“They can bring them now,” Secca said with a smile. “And thank you.”
“Be thanking you, Lady Sorceress. Oh, and there are kettles for the other sorceress, too.” Annalese bowed and slipped out through the still-open door, past Dymen and Gorkon, who had stationed themselves at the doorway.
Secca barely had a chance to lay out the saddlebags and set down the lutar when Richina reappeared.
“Yes, Lady Secca?”
“Before the bathwater arrives,” Secca said, “I want to see where the Maitre’s forces are.”
“Before you eat?” asked Alcaren.
Richina offered an inquiring look as well, but said nothing.
“I can do one scrying spell,” Secca replied.
“Just one,” Alcaren said.
While Secca uncased the lutar, Alcaren set the scrying mirror on the foot of the bed and began to unwrap it from its leathers. The he lifted the mirror and set it in the middle of the square conference table.
Secca finished tuning the lutar and stepped to the table, beginning the spellsong without preamble.
“Show us now and in clear light...”
The image in the scrying glass was that of a small hamlet set to the east of rolling hills still covered with brown grass. After a long look, Secca sang the release couplet, then turned to Alcaren. “They look to be in the grasslands just north of Elioch.”
“Can you tell how far north?”
“It could be one or two days. No more.” Secca tightened her lips. The Sturinnese were within four days of the West Pass, and five of Denguic. Less if they hasten.
“Should we send a message to Jolyn?” asked Richina.
“No,” Alcaren said firmly. “She received the last scroll. She knows what she must do. You must recover, Lady Richina, and my Lady Secca needs no additional strain upon her now.”
There was a thrap on the oak door.
“The boys with kettles,” announced Dymen.
“Have them come in, one at a time,” Alcaren said before Secca could respond. His hand rested on the hilt of his sabre. He watched as the three boys in brown robes paraded into the chambers one at a time and poured the steaming water into a tub that already had several spans of cooler clean water in it.
When both servers and Richina had departed, Secca slid the bolt across the outer door. “Do you mind if I bathe first?”
“Not if I can watch.” He grinned.
“You . . .” she shook her head and walked toward the bathchamber.
For all his words, Alearen did not follow her.
After Secca had bathed, she stood in one corner of the bathchamber, with a too-small towel wrapped around her. Finally, she pulled out the rolled green gown from her saddlebags, the one she hadn’t worn since Encora, if not before, and looked at the wrinkled fabric.
Alcaren leered from the tub, where he was now bathing. “You’re wearing that?"
“We are going to do some other sorcery, my dear.” She flushed, realizing what she implied. “It’s called washing out riding clothes, If I wear this tonight.. .“
“You won’t be wearing it that long,” he suggested.
Secca flushed even more and had to turn away for a moment before she continued, “I can wash both sets of riding clothes and spread them before the hearth.”
“That is a good idea.”
“You could wear that formal uniform.”
From the tub, he shrugged. “It’s packed with the gear we didn’t bring in. I’ll have to do with washing one set of uniforms.
Secca decided against providing more temptation and slipped out into the larger main chamber to dress.
By the time Secca and Alcaren had dressed and used a spell to wash their soiled gear, and then gathered Richina, more than a glass had passed, and faint daystars intermittently crossed Secca’s vision. She said nothing to Alcaren, not after she’d insisted that the laundry spell would not hurt her.
Both chief players and Wilten were waiting in the private dining area, but Secca was relieved to see that each had ale and that the remnants of a loaf of bread lay in a basket on the large round table.
“The lancers?" asked Secca.
“They are already being fed in the public room,” Wilten replied. “They can serve scores at once.”
“I’m sorry.” Secca took one of the empty wooden chairs. ‘We took a moment to use the glass to see where the Maitre might be. His forces are still in Neserea, but they appear close to Elioch.”
Palian shook her head. “We can but do our best, lady.”
“If Lord Robero had sent more lancers with Lady Clayre,” added. Delvor, “we might not be so pressed.”
Except that Lord Robero isn't the one who will suffer. That was a thought Secca wasn’t about to say aloud.
She looked up as a serving-woman, red-faced and smiling, appeared. ‘We have but two meals tonight, noble lady. The first is a small half chicken served with cream sauce and sautéed harvest mushrooms. We also have a quinced goose stuffed with nutbread and flamed with Vyelan brandy.”
Alcaren lifted his eyebrows, then smiled, as did most of the others around the table.
“The chicken,” Secca said, “with an ale.” Much as she liked the change from hard bread, cheese, and other travel fare, she wasn’t sure she wanted to see the draught she’d have to sign and seal for the River’s Edge. Then again, whatever the cost, it was cheaper than trying to follow the Maitre through burned-out lands or forcing a march through Nordwei.
She might as well enjoy the chicken, since quince was less than her favorite fruit, and even the best goose had a chance of being greasy.
111
Under a warm spring sun and a clear afternoon sky, Secca glanced down at her boots and trousers, splattered with mud, and probably worse, then at Alcaren, riding in front of her. He was even muddier than Secca, or perhaps it showed more on his light blue uniform.
Her entire force was riding single file across a soggy hillside bordering what had been a road, moving at the pace of a three-legged ox, if not slower. For the first day out of Morgen, the road had been damp clay, and fairly well packed, if at times slippery, but their luck with roads had ended roughly five deks behind them, where the road had narrowed and followed a stream on a gentle incline. The stream had recently overflowed its banks and flooded the road. Because the road had been used by wagons and horses for generations, they had gradually worn out a track that was below the terrain on either side, and that track had become a series of small ponds and muddy canals.
Looking at the long ridgeline that stretched south farther than she could see, Secca doubted they would cover ten deks in the entire day. At this pace, two or three days more than you‘d calculated just to get to Nordfels.
A dollop of mud splattered against Secca’s thigh, followed by small droplets of dark water thrown by Alcaren’s chestnut. Secca sighed.
Salchaar had told Secca that the roads were bad because spring had come late and hard, and everything had melted in days, rather than weeks.
Alcaren turned in the saddle and called back to Secca, "We’re going to have to climb higher on the hillside to circle around a bog in that dale ahead.”
“How much higher?” asked Secca.
“Several hundred yards,” he called back.
By the time they got around the bog, the detour would add another half-dek or more, and then there would probably be another one, if not more, when they reached the next valley.
Secca took a deep breath. There‘s nothing you can do. Sorcery wouldn’t help, or rather any that might would only clear or dry a few deks and leave her worthless for days, scarcely the best of ideas with the Maitre and his forces riding toward Defalk.
112
Secca frowned as she reined up on the rise behind the two Norweian officers. The tiny town lying at the foot of the slippery clay road that wound down the hillside appeared to he more hamlet than town. Late—afternoon shadows from those peaks of the Nordbergs that lay to the west en
folded the clump of buildings.
“The scouts say that it is called Talseite.” Undercaptain Eztaar turned in the saddle and addressed Secca. “Myself, I have never heard of it. They say that the border with Defalk is but a day’s ride to the south.”
“Now? Or in the summer?” asked Secca dryly.
Eztaar shrugged, half-apologetically. “Summer, I would guess.”
The sorceress nodded. In the three days since leaving Morgen, they had covered perhaps forty deks---little more than a day’s ride on the roads of Defalk---and almost half of that had been on the first day. She tried not to think about how far the Maitre’s forces might have gone on the far better roads in Neserea and how much faster they could move once they entered Defalk.
“It is windier to the south,” suggested Captain Salchaar. “That may dry the ground faster.”
“Or melt everything faster,” replied Alcaren.
As the column resumed its slow ride down the slippery and muddy road, Secca would have wagered on Alcaren’s judgment. So far, the unpaved roads had been slow---and they had been lucky not to have had to ride through rain. Yet.
Talseite had one inn, marked by a large iron kettle hung from a gallows-like frame beside the road, a good two hundred yards to the north of any of the other buildings in the hamlet. With its recently whitewashed plank walls, and graveled half courtyard between the main building and the stables, the Iron Kettle looked to be the house of a prosperous farmer converted to an inn to make a profit off the trade that had resumed during and after Anna’s Regency.
After discussing the arrangements for the players and lancers with the chief players and overcaptains, Secca dismounted and brushed off as much of the dried mud as she could before unstrapping her gear. She used the boot-scraper and climbed the two wide plank steps up to the narrow covered porch that sheltered the entrance. Behind her came the others, led by Alcaren.
Once inside the inn, she glanced through the square archway into the public room, a space with worn split-plank floors stained by age and grease, with rickety pine tables as dark as ancient oak. The entire public room was barely large enough for a score of diners. Then she turned to Wilten, Delcetta, and Palian. Delvor was still on the front steps. “We’ll eat in a glass, after the lancers and mounts are settled as best they can be.”
"Ah . . . ummm."
At the sound of the apologetic bass voice, Secca turned.
“The scouts have explained all, Lady Sorceress.” The once-muscular innkeeper bowed twice, mostly with his head, since a large midsection precluded any deeper a gesture of respect. “You have the best room, that you do.” He bowed again. “And the other lady the one adjoining. Yes, indeed.”
“Thank you.” Secca inclined her head slightly.
“If you would show us?” Alcaren stepped forward, smiling pleasantly.
“Oh, yes. Yes, ser.” The balding innkeeper turned and waddled through a narrow rectangular archway that he barely seemed to clear. “This way. This way, if you please.”
Alcaren followed, with Gorkon behind him, then Secca and Richina.
The corridor was short, and held but five doors, the last two for the sorceresses.
The “best” room had a double-width bed, a ledge attached to the wall beside it, on which was a small oil lamp. There was one narrow window, a wash table, and a rough pine-sided wardrobe without a door.
“Anything you want, we would please. Yes, we would.” Bowing effusively, the innkeeper backed away.
Secca suspected that, again, there would be draughts or golds required that were not quite excessive, but close to it.
As Alcaren and Secca closed the door and surveyed the small chamber, Secca could see that Alcaren’s eyes looked more dark-rimmed. Should she take the wards for at least a day?
He caught her glance and shook his head. “Richina will be well enough to carry them by the time we reach Nordfels.”
“You are most stubborn, my love.”
“Most practical, I fear,” he replied.
“While the others are settling in,” Secca said, “let me see where the Sea-Priests are.”
While Alcaren removed the bronze pitcher and basin and laid the mirror on the small wash table, Secca tuned the lutar and quickly sang the scrying spellsong.
“Show us now and in clear light
where those with the Maitre spend this night...”
The glass displayed a town square. On one side was a two-story wooden building, its slab-planked sides covered with a recent whitewash. The shutters were swung back and revealed narrow casements with glass windows. Several lancers in the white of Sturinn were posted as guards on the front porch. Even through the glass, Secca could see the sharpness of the white uniforms and the hard edge of discipline.
“That looks to be Elioch,” Secca observed. “That’s not any town in Defalk, and the only town of any size in eastern Neserea is Elioch.”
“You could try a map spell.”
She shook her head. “For now, that is good enough."
“At least they’re not in Defalk yet.”
“Not for another two or three days.” Secca frowned. “They should be traveling faster than they are.”
“It’s hard to travel fast,” Alcaren replied, “if you have to destroy everything along the roads you ride. That’s true even using sorcery, I’d wager.”
Wincing at the images created by Alcaren's words, and knowing that by the next evening Elioch would be ashes, Secca sang the release couplet. She didn’t need to see more, and she certainly didn’t want to call up scenes of the sorcerous carnage the Sturinnese had doubtless created, not when there was nothing she could do but fret. “Tomorrow, we’ll need to send a messenger to Lord Cassily, telling him we are coming.
“How will he take such?” asked Alcaren.
“That . . . I do not know. He was pleasant enough to Jolyn when she was his lover, and he now is lord because of her shadow sorcery, though he may not know such.” Secca shrugged. “She said that he would make a good lord of the old style.”
Alcaren nodded slowly.
Are there any good lords of the old style? Secca wondered.
113
A fine misting rain drifted around Secca, foglike enough that she had trouble seeing any riders except those within a few yards. Although it was close to midday, there was no sign of the sun or its warmth, and the air felt like that of a chill early-spring morning, or perhaps even a warmish winter morn. Even the green felt hat helped little because the fine rain drifted sideways as much as fell.
Alcaren had been right about the warmth creating just more mud, Secca reflected, as the Norwelan officers led her forces along the road, if it could have been called such, leading to Nordfels. She doubted that she had been able to go a hundred yards all morning without having to ride through or around a puddle of muddy water. Some seemed as large as small ponds. Mud coated everything---the legs and belly of the gray mare, Secca’s stirrups and boots, and her trousers practically halfway up her thighs.
She edged forward in the saddle, then reined in the mare as she saw that the scouts and the two Norwelan officers had come to a halt at the low rise ahead. She eased up beside Alcaren and the two officers, then brought her mount to a halt.
“Sorceress Protector, the border lies here.” Captain Salchaar bowed slightly in the saddle, a graceful gesture from a tall and lean woman, then gestured toward a weathered square stone post set on the right-hand shoulder of the muddy track, barely visible in the foggy rain.
Secca squinted, but could make out no inscriptions on the yard-and-a-half-high marker, and she turned her eyes back to the Norweian. ‘We appreciate your guidance and all that you have done, and all that the Council has provided.”
“Nordwei is most appreciative of all that you have done, and we wish you triumph in the battles to come.”
“That would be best for both Defalk and Nordwei,” Secca replied. “We will do all we can.”
“That is all the harmonie
s ask, all any can expect.” Salchaar bowed again.
Secca returned the bow. “A good and safe return to Wei for you.”
“Thank you, Lady Sorceress.” Captain Salchaar turned her mount, as did Undercaptain Eztaar, and the two headed back northward, joined by the squad of Norweian lancers that had been in the rear. Shortly, the Norweians vanished into the mist.
The sorceress turned the gray mare, looking south from the gentle road crest, but there was little to see, except a few yards of muddy road, descending slowly, before the misting rain and fog obscured what lay beyond. Secca could guess what was there—more deks of muddy road and soggy ground, winter-browned grasses, and bare-limbed bushes.
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