The White Order (4 page)

Clang! Clang!

   At the first bell, Cerryl peered out from the blankets, shivering. His breath was a white cloud that billowed into the air.

   “Darkness,” he murmured, trying not to move, not to let any of the cold air slip inside his blankets. There were no cracks in the heavy planked walls; the door fit snugly; and the window door was shut tightly-frozen shut, Cerryl suspected. But his cubby room had no hearth, not even a warming pan, though Dylert had sent him back down to bed the night before with two fire-warmed bricks.

   Clang!

   Cerryl clambered out from the blankets and began to shiver. His feet were cold and stiff as he wedged them, one by one, into his boots. Then he struggled into the patched canvas-and-leather jacket Nail had made for him. It was getting harder to tie shut. Had he grown that much over the fall and early winter?

   He lifted the two warming bricks-cold as ice-then tucked them under one arm. He opened his door, stepped outside, and shut it quickly, trying to keep the little heat in the room from escaping. Beside the path that led across to the mill and then up to the house the snow was more than knee deep, sparkling despite the lack of direct light in the moments before dawn.

   The smoke from the house's kitchen chimney was a thick white plume that climbed through the still air into the clear dark green-blue sky of predawn. A smaller plume escaped from the chimney at the far end of the house, the one Cerryl thought was the hearth for the mill-master's bedchamber.

   One foot skidded on the packed snow of the path, and Cerryl staggered, trying not to let the bricks slip from under his arm as he tried to catch his balance. He walked uphill carefully, eyes on the slick and icy surface, hands thrust inside the bottom of his jacket. Even the porch steps were slick, with a thin coating of the more recent snowflakes over the ice.

   Cerryl stamped his boots on the porch planks, trying to knock off all the snow, then reached for the boot brush. He could feel his toes jammed against the ends of the boots. He needed new boots, but the nine coppers he had saved wouldn't pay for them.

   Bundled in a heavy leather jacket and leather trousers, Erhana opened the door. “Come on! Breakfast is ready, and you've a lot to do, Da says.”

   Cerryl stepped into the kitchen, letting Erhana close the door. For a moment, he stood there, letting the warmth fill him. Then he walked to the hearth and set the bricks by those brought up by Rinfur. “Thank you,” he said, nodding toward Dyella.

   “Little enough,” answered the millmaster's consort with a smile. “This be going on, and you all sleep in the kitchen.”

   Cerryl slipped onto the middle of the bench, with Rinfur on his left. Viental, once more, had left to see his “sister.” Dylert sat at the end of the table, eating his gruel. On his right sat Erhana, still wrapped in her leather jacket.

   Dyella ladled the steaming gruel into the chipped bowl in front of Cerryl. “Seen your uncle recently? Before the snow, I be meaning,” she asked pleasantly. “Or your aunt?”

   “Aunt Nail, she stopped by coming back from Shandreth's vineyard last fall.” Cerryl took a sip of water from the cracked cup that was his. “I saw Uncle Syodor an eight-day ago, before the snows started. He'd been helping Zylerant raise a barn.” He quickly swallowed some more of the gruel, welcoming the warmth, and took a small bite of the muffin beside his bowl. He held the muffin for a moment, enjoying its warmth on his cold fingers.

   “They see you a lot more regular than some,” observed Dyella, adding another ladle of the hot gruel to Cerryl's bowl.

   “They've been good to me,” said Cerryl. “Good as they could be.” He ignored the glance from Dylert to Erhana, as well as Dyella's raised eyebrows as she glanced at the millmaster. Instead, he concentrated on eating, and before he could finish the last of the porridge in the bowl, Dyella had added more.

   “You be needing this today. No sense in wasting it. Forgot Viental was gone.”

   “Thank you, Dyella.” Cerryl smiled.

   Rinfur cleared his throat. “I best be checking the horses, ser. Extra grain, you think?”

   “Half cup, no more,” said Dylert. “No telling when I can get another barrel. Not in this weather. Can't hardly get to the road, except with the sled, and that's not much for carrying.”

   “Half cup each, that be it.” The teamster stood, stretched, then fastened his jacket and tromped out of the kitchen and onto the porch.

   Erhana, despite the heavy coat, shivered as the chill air washed over her. “Cold out there.”

   “Be thankful you only have to fetch water, child,” said Dyella.

   “I have to get more?”

   “I have to cook, if you want to eat,” pointed out her mother.

   “Mother...”

   Cerryl smothered a grin by looking down at his bowl.

   “Erhana-not another word.”

   Cerryl slowly ate the second bowl of hot gruel, saving the rest of the muffin, but he finished the last bite of the warm muffin all too soon.

   “Cerryl?” said Dylert.

   “Yes, ser?”

   “I was going to have you clean the pit today, seeing as things are slow.” He coughed. “Dyella, though, she pointed out how the roof of the chicken shed is sagging, and my bones tell me we might yet see more snow. I'd like you to clear that afore you come down to the mill.”

   “Yes, ser.”

   “Got an old pair of mitts.” Dylert glanced toward the narrow table by the door to the porch. “Need those, you will, lest your fingers chill.” He coughed. “Best you keep them till the weather warms.”

   “Thank you, ser.” Cerryl nodded and smiled, trying to show that he appreciated the gesture. “Thank you.”

   “Can't have you getting frozen hands. Darkness, this been a cold winter. Coldest in years.”

   “Coldest I can recall,” added Dyella.

   Cerryl eased off the bench and nodded to Dylert and then Dyella. “Thank you. The porridge was good.”

   “Stick to your bones,” Dyella said.

   After slipping the mitts on and easing out the door onto the porch, Cerryl took the slick steps carefully. Once his boots were on the packed snow of the path, he glanced at the mill. A thick plume of smoke billowed from the chimney.

   At least the mill would be warmer than his cubby. He trudged toward the chicken shed, conscious of how much warmer his hands were in the heavy leather mitts, mitts big enough for a grown man.

   Before he reached the chicken shed, his toes were cold, jammed as they were into his boots. The path went to the door of the chicken house, but the roof was slanted down to the left. Cerryl struggled from the path through the knee-deep snow around to the left side of the building, where he could reach the lower edge of the slanted roof.

   The bottom edge was but chest high, and Cerryl stretched and used his right arm to sweep the snow clear-except the powdery stuff swirled into the air and came down on his face and hair, and sifted down the back of his jacket.

   He brushed off his hair and face, then swept another heavy armful off the lower roof. More snow swirled around him and drifted down his neck, inside his jacket and shirt. Grimly, he swirled aside more snow, and more of the powder sifted around him, even getting into his nose and mouth.

   He stepped back, all too conscious of cold dampness down his back and toes going numb, looking up at the snow beyond his reach.

   “Here! Use this,” said Brental, handing Cerryl a small timber- quarterspan by quarterspan-perhaps six cubits long.

   “Thank you, Brental.” Cerryl gratefully took the timber.

   “No thanks. You be getting it done sooner this way. Da wants the sawpit cleaned later. Said he'd tell you, but Ma feared for the hens if'n the roof went.” The redheaded young man grinned. “I'm off to clear the barn roof.”

   “Lucky you.”

   “When you're taller, you can help.” Brental laughed. “Make sure you brush off that snow 'fore you go into the mill. It be getting warm there now, and you won't be wanting wet clothes.”

   Cerryl nodded. No ... he wouldn't be wanting wet clothes. He took a firm grip on the end of the pine timber and began to sweep the rest of the snow off the chicken house roof.

Cerryl lay on his back, the heavy coarse blankets up to his chin, looking up through the darkness at the wide planks overhead. He could sense, rather than see, the heavy timbers that rested on those planks- the end of the finish timber rack holding oak beams. Almost a dozen score were stacked above Cerryl, seasoning, waiting for a buyer.

   Even in designing where his workers' rooms were, Dylert wasted nothing, not even barn space, since any storage where the rooms were would have been almost inaccessible. Cerryl frowned, thinking about the three men-his father, his uncle, and Dylert. One had failed and died; one had failed, but not died; and one had succeeded. Was it luck? Order? Or had chaos just struck down his father and crippled Uncle Syodor?

   He recalled something Syodor had said to Nail-one night when they had thought Cerryl was sleeping-something about his father screaming he could have been High Wizard of Fairhaven had he only come from coins. Somehow, Cerryl didn't think that being High Wizard was something coins could purchase. Or had his father meant something else? Or had Syodor really recalled what his father had said?

   Cerryl inhaled deeply, then exhaled slowly with no answers. His breath no longer steamed like hearth smoke, and the worst of winter had passed, or so he hoped. One eight-day had been so cold that both he and Rinfur had slept by the hearth in the millmaster's house. The gray-haired woman who tutored Erhana on her letters had not been to the mill in four or five eight-days.

   It had taken Brental a two-stone black oak timber to break the ice in the well. Cerryl shivered at the memory, glad that only an eight-day had been that chill.

   His eyes went to the board under the cubby, the one he'd spent eight-days loosening. Behind it was the book he'd brought, the one he still kept puzzling over when he could.

   That, too, he could sense behind the wood, in a different way, with a faint white glow, not so reddish as a fire, but with the same hidden depths. The book held a key, that he knew, but how could he find it when he couldn't even read?

   He sighed again, his eyes blank, fixed on the planks over his pallet.

A light but chill spring breeze blew through the open mill door, carrying the scent of damp earth and pearapple blossoms, and the hint of the words Dylert exchanged with a crafter in brown near the mill door.

   Cerryl was on his knees, a relief to be off his feet, half under the fresh pine cuts rack, half-pushing, half-sweeping sawdust clear from underneath the lowest rack, using the side of the broom. He tried to ignore the itching in his nose and across his bare forearms, an itching that was worst around the pine sawdust.

   “Cerryl!” called Dylert from the center aisle. “Where are you?”

   “Yes, ser?” Cerryl straightened and stood, using his left hand on the rack to keep his balance. “I was cleaning out under the pine racks.”

   “Good.” Dylert nodded as though he had personally ordered Cerryl to clean there. Beside him stood a burly man in brown, black-bearded with a dour look upon his face.

   “There's a handcart in the second lumber barn. Use it to bring three dozen of the narrow rough floorboards from the second barn. The best ones we have there, mind you.”

   “Yes, ser.” Cerryl set the broom carefully against the rack, watching Dylert.

   The millmaster turned toward the man in brown. “What will you be needing for timber? We have ...”

   Cerryl eased himself away from the rack, walking as quickly as he could toward the mill door, each step sending a knife jab up his legs.

   Outside was a cart, and between the traces was a brown mule, thin and bony. The mule's leads, and a halter rope as well, were tethered to the ring on the millrace side of the causeway.

   Cerryl glanced up at the thickening clouds, then staggered and put his hand on the door frame to steady himself.

   “Geeahh!” Brental guided the empty log cart back toward the mill, gesturing for the oxen to stop as they neared the mule cart.

   With a pleasant smile plastered in place, Cerryl tried not to limp, but his toes and calves knotted with every step.

   “Cerryl, what's the matter?” asked Brental.

   “Nothing. I was sweeping under the pine racks. I'm stiff.”

   “Cerryl...” said the redhead firmly. “Sit down on the wall there. Next to the hitching post. Right now.”

   “Dylert said I was to use the handcart and bring him three dozen of the narrow rough floorboards from the second barn.” Cerryl stopped beside the hitching post but did not sit.

   “I'll help you if it comes to that. Sit down,” Brental insisted.

   Cerryl sat.

   “Off with the boots.”

   The youth looked stolidly ahead, as if Brental had not spoken.

   “Off...” Brental reached down and eased off one boot and then the other.

   Cerryl did not look at either his feet or boots.

   “Your toes are bloody.” Brental shook his head. “Darkness ... how long you been like this?”

   Cerryl looked at the stones of the causeway, his face blank.

   “Your feet are too small for those boots.”

   Cerryl kept looking down.

   Brental sighed. “You get chaos blisters there, and you'll not work again. You'll not walk again.”

   “Your da said I'd not go unshod, not in a lumber mill.” Cerryl managed to keep his jaw firm. “I almost have enough coppers for boots.”

   Brental laughed, not harshly but ruefully. “Lad ... Cerryl... you'd not ask for anything, would you?”

   Cerryl met Brental's gaze evenly. “I'd rather not.”

   “There are times to ask, and times not to. When you cannot walk, it be time to ask.” The redhead shook his head. “I've got an old pair of boots. They'll do better than these. Wait here.”

   “The boards ...” Cerryl glanced toward the mill door.

   “All right. You get the boards-barefoot. I'll meet you here before you go back into the mill.” Brental stood and gestured. “Rinfur! Watch the oxen for a moment.”

   Rinfur crossed the road. “Have to get the team.”

   “I'll be back in just a moment.”

   “Yes, master Brental.” Rinfur shook his head.

   Before Rinfur could see his feet, Cerryl stood and began to walk slowly, if more quickly than if he had worn boots, to the second lumber barn. The handcart was inside the door, and he pushed it to the right. The floorboards were on the low rack on the far right, and barefooted as he was, he was glad that he'd swept the second barn the day before.

   He inspected each board, letting his eyes check it, and holding it a moment, trying to get a feel of the wood before stacking it on the handcart. Sort of a golden oak, somewhere between black oak and white, floor oak wasn't bad. Three lengths he set aside because the knots were obvious, and two because he could sense, somehow, that the boards were weak.

   Once he had the golden oak floorboards stacked in four short piles, he pushed the cart slowly back out of the barn and along the cool stones of the causeway back toward the mill.

   Brental was standing by the oxen by the time Cerryl and the handcart reached the mule cart beside the millrace wall.

   “Da ... he's still jawing with master Hesduff. Got some boots here, and a bucket of water. Sit back down.”

   Cerryl sank onto the wall.

   Brental took a soaking rag and sponged away dust and blood. His eyes widened. “Darkness... what you did.” The redhead shook his head. “Cerryl. You have to wash your feet several times a day, no matter what. Till these heal. You understand?” Brental's brown eyes bored into Cerryl. “And wash 'em right 'fore you go to bed.”

   “Yes, Brental.”

   “Cerryl?” called Dylert.

   “You stay here.” Brental stood and pushed the handcart toward the mill, calling out, “Cerryl got the boards. I was coming this way, so I thought I'd bring 'em for you.”

   “Good.”

   “Good day, master Hesduff,” said Brental.

   “Good day, young Brental. Hard to believe I'm a-looking up to you.”

   As the three talked inside the mill door, Cerryl looked at the fresh blood welling across his bruised and blistered feet, then squared his shoulders.

   “Good boards for rough cut... Pick them out, Brental?”

   “No, master Hesduff. Young Cerryl did. Has an eye for wood, I'd say.”

   “Does indeed ... Would you load those on the cart? Now ... about the timbers, Dylert?”

   Brental slipped back out of the mill, pushing the handcart.

   Cerryl stood and walked over to the back of the mule cart. “I can load these.” He took the top pair of floorboards.

   “We can get it done twice as fast together,” Brental said mildly.

   Cerryl didn't object. His feet still hurt, if not so much as before. Neither spoke while they stacked the boards.

   “Brental! Bring that cart back.”

   Brental nodded and wheeled the cart back into the mill, returning shortly with eight six-cubit timbers laid across it.

   Again, Cerryl helped Brental load the timbers into the mule cart. Brental tied them in place with two lengths of hemp as Hesduff and Dylert strolled out of the mill.

   “We'll be seeing how these work out, and I'll be back before long.” The crafter nodded to the millmaster.

   “And we'll be here, Hesduff.” Dylert smiled politely.

   “Sure you will be. A pleasure, Dylert. Always a pleasure.” Hesduff untied the mule and climbed onto the cart seat, then flicked the reins.

   As the cart creaked away and down the road, Brental slipped up beside Dylert and began to speak to his father in a low voice. Cerryl might have been able to hear them if he strained, but he just sat on the wall dumbly, fearing the worst. If only he'd had some coppers before he started at the mill... if only his feet hadn't grown so fast... He wanted to shake his head but didn't. What good would it have done?

   Once the mule cart left, Dylert walked over to Cerryl. He shook his head. “Cerryl?”

   “Yes, ser?”

   “Have I been cruel to you? Have I beat you? Or failed to feed you? Or clothe you?”

   Cerryl looked at the stones of the causeway. “No, ser. Never, ser.”

   “Boy ... you ask for little. I know that. But there's a time for brains and a time for pride. What if Brental hadn't seen? How long afore you'd never walk again?”

   “I'm sorry, ser. I did not think.”

   “No, you didn't. You've had a hard life, but I'd not make it harder. Don't you, either. Take care of your body, boy. Be the only one you have.” Dylert nodded at Brental. “You say those old boots of yours will fit?”

   “Be better if he didn't work in the mill for a day or two. Ought to go barefoot.”

   “Place be clean enough to do without for a day or two.” Dylert laughed. “Viental always be taking off.” He looked at Cerryl. “You can help Dyella round the house. No boots. Understand?”

   “Yes, ser.” Cerryl looked up. “Thank you, ser.” He swallowed. “Thank you.” He had to look down, afraid Dylert would see how close to tears he was.

   “That be all right, Cerryl. Just get those feet well.”

   “Yes, ser.”

   “Now ... up to the house and tell Dyella you'll be doing chores for her. Darkness knows, she could use the help with ail the wool coming in.” He snorted. “And Erhana could spend more time on her lessons. Always looking for a way out, that child.”

   “Yes, ser.” Cerryl nodded.

   “Put the boots in your cubby first,” said Brental. “You need to clean the old ones sometime. Might be someone else could use them later.”

   Cerryl nodded again, forcing his eyes up to meet Dylert's. “Thank you, ser.”

   “Off with you, boy.”

   Cerryl could tell that Dylert didn't feel as gruff as he sounded, but he answered politely, “Yes, ser.”