Part 19 (1/2)
Were the vineyards another casualty of the Evult's drought? Along with how many other crops and people you don't even know about?
The road curved over the next dek to head directly toward the river. An arched bridge with three spans and two heavy stone piers in midstream offered the sole access to Cheor from the west-a bridge that had been far enough downstream to survive the Evult's floods of the fall before.
The dark-brown clay road widened even more closer to the bridge, as the riverbanks narrowed and deepened and the muddy water filled the entire stresinbed. From what Anna could see, when the Faiche was full, the river would be nearly ten yards deep. The battered clay levees on both sides testified that the Falche had indeed run deep in the past and that it had not recently, not with the gaps in the banks in places.
As they rode closer to the bridge, Alvar leaned toward Anna. ”I would suggest a van.”
A van? Anna paused, then finally had to ask, ”A van? I'm not a military person, Captain...”
”A forward guard, lady. We do not know exactly how friendly...”
”Of course.
”Just a half-score,” suggested Jecks.
Alvar nodded.
”And you might have your instrument and a spell ready,” added the white-haired lord, turning to Anna.
”First ten from the purple company!” called out Alvar. ”Form a van!”
As the armsmen eased their mounts onto the shoulder of the road and around Anna, she twisted in the saddle and extracted the lutar: What spell could she use for defense? A variation on the repulsion spell?
She hummed the melody, mentally tying to fit the words into the tune.
A single-horse wagon groaned over the stone paving blocks of the bridge and toward the column. The driver looked up at the line of riders, and immediately drove the cart south along the crude way formed by the levee.
”He didn't like our looks,” observed Alvar.
”Would you?” asked Jecks with a laugh. ”With near two hundred horse?” He glanced at Jimbob. and added in a lower voice, ”Most tradesmen and farmers will flee armsmen. They fear losing their goods and life. Never give them reason to fear. Remember, armsmen grow nothing and create nothing. They only allow you to hold what others grow and create. Farmers and tradesmen are the heart of a land.”
Anna nodded, almost to herself, then glanced at Jimbob, who nodded at his grandsire's words, but with a nod that meant he heard the words, not necessarily their meaning.
Jecks glanced at Anna.
She shook her head and offered a faint smile.
He shrugged in return. ”We say what we must.”
”As often as we have to,” she answered.
Alvar nodded slowly, but a vaguely puzzled expression remained on young Jimbob' s face.
As Firinelli's hoofs clicked on the stones of the bridge, Anna one-handedly readjusted her felt hat, a copy of the one she'd lost at Vult, comfortable, but scarcely stylish. She doubted she looked stylish even without the hat, not in pale green trousers and tunic, although the green leather riding boots might have offered a hint as to her station.
Station? You're worried about that? She smiled to herself.
From the height of the second arch, Anna could sense that Cheor was an old town, clearly older than Falcor. Less than fifty yards past the stone-paved approachway to the bridge, a hodgepodge of buildings began. The houses were not stone, but mainly of yellow bricks. Some were covered with stucco, once whitewashed, but now dingy and gray. The roofs were made of a dark red tile, and more than a handful of the roofs showed cracked and missing tiles.
The vanguard rode silently off the bridge and down the main thoroughfare, if a street paved with cracked stones, with weeds sprouting intermittently, and open sewers on each side of the pavement, if that const.i.tuted a main thoroughfare. The sound of the main force behind on the bridge echoed down the constricted street.
A calico cat sidled up to a damp-sided rain barrel on the right, then vanished into the adjacent alley. On the left side of the narrow street, before a shop that bore a weathered green sign with crude line drawings of a basket and a barrel, stood a dog, straining at a heavy rope tied to a post that supported a sagging porch roof. The dog continued to growl as the riders neared.
From the basketmaker-cooper's porch, a scar-faced woman glared as the column neared. Anna met the woman's eyes, and, after an instant, the woman looked away, her mouth moving, but with words inaudible to the sorceress.
Anna took a slow deep breath as she pa.s.sed the basket-maker's, and wished she hadn't. The stench reminded her of an ill-tended jakes-or certain public banos she'd encountered on her sole South American tour.
Two women beating large baskets glanced up at the clacking of hoofs, then darted down a side alley.
Farther toward the center of the town, a man with wispy white hair stared from under a tattered gray awning that sheltered three tables as they pa.s.sed and rode into the open square.
The square of Cheor held a low yellow-brick platform roughly thirty yards square. The platform was empty except for a bearded man covered with a ragged gray blanket and slumped in one corner. His mud- covered feet were bare. A rope ran from his hand to a yellow dog who lay on the bricks, his eyes on the riders.
The street around the platform was cobbled, except for a handful of irregularly s.p.a.ced potholes, each partly filled with rainwater.
On the far side of the square was another cooper's, with a man-sized barrel over the door, bound with twisted willow rather than with iron hoops. The sound of hammering echoed from the general direction of the cooper's shop. Beside the cooper's was a larger structure, bearing the crossed candles of a chandlery.
On the other side of the cooper's was another shop, or something, which had no sign.
On the short side of the square-to Anna's right and beyond the restaurant or cafe under the awning- were four buildings, each two stories high, and narrow. The windows and doors of the last building were boarded closed, and one of the second-floor shutters of the adjoining building hung at an angle, as if held only by a single hinge.
A heavyset red-haired woman peered from the window of the second building, one with a white sign bearing the image of a pair of boots. At the sight of the horses entering the square, her mouth formed an 0, soundlessly, and her head vanished.
Alvar eased his mount toward a gangly figure standing by the mounting block before the building Anna would have called a dry goods store. The red-painted shutters were drawn back to reveal an ungla.s.sed window, behind which were bolts of cloth displayed on a rack.
Anna reined up, waiting, and behind her the column slowed.
Is this a good idea? We could be sitting ducks... or whatever Her eyes flicked around the square, but she could only see what she would have expected to see- women carrying bundles, a young woman half holding the hand of a toddler, half dragging him toward the cooper's, a youth carting a plank into the cooper's.
”Which way to Lord Arkad's?” asked Alvar.
”Ah... I couldn't be saying, ser armsman.” The man swallowed almost convulsively. ”His holding's north somewhere, they say. Me... I never been there.”
”You've never been there?” asked the captain flatly.
”No, ser. No, ser.”
Anna recognized the signs. No retainer of Arkad's would reveal anything, fearing the wrath of a local lord far more than that of even armed men who would pa.s.s and might never reappear. It also meant Arkad was indeed feared, and that bothered her.
She turned in the saddle, and her fingers ran over the lutar. Then she sang.
”Tell the truth and tell us true, all we've asked of you..
The gangly man's mouth opened, then closed.
”You haven't met the regent, have you?” said Alvar with a smile. ”She doesn't care much for those who'd lie to her.”
'The... north... road... there, by the coppersmith's.” Anna's eyes blurred, and, again, for a moment, she saw two images of the gangly man. She shook her head, trying to clear her sight. Then she ma.s.saged her forehead for a moment.
The double image faded, and Anna's eyes went back to the narrow building in the far left corner of the square, where a copper pot glittered in the early morning sun. In the instant her eyes s.h.i.+fted, she could sense that people were easing out of the square, or back into buildings, anywhere away from her armsmen.