The Magic of Recluce (15 page)

I looked at Myrten. He looked at me. Then we left.

Outside, I stopped. “Is Cinch Street the next one ahead?”

“Yes. If you can trust the map in the inn. Good luck, Lerris.” He turned back the way we had come, and I started toward Cinch Street. The alleyway got narrower with each step, and the eaves of the second floors seemed to lean down on me. A shadow fell across the stones and refuse alike.

I started, then relaxed. A puffy white cloud had scudded across the morning sun, and the shadow lifted almost as quickly as it had fallen.

Outside of a beggar boy who scuttled behind a refuse heap as I passed, I saw no one until I reached the next street—Cinch Street. Myrten had been right.

Turning left, I started uphill. The slope was gentle, but I had to watch my steps. Many of the reddish sandstone paving-blocks had split or shifted out of place. Cinch Street had been added later, and more cheaply. The paving-blocks in the unnamed alley-street had been of granite and better placed, even though the way had been narrow and neglected.

I marched perhaps a hundred rods, almost to the top of the hill, before I reached the stable. “Felshar's Livery,” proclaimed the weather-beaten sign carrying simple line drawings of a horse, a saddle and bridle, and a squarish object that I gathered was a bale of hay. The gray wood of the sliding plank door was pushed back.

After taking a deep breath, I stepped into the building, a wood-planked passageway into an unroofed space. Underfoot was hard-packed composite of clay, horse droppings, and who knew what else. In the central court, a single swaybacked horse was hitched, without a saddle, on the right side. At the far end was a smaller horse, a large and shaggy pony, really.

Crraccckkk!
A whip cracked toward the pony, which lashed both rear feet toward the bearded man in faded gray.

The man ducked back from the hooves. “Hamor take you!”

Wheee…eeeeiii!

An aura of hatred poured from the liveryman, so strong that I could sense it without trying. I swallowed, then called, “You there! Are you Felshar?”

“…get yours later, beast…” muttered the man, as he coiled the whip and turned toward me. His expression shifted to professed pleasure, but the hatred boiled underneath.

“Felshar will be back in a short time. I'm Cerclas. How may I help you?” His voice was as slippery as the bottle of leather-oil set beside the racked saddles by the tethered horse.

I shrugged. “I don't know that you can. Thinking about a horse.”

Cerclas smiled faintly, his eyes running over my dark brown traveling clothes and cloak, noting the staff with a frown.

“Horses are dear this year.”

I lifted my eyebrows. “Oh?”

“The drought in Kyphros, and the heavy winter in Spidlar—they were hard on the stock, and few travelers returned with mounts.”

I nodded toward the swaybacked horse—a nondescript grayish color. It looked gentle, unlike the small shaggy beast. “That one?”

“Five golds.” Cerclas shrugged. “That's a steal. But feed is dear, too.”

I really didn't want to deal with Cerclas. The man smelled worse than the horses, and his eyes were bloodshot and kept drifting to my pack. Like a lot of the traders who visited Nylan, he lied. But, even with my growing awareness of order and chaos, I couldn't tell how much.

“There aren't that many travelers, and there may not be any for a while. Your stable is nearly full.” I was guessing, but it seemed right.

“There are always travelers in Freetown,” observed Cerclas.

“What other mounts might you have?” I walked toward the shaggy horse.

“A war-horse, a traveler, and some others…”

For some reason I wanted to look at the small horse. A welt the length of my hand lay across his flank, clearly raised by the recent whipping. For the moment I merely noted it, trying to understand why Cerclas had been so angry at the horse.

The animal was well-fed and untouched by anything resembling chaos, unless it was far more subtle than I could detect.

Wheee…. eeeee…

I barely kept from jumping.

“Mean little bastard, isn't he?” Cerclas stood by me. “If you don't know horses, stay away from ponies. They're smart, and that makes them dangerous and mean. I can show you some better mounts. In the stalls over on the right.”

“All right.” I let the liveryman lead me toward the nearest stall, where a chestnut munched on hay from the manger.

“This one is a battle-trained gelding. He'll stand up to anything.”

I nodded. The chestnut seemed healthy, well-treated, although there was something about him that bothered me…his size? I wondered, looking up at his ears. Or something else? “How much?”

“Fifteen golds.”

That was a more honest price than the one he had quoted for the swayback.

“What else?”

“Here we have a mare…good traveler, but not nearly so good in a fight. Eight golds.”

The mare was a blotchy-colored horse, black-and-white patches across her body, with a short cropped mane. I liked her less than the chestnut, and just nodded to Cerclas. “What else?”

He walked to the next stall, where a hulking brown beast of a horse munched placidly on hay so dry it crackled. “Plowhorse broken to ride. He's not much good in battle, gets nasty when mares are around, but could carry two of you and your gear. He could also pull a wagon if you needed it. Six golds for him. He's worth more, but there aren't many caravans around this time of year, and he eats a lot.”

We looked at three others, all broken-down mares. I didn't like any of them and found my feet carrying me back toward the central yard. As I stepped past the shaggy little horse, I could feel a sense of rightness about him, but kept moving toward the overpriced swayback.

Wheuuunnnn
…The nag's whinny was half-whine, half-groan.

I shook my head. I'd be lucky if the old gelding made it much past the gates of Freetown.

“At five golds, he's a bargain,” commented Cerclas.

“Is that what the glue works would pay?”

Cerclas coughed into his tangled beard, then straightened and fixed his glance on my staff. His eyes widened. “He's a long way from the glue works, and you need transportation, I'd venture.”

“I do, or I wouldn't be looking at horses. But even at two golds, this old fellow wouldn't get me halfway to anywhere.”

Cerclas shrugged, scratching the unkempt gray-and-black thatch at the back of his head, then spat noisily on the clay.

“What about that undersized horse over there?” I asked.

“That's not a horse. He's a mountain pony, tough as they come. Felshar hasn't priced him.”

I repressed a smile. That failure might be enough. Walking over to the pony, but avoiding those effective hooves, I stepped up toward his shoulder. While I was no judge of horses or ponies, he seemed broader in the shoulders than some of the larger horses, and his legs, while shorter, seemed sturdier.

“He might be able to carry me,” I let my voice ooze doubt.

“He'll carry you and another,” admitted the liveryman, standing well behind me.

I touched a streak on the pony's flank.

Wheeee
…The animal twitched, but did not move away from me.

“These welts…” I shook my head. “Still…two golds?”

“Felshar hasn't priced him…”

I shrugged. “What good would it be to price him? Most buyers wouldn't take him until these heal. Felshar would certainly know that.”

This time I could sense the uneasiness in the liveryman.

“Three golds, if you throw in a saddle, bridle and blanket.”

“I don't know…”

I shrugged again. “Well…I need to check elsewhere, then…”

Cerclas scratched his head and spat again. “Felshar wouldn't complain too much if I got four…I don't suppose…” He stepped closer to the pony.

Wheeeee…eeee…

The liveryman stepped back.

“Let's see the saddle and bridle first…”

In the end, I paid more than I had to, three golds and seven silvers, but I got a decent saddle and blanket. The bridle wasn't a bit-type, but a choker, sort of a hackamore. But I had the feeling that the force of the bridle wasn't going to matter much anyway. If I couldn't persuade that pony to do something gently, he wasn't about to be forced.

The only other sticky point was the chit.

“I never learned my figures. Felshar does that.”

“Fine. I'll write it up and you put the chop on it.” I'd seen the chop hanging next to the boxes where the chits were lying.

“How do I know…”

I held up the staff. “Everyone knows if you carry this, you don't lie. I couldn't afford to. The price is too high.”

At the sight of the staff, he stepped back. “I don't know…”

“Felshar knows you don't cheat a blackstaffer, and that they don't cheat you. Maybe you didn't get an outrageous profit, but you got a fair price, and you're getting rid of some trouble.” I looked pointedly at the pony's flank.

“…suppose…wouldn't hurt…”

That was how I ended up riding down Cinch Street toward the gates of Freetown. The old lance cup, with the addition of a strip of leather, was adequate enough to hold my staff, although I had a tendency to lurch in the saddle perilously close to the dark wood when I wasn't paying attention.

The pony's name was Gairloch. I knew that when I touched him to saddle him. He did try and puff out his belly, but, following Cerclas's instructions, I kneed him, not very hard, and not nearly so hard as Cerclas recommended, to get him to let out his breath.

Don't ask me how I knew his name, but I did. That bothered me, but there wasn't much I could do about it.

Surprisingly, Gairloch didn't rock all that much, and the old saddle was broken in enough that it wasn't too stiff. The straps and girths had been replaced recently, and I had checked the stitching and rivets to make sure they were solid, but the seat looked like it had weathered more than a few caravans.

If Gairloch were as adept on the trail as he was in avoiding city potholes, I would be better off than I had hoped—although, as I looked overhead, we might be getting wet sooner than I had hoped.

The early morning gray-and-white puffs of cloud were darkening and thickening as Gairloch bore me onto the worn but even gray stones leading to the city gate. The walls were scarcely impressive, rising only about twenty cubits. Two squarish towers, each with crenelated parapets too small to be very useful, framed the gate. Graying and iron-bound timbers comprised the city gate itself, a gate that waited in a recess in the walls behind the towers. A stone bridge spanned the space between the towers. When closed, the gate sat in a stone groove and was backed with stone on all sides, making it difficult, if not impossible, to batter down. But any attacker would have gone for a less defended point on the low walls in any case.

Set toward the city from the walls was a stone hut, and outside the hut waited a pair of guards. As I watched, a small cart, pulled by a swaybacked horse that could have been a mate to the one I had seen at Felshar's, rocked over the stone gate groove and onto the pavement by the guard hut.

The rear guard waved the cart, driven by a woman with straggly hair and a hooked nose, toward the other side of the roadway. “Over there. Don't take the whole road!”

Whstt-chuck
. The long reins clacked, and the cart lurched slightly away from us.

“Halt!”

The other guard stopped looking bored as he took in my dark cloak and the pony.

“Where'd you get that horse, boy?”

“Felshar's, officer.” There was no sense in being nasty to the man. Besides, he was bigger than me, and, if paunchy, probably could use the sword that one hand rested upon.

“Any way to prove that?”

I shrugged. “I have a bill of sale with Felshar's chop.” Then I touched the staff, which was faintly warm to my ungloved fingertips. “And, besides, would I lie about it?”

His eyes moved to the staff, widened like Cerclas's eyes had widened, then moved to my face.

“You're young for that…”

“I know. They've been telling me that since the spring.” I unfolded the thin parchment from my belt. “If you'd care to look…”

The look on his face—that, and the fury behind his eyes—warned me.

Clang…thwackt…

…whssssttt…

“…Aiiiee…thief!”

Somehow, I had managed to stuff the parchment into my belt and grab the staff from the holder quickly enough to knock aside his sword even before he positioned himself. The second tap—and it was scarcely more than that—was to his cheek, but the brand was instantaneous.

Gairloch didn't wait for my heels in his flank, but began to trot, then gallop, through the still-open gate. The gate couldn't be closed, not in the instants Gairloch took me past the second guard and through the gate gap in the wall.

Cloppedy, cloppedy, cloppedy…
Gairloch's hooves rang on the stones, and I dropped the reins and grabbed his mane with my right hand, trying to keep from hitting anyone with the staff, hanging on as we careened down the causeway.

“Look out!”

“Runaway horse!”

“Thief! Traitor!”

A set of peddlers scrambled off the causeway into the mud-filled trench on the right, and Gairloch angled around a slow-moving wagon pulled by a single plodding horse which barely lifted its head. I could have reached out and touched the dusty harness, so close did we pass.

The traffic on the causeway probably saved us from an arrow in the back, but by the time we cleared the causeway where the day's incoming produce and shoppers all funneled toward Freetown, we were out of range of all but the strongest of crossbows, assuming any were ready and in place on the guard-tower parapets.