The White Order

XX

THE HANDCART SQUEALED as Cerryl pushed the load of gold oak planks toward the green-painted wagon drawn up before the mill door. He wanted to groan because the squeaking meant that he needed to grease the wheels and axle again, and he hated getting into the grease. Rather, he hated the time and effort it took him to get clean afterward. Somehow, he didn’t have that deft a touch with matters mechanical and always ended up a mess, unlike Dylert or Brental, who always made everything around the mill look so effortless.

The handcart kept squealing, the sound drowning out the low rumble of the wheels on the stones of the causeway.

Under the high and hazy clouds of late summer, sweat streamed down his face and down the back of his neck. The meadow grasses below the causeway and to the east of the lower lane hung limply, already browning well before harvest. Not the faintest hint of a breeze had appeared for most of the past eight-day.

Cerryl pushed and sweated, and the cart squeaked and rumbled along the causeway toward the mill. Just outside the big south door, Dylert stood by the wagon talking to a narrow-shouldered man with a wispy ginger goatee in a sleeveless leather vest.

The youth’s eyes passed over the emblem on the side of the wagon, then stopped. He squinted against the glare of the sun from the shiny paint and read to himself-“Enfoss and Sons, Master Builders”-half-wondering exactly what Enfoss built.

He slowed the cart as he neared the wagon.

“Here you be, master Enfoss,” said Dylert, putting out a hand to help slow the cart. “The best of the golden oak.”

“And at a pretty price, too, master Dylert.” Enfoss grinned at the millmaster, showing yellowed teeth that peered from his face like a rat’s. “I paid for more than one puny cartload.”

“You paid for three, and three you’ll get.” Dylert smiled back at Enfoss; then he moved to help Cerryl reload the wood onto the big green wagon. “Just set it on the tailboard, lad, and get the next load. I’ll stack it right in the wagon.”

“Yes, ser.” Cerryl began to lift the planks, two at a time.

“You picking up more on the way back?”

“With what you charge, Dylert? Now, that be hardly likely.” Enfoss guffawed.

“You could go to Howlett and pay twice as much for less,” suggested the millmaster, lifting four of the heavy planks as though they were feathers.

Before long, Cerryl was pushing the empty cart back to the first lumber barn, glad it only squeaked when laden and not all the time.

Cerryl’s shirt was totally soaked by the time the high green wagon rolled down the lane. Enfoss never looked back. For a brief time, both Dylert and Cerryl watched, until the wagon turned eastward on the main road that, Cerryl had been told, eventually joined the wide, stone-paved, wizards’ road between Fairhaven and Lydiar.

Dylert nodded, as though he had been assured that Enfoss was indeed on his way back to Lydiar, and then turned. “Cerryl?”

“Yes, ser? I know the cart needs grease again, but it didn’t start making noise until I had a load on it.”

Dylert shook his head. “Would that all fellows were as worried about their tools. I was going to tell you that you do a good job of picking woods. Nice not to have to worry, it be. As for the grease, tomorrow be fine for that. Put the cart back in the first barn and go wash up and spend some time on yourself ’fore dinner.”

“Thank you, ser.” Cerryl grinned.

At the sound of a distant hom, both turned toward the lane that led down to the main road. A horse walked slowly up the last section of the road, turning onto the lane up to the mill, each step labored, hardly moving, carrying a bareheaded blond man in dark leathers. Cerryl could see the lather. He could also hear the drumbeat hoofs of many other horses and see the dust rising beyond the hillcrest on the road from Lydiar-a good two kays east of the mill.

Another series of notes rose across the afternoon, and a company of lancers rode over the hill, moving at what seemed to Cerryl to be a fast trot. But he wouldn’t have known one gait from another, except a walk from a full gallop.

His eyes went back to the single horse and rider.

The rider gestured toward them. “You two. One of you-you have it-you must help!” He spurred his mount, and the horse took another dozen steps, and then his leg seemed to give way. The rider half-fell, half-flung himself clear and staggered into a heap in the dusty road.

“Cerryl-there be trouble,” murmured Dylert. “Help me close the mill door, quick-like.”

Cerryl turned and ran to the door, pushing while Dylert pulled. When the long sliding door had but a cubit left to close, Dylert gestured to Cerryl. “Cerryl! Hurry and close the door on the finish barn, and stay inside! Be making sure you stay there. Understand?”

“Yes, ser.” Cerryl nodded and ran down the causeway to the finish lumber barn. He glanced over his shoulder.

The rider was rising to his feet, glancing back at the oncoming lancers.

Cerryl tugged the finish barn door, smaller than the one at the mill, until it was nearly closed, before slipping inside. His eyes went to the mill, its door closed, and then back to what he could see of the road, but all he could see was the rider, turning back toward the mill, drawing a blade.

The youth’s lips tightened, and he pulled on the door, sliding it closed-almost. He left a sliver of space between the massive doorpost timber and the door itself, so little that no one could have seen without being right at the door. Then he watched, squinting through his peephole.

The dusty rider half-walked, half-staggered uphill, moving determinedly toward the mill, carrying a shimmering blade. His eyes flicked uphill, and Cerryl almost felt as though the rider sought him.

The man drew closer to the mill, less than two hundred cubits from where Cerryl hunched behind the door. He wore a belt scabbard, not a shoulder harness the way the demon women had or the way mercenaries supposedly did. His sleeveless tunic was stained and streaked with dust and dirt, as was the once-fine silk shirt beneath it, and even at a distance, Cerryl could see-or sense-that the fugitive’s face was flushed and that a faint white glow surrounded him-like it cloaked the books from Cerryl’s father.

The fugitive’s eyes raked across the buildings and fixed on the finish barn. Abruptly, he turned as the drumming of hoofs rose again, nearer, and a score of lancers appeared, but a hundred cubits or so downhill from the single man.

All the lancers wore the cyan livery of Lydiar, except for the man riding beside the lancer officer who led the troop. The exception was a figure dressed entirely in white-a white mage.

Cerryl shivered but kept watching.

The lancer officer gestured, and the lancers reined up. Three lancers, bearing bows already strung, rode to the front of the column and drew arrows from their quivers with a fluidity that bespoke long practice.

The fugitive squared himself to face the archers. He raised a hand, and a small ball of fire arched from his fingertips toward the lancers.

Cerryl held his breath as the fire flared toward the Lydian lancers, yet none moved.

The white mage nodded, and simultaneously the fireball splattered into fragments that fell short of the riders. A tuft of brown grass burst into flame, and then ashes.

For a moment, the shoulders of the blond man in the travel-stained clothes slumped; then he straightened and raised his blade to the late afternoon sun. The metal glistened as though it held the fires of the sun, even after he had lowered it to chest height. He faced the lancers, neither stepping back nor forward.

The lancer officer snapped an order, and the archers released their nocked arrows.

The fugitive’s blade seemed to flash, and he stood untouched, two broken arrows lying by his feet, both somehow charred and snapped.

The lancer officer glanced at the white wizard. This time, the wizard raised his hand, and a larger fireball flared toward the blond man.

Once more the golden-fired blade flashed, and fragments of fire spewed around the fugitive. Cerryl could see a black slash across the back of the man’s left arm. The man was breathing heavily but continued to hold his strange blade in the guard position.

Another firebolt flashed from the white wizard, parried by the blond man, and yet another firebolt. After the third firebolt, the fugitive barely could raise the sword.

Cerryl missed the order from the lancer officer, but arrows flew toward the blond man. The first arrow took the fugitive in the arm. A second missed, as did a third as he threw himself to the side, but his leg slipped on the gravel of the road.

As he fell, the man hurled the blade. It flashed white and gold as it spun hilt over point and into the low brush at the end of the meadow by the road.

Two firebolts flashed from the hands of the white wizard in succession, exploding over the body of the fallen man and rising into a pillar of flame.

When the fires receded, all that remained was an irregular star of blackened ground-no body, no ashes, just an odd-shaped star of soot. Soot and the odor of burned meat.

Cerryl leaned against the doorpost and swallowed hard to keep from gagging. By the time he had regained full control, the drumming of hoofbeats had died away, and the lane was empty. Even the dust over the road to Lydiar had begun to settle.

He slowly pushed the barn door open enough to slip out. Then he studied the lane and the road. The lancers-and the white mage-had indeed left on their return to Lydiar.

Slowly, Cerryl walked down the lane, avoiding the star-shaped patch of soot, until he reached the area where the dead man had thrown the blade. A faint glint of something tugged at his eyes, except that tug urged him to look away.

He fought the feeling and followed it to a deeper patch of grass. Gingerly, he picked up the blade by the hilt, a hilt of bronze, apparently wrapped in something like silk.

Cerryl studied the blade, noting that it was not iron or steel or anything like it, but more like the metal of the knife that had been his father’s.

The sound of boots on the road alerted him, and he slipped the blade behind him as he turned.

Brental smiled. “You need not hide that blade, Cerryl. I see we had the same thought. You found it, and it be yours. Might I see it?”

After a moment, Cerryl extended the blade sideways, looking over Brental’s shoulder as Dylert walked down the lane from the barn.

Brental took it, then squinted. “I can hardly see it. It twists your eyes right well away from it.” He shivered and quickly handed the blade back to Cerryl. “It be yours, if you wish it.”

Cerryl took the blade back.

Dylert nodded, as if to agree that the blade was Cerryl’s.

Brental glanced past Cerryl, toward the Lydiar road, before speaking. “You saw the firebolt? The flame the poor fellow cast? Pity-poor chaos flame, too, it was.”

“Chaos flame?” blurted Cerryl.

“Aye,” answered Dylert. “The fellow with that blade there, he’d a been a renegade white-one who’d not follow their rules. Strict they be, about chaos and its use.” He looked hard at Cerryl. “Seen a handful over my years. A man has the talent and not be under their rules and protection, the white mages, they like as not kill or rain a fellow. . and them’s the lucky ones.” He shook his head slowly. “In their own way, they be fair, fairer than most dukes and the like. But a man should walk a fair piece to stay on their good side. Aye, and he should.”

Their good side? Had they one? Cerryl wondered.

“Glad I be as just a mill man,” said Brental, following his words with a nervous laugh.

Cerryl forced himself not to look down at the blade in his hands, a blade that felt strangely comfortable and simultaneously uncomfortable as he held it loosely.

“Well. .” Dylert added into the silence, glancing to the west where the sun hung low over the house. “Day’s done. Be time soon for dinner.” He turned and walked briskly back uphill.

After a moment, Brental nodded and followed his father.

With the near-setting sun warming his face, Cerryl looked down at the blade, the same white bronze as the knife from his father, recalling how the dead man had knocked down arrows and firebolts. . and how his efforts had been in vain.

And how he had sought Cerryl. The youth shivered.