” answered Hiser cautiously.

“When they think we’re not looking,” added Ferek.

The three, followed by four lancer guards, rode along the avenue from the south gate toward the center of Elparta. Away from the river, the smell of fish and mud dwindled, but the air seemed smokier.

As he neared the edge of the Market Square, Cerryl slowed the gelding. One of the stores-a chandlery-had been repaired, although the door was shut and the windows shuttered. A shutter on the adjoining cooper’s shop clattered slowly against the mud-splattered plaster of the wall, moved back and forth by the wind.

A bellow, inchoate but loud, echoed across the seemingly empty square, followed by a scream and another, sharper yell.

Cerryl glanced around, then at Hiser.

Before either could speak, a man in a green vest and an oversized and open brown cloak ran out of an alleyway, darting around a pile of brick and mud. He dashed toward Cerryl. “Ser mage! Help! They’ll kill me, they will.”

Another man, swinging a sabre, his belt undone, scabbard banging against his leg, charged around the rubble and after the ginger-bearded and vested man.

“Halt!” bellowed Ferek.

Both the bearded man and the man chasing him slowed, then stopped as they saw the six lancers with unsheathed blades. The sabre-swinging man was a lancer, Cerryl could see, despite the afternoon shadows that lent an air of gloom to the dilapidated square.

The vested and bearded man turned to Cerryl. “Your lancer…he took out his blade and he threatened me. He said if I did not have my daughter…service him…he would kill us both.”

Cerryl glanced at the unbelted lancer, who had sheathed his sabre.

“It’s a lie!” yelled the lancer. “Ser,” he added quickly as he saw the white cloak.

“He said he would kill us both, I swear,” insisted the man with the curly beard and gold earrings.

Behind the two men were another pair of lancers, dragging a woman forward.

“What have you to say?” Cerryl’s gray eyes focused on the single lancer.

“They’re lying. She’s a trollop and a cutpurse and-”

“See this cut? Do you see it, ser mage?” demanded the man in the vest, pointing to a short slash across his chin that dripped blood onto a stained shirt that might have once been white silk and onto a dirty brown cloak. “Your lancer did this to me.”

Cerryl looked at the woman, struggling in the arms of two lancers who half-dragged, half carried her toward Cerryl, the subofficers, and the four lancer guards. One of the lancers lugging the woman kept looking down at her open cloak and ripped blouse, which showed half-exposed full breasts.

“He tried to kill me,” insisted the bearded man.

“They…she offered…They tried to kill me…” stuttered the accused lancer, glancing from the bearded man to the woman.

Cerryl fixed his eyes on the woman. “Did you steal the lancer’s purse?”

“I stole nothing.”

“Did you offer yourself to him for coins?”

“He forced himself on me.” The woman drew herself up as much as possible with the two lancers restraining her.

“She had a knife, ser,” added one of the lancers holding the woman.

“What about the knife?” Cerryl asked.

“I had no knife. What would I do with a knife against such a brute?”

Cerryl smiled tiredly and turned to the lancers. “Bring her out into the street here. Let her go and stand away from her.”

The two men looked at each other, then frog-marched the dark-haired woman forward, abruptly releasing her.

Cerryl seized chaos and flung it, almost contemptuously. Whhhsst! Where the woman had stood was a pillar of fire.

The man in the green vest ripped himself out of the hands of the lancer and started to run.

Despite his headache, Cerryl forced himself to concentrate.

Whhssst! A second firebolt created another heap of flaming charcoal that subsided to white ash.

Cerryl looked at the stunned single lancer. “They lied. You did also, but not so much. If I find you like this again, you’ll join them.” His eyes went to the two unknown lancers-from Fydel’s forces probably, since he recognized neither. “Tell your comrades.”

“Yes, ser.”

Cerryl glanced at Ferek, then Hiser, before turning the gelding toward the low hill that held their quarters.

“Darkness-fired lucky, you were…”

“Coulda been you…”

“Fair…he is…cold as the Westhorns, too.”

Cold? Cerryl almost laughed, half in frustration. You’ll be the most disliked mage in Candar the way things are going. Or the second most disliked, after Jeslek.

He leaned forward and patted the gelding’s neck. Horses didn’t talk back or mutter behind his back. At least, his didn’t.