The sun bore down on Charlot, and the path along the riverbank grew steeper with every step. A drop of sweat slipped from his bushy eyebrows and splashed against his nose. The rain had softened the ground, and his feet squelched in mud and murmured against wet grass. Charlot found himself leaning more and more on Flaccaro for support. His knees did not care for the climb at all. If only he could oil them as one might a hinge, to stop their creaking and complaining.

Charlot’s stomach was grumbling right along with his knees. He thought of catching and roasting a fish, but he had dawdled too long already. The boy surely walked faster than him. He told himself he would trade with one of the five families at the stockade and pushed himself forward with the thought. Perhaps one of them had lamb, or even better, spiced lamb sausage. His mouth watered at the thought.

The ridge rose on either side of the Cormorbo as he approached the narrows and, in places, he had to bind Flaccaro to his back and use both hands to climb. He took great care not to strain his injured shoulder any further. By the time he mounted the rise, his breath came in a raspy wheeze and his face was beaded with sweat.

He paused to catch his breath, looking down at the banded bluffs on the far side of the river. This was the narrowest place anywhere on the explored reaches of the Cormorbo. It was only a hundred yards to the far bank. If you knew where to look, you could see that the ridge was not natural here. The edge bore the signs of ancient stonework, weathered by millennia, built at a scale far too grand for common men. Once, there had been a bridge here, twenty yards wide, that spanned the river as a single wide arch of stone. If there was ever a central support, there was no trace of it now. How had they done that?

Charlot had first noticed it when hunting for a place to build his tower. He’d briefly flirted with the idea of rebuilding the bridge and having the citadel as the center support pillar, but the difficulty was far greater than the reward.

Ancient ruins never held Charlot’s attention for long. The questions were so many and the answers few and feeble. Many mages grew fascinated with the old ones, delving deep into musty crypts and forgotten temples, but they were seldom rewarded for their efforts. He focused on things that lived and grew, subjects which were far more fruitful. Once he’d caught his breath, Charlot set out once again, walking swiftly now. His goal was nearly in sight.

A thousand paces from the high point, he could make out the settlement of Fraughten, and he stopped in his tracks in disbelief. He had expected to see a single blob at the top of the rise surrounded by a wall of green. Instead, he saw a whole spread of color all the way down the hill and spreading out past it. This was a whole village! The last time he saw the hamlet it was nothing more than a log stockade built on a hill. There had been just five houses and a homely church that doubled as a barn. Dimly, he remembered their crude stockade of sharpened logs, but now there was a line of white that was no doubt a proper stone wall. What was more, he could make out the white finger of a structure that must be a watchtower. With a scowl, Charlot wondered if it stood taller than his own.

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As he walked closer, muttering with disbelief, Charlot’s ailing eyes could resolve more details. Cottages with vegetable patches and sheep pens in fieldstone walls. There were better than twenty houses! If they had so many families living here, they must have found the crescent of fertile land two leagues from the town. It would take intensive farming to support so many people.

“I should have wiped them out when they arrived,” Charlot said bitterly. At the time, he could have simply burned out the homes and driven them away, perhaps without even needing to kill any of them outright. Now, he would have to slaughter an entire town. He’d let himself fall into a deep rut and the world had encroached deeply into his territory while he puttered around uselessly in his citadel.

It was a good spot for a town. Their watchtower stood on one of three sites he’d seriously surveyed as a potential location for the Citadel. The bluff was almost a hundred feet above the Cormorbo, and the only way to reach it was up a steep path that was less than fifty feet wide. With a solid wall there, ten men could hold off a hundred. But there was better soil on the island upriver, and the silver pears were so particular.

Thoughts of his grove steeled his resolve that the town could not remain. There were too many of them, far too many to be so close to his tower. He’d built as far from civilization as possible, and yet here it was, practically at his doorstep. He would have to do something drastic.

Sighing, Charlot walked down the path, casting a glamor over himself so that the fine robes appeared as nothing more than a beaten monk’s cassock and the gleaming staff seemed but a simple length of weathered oak. Carefully inspecting his spell, he saw that the glamor had only partially taken. From some angles the staff still shone in the light. At once, he saw the staff was at fault. Flaccaro didn’t want its splendor obscured!

With a huff of annoyance, Charlot broke the glamor and cast it again. It had been so long since he’d disguised himself that he’d become too used to appearing as he actually was. He was out of practice at everything. No sooner had he cast the spell again than he realized he‘d made another blunder. He ought to appear as a different person entirely in case the bowman had made it back to town before him.

Yet, as he considered breaking the spell, he hesitated. Flaccaro was not the only vain one, and Charlot did not want to hide his face. The man had attacked him first, after all! With a shrug, he decided not to bother and walked down the trail toward the town, wondering if Fraughten had a tavern these days.