5.Death of Chaos
LXXXVI
DESPITE THE LOW clouds, the light wind out of the south was hot. Sweat dripped down the inside of Justen's shirt, and his collar was dark with moisture. After wiping his forehead, he patted Rosefoot on the neck.
Somewhat behind him, Tamra rode silently, her eyes partly glazed over, as though her mind or sense were elsewhere.
A not-too-distant explosion echoed through the hills, then another, but the two continued to ride to the southwest, away from Jellico.
In time, Justen reined up behind the wreckage of a mountain willow. The entire tree had been bent and smashed flat by the heavy limb of an oak that had fallen across the top of the willow. Where the trunk of the willow had bent was a mass of twisted and splintered wood.
Justen looked up and studied the whitened section of the oak from where the branch had fallen, his eyes taking on a faraway cast.
“What is it?” asked Tamra.
“Cannon shell.”
She glanced from the tree to Justen and back to the tree.
Crummpptt Less than four hundred cubits below them, sod and scrub brush erupted into the sky.
In the valley to the southeast, patches of smoke as thick as fog had begun to drift across the low hills and grasslands. At the east end of the valley, behind the handful of sunburst banners, the flashes of the cannon continued.
Dirt and sod and grass spewed into the sky where the heavy shells from the Hamorian guns continued to explode just in front of the Certan troops, lying flat behind hastily dug embankments that offered no real protection against the explosions. Their green banners lay scattered, as if no one wished to raise one as a target for the deadly cannon.
Justen pointed to the west and to the back side of the ridge. “We'll need to circle around this and take the back trails. It will take more time.”
“Won't we run into more troops?” Tamra looked from the distant cannon to the scattered troops below. “They seem to be everywhere.”
“Hamor doesn't work that way. They take the roads, the cities, the trading points, and wait. Eventually, people give up. These troops didn't take any of the main roads, and that's a problem.”
“Why?”
“I don't know, but I'd bet that the Hamorians are rebuilding or clearing the old hidden roads of Fairhaven. I don't see any other way how they got all these troops into Certis so quickly and unseen.”
Justen rode for a while, then continued. “That gives us two other problems. Do you see?”
“They'll use the roads to take the middle of Candar, and the seas to take the ports?” asked the redhead.
“That's one,” pointed out Justen. “And with the ports in their hands and the roads, that doesn't leave much.”
“I can't see the autarch giving up. Or Lerris.”
“That's going to be the second problem, especially if we don't get to him.” Justen nudged Rosefoot away from Tamra and down the far side of the hill, away from the troops and the falling shells. “A real problem. Can you see why?”
Tamra took a last look back at another geyser of soil and cloth fragments, then spurred her mount after Justen. “What could Lerris do to stop an army?”
Justen did not answer, even when Tamra pulled her mount alongside his, though his face remained grim.
“Why won't you say? You're hiding things again.”
“How do you think Hamor is clearing the roads that quickly? Haven't you heard the groaning in the earth?”
“Chaos? And Lerris will try to stop it? Like he did in Hydlen? Oh, darkness...”
They kept riding.