"Ser?" Another roll of thunder pounded out of the mountains.

   "This is going to be a demon-damned storm. Let's go! Now!"

   "Yes, ser." Huldran grabbed Weindre by the arm, and the two marines unfolded the carry-arms for the firin cell racks.

   Nylan began gathering tools and loose objects as the wind began to tear around him.

   Overhead, the clouds gathered into a dark mass almost as black as deep space. The wind had risen to a whistling shriek by the time the three had stowed all the equipment, as well as the just-finished black blade, back in the tower, and Nylan had secured the heavy door.

   "Now what?" shouted Huldran above the wind.

   The lightning cracked across the sky, the white-yellow bolt reflecting off the ice of Freyja, the rumbling echoing back and forth between the high peaks after each bolt.

   "Just stay here in the lower level of the tower," suggested Nylan. "We'll see how well we built."

   Weindre looked at the two.

   "I'd rather be here than in one of those flimsy landers," snapped Huldran.

   . Nylan sat on one of the steps, his eyes resting on the low lines of brick that represented the base of the stove. The furnace was waiting on the results of his efforts in firing clay piping.

   Weindre glanced up the stairs, then followed Huldran over to a side wall. Unlike Nylan, neither sat-they just stood listening to the storm.

   His eyes closed as he leaned back against the stones, Nylan let his senses follow the patterns of the storm. Even without straining, he could feel the interplay of chaos and order, like the power flows that occurred when the angels' de-energizers fought with the mirror towers of the demons. He doubted he'd sense that type of battle again, not with technology, anyway.

   Like ice knives, the rain slashed down, heavy droplets dashing against the stone walls of the tower, then running in rivulets downward.

   Clack! Clack!

   Fist-sized hailstones banged off the stones of the tower walls.

   A small trickle of water, blown through the unfinished main doorway, began to drop from one side of the stairwell above, down onto the packed clay of the tower's lowest level. Before long, the drops became a stream.

   The wind continued to howl, and Nylan wished that he'd insisted that the big front door be finished and hung. He still hadn't done much more on the waste-disposal problem than rework the two casements.

   The water had formed a large puddle, almost a small pond in the lowest part of the tower basement, that grew as Nylan watched.

   Almost as suddenly as the storm had begun, the clacking of the hailstones died away, and the wind's whistling dropped off.

   Nylan stood and eased his way up the steps and onto the water-soaked timbers and stone subflooring of the tower's entry level. From the doorless front portal, he looked out across the Roof of the World. The lower corners of the larger field were little more than knee-deep gullies, leading into a man-deep canyon that ran right off the edge of the plateau. Even in the middle of the northernmost fields, some of the small potato nodules were half-exposed, hanging out over ditches. Only the stone cairns-one large and eight smaller ones-looked untouched. That figured.

   Nylan shrugged and walked out into the drizzle, then looked back at the tower. The walls seemed solid, and the foundations untouched, although the open casements on the upper levels were dark with moisture. His eyes went higher. From what he could tell, only the lower line of slate tiles on the east side had been damaged, and about half, a good twenty, were either askew or missing.

   Nylan hoped the laser lasted longer, because trying to hand bore or punch those slates would create a lot of broken tiles-and more than a little wasted effort for Weblya, Huldran, and Cessya.

   "Shit!" Huldran's voice was bitter.

   "That's only a handful of roof tiles," Nylan pointed out, turning back toward the landers and trying to ignore a sense of loss as he plodded through ankle-deep water and mud. He didn't know what he should-or could-do, but he needed to find out the rest of the damage.

   "Yes, ser, but we didn't need any of this." Huldran walked at his elbow..

   "Probably not. We should have expected it, though. I imagine fall, winter, and spring are all this violent, if not worse."

   "Hate this place."

   "You'd rather be down on the plains, melting into a pile of goo?"

   "The whole friggin' planet, ser."

   "None of us planned this. We do what we can." And hope that it's enough and that we didn't do anything too stupid, he added to himself. "We'll need to run wider diversion ditches around the field to stop this sort of thing."

   Heaps of hail lay strewn everywhere across the meadow, and the drizzle that kept falling was tinged with ice flakes. Ryba looked up from a prone figure where she and Jaseen, the combat medtech, struggled. "We need dressings, Nylan. Gerlich's out hunting, and he knew the storage plan by heart. Try lander three. Huldran, can you take charge of the diversion in the fields so that we don't lose any more crops?"

   "Yes, ser." The blond marine was moving as she spoke. "Will do." As Nylan turned to go for the medsupplies, he asked, "What happened?"

   "One of those skinny little trees with the gray leaves- the storm ripped off a top branch. Kadran didn't even see it coming in the wind and rain. Went through her shoulder like a set of barbed arrows."

   Nylan winced, but stepped up his pace. He was halfway through the second bin in lander three when Ayrlyn joined him and started at the other end of the bins.

   Nylan ran through an emergency medical kit. "There are a couple of modules missing here."

   "Don't bother with that, Nylan." Ayrlyn frowned. "Great help here. This one says it's the emergency surgery section, and here's the section for emergency childbirth. Someone's been into it, but it's been resealed."

   "Be a while before we need that." Nylan glanced through the lander door, but did not see the all-too-visibly-pregnant Ellysia. "How Gerlich . . ." He turned back and discarded the single remaining bone-splint kit.

   "There are some stupid ones left. Every generation there always are. Not many, but she'd never considered birth control. Now, what about this-standard first aid-"

   "That's it. We need to run that over to Jaseen."

   "I'll do that. See if you can find any more. We might need them. Who knows what happened to those who were caught out in the open?" Ayrlyn grasped the sealed package and left while Nylan carefully worked through the dwindling medical supplies, before finding another sealed package of surgical dressings. He decided against taking them, but set the package in the now-empty first bin before leaving the lander.

   In the short time he'd been in the lander, Ryba had managed to start the process of restoring order. Kyseen was rebuilding the cook fire, and straightening up that area, while Huldran had managed to divert the main flow of water from the bean field and had a crew working on the potatoes.

   Ryba was checking over the mounts, and Istril headed off with two others to see about rounding up two mounts that had left the makeshift corral.

   Everything, except the tower, it seemed, was makeshift, and he still didn't have the demon-damned thing finished- or even the plans worked out for the bathhouse and laundry addition and the jakes in the tower.

   Slowly he walked back to the tower, where the lower level lay filled with puddles, one of them almost a half cubit deep. Drains. He had forgotten drains-another mistake to be rectified.

   When he reached the tower yard, and the slowly vanishing puddles, he turned and looked up, studying the rain, now only falling steadily in a form somewhere between a fine mist and a heavy drizzle. The piles of white hailstones, like bleached bones, stood out on the green of the meadow.

   Then he walked up into the tower and started up the stairs to check on the damage to the east roof.

   As he climbed, he wondered about his brick-making and the crude oven, then shook his head. That had been low tech, and if the rains had carried it away, he would find a way to rebuild it.

 

 

XXIX

 

HISSL STARES INTO the glass, looking at the waving stalks of grass, and at the burned fort, with the few wisps of smoke still threading into the sky. Concentrating again, he waits for the image to re-form, and it does, showing an empty road that would lead to Berlitos, should he desire the glass to follow the track.

   There are no signs of the Jeranyi. Hissl tugs at his chin. Ildyrom must have pulled back a long ways, perhaps as far as Berlitos.

   The wizard frowns, and the white mists fill the glass, eventually showing a line of horse troopers trudging down a forest road behind the fir-tree banner. Since there are no forests near Clynya, that means Ildyrom has in fact stopped pressing his claim on the grasslands-for now.

   The white wizard shakes his head. "You'll be stuck here for seasons-seasons, angel-damn!" His words are low, but they hiss with frustration.

   He looks around the small room, then out the narrow window into the blue of the morning and over the low thatched roofs of Clynya toward the West Fork he cannot see from the second story of the barracks. As he does, the image fades from the glass.

   "Terek . . . with you scheming in Lornth, how will I ever get out of here? If I'm successful, Ildyrom won't get the grasslands back, and I'll be stuck here. If I'm not. . ." He shakes his head and looks down at the blank glass.

   In time, he studies the mirror once more, and the mists swirl, and in the midst of the swirling white appears the Roof of the World, and the black tower that stands, despite the storm, and the silver-haired figure in olive-black who trudges up the stone steps. The glass also shows the aura of darkness that surrounds the man in the glass.

   "A mage, and he knows it not." After a time, Hissl gestures, and the image vanishes, leaving only a blank and flat mirror on the small table.

   Finally, he smiles, tightly, thinking about bandits and the Roof of the World.

 

 

XXX

 

STANDING OUTSIDE THE lander, with the light wind that promised fall ruffling his hair, Nylan slowly finished the gruel that passed as morning porridge, along with cold bread, his thoughts on the tower once more.

   Huldran and the others had been less than pleased when Nylan had insisted on putting a drain in the bottom of the tower, nor had Ryba been happy when he had used the laser to drill through some of the rock.

   "A waste of power . .."

   Nylan disagreed-the lowest level of the tower needed to be dry. Dampness destroyed too many things. He swallowed the last bite of the lumpy gruel with a shudder and glanced toward the tower. At least the roof and doors were in place, and he could concentrate on making the place livable. Outside the front door, Cessya and Weblya had already begun to haul stones in to fill the space between the walls of the causeway.

   The engineer walked over to the wash kettle and rinsed the wooden platter before racking it. He hoped that they could finish the tower kitchen before long-but he needed to work out the problems with making the water pipes. If the climate were warmer he could have just built a covered aqueduct, but that would freeze solid for half the year.

   He walked back toward Ryba, his eyes rising back toward the dark stones of the tower that was somehow tall, squat, and massive all at the same time.

   "What are you thinking?" asked Ryba. "You're not really even here."

   "About water pipes, kitchens, laundry." He paused. "About building a bathhouse or whatever."

   "I suppose you want to start a soap factory, too."

   "Someone else can worry about that. I'm an engineer, not a chemist."

   "Good." She laughed harshly. "The bandits are whittling away at our ammunition. We need more blades. Can you coax out another two dozen?"

   "Another two dozen? Don't most of the marines have one?"

   "They'll need two."

   Nylan pursed his lips. "I can do some. I don't know how many. I thought the cells would be the problem, but there's a raggedness in the powerheads."

   "And you had to drill a drain?"

   "Yes . . . if you didn't want all the supplies to mold and mildew."

   She shook her head. "You're stubborn."

   "Not so stubborn as you are." Nylan wondered how long before everyone would think he was obsessed with building, if they didn't already. Why didn't they see that they had one chance-just one?

   A single clang on the triangle echoed through the morning. Ryba and Nylan looked up to see Llyselle ride across the meadow. Llyselle bounced slightly in the saddle, but Nylan knew that he bounced even more when he rode. He didn't have Sybran nomad blood-or training. The tall, silver-haired marine reined up outside the cooking area, but before she could dismount, Ryba stood there, Nylan not far behind her.

   "There's a herder down there, waving a white flag," Llyselle announced. "He's got some sheep or goats, and something in cages."

   "Let's hope he wants to sell something." Ryba pointed at the nearest marine-Siret. "Go find Narliat, and Ayrlyn, and ask them to join us."

   "Yes, ser." Siret glanced at Nylan with a strange look in her deep green eyes, then turned away, but Nylan could tell she was definitely thicker in the midsection, unlike Selitra. Yet Selitra had been sleeping with Gerlich, and she didn't seem pregnant. But Siret, the silent silver-haired guard?

   Before long, Narliat limped up, using a cane, but without the makeshift leg cast he had worn for so long.

   Ryba repeated Llyselle's explanation.

   "Most herders would not come this high with you angels here. Once this was good summer pasture, but now .. ."The former armsman shrugged. "Times have been hard, and your coins are good. He would not have to drive animals all the way to Lornth or to Gallos. The cages-they might be chick-ins."

   "What does the white banner mean?" asked Ryba.

   "Ser Marshal, it means he wants to get your attention. Beyond that? I do not know."

   "Hmmmm ... we need all the supplies we can buy or grow, and they probably won't be enough." Ryba glanced up at the tower and then back to Ayrlyn and Narliat. "How do we approach this herder?"

   "You walk down with a handful of people, I suppose," began Ayrlyn.

   "Just one or two-not the marshal or the mage," added Narliat. "Powerful angels should not start negotiations with herders."

   "We did with Skiodra," pointed out Ryba.

   "That, it was different, because it was under a trade flag and Skiodra was himself there, and he is a powerful trader."

   "If you say so." Ryba glanced around. "All right. Everyone! Get your weapons. Let's hope we won't need them. Meet by the triangle at the watch station on the right... by the road to the tower." She turned to Fierral. "Where's Gerlich?"

   "Where he is every morning. Out hunting." The head marine's voice bore overtones of disgust.

   "If he shows up ... tell him, too."

   Nylan hurried to the lander where he reclaimed his sidearm and the blade he had forged, which was too small for the overlarge scabbard. He tried not to fall over the damned thing every time he wore it. Ryba might never be without her weapons, but he couldn't work with a pistol at his side and a blade banging his leg.

   Ryba had the big roan saddled when he reached the watch station.

   The herder waited below at the foot of the ridge. Occasionally, the man looked up the slope, then back at the milling sheep, or shifted his weight as he leaned against the side of the cart.

   Finally, after talking to Fierral and Istril, Ryba nodded.

   Carrying the small circular shields they had reclaimed from the last brigands, with Narliat between them, Berlis and Rienadre walked down the ridge toward the herder, who had a white banner leaned against his cart. Beyond the herder were perhaps five ewes with their lambs.

   Nylan and Ryba watched from the rocks at the top of the ridge as the three neared the herder. The herder and the three talked, with Narliat doing most of the speaking. Finally, Berlis turned uphill and gestured.

   Neither Nylan nor Ryba could make out the words.

   "Do you think it's all right?" asked the captain.

   "I don't know, but nothing's going to happen if someone doesn't head down there. From what Berlis is trying to tell us, the trader won't trade unless a more important person appears."

   "I don't like this," muttered Ryba.

   "All right, ride down. That gives you more mobility-and have Istril and some of the others ready to charge like those old Sybran cavalry."

   "Very funny."

   "We need the sheep, and maybe those chickens, and you know it. So does the herder. He's gambling that you just won't steal them. You're gambling that it's not some kind of setup."

   "Wish I could see ... everything ..."

   Below them, Berlis gestured again.

   "You can't?"

   "It comes and goes, and some of it... makes no sense. Some is too clear." Ryba vaulted into the saddle. "Fierral! Istril! Stand by. Llyselle, you ride with me-on the right."

   Nylan noted that the trees at the base of the ridge were on the right, but before he could speak the two started down the ridge, riding slowly. He kept watching, but nothing changed. The herder watched as the two riders neared, and so did Berlis and Rienadre.

   Abruptly, Llyselle's horse reared, sending the silver-haired marine flying. Ryba bent low in the saddle, turned her roan toward the trees, and charged.

   "Let's go!" Fierral and the others galloped down the ridge.

   Feeling as if he were making a big mistake, Nylan followed on foot. He was halfway down the ridge, his worn boots skidding on the rocky ground before he realized he was alone.

   Ahead, the mounted marines charged into the trees. Nylan heard the reports of the sidearms and saw the sun flash off Ryba's blade. He kept moving, but, by the time he neared the herder's cart, the action was over.

   Llyselle was limping toward the cart, looking uphill past Nylan, and the engineer turned and saw Ayrlyn riding down, carrying two large plastic sacks with green crosses on them-medical supplies or dressings. Nylan wished he'd been smart enough to think of a horse or medical supplies, or something. Instead, he'd just run into the middle of what could have been trouble, too late to help and without any support.

   He pursed his lips as Ayrlyn rode past. There was still trouble. Llyselle was holding her right arm, cradling it, as though it were broken or injured, and Narliat and the herder were still under the cart. Fierral and Istril had charged off downhill through the trees.

   Nylan kept walking, his eyes checking on all sides. As he neared the cart and the beginning of the forest on his right, he saw several bodies near the trees, and one on the open ridge ground, with two marines beside her.

   The downed marine was Stentana-an arrow through her eye. An arrow, for darkness' sake.

   Nylan counted eight brigand bodies and, his eyes elsewhere, almost tripped over his scabbard. He caught himself and turned at the sound of hooves, reaching for the blade, but the riders were Istril and Fierral, and they led two more horses, each with a body slung across it.

   Nylan turned toward the cart. There Ayrlyn was treating a wound caused where an arrow seemed to have ripped into Berlis's thigh. Llyselle stood beside Berlis, waiting.

   "Strip the bodies and make a cairn down there, over by the rocks," commanded Ryba. "No sense in dragging them up the mountainside. Take all their clothes. We need rags as well as anything-but the clothes all need washing, and then some."

   Since he didn't seem to have been much use, Nylan plodded toward the woods, and grabbed one of the bodies by the boots and dragged the corpse toward the rocks where Ryba had pointed, but toward an area where small boulders seemed more plentiful. Damned if he were going to make burial hard on himself, not for men killed as a result of their own failed ambush.

   Nylan forced himself to strip the bandit, barely more than a youth despite the straggly beard and the.scar across one cheek. The bandit's purse held only two silvers and a worn copper, but both silvers were shiny. The man wore a quiver, but had dropped his bow somewhere. He had no blade, just a knife that was badly nicked. As for clothing, he had worn a tattered and faded half cloak that had once been green of some shade, a ragged shirt, once brown, trousers, also once brown, but of a differing shade, and two mismatched boots, both with holes in the soles. No undergarments, and no jewelry.

   After looking at the threadbare garments and cloak, Nylan agreed with Ryba's assessment of their use as rags. He also wondered how many vermin the clothes harbored. At the same time, in a way, he felt sorry for the dead man. Life couldn't have been that easy for him.

   "Another attack?" Gerlich had ridden in from the trail to the west, the one that looped north from the ridge before descending and turning west, unlike the other two-one of which descended around the lower east side of the ridge and eventually led to Nylan's brickworks. Across his saddle lay three large and brown-furred rodentlike creatures, already gutted.

   "This one was a little different," Nylan explained as Siret dragged another body across the ground and let it fall next to the one Nylan had stripped. "They used that herder there as bait."

   "Dump the clothes there in that pile," ordered Fierral, still mounted, and pointed to the stack Nylan had made.

   "What about the coins and other stuff?" asked Siret.

   "You can keep a knife-if you don't have a belt knife," answered Ryba. "If you do, pass it to someone who doesn't. You can keep the local coppers, too. Share them if you think you can. Give any silvers or golds to the comm officer- Ayrlyn. We'll need those to buy food and supplies-from the next honest trader."

   "They seem to have things well in hand," observed Gerlich.

   The herder and Narliat had crawled out from beneath the cart. Berlis and Rienadre stalked toward them. So did Huldran and another seven marines. The herder looked up at the circle of marines. Then he slumped into a heap.

   "He's just fainted," said Ayrlyn softly.

   "Never saw angry women with blades," snorted Ryba. "What about the others?"

   "I did nothing," pleaded Narliat. "Nothing, I swear it."

   "Just stuff it," growled Berlis as Ayrlyn sprayed a disinfectant into the guard's wound. "Don't tell me how you didn't see it coming."

   Llyselle leaned against the side of the cart, her face paler than her silver hair.

   Brawwwwkkk . . . awwwkkkk . . . From the handful of cages behind the injured marine came the sound of chickens.

   "Are there any other bandits around?" Ryba asked Fierral.

   "Istril and I chased down the two who ran. Istril was complaining that she had to shoot them. She didn't want to waste the ammunition."

   "We need to think about bows," snapped Gerlich as he eased his horse next to Ryba's. "We need some sort of long-range weapon."

   "There are four or five here. Two got broken," announced Siret.

   "We'd better start learning to use them," suggested Gerlich.

   Nylan frowned. Gerlich was right. But could he build a better bow? One with a longer range? Out of some of the composites in the lander?

   "Look out," whispered Istril.. "The engineer's got that look again."

   "What about these damned sheep?" asked Gerlich, gesturing around at the near dozen ewes and lambs.

   "They're all ours," snapped Ryba. "We'll let the herder go."

   "Don't forget the chickens," Nylan said. "Good source of protein."

   "Pay him one copper. I only suggest," Narliat added hastily as Berlis glared at him while Ayrlyn continued wrapping a tape dressing around the wounded marine's thigh.

   "Local custom?" asked Nylan.

   "It is traditional for treachery. He cannot claim he was not paid."

   "Fine. Nylan-you and Ayrlyn take care of it," said Ryba. "Just make sure he understands."

   "He already understands," said Ayrlyn. "That's why he passed out."

   Ryba pointed toward Denalle and Rienadre. "You two, and anyone else you can round up, figure out how to get these animals up over the ridge and into the grass on the west end. We can use the manure to fertilize the crops-or maybe compost it some way for next year. I'm no herder, but they'll provide meat at the least and maybe wool, if we can figure out what to do with it." She gestured up the ridge.

   "Yes, ser." The two nodded and looked at the sheep, then slowly circled downhill of the milling animals.

   The herder moaned, and Berlis levered her blade out, wincing, but the point was firm as it rested against the herder's neck. The man's eyes bulged.

   "Go ahead. Explain it to him, Narliat," Ayrlyn suggested. She rummaged through the prepackaged medical gear.

   "I have no copper."

   Nylan fished out the purse he had taken from the dead bandit, extracted the single copper, and handed the worn coin to Narliat. "There."

   Narliat looked at Nylan, turned to the herder, then to Berlis. Berlis retracted the sword. The herder swallowed, but did not move.

   "Sit up," Nylan commanded in his poor Anglorat-good enough because the herder sat up slowly. "Go ahead," the engineer told Narliat.

   "This is your payment. It is full payment for your treachery. There is no other payment, save death, should you reject this coin."

   The herdsman gulped, looking toward Ryba. "Kind lady . . . they made me. They would have killed me. My ewes, they are half my flock ... my children will suffer . .. Take the fowl... take them as my gift, but... the flock . . . ?"

   Ryba's eyes were as hard as emerald. "Your treachery has killed a dozen men, not that they were worth much, and one of my marines, who was worth much. Another has lost the use of her arm, and a third took an arrow in the thigh. Don't talk of suffering."

   Narliat looked at Nylan, and the engineer realized that the herder had not understood a word. "Our people have suffered from your treachery," Nylan explained in Old Anglorat. "You helped make that treachery. The marshal has been generous. Will you take payment or death?"

   Narliat's slight nod confirmed that Nylan's words met the formula.

   "And," Nylan added, though he could not have said why, "do not think to take the coin and reject the offer. Do not take the coin and curse us. For then you will live all your days as though you had died, and you will be tortured endlessly." He could feel something flash before-or from-his eyes.

   The herder fell forward in another dead faint.

   "Friggin' torps," said Berlis. "Man has no guts. Faints twice, and nothing touched him."

   "The . . . mage . . . did," stuttered Narliat. "He-the herder-will never think a dangerous thought again."

   "Impressive," said Ayrlyn.

   The herder groaned and slowly picked himself up. "The coin ... the copper . .. please ... please .. ."

   Narliat handed him the copper.

   "Please . . . can I take my cart? Please let me depart."

   "Go on," said Ryba.

   The herder looked at Nylan.

   "Go. Never forget."

   - "No, great one. No. No." The herder shivered as he slowly unstacked the four crates, each with a pair of chickens with reddish-brown feathers. Then he took the pony's reins and untied them from the stake in the ground. Leaving the white banner on the ground, he led the cart away, looking back over his shoulder every few paces.

   "We need a cart," Nylan said, looking at the departing herder.

   "A cart?" asked Ayrlyn.

   "For firewood, bricks, you name it. . ."

   "Fine," laughed Ayrlyn. "Saryn and I will work on it."

   "You?"

   "Why not? If you can build towers and forge swords, surely two of us can find a way to build a simple cart."

   "Now that you've disposed of those logistics, how did you manage that last bit of terror, Nylan?" asked Ryba.

   Ayrlyn frowned, but stepped back from the marshal as Ryba edged the roan closer to the engineer.

   "What?"

   "Terrifying that poor sot."

   "He's not a sot, ser," said Berlis. "He's a worthless hunk of meat." Then she paused. "I have to admit that the engineer scared me for an instant, and I didn't even know what he was saying."

   "I'm waiting, Nylan," said Ryba lightly.

   The engineer finally shrugged. "A little applied psychology and a menacing tone in a foreign accent." His head throbbed slightly as he said the words, and he frowned.

   "Psychology, my left toe," muttered Ayrlyn under her breath. "Wizardry, plain and simple."

   Nylan flushed, but Ryba had eased her mount back slightly and missed the byplay. The engineer said more loudly, to catch Ryba's ear, "I still need to go down and check the brickworks. There's nothing I can do here right now, and I want to get the tower ready to live in."

   Ryba opened her mouth, closed it, then said, "All right. I trust you'll use your senses to scout the way."

   The slight emphasis on "senses" was not lost on the engineer, and he nodded. "I will, Marshal."

   "Thank you, Honored Mage." She flushed at the title. "And Istril and Siret can ride with you." She laughed. "The silver angels."

   Nylan frowned before he realized that the three of them all had the bright silver hair created by the underjump that had brought them to the Roof of the World.

   "Siret can take Llyselle's mount," continued Ryba. "You can try one of the captured ones. They look spiritless enough even for you."

   Nylan nodded. "That's fine."

   ".. . what was all that about?"

   Nylan caught the question Siret whispered to Ayrlyn as he climbed into the saddle of the old bay.

   "A little formality, that's all," Ayrlyn answered Siret in a dry tone.

   After settling himself into the saddle, Nylan gingerly flicked the reins of the bay and followed Berlis and Istril toward the descending ridge road. As he bounced along, he wondered why he'd insisted on going to the brickworks. Was he worried that the brigands had found it and damaged it? Or because he had to do something after looking so stupid?

   Belatedly recalling Ryba's admonition, he tried to sense beyond the trail that was still not a road, for all the travel between the clayworks and the tower. Slowly, he caught up with the marines.

   "I'll go first," suggested Istril, "then the engineer."

   Nylan started to object, then shut his mouth. If anything went wrong, with only three of them, it didn't really matter where he rode. Besides, given all the dead brigands, why would any who had survived stick around?

   "Hate this frigging place," said Siret, now riding behind Nylan. "Everyone out to kill us, just because we're women."

   "They seem to want to kill me and Gerlich as well," Nylan answered. "And Merlin might have had something to say about it. They don't seem to like any strangers."

   "You're different, ser." Siret's voice held less anger. "The men here . .. they're not human."

   "Even Narliat?"

   "He's the same as the rest. He's just scared stiff of us, especially the captain, the second, and you, ser. Especially you, ser."

   Why him? Ryba was far deadlier than Nylan. Why, Nylan couldn't hit someone with a slug-thrower at nearly point-blank range.

   The three rode down from the next rise in the rising and falling trail, and when Nylan glanced back, he saw only the sky, the plateau rocks, and the trees. Istril had opened more distance between them, and her head swung from side to side, her head cocked almost as though she were trying to listen for trouble or even sniff it out.

   Nylan tried to follow her example, looking, sensing ...

   They continued down the winding trail, nearly silently, when a vague sense of unease drifted, as if on the wind, toward Nylan. He squinted, and looked toward the tall evergreens to the left, but the silence was absolute. That bothered him. All he could smell was the scent of pine, of fir.

   But there was something . .. somewhere .. .

   "Ser!" cried Siret.

   Even before her words, Nylan had seen the flicker of motion to the left of the trail. As he yelled "Istril!" he turned in the saddle and drew and threw his blade toward the man who had stepped clear of the thick underbrush and leveled the bow at the slender marine who led the three angels.

   In a fashion similar to working the ship's power net and the laser, Nylan smoothed the air flow around the spinning blade, extending its range, and somehow ensuring that the point struck first.

   "Uhhh!" The brigand crumpled.

   Nylan rode toward the forest, sending his senses into the trees, but felt no others nearby. Siret had ridden up beside him, her slug-thrower out in one hand. Istril had wheeled her horse, ducking low against her mount's back as she rode up.

   Before the engineer and Siret reached the bandit, the figure convulsed, and a wave of whiteness flared across Nylan. He shivered and barely hung on to the saddle as the power of the death he had created washed over him.

   "Ser? Are you all right?" Istril reined her mount up beside Nylan.

   "He's fine," affirmed Siret.

   "Fine . . . now," said Nylan after drawing a deep breath, trying not to shake as he forced himself out of the reflex step-up that he hadn't even realized that he had triggered. He took another deep breath and glanced down at the dead brigand's young face-another man barely out of youth, looking for all the world almost like the one he had stripped farther up the mountain. Brothers? Or did a lot of dead bearded young men just look alike? He took another slow deep breath, wishing he had something to eat or drink.

   Why all the bandits? Surely, the word was out that it was dangerous to take on the angels up in the mountains?

   "You stopped him. He was going to shoot me, wasn't he?" asked Istril.

   "Yes."

   "Frigging right," added Siret, the deep green eyes cold.

   "How did you know he was here?" asked Istril, adding belatedly, "Ser?"

   "I just sort of felt that someone was here." Nylan dismounted and eased his blade from the bandit's chest, then wiped it clean before replacing it in the scabbard that the blade did not really fit. "And I couldn't reach him. Gerlich was right. We need longer-range weapons."

   Istril studied him and pointed. "You have your sidearm."

   Nylan swallowed. "I guess I really didn't think. So I threw the blade. I hoped it would distract him, anyway."

   His head throbbed with the lie. He'd hoped to kill the bandit, plain and simple, and instinctively he'd known that he couldn't have with the slug-thrower. He'd always been a lousy shot. So he added, "I hoped it would kill him, but I wasn't sure I could do it. Not with a pistol." With his uttering of the truth, the sharp throbbing in his skull faded into a dull ache. The engineer rubbed his forehead. What was happening to him? Throwing blades on a low-tech planet, getting headaches from lies, forging blades with magic-or the equivalent, knowing that he could kill with a blade and not a sidearm. Was he dreaming? Was he dead?

   He shook his head. The pain, the aches, the constant tension-they all seemed too real for death or dreams.

   "Are you certain you're all right?" Istril's eyes continued to survey the forest to their left, then the cliffs to the right.

   "Yes. Mostly." Nylan bent and went through the brigand's purse. A few coppers, and three shiny silvers. A thin gold ring. A beat-up knife. He checked the clothing and boots. "Boots worn through and stuffed with some old leather." He stood and sniffed. "He had to have a mount somewhere."

   The engineer cast out his senses again, searching not for more brigands, but the horse. "I'm not sure, but I think his mount is tethered back there."

   "What about more bandits?" asked Istril.

   "We thought we had them all," said Siret, "and this one popped up."

   The engineer shook his head. "There aren't any. Not alive."

   "Narliat says you're a wizard, too-a black one. Do you know what that means?" Istril glanced back toward the trail and then focused on Nylan.

   "No." Nylan took the reins and began to lead his mount through the trees toward the horse tethered behind a massive pine just past a large boulder sunk in pine needles. "A black wizard? I've got enough trouble just being an engineer."

   Istril ducked and rode after him. After a moment, so did Siret.

 

 

XXXI

 

"NOW THAT YOU have reclaimed the grasslands, when will you reclaim the Roof of the World? And your father's honor?" The gray-haired Lady Ellindyja shifts her not-inconsiderable bulk on the upholstered bench in the alcove. Her fingers dart across the embroidery hoop, the needle shining like a miniature blade that she deftly wields. Sillek stands behind the carved chair with the purple cushion, resting his arms on the back. "The grasslands are reclaimed only so long as Koric and Hissl remain in Clynya. The moment they leave, Ildyrom's forces will return, in even greater numbers, no doubt. I send armsmen into the Westhorns, and I won't only lose the grasslands, but half the land between Clynya and Rohrn."

   "If you cannot reclaim that honor, you must do something to solidify your position. You need an heir, Sillek." His mother's voice is flat. "You know you do."

   "I also need score five more armsmen, control of Rulyarth, and Ildyrom in his grave."

   "Not to mention regaining control of the Roof of the World." The needle continues to dart through the white fabric, trailing crimson-red thread.

   "As I have told you, most honored mother, that might be a very bad idea, right now." Sillek straightens and purses his lips. "A very bad idea."

   "A bad idea? To reclaim your patrimony? Given all that your father has done for you, Sillek, how could you possibly even think that, let alone say it so soon after his last sacrifice for you?" The glittering needle darts through the fabric like a cavalry blade chasing a fleeing footman.

   Sillek waits until the pace of the needle slows. "I took your advice, dear Mother, and we are already reaping its benefit, and it has cost us little."

   "Costs? You talk so much of costs." The needle shimmers, then plunges into the fabric. "Costs are for merchants, or for scoundrel traders."

   "I am not being clear, I fear."

   "Clear? I fear you are all too clear. You will give up your patrimony because your enemies are too much for you."

   "I do not intend to forfeit my patrimony, Mother dear, and your assumption that I would do so speaks poorly for me, and not well for you. I would certainly never wish to relinquish that which my honored sire had gathered for my benefit or the benefit of our people." Sillek walks toward the alcove.

   "Could you explain your logic to your poor benighted mother, Sillek, Lord of the Realm? How can you retain your patrimony when you refuse to reclaim it? Are you a magician now?" The needle stitches another crimson loop in a droplet of blood that falls from a gray sword.

   Sillek smiles. "From what Terek has told me, and from my other sources, so far the angels on the Roof of the World have destroyed at least three bands of brigands trying to claim my reward-that reward you suggested so wisely. And two of the lesser angels have been killed, and four or five wounded, while close to a score of brigands have been destroyed." His smile turns into a laugh. "I couldn't do nearly so well, and I certainly am in no position to lose another score three of trained armsmen."

   Sillek glances out the window and toward the river. "Next spring . . . after winter up there-then we'll see."

   "I do hope so, Sillek, dear. I do hope so." The sharp needle stitches in another loop of blood.

   Sillek's lips tighten, but he does not speak.

 

 

XXXII

 

NYLAN OPENED HIS eyes slowly in the gray light that came through the open tower window. Although fall had scarcely arrived, the nights had begun to chill, enough so that the single blanket seemed thin, indeed. Blankets were not used in large numbers on spacecraft, and the few that had been brought down felt less than adequate for the winter ahead. That meant another set of items to be bought from the all-too-infrequent traders. Nylan blinked as he wondered how they could pay for all that they still needed.

   Although the landers had been stripped of what would make the tower more habitable, that had provided little enough. The marines occupied the third level of the tower. Gerlich, Saryn, Ayrlyn, and Narliat occupied part of the fourth level. The fifth was used for miscellaneous storage, and Ryba and Nylan rattled around in a sixth level that had little in it except for the two lander couches lashed together and a few weapons and personal effects.

   Only the shutters on the second and third levels were finished, the results of Saryn's and Ayrlyn's handicrafts, and there were no internal doors. Rags had been pieced together to curtain off the two jakes and provide some privacy. Nylan hoped that they could finish the bathhouse and additional jakes facilities before too long-not to mention the shutters.

   As he moved slightly, Ryba's eyelids fluttered, and she moaned. He waited, but she did not open her eyes. So Nylan slowly shifted his weight more in order to look out through the casement. A trace of white rime frosted the outer edge of the window ledge, but the whiteness seemed to vanish as the first direct rays from the sun touched the dark stone. The hint of wood smoke drifted in the window, blown down from the chimney momentarily.

   Over the crude rack in the corner hung their clothes, including the ship jackets that probably would not be heavy enough for the winter ahead.

   Nylan's eyes shifted back to Ryba's face, to the curly jet-black hair cut so short and the pale clear skin, to the thin lips and the high cheekbones. Her eyelids fluttered again, and she groaned.

   "Not yet... not yet," she murmured.

   Nylan waited, almost holding his breath.

   "No..."

   He reached out and touched the cool bare shoulder. "It's all right. It's all right."

   Ryba shook her head and moistened her lips, but her eyes did not open for a moment. Then she shitted her weight on the lander couch and looked directly at the engineer. "No it's not. I was dying, and I won't finish everything that needs to be done for Westwind, or for Dyliess."

   "It was just a dream ..." Nylan paused. "It was a dream, wasn't it?"

   Ryba shook her head again, and squinted as she sat up. Then she swung her feet off the couch, letting the blanket fall away from her naked figure, until it covered only her waist and upper thighs. Her back to Nylan, she faced the open window, looking out toward the northern peaks that showed a light dusting of snow from the night before. The faintest touch of yellow and brown tinged the bushes and meadow grasses.

   "It wasn't a dream. It was real. My hair was gray, and I was lying here, except I was in a big wooden bed, and there was glass in the windows, and people in gray leathers were standing around me." Ryba shivered and then stood, padding to the clothes rack, where she pulled on her undergarments and then the brown leather trousers and an old shirt-both plunder.

   "If your hair had become gray, that had to be a long time from now." He stood and stretched.

   "Nylan ... I wasn't finished, and it hurt that I didn't finish."

   "Ryba," Nylan offered gently, "no one who really cares about anything is ever finished with life. And you care a lot." He forced a smile, then began to dress himself.

   Ryba finished with the bone buttons of the trousers and then buttoned the shirt. "You're probably right, but it was real ... too real."

   "Another one of your senses of what will happen?"

   She nodded. "They come at odd times, but some have already happened."

   "Oh?" He hadn't heard that part.

   "Little things, or not so little. I saw your tower almost from the beginning-and I know what the bathhouse will look like." She sat back on the joined lander couches that served as their bed and pulled on her boots.

   "Who is Dyliess?"

   "Our daughter. I'm pregnant, and she'll be born in the spring, just before the passes melt."

   Nylan's mouth dropped open. "You ... never .. ."

   "She'll be a good daughter, and don't you forget that, Engineer." Ryba smiled. "I wanted the timing right. You can't do that much in the winter here, and next summer . .. we'll have a lot of problems when people realize we're here to stay. They think the winter will finish us, but it won't."

   "Promise?" he asked.

   "I can promise that, at least so long as you keep building." She stood in the open doorway at the top of the steps. "I want things to be right for Dyliess, and they will be."

   "A daughter ... you're sure?"

   "You wanted a son?"

   "I never thought-one way or another." He shook his head, still at a loss, still amazed.

   "You'll have a son. I'll promise that, too." Her voice turned soft, almost sad.

   "You don't. . ."

   "I know what to promise, Nylan. I do." Her eyes met his, and they were deep and chill, filled with pain. "There's no time to be melancholy, Engineer."

   The forced cheer in her voice contradicted her calm and pale face. As they looked at each other, Nylan could hear the hum of voices from below, and the smell of something cooking, although he wasn't sure he was in any hurry to find out what Kyseen had improvised for breakfast.

   "We do our best, Nylan, in spite of what may be."

   "May be or will be? Can these visions of yours be changed?" Nylan sat down on the couch-bed and reached for his shipboots, his eyes still on her.

   Ryba shrugged. "Maybe I only see what can't be changed. Maybe it can be. I don't know, because this is something new."

   "All of this is something new." Nylan pulled on his ship-boots, getting so worn that he could feel stones through them.

   "You need new boots. You ought to check the spares. We've only got about twenty pair left over."

   "I suppose you're right." Nylan stood. "I have to be. I'm the marshal. You have to, also. You're the mage. Now that we've settled that, let's see if breakfast is remotely palatable." She started down the steps, the hard heels of her boots echoing off the harder stone, and Nylan followed, trying not to shake his head. A daughter, for darkness' sake, and Ryba had named her, and seen her in a vision of her own death. At that, he did shake his head. The Roof of the World was strange, and getting stranger even as he learned more.

   They walked toward the pair of tables stretched out from the hearth. In a room that could have handled a dozen or more tables that size with space to spare, the two almost looked lost. The benches had finally been finished, and for the moment everyone could sit at the same time.

   Ryba marched toward the head of the table, but Nylan lagged, still looking around the great room, amazed that they had completed so much in barely a half year. Of course, the tower was really not much more than a shell, but still... He smiled for a moment.

   Breakfast in the great hall had gotten regularized-a warm drink, usually a bitter grass and root tea; cold fried bread; some small slices of cheese; any meat left over from supper-if there had been meat served-and something hot, although it could be as odd as batter-dipped and fried greens or kisbah, a wild root that Narliat had insisted was edible. Edible kisbah might be, reflected Nylan, but something that tasted like onions dipped in hydraulic oil had little more to recommend it than basic nutrients. It made the heavy fried bread seem like the best of pastries by comparison. So far the few eggs dropped by the scrawny chickens had gone into the bread or something else fixed by Kyseen.

   "Good morning, Nylan," said Ayrlyn.

   "How did you sleep last night?" the engineer asked the redhead, who huddled inside a sweater and a thermal jacket and sat on the sunny south casement ledge that overlooked the meadow and fields.

   "Not well. It's getting cold. When will the furnace be finished?"

   "Not until after the shutters," he answered.

   "The shutters won't help that much."

   "Unless we cut a lot more wood and finish the shutters, the furnace won't be much use," Nylan pointed out.

   "Don't we have any armaglass at all?" Ayrlyn shivered inside the jacket.

   "There's enough for six windows." He put his lips together and thought. "Maybe eight. Most of them ought to go in here. These are south windows."

   "That's why I'm sitting here trying to warm up. I'm not a Sybran nomad," Ayrlyn pointed out, turning slightly on the stone so that the sun hit her back full on. "Saryn and I could make simple frames that would go on pivots if you could mortar the pivot bolts or whatever in place. Can you cut the armaglass?"

   "If the laser lasts." Nylan laughed, then frowned as his stomach growled.

   "You need to eat."

   "I can hardly wait." The engineer glanced toward the table where Ryba was serving herself.

   "It's not bad this morning-some fried meat that has some taste, but not too much, if you know what I mean, and there's a decent hot brew. Narliat showed Selitra a bush that actually makes something close to tea. Bitter, but it does wake you up."

   "All right. Bring me a window design, and we'll see what we can do." He started toward the table.

   "We need salt, demon-damn!" Gerlich's voice rose from the end of the table nearest the completed but empty hearth. "Without salt, drying meat's a tricky thing, and I don't want to smoke everything."

   "I'll have Ayrlyn put it high on the trading list." Ryba's voice, quieter than Gerlich's, still carried the length of the room.

   Gerlich strode by, wearing worn and tattered brown leathers rudely altered to fit his large frame and carrying a bow and quiver. "Good day, Nylan."

   "Good day. How's the bow going?"

   Gerlich stopped and shrugged. "It doesn't shoot far enough, or with enough power, but it's good for some of the smaller animals-the furry rodents." He grinned. "I'm tanning those pelts-Narliat told me some of the roots and an acorn they use-and by winter I might have enough for a warm coat." The grin faded. "There's not much meat on the fattest ones, and I don't know how good the hunting will be when the snow gets deep."

   "I don't, either." Nylan paused. "Let me think about it."

   "Do that, Engineer." Gerlich raised the bow, almost in a mocking salute, and began to walk toward the main door. "I'm going to try my luck at fashioning a larger bow."

   "Good luck, Great Hunter." Nylan made his way to the table and sat down across from Ryba.

   "It's not bad," she said. "The meat, I mean."

   "What is it?"

   "I didn't ask."

   "One of those rodents, baked and then fried," said Kyseen, replacing the battered wooden platter with another; half-filled with strips of fried meat. "The stove makes all the difference, and the bread even tastes like bread now. The eggs help, but those chickens don't lay them fast, and I'm letting 'em hatch a few, 'cause we'll need another cock, a rooster"-the cook flushed-"before long."

   "If we had windows and that furnace," suggested Siret, with a shiver, "that would help, too."

   Nylan glanced at her, and she looked away.

   "You'll warm up a lot before long," added Berlis.

   The silver-haired Siret flushed.

   Nylan felt sorry for the pregnant marine and added, "I'm working on the furnace... as soon as we have more bricks." Gingerly, he used his fingers to take several strips of the fried rodent, and two slices of bread. There was no cheese, but there was a grass basket filled with green berries. He tried one, and his mouth puckered.

   "Those green berries are real tart, ser," said Berlis, glancing at Siret.

   Siret flushed, but said quietly, "It might have been better if that arrow had been centered between both thighs. It would have fit right there."

   "Enough," said Ryba, but Siret was already walking past the end of the table with no intention of returning. The marshal turned her eyes to Berlis. "Comments like that could get you killed."

   "Yes, ser." Berlis's voice was dull, resigned.

   Nylan ate more of the green berries and the fried rodent strips without comment. The bread was good, and he finished both slices down to the crumbs.

   "What are you planning today?" Ryba asked.

   "I'll try to squeeze in two more blades before I go back to the bathhouse. What about you?"

   "Trying to put up a more permanent fence for the sheep. They got into the beans last night."

   "I'd rather have mutton anyway," came a low voice from down the table.

   "I would, too," admitted Ryba, "but we need both."

   Those left at the table laughed, and Ryba took some more rodent strips..So did Nylan. Before he had finished eating, Ryba stood and touched his arm. "I'll see you later."

   His mouth full, Nylan nodded.

   After he gulped down the rest of his breakfast, he walked out the causeway and down to the "washing area" of the stream. In the shade of the low scrub by the water were a few small ice fragments, which reminded the engineer that the bathhouse would soon become a necessity, not a luxury. He took a deep breath, and then an even deeper one when he splashed the icy water across his face. The sand helped get the grease off his hands, but he wished they had soap, real soap.

   "Along with everything else." Nylan snorted and mumbled to himself. He tried to ignore the basic question that the soap raised. How could he or Ryba turn Westwind into an economically functioning community?

   Because the south yard had become the meeting place, training yard, and thoroughfare, Nylan carted the laser equipment out to the cleared space beside the bathhouse structure on the north side of the tower.

   After he checked the power levels and connected the cables, Nylan looked from the laser powerhead to the endurasteel braces, then at the half-finished north wall of the bathhouse. Huldran was mixing mortar, while Cessya and Weblya were carrying building stones.

   He lowered the goggles, pulled on the gauntlets, and flicked the power switches. Huldran had finished mixing the mortar and had begun to set the higher stones in the north wall by the time Nylan had finished the rough shaping of the blade.

   He cut off the power, pushed back the goggles, and sat down on the low sills of the unfinished east wall of the bathhouse. Working with the laser was as exhausting as lugging stones. While his mind understood that, it still felt strange. Then again, the whole planet was strange.

   After he felt less drained, he stood and walked around the bathhouse and uphill to the spring where he filled the plastic cup that would probably wear out even before he did. He sipped the water, too cold to drink in large swallows, until he had emptied the cup. Then he refilled it and walked back down and checked the firm cells.

   "How many more blades will you do, ser?" asked Huldran.

   "I don't know. There are enough braces for another dozen, but whether the laser will last that long is another question."

   "Do we have enough stone?"

   "Probably not. This afternoon, I'll cut some more. We may have to finish this with bricks. I asked Rienadre to create some molds for bigger ones, closer to the size of the stones."

   "That's good, but I'd rather have stone."

   "So would I, but we're lucky we've gotten this far."

   "I'd not call it luck, ser." Huldran flashed a brief smile.

   "Perhaps not," said Nylan, thinking of the nine individual cairns overlooking the cliff. He lowered the goggles and triggered the power, beginning the final shaping of the blade.

   When he looked up after slipping the blade into the quench trough, Huldran had finished the north wall and was beginning on the east wall. He removed the blade and set it on the wall to finish cooling.

   Clang! Clang!

   "Bandits!"

   A half-dozen horses clattered over the ridge and down toward the tower. The riders had their blades out as they headed for the tower. Behind them, Nylan could see two marines following on foot.

   Crack! Crack! The two shots from one of the rifles-presumably from the lookout at the tower's northern window on the upper level-resulted in one horseman dropping a blade and clutching his arm. He swung his mount around and back uphill, but the others galloped toward the tower, directly at Nylan.

   The engineer groped for the blade that wasn't at his side. Then, with a deep breath, he flicked the power switches on the firin cells back on, and dropped the goggles over his eyes.

   "It ought to work . .." he muttered. As the power came up, he forced himself to concentrate, trying to extend the beam focal point through what he thought of as the local net, creating a needle-edged lightknife.

   "Get the mage! There!"

   The remaining five riders turned toward Nylan. The ground vibrated underfoot as they pounded downhill.

   A field of reddish-white surrounded the focal tip of the weapon as Nylan, more with his senses than his hands, slewed the lightblade across the neck of the leading rider, then the second.

   Nylan staggered, as his eyes blurred, with the white backlash of death, and his head throbbed. He just stood, stock-still, trying to gather himself together, to see somehow, through the knives of pain that were his eyes.

   Another set of hooves clattered across the hard ground, these coming from the south side of the tower. As the second rider finally went down, Istril and Ryba rode past the tower, their blades out.

   Ryba's throwing blade flew, and the third rider-his mouth open in surprise-collapsed across his mount's neck. The horse reared, throwing the body half-clear, and dragging the rider by the one foot that jammed in the left stirrup all the way to the edge of the upper field before the horse finally stopped.

   Crack! Crack!

   The fourth horse staggered and fell, but the rider vaulted free and ran toward Nylan, his blade raised, and his free hand reaching for the shorter knife at his belt.

   The engineer swung the laser toward the attacker, readjusting the focal length with his senses, fighting against his own headache and the knives in his eyes. The white-red fire blazed, and the flame bored through the man. The corpse pitched forward, and the blade clattered on the stones less than a body length from Nylan's feet. Nylan went down to his knees, and stayed there, flicking off the energy flow to the powerhead as he swayed under the impact of another death, yet worrying that he had not cut the power earlier. They had so little left and so much to do.

   The single remaining raider ducked under Istril's slash, started to counter, and looked at the stump of his forearm as Ryba's second blade flashed downward.

   "Yield!" demanded the marshal, her eyes cold as the ice on Freyja.

   The redheaded man, his hair a mahogany, rather than the fire-red of Ayrlyn or Fierral, clutched at his stump without speaking.

   "Yield or die!" yelled Nylan in Old Anglorat, forcing himself to his feet, still clutching the wand that held the laser's powerhead.

   "I... Relyn of Gethen Groves of Lornth ... I yield." The young fellow was already turning white.

   "Nylan, can you handle this? There's still a bunch below the ridge." Ryba had pulled her blade from her other victim, not leaving the saddle, then turned the roan toward the ridge, Istril beside her.

   Relyn swallowed as he heard her voice and watched the two gallop uphill, joined by four others.

   "You'd better get down." Nylan glanced around. Both Huldran and Cessya had left, either to find mounts or follow on foot with their weapons. "If you don't want to bleed to death."

   As he struggled out of the saddle, Relyn looked closely at Nylan, seeing for the first time Nylan's goggles and gauntlets. Then he pitched forward.

   Nylan set aside the powerhead and walked toward the mount and its downed rider, noting the well-worked leather and the tailored linens of the rider. The black mare skittered aside, but only slightly as Nylan dragged the young man toward the laser.

   "Hate to do this ..." he said.

   A brief burst of power at the lowest level and widest spread cauterized the stump.

   Nylan kept looking toward the ridge, but no one appeared. With his senses he could tell that Relyn was still alive and would probably live since the blackened stump wasn't bleeding anymore. The engineer wished he could have done something else, but what? He laughed harshly. Here he was, worrying about whether he could have done a better job saving a man who had been out to remove his head.

   He left the laser depowered and walked to the wall where he picked up the blade he had just forged. Wearing the gauntlets, he could use it-if the need arose.

   Should he chase after the others-or wait? He decided to wait, hoping he wouldn't have to use the laser again. He wasn't sure he could take any more killing. Since Relyn was still unconscious, he walked toward the black mare, starting with her to round up the three horses that had remained in the area, tying their reins to various stones on the solid part of the north wall of the bathhouse. Then he forced himself to check through what remained of the three bodies that he had blasted in one way or another with the laser.

   Ignoring the smell of charred flesh, he methodically raided purses, removed jewelry, and stacked weapons on the partly built east wall. Then he went to work removing those garments that might still be usable. All three mounts had heavy blankets rolled behind the saddles.

   "Oooohhh ..." Relyn moaned, but did not move.

   Nylan looked toward the ridge. Finally, he looped some cord around the unconscious man's arms and feet, and then climbed onto the mare, who backed around several times before finally carrying Nylan and his recently forged blade toward the ridge.

   The wave of death that reached him as he crested the ridge almost knocked him from the saddle. All he could do was hang on for a moment before starting downhill toward the figures on horseback and the riderless mounts.

   As he descended, he began to discern individual figures, and almost all those he saw were in olive-black.

   A black-haired figure turned the big roan toward him. "Nylan! Are there any more by the tower?"

   "Just the one I tied up. The others are dead. What happened here?"

   "There must have been nearly thirty of them . . ." Ryba smiled a grim smile. "A handful got away. The others, except one or two, are dead."

   "What about us?"

   Ryba shook her head. "For this sort of thing-it's not too bad. We lost two, I think, and Weindre took one of those blades in her left shoulder. We're claiming the spoils of war right now."

   "Did you notice that these weren't bandits?" he asked.

   "What do you mean?"

   "Good mounts, good saddles, good clothes, good weapons, and jewelry and a lot of coins," Nylan explained.

   "We'll talk about it later. We need to gather up everything." Ryba rode back downhill.

   Since she seemed to have everything under control, Nylan turned the black around and headed back up the ridge to the tower.

   By the time he had reached the uncompleted bathhouse and tied up the black, Relyn's eyes were open.

   "I gave my word, Mage," he snapped.

   "I wasn't sure, and you weren't awake enough for me to ask you," returned Nylan in Old Anglorat as he unfastened the cords. He extended his senses to Relyn's stump. "That probably hurts, but you'll live."

   "Better I didn't."

   "I doubt that." Nylan massaged his forehead, trying to relieve the pain in his eyes and the throbbing in his skull.

   "Have you never been exiled, unable to return? That is what will happen when my sire discovers I was bested by women, and fewer of them than my own solid armsmen."

   "All of us are exiles, young fellow. As for the women, you might note that they're not exactly the kind of women you have here." Nylan felt very safe with that assertion.

   "You don't jest," returned the man dourly. "They had small thunder-throwers-and their blades ... had we blades such as those, things would have been different. Did those blades come from the heavens, also?"

   Nylan looked down at the stony ground.

   "You look confounded, Mage."

   "My name is Nylan." The engineer didn't wish to answer, but even the thought of not answering was increasing his headache.

   "Ser Nylan, surely you know where came such blades."

   The engineer took a deep breath. "I... made them."

   "Here? On the Roof of the World?"

   Nylan nodded.

   "Light! I must be cozened into attacking angels each worth twice any armsman, and supported by a mage the like of which our poor world has never seen." Relyn struggled into a sitting position on the wall. "You killed three of my men, did you not?"

   "Yes."

   "Might I look at that blade?"

   Nylan looked down at the blade he had thrust through the tool belt. "This? It's not finished. The hilt needs to be wrapped." He eased the blade out, half surprised that he had not cut himself with it, though it was shorter than the crowbars carried by the locals. He showed it to Relyn, who brushed the metal with the fingers of his left hand.

   "Would that I had a blade like that," said the younger man.

   "They are for... the guards ... of Westwind."

   "Westwind?"

   Nylan gestured to the tower. "That's what we have named it."

   "Westwind." Relyn shivered: "Westwind. A cold wind."

   "Very cold," Nylan agreed, thinking about Ryba's coolness after the battle. What was he supposed to have done? Sprung into the saddle and chased after them? He laughed, thinking of himself bouncing along on the black.

   "You laugh? You laugh?"

   "Not at you, Relyn. At me. I was thinking about how awkward it is for me to ride a horse."

   "I do not understand. Do not all men ride? All mages?"

   "Yes, but we don't always ride horses into battle." Nylan turned at the sound of hooves, watching as Huldran and Cessya rode up.

   "You're already organized, ser, aren't you?" asked Huldran.

   "Pretty much," Nylan admitted.

   "Who's the pretty boy?" asked Cessya.

   "I think he's the guilty one. He thinks his father will disown him for being defeated by a bunch of women."

   "He's not bad-looking."

   "They think you're not bad-looking, Relyn," Nylan said. "Even if you are the one who plotted this. Might I ask why?"

   Relyn shrugged. "I am the younger son, and when I heard that Lord Sillek had offered lands and a title to whoever reclaimed the Roof of the World ... I spent what I had. Now ... I am ruined."

   "If you had succeeded, we'd have been ruined," pointed out Nylan as he turned to Huldran. "Who did we lose?"

   "Weblya and Sheriz. Weindre got slashed up, but Jaseen says she'll pull through. A bunch of bruises and cuts for everyone else, except the marshal." Huldran sighed. "It's going to get tougher. We're just about out of rounds. Best to use what we've got left for the rifles."

   "I wouldn't know," Nylan said, "but that would be my suggestion."

   "That's what the marshal told us." Huldran turned in the saddle. "We've got to make another big cairn. Siret's bringing down the cart for the bodies. Since you're all right, ser..."

   "Go on." Nylan waved the two off. "Do what you have to."

   "A curious tongue you speak, Mage. Some words I understand. You are not, properly speaking, an armsman, are you?"

   "No. I'm an engineer ... like a smith. I build things, like the tower, or this."

   "Yet you slew three men, and you forge blades that. . ." Relyn groped in the air with his left hand. "And the women, they are mightier warriors than you?"

   "For the most part, yes."

   "Demons of light save us, save us all, for they will change the world and all that is in it."

   Of that, Nylan had no doubts. And, from what he'd seen, it would probably be a better world-but would it be one that had a place for him? From Ryba's actions and gestures, daughter or no daughter, he wondered.

 

 

XXXIII

 

THE GRAY CLOUDS churn out of the north, and a cold rain falls across Lornth, heavier showers splattering in waves across the red tile roofs of the town. From behind the leaded-glass window, Sillek's eyes look south toward the river, though he sees neither roofs nor river.

   "Sillek, did you hear me?"

   He turns toward the alcove where his mother the lady Ellindyja adjusts the white fabric over one wooden hoop, then slips the second hoop in place to hold the linen taut. Golden thread trails from the needle she holds in her right hand.

   "My dear mother, I fear I was distracted."

   "Distracted? The Lord of Lornth cannot afford distractions, mental or otherwise, and certainly not distractions of the nature of the ... lady ... Kirandya." Ellindyja knots the end of the thread with motions that seem too precise for the white and pudgy fingers.

   "I suppose not." Sillek's words are harsh as he sits on the straight-backed wooden chair opposite the alcove bench. "You were saying?"

   "Ser Gethen-you might recall him, Sillek. He has more than score ten in armsmen, and all the lands between the rivers north of Carpa, even a hillside vineyard. I think he has several daughters near your age as well, and the middle one is said to be quite a beauty."

   "I don't believe you were talking about his daughters."

   "Ah . . . no." The golden thread completes the edge of a coronet on the linen, and the needle pauses. "Ser Gethen had a son, Relyn or Ronwin or something. He heard of your offer of lands and a minor title for destroying those witches on the heights-"

   "Your idea, as I recall," interjects Sillek, "and a good one."

   "And the young fellow gathered his funds and some armsmen and attacked the witches. He had a score and ten men, well armed. A half dozen returned."

   "I had heard something of his exploit, but only this morning. Pray, tell me-how did this news come to you?"

   "The youth's mother-Erenthla-she and I were once close, and she sent a messenger. That's of no matter now, Sillek. You certainly should not expect me to be totally cloistered. What is of import is that Ser Gethen is less than pleased. Erenthla-she is Lady of Gethen Groves- conveyed that. Rather clearly." Ellindyja's needle flickers through the fabric, creating another lobe to the coronet taking shape on the linen. "She hinted at her liege's loss of honor and that it might be linked to your failure to uphold that noble heritage bequeathed to you."

   "Since you are determined to pin this upon me, why should I be disturbed? The young fellow knew the risks. Any raiding has risks. And he was a hothead, from what I recall. The kind that thinks every fight brings honor." Sillek stands, then his brows knit. "He was killed?"

   "Far worse-he was captured. Being captured by women -even angels-makes it most humiliating, especially for his sire. Erenthla was clearly distraught. I should not have to point this out to you. Of course, Ser Gethen was forced to disown him, but he was Gethen's second son of two, and second in the succession, and there are only sisters after him."

   "Ah ... the matter becomes clearer. I should court one of those sisters in the guise of placating Ser Gethen ...." Sillek paces back to the window and stares into the heavy rain. His lips tighten and his fingers knot around each other.

   "I did not suggest that. It is not a bad idea, but I was talking of honor of the honor your failures have cost you, and now, Ser Gethen. The honor you have steadfastly refused to acknowledge or uphold. The honor that you subjugate to concerns more suited to a petty merchant. My son should not be a merchant, but a lord."

   Sillek turns and slowly walks across the floor. He stops by the chair, and his eyes flash. "I am Lord of Lornth, and my father did not die for honor. He died looking for exotic women. Of that, I should not have to remind you, of all people. His honor, his duty, lay in preserving and protecting his people-and there he failed. He lost more than twoscore trained armsmen for nothing! I know what honor is. Honor is more than a reputation for seeking out danger mindlessly. It is more than attacking enemies blindly without regard to costs and deaths.

   "You talk of honor, but the honor that you speak of so carelessly and endlessly will bring nothing but pain and needless death. There is no honor in destroying Lornth through mindless attacks on powerful enemies. There is no honor in squandering trained armsmen like poor tavern ale." His hand jabs toward Ellindyja as she starts to speak. "No! I will hear no more protestations about empty honor, and should you ever throw that word at me again, you will be cloistered-in high and lonely honor in my tallest tower. There you can think of honor until your dying day. And may it comfort you, because no one else will. Do you understand, my dearest mother?"

   Ellindyja pales. Her mouth opens.

   Sillek shakes his head grimly.

   Finally, she bows her head. "Yes, my son and liege."

   For a time, silence fills the chamber.

   "I still value your advice," Sillek says evenly.

   Ellindyja does not look up, as the unsteady needle slowly fills in the second lobe of the coronet she stitches.

   "About Ser Gethen's daughter," he suggests.

   "Courting Ser Gethen's daughter would not be a bad idea," Ellindyja says quietly, her eyes still on the embroidery. "No ruler is so rich that he cannot afford to look at both a lovely lady and lovely lands, and this... incident... left Ser Gethen with but one heir."

   "Fornal is reputed to be outstanding in Arms."

   "He may be," said Ellindyja, "but life is uncertain, as your father discovered. Although Ser Gethen is a warrior of caution and deliberation, I do know that he is less than pleased."

   Sillek turns from the window. "You think I should go to Carpa and soothe his ruffled wings?"

   "It could not harm you, and, since you are so preoccupied about the possible predations of Lord Ildyrom, rather than ... other considerations, you would be close enough to return to Clynya, should that remote need arise." The pudgy fingers fly momentarily, and the golden thread continues to fill in the outline of the coronet.

   "It is scarcely remote when a neighboring lord builds a fort on your lands." Sillek's face is stern, and chill radiates from him.

   A jagged line of lightning illuminates the roofs of Lornth, and the crash of nearby thunder punctuates Sillek's observation.

   "That is true. Perhaps you could make that point with Ser Gethen in person." The lady Ellindyja lowers her embroidery. She does not meet his eyes.

   Sillek lifts his hands, and then lowers them. "We shall see."

   "Sillek dear, I understand your concerns for the greater good of Lornth. I only provide those suggestions that I feel might be helpful for Lornth ... and for preserving your patrimony."

   Sillek's lips tighten again.

   Ellindyja looks away. "Ser Gethen is upset, my son and liege. I cannot disguise that."

   Sillek's eyes fix on her, but she says nothing.

   "He is upset." He takes a deep breath and releases it slowly. "And it is true. You cannot change that. For your judgment in this matter, I am grateful, but... I do not appreciate even indirect references to honor and patrimony. Those are best reserved for cloistered towers."

   "Yes, Sillek. You have made your point, and you are Lord of Lornth." Ellindyja bows her head again.

   Sillek offers the faintest of head bows before turning back toward the door as another rain squall pelts across the roofs outside.

   After the door closes, Ellindyja smiles sadly, and murmurs, "But you cannot escape honor."

   The embroidery needle flashes, and the third golden lobe of the coronet forms.

 

 

XXXIV

 

WITH THE SHUTTERS in the great hall closed, the fire in the hearth left the room-the end closest to the fire-nearly comfortable for Ryba and the marines in just the light and tattered shipsuits they wore for heavy work. Although Narliat had kept complaining about the chill, Nylan had resisted using the new furnace, especially since the grates for the ducts on each floor were not finished. Besides, it wasn't that cold, not yet, and he worried about having enough firewood for the long winter.

   Nylan wore his ship jacket, unfastened and open, as did Ayrlyn and Saryn. Relyn and Narliat wore their heavy cloaks wrapped around them, and sat on the right edge of the raised hearth, their backs to the heaping coals and the logs of the fire.

   Two squat candles-among the few in Westwind and procured by Ayrlyn and Narliat-flickered on the table. The candles and the fire managed to impart a wavering illumination to the great hall, although the corners were dark, as was the end of the room nearest the stairs. Nylan could see clearly without the light. That was not the case for most of the others, as they squinted to see when they turned toward the gloomier sections of the hall.

   Ayrlyn had drawn one of the candles close to Relyn's stump, because he had complained that the arm was chaos-tinged.

   "Chaos-tinged?" asked Saryn.

   "Infected," explained the redhead, looking at the arm.

   Nylan could feel as Ayrlyn extended her senses to examine the arm, much in the same way that he had manipulated the fields around the laser.

   "The arm's not infected," Ayrlyn said. "You'll live."

   "What sort of life will I live, healer?" asked Relyn. "The great warrior of Gethen Groves defeated by a handful of women, and what kind of life awaits me?" He inclined his head to Nylan. "And by an unknown mage." He snorted. "Who would believe that less than a score of women, a single armed man, and one mage could kill nearly thirty well-armed and -trained men?"

   Nylan took another look at Relyn's stump. Crafting something like a hook or artificial hand might not be that difficult, and it might make the man more functional and less self-pitying.

   Gerlich smiled briefly at the mention of "a single armed man," then glanced toward Ryba. His smile vanished.

   "Ser, they killed three score of Lord Nessil's men," suggested Narliat, raising his maimed right hand. "He even had a wizard with him. And we have not seen any of the great Lord Sillek's men, or Lord Sillek himself, come to follow his sire's example. Lord Sillek did succeed his father, did he not?"

   "He did, armsman. That was why I was here."

   "Would you care to explain?" asked Nylan, knowing the answer, but wanting the others, besides Ryba, to hear it from the local noble himself.

   Ryba sat in the single chair at the end of the table-a rude chair, crude like all the other crafts, but Saryn had insisted that the marshal should sit at the end, and had made the chair herself. Ryba half turned in the chair to hear Relyn's words.

   "Lord Sillek offered a reward of the Ironwoods and a title for whoever cleansed the Roof of the World."

   "Cleansed?" asked Ryba coldly. "Are we vermin?"

   While her accent in Old Anglorat left something to be desired, Relyn understood and swallowed. "Your pardon . . . but women like you are not seen elsewhere in Candar, nor across either the Eastern or the Western Ocean."

   "There are women like us in Candar, and they will find their way to Westwind," Ryba said. "In time, all the lands west of the Westhorns will be ruled by women who follow the Legend-the guards of Westwind... I've mentioned the name before."

   "The Legend?" asked Relyn.

   Nylan glanced at Ayrlyn, who looked down.

   "Ayrlyn? Now would be a good time to introduce your latest song."

   "As you wish, Marshal." Ayrlyn walked to the far end of the hall where she removed the lutar case from the open shelves under the central stone stairs. She left the case and carried the instrument toward the hearth.

   "What is this Legend?" asked Narliat.

   "It is the story of the angels," Ryba said smoothly, "and the "fate of those who put their trust in the power of men alone."

   Nylan winced at the certainty in her voice, the absolute surety of vision. Like her vision of a daughter, although that was certainly no vision. There were enough signs to Nylan, especially to his senses, but while he could not tell the sex of the child, Ryba had no doubts.

   "All Candar will come to understand the vision and the power of the Legend," Ryba added. "Though there will be those who oppose it, even they will not deny its truth and its power."

   Ayrlyn stood before the hearth, lutar in hand, adjusting the tuning pegs, and striking several strong chords before beginning.

 

   From the skies of long-tost Heaven

   to the heights of Westwind keep,

   We will hold our blades in order,

   and never let our honor sleep.

 

   From the skies of light-iced towers

   to the demons 'place on earth,

   We will hold fast lightnings 'powers,

   and never count gold's worth.

 

   As the guards of Westwind keep

   our souls hold winter s sweep;

   We will hold our blades in order,

   and never let our honor sleep...

 

   As Ayrlyn set down the small lutar, Ryba smiled. The hall was hushed for an instant. Then Cessya began to clap.

   "Don't clap. It's yours, and you need to sing it with her. Again, Ayrlyn."

   The redheaded healer and singer bowed and strummed the lutar. Her silver voice repeated the words.

   By the last chorus of "and never let our honor sleep" all the marines who had become, by virtue of the song and Ryba's pronouncement, the guards of Westwind Keep had joined in.

   Nylan tried not to frown. Had Ryba used the term "guard" before? Was she mixing what she thought she had said, her visions, and what she wished she had said?

   Relyn looked at Narliat, and both men frowned.

   "You frown, young Relyn. Do you doubt our ability at arms? Or mine?" asked the marshal.

   "No, sher."

   " 'Ser' will do, thank you. The term applies to honored warriors." Ryba turned away from the two at the corner of the hearth. "A good rendition, Ayrlyn. Very good."

   Ayrlyn bowed and walked toward the shadows that shrouded the stairs.

   Relyn glanced toward Ryba's pale and impassive face and whispered to Narliat. "She is truly more dangerous than Lord Sillek."

   Far more dangerous, Nylan felt, for Ryba had a vision, and that vision just might change the entire planet-or more. Sillek and the others had no idea what they faced.

   The engineer's sense of reason wanted to deny his feelings. Logic said that a mere twenty-plus marines and an engineer could not change history, but he could feel a cold wind every time he thought of the words Ayrlyn had composed, as though they echoed down the years ahead.

 

 

XXXV

 

IN THE NORTH tower yard, Nylan glanced from the armaglass panels up at the sky, where gray clouds twisted in and out and back upon each other as they churned their way southward, bringing moisture from the northern ocean.

   Behind him Huldran and Cessya ground more lavastone for the mortar needed to finish the southern wall of the bath-house and the archway in its center that would lead to the north tower door. As the powder rose into the air, the intermittent cold breeze blew some of the fine dust toward the engineer.

   Kkkchewww!!! He rubbed his nose and looked at the two marines, working in their threadbare and tattered uniforms. Then he checked the connections on the power cables, and the power levels on the scrambled bank of firin cells he was using-twenty-four percent.

   He lowered the goggles over his eyes.

   Baaa . . . aaaa . . . The sound of the sheep drifted around the tower. Nylan hoped someone knew something about sheep, because he didn't. They gave wool, but how did one shear it? Or turn the fleece into thread or wool or whatever got woven into cloth? There was something about stripping the oil from the wool, too. Saryn or Gerlich probably could slaughter them and dress them, but how many did they want to kill-if any? And when?

   What about the chickens? Kadran had them up in a narrow cut Nylan had made above the stables-a makeshift chicken coop. Would it be warm enough in the winter, or should they be in with the sheep or horses? Who would know? He couldn't attempt to resolve every problem, but he hoped someone else could figure out the sheep and the chickens.

   He forced his thoughts back to the job at hand-cutting the armaglass to fit the window frames that Saryn and Ayrlyn had made.

   Nylan studied the chalked lines on the scarred and once-transparent panels from the landers. If he cut carefully, and if his measurements were correct, he might have enough glass for eight windows-four for the great hall and the rest for the living quarters-one or two on each floor where people slept. In the coming winter, the tower would still be dark-they had no lamps and only the few candles.

   His eyes flicked in the general direction of the second large cairn-and the eleven individual cairns. How could Ryba promise that Westwind would change history when two seasons had reduced their numbers by more than a third? Children? But how many?

   "Stop it!" he told himself, lifting the powerhead.

   Cessya and Huldran glanced up, and Nylan looked down at the armaglass, forcing himself to take a deep breath and concentrate on the cutting ahead.

   He triggered the energy flow to the powerhead, and began his efforts to narrow the laser's focus even more. Unlike his efforts with stone or metal, the armaglass sliced quickly and easily, and Nylan soon looked on eight evenly sized pieces, each ready to fit into a frame.

   After clicking off the power, he checked the cell-bank energy level-barely down at all. His eyes narrowed, and he looked at the armaglass sections, then pushed back the goggles and walked over to the frames. Each frame was complete, except for the top bar, so that the armaglass could be slipped into the grooves.

   Still wearing the gauntlets, Nylan picked up a section and eased it into the frame. It stuck halfway down, but with some tugging and wiggling, he managed to push the glass all the way into the frame. Saryn and Ayrlyn could assemble and install the rest of the windows. Another problem resolved.

   Then he looked back at the laser. Because he had used so little energy, he might even have some power to use for Gerlich's project, not that Gerlich had asked Nylan directly, beyond complaining about underpowered bows.

   Nylan removed the fraying gauntlets and wiped his forehead with the back of his forearm. Cool breezes or not, using the laser left him hot and sweaty. After a swallow of water, he looked at the two smaller braces on the stone, along with the two long rods of composite beside them, then at the sketch that Saryn had drawn from memory.

   Nylan studied the pair of braces once more, then pulled on the gauntlets and eased the goggles in place. The lenses were so scratched that he relied on his senses more than on his sight. All the equipment from the Winterlance was falling apart, overstrained and stressed from usage far heavier than ever planned for by Heaven's shipbuilders and the angels' suppliers.

   Finally, he triggered the power to the laser. The composite sliced easily, and he quickly had the rough form he needed. Then he set that aside and began shaping the brace toward the ideal shape that Saryn had suggested.

   The first long, slow pass with the laser left him with the metal too heavily bunched near the grip. After three passes, with the sweat streaming down his face and around his goggles, he had the shape he needed, leaving an open groove down what he thought of as the spine of the metal.

   He cut the power flow and set the laser wand aside gently, removing the goggles and gauntlets and sitting on a building stone. There he wiped and blotted his face.

   In the meadow to the east, the grass was browning more each day. The leaves of local deciduous trees, even those that seemed like oaks and had acorns, did not change color much. Half the leaves seemed to turn to a light gray and shrivel into almost thin strips clinging to the branches, while the other half dropped off. Why? He didn't know and might never.

   "Ser?" asked Huldran as she carried a stone past him and toward the slowly rising southern wall. "What's that?"

   "A bow . . . maybe."

   "You'll get it right."

   Nylan wasn't sure about that, but he put the goggles back on, and then pulled his hands into the gauntlets. After measuring the composite rod, he triggered the laser, trimmed the rod more, and then started to mold the metal around the rod.

   EEEssssssTTTIThe would-be bow exploded into burning sparkles, and Nylan threw it into a stone-walled corner. He backed away quickly and set down the wand as quickly as he could so that he could beat out the smoldering fabric on his upper arm. As he did, he thanked the high command for insisting on flame-retardant uniforms.

   He took off the goggles and studied the ragged and now burned and holed right sleeve. A section of his biceps was faintly reddened, but he could feel just warmth, not the pain of a burn.

   With that, he watched as his protobow collapsed into a puddled mass of metal and melted composite. What had happened? He knew iron-based alloys could burn, but the laser hadn't been that hot.

   He glanced upward. Overhead, the gray clouds continued to twist back and forth on each other, but not even a sprinkle had fallen on the Roof of the World, let alone lightning. On the other side of the tower, a procession of marines conveyed the last of everything remotely usable from the landers into the tower. Another group was systematically finishing the stripping of the lander shells and storing what could be used for future building or raw materials in the first lander, which had been dragged up next to the bathhouse wall. The second lander shell was at the foot of the narrow canyon where Nylan had quarried his stone, partly filled with cut and dried grasses for winter feed for the horses. Drying racks, made of evergreen limbs, ranged across the spaces below the ridge rocks.

   Nylan glanced back at the cooling mess of metal. Beside him stood Huldran, just looking.

   "Fireworks, yet?" asked Ryba from behind him. "How did you two manage that?"

   "I haven't figured that out yet, but I was trying to form metal around a composite core-"

   "The gray stuff-cormclit?" Nylan nodded.

   "It's pretty heat-resistant in a directional way-that's why it's used as a hull backing," pointed out the marshal.

   "Oh, frig . . ." The engineer shook his head. Next time, he'd have to cut the composite so that the heat-reflective side was to the inside of the groove. It made a stupid kind of sense, although he couldn't have given the explanation a good physicist could have.

   "I take it you figured it out?" asked Ryba. "You have that look that says you're so stupid not to have realized it from the beginning." She paused. "No one else would ever figure out your mistakes if you weren't so upset about them." She laughed briefly. "What were you trying this time?"

   "Another weapon."

   Huldran eased away from the two. "Need to set these stones, ser, Marshal, before the mortar locks up."

   "Go ahead," said Nylan.

   "We'll need every new weapon we can get," Ryba said.

   "We're about out of slug-thrower shells?" asked Nylan.

   "Maybe fifty, seventy-five rounds left in personal weapons, about the same for the two rifles. That's not enough." She shrugged. "What were you trying to make?"

   "One of those endurasteel composite bows."

   "We could use some, but where did you get the idea?"

   "Gerlich was muttering the other morning about the lack of accuracy and range with the native bows."

   "He always mutters-when he's around."

   Thunder rumbled across the skies, echoing back from Freyja, and fat raindrops began to fall.

   "Excuse me. I need to get the laser under cover." Nylan began to disassemble the equipment. First the powerhead and cable went back to the fifth-level storage space-into an area half built into the central stone pedestal-then the meters, and finally, the firin cells themselves. Ryba helped him carry the cell assembly. After that he set the cooled and melted puddle of metal and composite in a corner of the uncompleted bathhouse. He might be able to use the mess in some fashion later . .. and he might not.

   Then, through the scattered but big raindrops, he and Ryba walked up to the emergency generator, spinning in the fall wind. It too was failing, bearings squeaking, and power surging, but it still put power into the firin cell attached to the charger. Both charger and cell were protected by a framework of fir limbs covered with alternating layers of cannibalized lander tiles held in place with heavy stones.

   "Still charging." Nylan carefully replaced the covering.

   "You've made the power last longer than anyone thought possible," Ryba said.

   Looking downhill at the tower, Nylan answered, "There's more to do, a lot more."

   "There always will be, but Dyliess will appreciate it all. All of the guards will."

   At the clop of hooves, both turned toward the narrow trail from the ridge, where Istril rode toward the front gate to the black tower.

   "Trouble?" asked the engineer.

   "I don't think so. She wasn't riding that fast."

   They had almost reached the south side of the tower before the triangle gong rang. Clang! Clang!

   "Those traders are back, Marshal," called Istril as she rode from the causeway toward Nylan and Ryba. "The first ones."

   "Skiodra," Nylan recalled.

   "He's the one. He's got nearly a score of men, and eight wagons."

   "I told you we needed weapons," said Ryba dryly.

   Nylan shrugged.

   "Get a dozen marines," ordered Ryba, looking at Istril, "fully armed. Have the rifles stationed to sweep them if we need it."

   "Gerlich is out hunting," pointed out Istril, "with half a squad."

   "Get who you can." Ryba turned to Nylan. "You, too. You did so well last time that you can handle the trading."

   Nylan shrugged, then headed to the washing area of the stream. He wished the bathhouse were completed. Then he laughed. The tower had gone more quickly than anyone could have anticipated, far more quickly, and he was still worrying, except it was about showers, and laundry tubs, and more jakes.

   Ryba headed toward the stables. "I'll have a mount waiting for you."

   "Thank you. I won't be too long."

   After a quick wash and shave, with the attendant cuts, a return to the tower, and a change into his other shipsuit, he donned the slug-thrower he hoped he didn't have to use, and the black blade he had infused with black flux order. Then he walked down the stone steps, past the aroma of baking bread, and out the front gate of the tower.

   As Ryba had promised, a mount was waiting, its reins held by Istril.

   "They just left, ser, at a walk."

   "Can we catch them by walking a bit faster?" asked Nylan. The not - quite - swaybacked gray whickered softly as he mounted.

   "I think so." Istril grinned.

   Nylan and the silver-haired marine with the warm smile joined the other eleven marines and Ryba halfway down the ridge toward the spot where the traders, dressed in the same quilted jackets and cloaks, waited by a single cart that flew a trading banner. Two were on foot before the cart, the remainder mounted behind the cart.

   Skiodra, still the biggest man among the traders and wearing in his shoulder harness an even bigger broadsword than the long blade Gerlich usually bore in similar fashion, stepped forward. "I am Skiodra, and I have returned." His Old Anglorat did not seem so thick, but Nylan wondered if that were merely his growing familiarity with the local tongue.

   "Greetings, trader," answered Ryba, still mounted. Her eyes did not leave his, and after a moment, the trader bowed.

   "Greetings, Marshal of the angels. We bring more supplies. Have you blades to trade?"

   "These are better," said Ryba. "We will bring them down shortly. What do you have to offer?"

   "Are we sure they are angels?" interrupted the bushy-haired and full-bearded trader behind Skiodra.

   Skiodra waited, enough so that Nylan understood the ploy.

   "If you wish to join those under that cairn there," suggested the engineer quietly, pointing to the heaped rocks that covered the slain bandits, "you may certainly test the strength of your beliefs." He dismounted and handed the reins to Istril. Then he walked forward, slowly drawing his blade, the one he had kept because it was even darker than the others and seemed to hold darkness within its smooth luster, and extended it sideways and slowly. "You might also wish to touch this blade if you doubt." He smiled, knowing that he had bound some of the strange flux energy within the blade.

   The blond reached for the blade, but his fingers never touched the black metal. Instead, he stepped back, his face pale.

   Nylan extended the side of the blade toward Skiodra. "Perhaps..."

   "No. My friend spoke too hastily."

   As before, the first cart-the one with the banner this time-was filled with barrels.

   "Shall we start with the wheat flour?" asked Skiodra. "I have the finest of flours from the fertile plains of Gallos, even better than the flour of Certis, and closer and fresher."

   "And doubtless unnecessarily costly, for all that trouble, trader."

   "It is good flour."

   "I am sure it is," agreed Nylan, "but why should we pay for a few days' freshness when we will be storing it and not using it until seasons from now?"

   "I had forgotten-until now-that, mage or not, you came from a long and distinguished line of usurers," responded Skiodra. "As I told you once, my friend, and I will accord you that courtesy, it is far from costless to travel the Westhorns. This is good flour, the best flour, and that freshness means that you can store it longer, far, far longer... at a silver and three coppers a barrel, I am offering you what few could find."

   Nylan tried not to sigh. Was every trading session going to be like the first? "And fewer still could afford," he responded as smoothly as he could. "Granting you the freshness, still five coppers would more than recompense your travel."

   "Five coppers! Five? You would destroy me," declared Skiodra. "With your black blades, do you think that you can eat metal in the cold of winter? Or your soldiers, will they not grow thin on cold iron? A generous man am I, and for a silver and two I will prove that generosity."

   Ryba's eyes appeared to look at neither Skiodra or Nylan, but remained on the blond trader.

   "Such generosity would quickly bring you dinner on plates of gold and silver. At six coppers a barrel, you would be feeding your mounts sweetcakes." Nylan smiled broadly to signify his amusement.

   "Sweetcakes? More likely maize husks begged from gleaning fields. A silver and one... not a copper less!" Skiodra looked toward the roiling clouds. "May the devils from the skies show you my good faith."

   "Your faith, that I believe," answered Nylan. "It is your price that not even a spendthrift second son would swallow. Seven coppers."

   "I said you were a mage. Oh, I said that, and blades like black lightning you may forge, but your father could not have been a mere usurer, but an usurer to usurers. You would have my horses grub stubble from peasants' fields. Even to give you a gift to start trading, at a silver a barrel, I would have to sell not only my daughter, but my son."

   "At eight coppers a barrel, because I would reward your efforts to climb here, you would still have golden chains for your daughter."

   "I could not sell a single barrel at nine coppers," protested Skiodra.

   "How about eleven barrels for a gold?" Nylan's fingers slipped over the hilt of his blade as he sensed the growing chaos and tension in the big guard next to Skiodra and keyed in the reflex boost he had always worried about using, even on the Winterlance 's neuronet.

   "Done, even though you will ruin me, Mage."

   Ryba looked sideways, and the blade of the blond trader flickered-but not as fast as Nylan's, which flashed like a stroke of black lightning through shoulder and armor.

   The blond trader's dead eyes were frozen open in surprise, and Ryba's blade rested against Skiodra's throat, as Nylan removed and cleaned his own blade, fighting against the throbbing and aching that battered his skull, both from the chaos of death and the agony of forced reflexes. Would every death hurt that much? Or would it get worse?

   "This sort of thing isn't good for a trader," Nylan remarked conversationally. "People might get the wrong idea. We might think that you really wanted to rob us." He squinted, trying to fight off the pain.

   "I did not know . . ." Skiodra looked toward the dozen armed men with bared blades who edged their mounts toward the mounted guards of Westwind.

   "Let us just say that you did not," said Ryba. "You might tell your men to sheathe their blades. Could any of them have stopped the mage?"

   "No." Skiodra looked toward his men. "The angels mean well, I think, and it might be best if you put your blades away."

   About half did.

   "Who wants a blade right through his chest?" asked Ryba with a smile.

   A single man charged, and Ryba's left hand flickered. The dark-bearded man slumped across the horse's mane with the throwing blade through his chest, and his mount reared. The body slid into the dust.

   The dozen mounted angels eased forward, each bearing an unsheathed and dark blade Nylan had forged.

   Skiodra looked at the grim faces of the women, and the blades. The other five men sheathed their blades slowly, though their hands remained on their hilts.

   "This really isn't very friendly, Skiodra," said Nylan. "Have you seen that your men all moved first, and they're all dead?"

   Skiodra swallowed, eyes glancing at Ryba's blade, back at his neck.

   "Doesn't that tell you something?" pursued Nylan. "Now ... do you want to trade for your goods, or do you want us to slaughter you and take them?"

   "How do I know-"

   "Stuff it!" snapped Ryba. "We would prefer to trade, and you know it. You'd prefer to steal, and we know it."

   A pasty cast crossed Skiodra's face.

   "So we'll trade, and if you try anything nasty, we'll just kill you," concluded Ryba. "I thought you agreed to nine coppers a barrel for the flour."

   "Yes, Marshal of angels."

   As Ryba lowered her blade, Skiodra mopped his forehead.

   "What else do you have to offer?"

   Skiodra forced a grin under his pale and sweating brow. "I might ask the same of you, Mage."

   "How about two dozen of the finest blades produced west of the Westhorns, directly, more or less, from a place called Carpa. Of course," Nylan said lightly, "I expect that five of them would pay for everything in your carts with a few golds to spare."

   "I slandered your father, Mage. You had to be whelped from a white witch and sired by the patron angel of usurers." Skiodra shrugged. "I cannot blame you for trying to get the best price, but your idea of fairness would have ruined Lestmerk, and he could get blood from stones and water from the sands of the Stone Hills."

   "Now that we have that understood," laughed Nylan, doing his best to ignore his continuing headache, "what do you offer from the remaining carts?"

   "I will show you, provided you bring down those blades."

   "I'd say to bring ten," Nylan suggested to Ryba, "just so that the honorable Skiodra has a choice. And some of the breastplates, maybe."

   Skiodra frowned, and Nylan translated roughly. "I suggested that the marshal bring a double handful to allow you a choice."

   "Mage . . . you alone must be the patron of usurers."

   Nylan shrugged. "Since you are the patron of ambitious traders, I'd say we could work out a fair trade."

   Skiodra laughed, but the sweat beaded on his forehead, and Nylan wondered why. Did he seem that formidable?

   Cessya turned her mount back up the ridge, presumably to bring down the cart and some of the blades captured from Relyn's forces.

   In the end, Ryba and Nylan looked upon nearly thirty barrels of flours-maize, wheat, and barley; five bolts of gray woolen cloth; one bolt of a red and blue plaid; four barrels of dried fruit; two kegs of a cooking oil from something called oilpods; three axes; two saws; and enough other assorted goods to fill a wagon-plus one of Skiodra's carts, the oldest and most rickety. He'd even managed to get a barrel and a small-keg of feed corn that might help the chickens through the winter.

   The guards remained mounted until the trader's entourage was well along the road toward Lornth. Then, as half the women began to load the two carts, Nylan mounted and eased the gray up beside Ryba.

   "This whole business is a little strange," he observed. "You notice that Skiodra didn't show up until after you made hash of young Relyn's forces. And this Lord Sillek-he's the son of the lord you killed in the first battle-he's offered land and a title for our destruction, enough that this young hothead-Relyn, I mean-was willing to take the chance."

   "It's not all that strange," answered Ryba. "Skiodra wanted to see if we'd been hurt, and how badly. If we were weak, then he'd attack. Since he found us strong, he'll sell the information to someone. Lord Sillek, I suppose."

   "Something like that," Nylan agreed. His eyes covered the goods that had cost eight blades and some breastplates. "We still have some coins."

   . "The flour and fruit will help, but it's going to be a long winter," Ryba said quietly, "even if we can get some more from those traders that Ayrlyn has been working with near ... what is it? ... Clarta, Carpa? The economics are the hard part-in war or peace, I suppose." As the last of Skiodra's riders disappeared beyond the ridge, she turned her mount uphill.

   Nylan rode beside her, still bouncing in his saddle, wondering if he would ever learn to ride as smoothly as the others. "Do you think we can make this work economically? Westwind, I mean?"

   "I already have," said Ryba slowly, "thanks to Skiodra and young Relyn."

   "You don't sound happy. Is that another vision?"

   "Not exactly. But the pieces I've already seen make more sense." Ryba shifted her weight in the saddle and turned to face Nylan. "Look how many bandits there are. Trading has to be dangerous. Westwind will patrol the roads across this section of the mountains-what are they called?"

   "The Westhorns."

   "And we'll charge for it. I think the sheep will make it."

   "But that's trading lives for coin ..." said Nylan. "More or less."

   "Yes, it is. So is everything in a primitive culture. Have you a better answer? Can we grow enough up here to support even the few we have left? And if we could, could we keep it without fighting?"

   "No," admitted Nylan.

   "If they want to die by the sword, we'll live by having sharper and faster blades. Thanks to you, smith of the angels." Ryba did not look at Nylan as she rode past the sentry point where Berlis and Siret, and their rifles, had surveyed the trading.

   Nylan could feel Siret's green eyes on him, and he nodded and smiled to the pregnant marine briefly.

   "Smith of the angels?"

   "For better or worse, that's your legacy, Nylan." Ryba kept riding, crossing the ridge crest and turning the roan toward the canyon that served as a corral until the stables could be completed.

   "And yours? Or do I want to know?"

   "Ryba, of the swift ships of Heaven. Ryba, one of the founders of Westwind and the Legend. Blessed and cursed throughout the history to come, I suspect. Don't ask more, Nylan."

   "Why not?"

   "Because I won't tell. Not even you. Not Dyliess, when her time comes. It hurts too much."

   "You can tell me."

   "No. If I tell, then you-nobody-will act the same, and we might not survive. I can't risk that, not with all the prices everyone's already paid. And will. And will keep paying." She kept riding.

   Nylan looked toward the tower, and then at Ryba's dark hair and the dark hilts of her blades. Ryba of the swift ships of Heaven. Ryba, the founder of the guards of Westwind and the Legend. He swallowed, but he urged the gray to keep pace with the roan.

 

 

XXXVI

 

THE STOCKY MAN whose black hair is streaked with gray escorts Lord Sillek into the room at the north end of the courtyard, carefully closing the door behind him.

   Two heavy wooden doors stand open to the veranda and the shaded fountain that splashes loudly just beyond them.

   Sillek glances around the room, his eyes taking in the inlaid cherry desk, the two bookcases filled with manuscripts bound in hand-tooled leather, and the two cushioned captain's chairs that are drawn up opposite a small table. The chairs face the fountain, and the north wind, further cooled by the fountain, blows into the study.

   "My sanctuary, if you will," says the gray-haired man.

   "Quite well appointed, Ser Gethen," responds Sillek, "and certainly private enough-although ..." He gestures toward the open doors and the fountain.

   "It is more discreet than one would suspect." Gethen laughs. "It took some doing before the sculptor understood that I wanted a noisy fountain."

   "Oh . . ." Sillek smiles, almost embarrassed.

   "Please, Lord Sillek, do be seated." Gethen slips into the chair on the left with an understated athletic grace.

   "Thank you." Sillek sits almost as gracefully.

   "My lady Erenthla has expressed a concern that you might have come to the Groves as a result of her hasty note to the lady Ellindyja. She wrote that missive while she was in some distress." Gethen clears his throat.

   "I must admit that the receipt of the letter, certainly not its contents, did remind me that I had been remiss in paying my respects. My arrival represents a long-overdue visit to someone who has always been of great support and good advice to the house of Lornth." Sillek inclines his head ever so slightly.

   Thrap. The knock is almost unheard over the gentle plashing of the fountain, but Gethen immediately rises, crosses the handwoven, patterned carpet, and opens the door.

   "Thank you, my dear." The master of the Groves stands aside as a young blond woman carries a tray into the study. On the elaborately carved tray are two cups, a covered pot with a spout, and a flat dish divided into two compartments. The left contains carna nuts, the right small honeyed rolls.

   Sillek stands, his eyes going from the confectioneries to the bearer, whose shoulder-length blond hair is kept off her face with a silver and black headband. Her eyes are deep green, her skin the palest of golds, her nose straight and even, and just strong enough not to balance the elfin chin and high cheekbones.

   "This is my middle daughter, Zeldyan. Zeldyan, this is Lord Sillek."

   Zeldyan sets the tray on the low table, then rises and offers a deep, kneeling bow to Sillek, a bow that drops the loose neckline of her low-cut tunic enough to reveal that her body is as well proportioned as her face. "Your Grace, I am at your service." Her voice bears the hint of husky bells.

   "And I, at yours," Sillek responds, as he tries not to swallow too hard.

   "We will see you at supper, Zeldyan." Gethen smiles indulgently.

   She bows to them both, then steps back without turning, easing her way from the study and closing the door behind her. Gethen slides the bolt into place.

   "A lovely young woman, and with great bearing and grace," Sillek observes. "You must be proud of her." His fingers touch his beard briefly.

   "My daughters are a great comfort," Gethen answers as he reseats himself, "a great comfort. And so is my only son, Fornal. You will meet him at supper as well."

   "I never heard but good of all your offspring, ser." Sillek has caught the slight emphasis on the word "only," but still places his own marginal accent on the word "all."

   "Your courtesy and concern speak well of you, Lord Sillek." Gethen leans forward and pours the hot cider into the cups. "Your father was not just Lord of Lornth, but a friend and a compatriot." He turns the tray and gestures to the cups, letting Sillek choose.

   Sillek takes the cup closest to him and lifts it, chest-high, before answering. "A compatriot of my sire is certainly someone to heed, and to pay great respect to." Then he sips the cider and replaces the cup on the tray.

   Gethen takes his cup. "The son of a lord and a friend is also a lord and a friend." He sips and sets the cup beside Sillek*.

   Sillek glances toward the fountain, then back to Gethen. "You offered my sire your best judgment."

   "And I would offer you the same."

   "You have heard of the ... difficulties I have faced recently, between certain events on the Roof of the World and Lord Ildyrom's ... adventures near Clynya?"

   "I have heard that certain newcomers are said to be evil angels, and that they have great weapons and a black mage with powers not seen since the time of the descent of the demons."

   "We do not know nearly enough," Sillek admits, "but what I do know is that these so-called angels killed nearly threescore trained armsmen and lost but three of their number. They have also destroyed several bands of brigands who thought them easy prey. Unfortunately, they have also caused others pain, others who may have judged-"

   "It often is not our judgment that matters, Lord Sillek, but the perceptions of others," interrupts Gethen. "When the perception of the people is that women are weak, those who fall to women are deemed even weaker and unfit to lead." The master of the Groves shrugs, sadly. "And those who lead, especially rulers, must follow those perceptions unless they wish to fight all those who now support them."

   "That is a harsh judgment."

   "Harsh, yes, but true, and that is why I, who loved all my children, have but one son, for I cannot endanger the others by flaunting dearly held beliefs." Gethen clears his throat.

   Sillek waits without speaking.

   "I understand you were successful in reclaiming the grasslands with a rather minimal loss of trained armsmen." Gethen laughs. "Rather ingenious, I think."

   "I was fortunate," Sillek says, "but it ties up my chief armsman and one of my strongest wizards in Clynya."

   "Hmmmm. I see your problem. If you attempt to secure the river, or Rulyarth ... or send another expedition to the Roof of the World. .."

   Sillek nods.

   "Perhaps you should take the battle to Ildyrom. It appears unlikely that the newcomers on the Roof of the World would move against anyone in the near future. Nor will the Suthyan traders."

   "I had thought that, Ser Gethen. Still, Ildyrom can muster twice the armsmen I can. The other option would be to enlist support for a campaign to take Rulyarth, enough support to wage such an effort without removing forces from Clynya."

   Gethen purses his lips, then tugs at his chin. "That might work, provided those who supported you were convinced that you would continue to work in their best interests. With the access to the Northern Ocean, and the trade revenues, Lornth could support a larger force of armsmen ..."

   "I had thought that, ser, but wished to consider your thoughts upon the matter."

   "Hmmm . . . that does bear consideration." Gethen tugs at his chin again, then reaches for his cider and sips. "You would need to make a solid, a very solid, commitment."

   "That is something that I would be willing to do, ser, especially for the good of Lornth."

   "The good of Lornth, ha! You sound like your father. Beware, Sillek, of phrases like that. When a ruler talks of the good of his land, he means his own good."

   "The two are not opposites, ser."

   "True. And sometimes they are the same. Tell me, what do you think of Zeldyan?"

   "At first blush, she is attractive and courtly. I would know her better."

   "Should you wish for the good of Lornth, Sillek, I'd bet you will know her much better."

   "That is quite undoubtedly true." Sillek forces a smile. "For you offer good advice."

   "How good it is-you shall see, but I offer you all the experience that I have, purchased dearly through my mistakes." The gray-haired man rises. "I believe the time for supper nears, and Fornal and Zeldyan would like to share in your company."

   "And I in theirs, and yours, and your lady's." Sillek stands and follows Gethen into the twilight of the courtyard.

 

 

XXXVII

 

THE WEST WIND, as usual, was chill, chill enough that most of those working on the Roof of the World had covered their arms, although only Narliat, stacking grasses on the drying rack, actually wore a jacket in the sunny afternoon of early fall.

   In the colder shadow of the tower on the north side, as Huldran, Cessya, and Selitra worked to complete the stonework on the east and south sides of the bathhouse, Nylan tried to complete the bow he had failed three times with squinting through the goggles, coaxing power out of the cells and through the powerhead. The line of light and power flared almost green, and Nylan channeled the reduced power around the curved form he held in the crude tongs, smoothing the metal around the composite core, trying to shunt the energy evenly around the composite without burning the iron-based alloy.

   With a last limited power bath, Nylan flicked off the laser and slipped the protobow into the quench-but only for a moment-before laying it out on the dented chunk of stone too flawed to use for building.

   In the end, the shape differed clearly, if subtly, from the sketch that Saryn had provided so many days earlier. Still, a wide smile crossed his face. The bow had been harder, much harder, than the blades.

   After a drink from the fired-clay mug, he picked up the second crude bow frame, already roughed out, and began inserting the composite core.

   But just before noon, he had created three bows and dropped the energy levels to where he needed to replace two of the ten cells before continuing.

   He also needed a rest, and something to eat.

   After disassembling the laser and storing the wand and powerhead, the engineer walked around the tower toward the causeway and the main south gate to the tower.

   The south tower yard, below the causeway, was getting more use, now that the tower was occupied, and the landers had been moved again and set up more for storage, either to the west of the tower or at the mouth of the canyon used for corraling the horses and for stone. A low rough-stone wall was rising around the yard, built by the simple expedient of asking the marines to carry small stones and put them along the lines Nylan had scratched out. There were enough stones around the tower, and the knee-height wall made a clear demarcation between meadow and the tower yard.

   On the uphill side of the yard, near the causeway into the tower, Ayrlyn and Saryn were working to improve their cart, based on their ideas and what they had seen in practice in the cart obtained from Skiodra. On the downhill side, beside the remaining roof slates and building stones for the bathhouse, Gerlich and Jaseen sparred with the heavy wooden blades.

   Nylan's eyes moved south where, on the trail-road down from the ridge, a thin, red-haired figure walked between the two marines, and Fierral followed.

   Since Ryba wasn't around, Nylan waited until the four reached the base of the causeway. The marines stopped, and Fierral stepped forward, her eyes surveying the area before settling on Nylan.

   The local, so thin she seemed to be little more than a child, barely reached Fierral's shoulder, although her tangled hair fell nearly to the middle of her back. Her pale blue eyes darted from the marines to Nylan. She shrank away and back toward the marines.

   "Ser," Fierral began, "this local just showed up and bowed and bowed. Selitra and Rienadre don't understand the local Anglorat, and I don't do that much better, but I think she's asking for refuge or something. Do you know where the marshal is?"

   "No one here will harm you," Nylan offered in his slow Anglorat, looking at the painfully thin figure.

   The girl-woman looked down at the packed dirt leading to the causeway, and eased back until she was pressed against Rienadre's olive-blacks.

   "She's clearly not fond of men. Better get the marshal," Nylan suggested. He turned toward the nearest of his tower workers, who had stopped on the far side of the causeway by the main tower door. "Cessya? I think Ryba's checking the space for stables up in the stone-cutting canyon. Will you get her?"

   "Yes, ser. Wouldn't mind a break from lugging stone."

   "Well... you could bring down a few of the larger fragments ..."

   "Ser?"

   Nylan grinned.

   "Master Engineer... someday . . . someday . .."

   "Promises, promises..."

   Cessya flushed as she turned.

   "You're a dangerous man, Engineer," said Fierral.

   "Me?" Nylan laughed.

   When the force leader, or armsmaster, just shook her head, Nylan's eyes crossed the south tower yard to where Ayrlyn was bent over the axle of the creaky cart. Saryn stood on the other side.

   "Ayrlyn?"

   The redheaded healer lifted her head. "Yes, Nylan? What great engineering expertise can you offer to stop the creakiness of the wheels?"

   "Roller bearings, except I can't make them. Grease, otherwise, preferably from Kyseen's leavings or from animal fat."

   "Grease?" Ayrlyn made a face. "I need engineering, and all you have to offer is grease? That was what you said yesterday."

   "That's what they used for centuries. It's smelly and messy, but I understand it works." Nylan shrugged and grinned. "Can you give us a hand?"

   "With what?"

   The engineer motioned toward the local girl-woman. "We have a local problem. I need you and Narliat."

   "That worthless loafer?" Ayrlyn took a deep breath, then wiped her greasy hands on a clump of grass. "He's pretending to stack grasses to dry. It's the easiest job he can find."

   "I'll get him," Saryn volunteered. "You talk to the local kid, Ayrlyn. I still hate Anglorat." The former second pilot, limping yet, turned and headed for the grass-drying racks.

   Ayrlyn wiped her hands on the grass again, then crossed the yard, where she stopped and looked at the small redhead. After a time, the girl-woman looked back.

   "Who are you?" asked Ayrlyn.

   "Hryessa." The name was so faint that all of the angels had to strain to catch it.

   "Where are you from?"

   "Lornth. The way was hard." Nylan nodded at the long scratches, and the scabs, on the scrawny legs below the gray dresslike garment, and the purple and green bruises on the left side of the face. A white line in front of her left ear bore witness to a previous injury. "Why did you come?"

   "Because . . . because ... I heard that you were angel-women, and that you had defeated Lord Nessil. Even the mages of Lord Sillek fear you." Hryessa pursed her lips as though she feared having said too much.

   "Some of that is true," answered Nylan. "We have defeated Lord Nessil, and some of the bandits."

   The small redhead stiffened and swallowed, but her eyes finally met Nylan's, although she shivered as she spoke. "They say that you are a black mage who devours souls and puts them into the stones of your tower."

   "Oh ... frig.. ."The expletive whispered from Rienadre's lips.

   "I do not devour souls. All of us have built the tower," Nylan explained.

   "You are too modest," interjected Narliat. "The mage made the tower possible, and he used a knife of fire-"

   Hryessa shrank back until her back pressed against Rienadre's legs.

   Nylan wanted to smash Narliat for making things harder, but Rienadre spoke before Nylan had figured out what to say.

   "Easy, easy, kid," said the marine. "The engineer's good people." Rienadre patted the girl-woman's shoulder, and the small redhead straightened, more in response to the tone than the words she could not have understood.

   "He is a good mage," explained Ayrlyn in Old Anglorat. "His works have saved many, and his tower will protect us all against the winter. It is only made of stones and timber and metal-nothing more."

   Nylan tried not to wince at being called a mage. He was an engineer, and a poor excuse for one in a low-tech culture. That was all he was. Except... as he thought that, his head throbbed. Was he more than an engineer?

   "You wanted to see us?" asked Ayrlyn.

   "I had . .. hoped, great lady ..'." Her eyes fell to the clay underfoot. "I had hoped to find a place."

   "It will be a cold and long winter," Ayrlyn offered.

   "I do not care . . . you are women." Her eyes glistened, but the tears remained unshed, and Hryessa stiffened, gathering herself together in pride.

   "You do not have to beg, or humble yourself," Nylan said softly. "The lady Ayrlyn only wished you to know that winter on the Roof of the World will not be easy."

   "Is he really a man?" asked Hryessa, directing his words at Ayrlyn.

   Nylan tried not to frown.

   "Yes," answered Ayrlyn with a smile. "He is very much a man, but he is an angel, as are we all."

   The sound of hoofbeats interrupted the process, as Ryba guided the big roan to a halt by the causeway, letting Cessya slide off first, then dismounted and handed the marine the reins. The marine led the roan to the hitching rail.

   Ryba walked toward the group, halting beside Nylan and looking at the small redhead. "You are Hryessa," she said slowly, "and you have come for refuge. You are welcome." With that, the marshal smiled. "All such as you are welcome."

   Nylan froze for a moment. How had Ryba known the woman's name?

   Hryessa bent her head, then knelt. "Thank you, Angel of Heaven."

   Ayrlyn's and Nylan's eyes met, and Nylan realized that they shared the same feeling-one of awe, a sense of experiencing something that transcended either of them.

   After a moment, Ayrlyn spoke. "These others-they are also angels."

   "But she is the angel," said Hryessa in a calm voice. "I have seen." She bowed again to Ryba.

   Ryba inclined her head to Ayrlyn. "Would you take care of her? Get her washed and clean and clothed? And you and Fierral need to work on sleeping arrangements and blade training."

   "We'll take care of it." Ayrlyn nodded. After a moment, so did Fierral.

   Hryessa frowned, her eyes darting from Ryba to Ayrlyn.

   "They're going to make sure you get bathed, clothed, and fed," Nylan explained in Old Anglorat. "Then, you will learn our ways, and they will teach you the way of the blade."

   "Teach me a blade, like an armsman?"

   "Better, Hryessa, better," said Fierral in accented Anglo-rat.

   Again, Ayrlyn and Nylan exchanged glances, and Nylan felt that they shared almost a sense of foreboding.

   Ryba nodded and turned back toward the long hitching rail on the west side of the causeway, where her roan was tied.

   "Let's go, Hryessa," suggested Ayrlyn, leading the young woman toward the tower.

   Nylan headed for the stream to wash, wishing, again, that he had gotten around to finishing the bathhouse.

   After washing, he turned back toward the tower and walked across the short causeway and into the great room. All eight narrow windows to the great room were open to admit the cool breeze. In four, the armaglass windows were pivoted and the shutters folded back. In the other four, without the armaglass, the shutters were just folded open.

   In time, Nylan hoped, they would be able to afford glass for the remainder of the tower windows, but glass was a lower priority than food or weapons, especially now that Ryba had declared that the destiny of the guards of Westwind would be the double blades.

   No wonder she had pressed him for the forty blades he had made so far!

   He stepped toward the mostly filled tables. The grass baskets were filled with loaves of fresh-baked bread. Ayrlyn had finally brought back a yeast starter or whatever it was, and Kyseen had only exploded dough all over the kitchen a handful of times before learning how to mix flour, yeast, and water in making loaves suited to the big, wood-burning ovens that everyone had thought were too big when Nylan and Huldran had started laying bricks and mortaring in the metal cooking surfaces and oven grate slots.

   Nylan sniffed the air, trying to determine the composition of the steam rising from the two big pots-one on each table. Some sort of stew, with local roots and greens tossed in.

   Jaseen turned toward Nylan as he passed the end of the second table, and he noted the scratches on the medtech's forearms.

   "What happened?" he asked.

   "Frigging pine trees. The second and Kyseen discovered the cones have nuts, and you can roast them or bake them or whatever. Only problem is that if you wait for the cones to fall, the nuts are gone. Selitra and me, we've been climbing pines. I slipped, and some of those needles are like knives."

   "I'm sorry."

   "So am I. Frigging nuts. Bet they don't even taste good." She took a savage bite from the chunk of bread she held, and Nylan walked toward the hearth end of the first table.

   Ryba, as usual, sat at the head of the table, and Nylan slipped onto the end of the bench to her left, the space that was always left for him.

   As he sat, he noticed Ayrlyn leading Hryessa toward the second table. The local woman now wore leather trousers, boots, and a shirt somewhat large for her thin frame. Her face had been washed, and her hair had been cut short, marine-style.

   As Hryessa looked down the table, her eyes widened, and she swallowed. Ayrlyn said something, easing Hryessa onto the bench and breaking off a large chunk of bread for her.

   "There's our first recruit," noted Ryba.

   "She's not that big," said Gerlich from the other side of the table.

   "Given time, she'll be as good or better than any except Istril or a few others." Ryba's words were matter-of-fact. "We'll see more before long."

   Beside Saryn, Relyn frowned, struggling with a spoon in his left hand. "You will teach her the blade?"

   "Of course. Why not?"

   Relyn opened his mouth, then looked at Nylan. "Mage? What do you see when women have blades?"

   "More men and women will get killed-at first." Nylan stood and spooned stew onto his trencher. "After that, most of those who die will be arrogant men."

   "You sound displeased at that," Saryn offered.

   "I'm displeased any time force is the only answer, and these days I'm displeased a lot," said the engineer as he reseated himself, forcing his tone to be wry.

   The silver-haired Siret smiled shyly and passed Nylan a basket of bread.

   "Thank you." Nylan handed the basket back after breaking off a chunk of the heavy bread.

   "You're welcome, ser."

   "Would you pass me some, dear Siret?" asked Berlis.

   "I certainly would, dear Berlis. About the time you bed a demon-except you already have. So enjoy it." The deep green eyes flashed.

   "Talk about bedding ..."

   "If you want to bed a blade," suggested Siret, "just say another word."

   "Guards!" snapped Ryba.

   Both women closed their mouths.

   "Thank you." Ryba turned to Nylan. "You were working on something different this morning."

   "Yes. I finally got the bow thing worked out, I think." Nylan turned to Gerlich. "You might want to try it later this afternoon."

   "Try what?" Gerlich lifted his eyebrows.

   "A metal-composite bow."

   "I'll try it, but I finally made one out of a local fir-type tree that works pretty well."

   Nylan took a spoonful of stew. The meat and sauce tasted more of salt and some spice than meat, but he was hungry and shoveled in several mouthfuls, followed with a bite of bread. The bread was better-tasting than the stew.

   Perhaps because of the outburst between Berlis and Siret, the midday meal was relatively quiet, although Gerlich had a long and low conversation with Narliat.

   After eating, Nylan went back to the north yard and the next group of metal-composite bows.

   First, he laid out three more strips of composite, and trimmed them, before rough-shaping the braces into the bow outlines. After that, he turned off the power and rested for a moment, letting the chill breeze off the western heights cool him and dry his sweat-soaked hair.

   Behind him, the clink of trowels and mortar and stone continued as the outside walls of the bathhouse rose. The walls separating jakes, showers, and laundry could be installed after the roofing.

   His break done, Nylan adjusted the goggles over his eyes once more and eased power through the laser. He could sense the raggedness of the powerhead, and he sweated even more heavily as he strained not only to meld the metal around the composite core, but to keep the energy flow from the powerhead constant.

   As he turned the curved shape in the tongs, his breath became more and more uneven, but he managed to smooth the last curves before shutting down the power and pushing the goggles back.

   The quick quench was followed by his slumping onto a stone to rest.

   Four bows. How many more could he coax from the laser? Should he stop and use the life of the powerhead to do the delicate stonework? He took a deep breath. He still had the other powerhead.

   With a quick rest and a mugful of cold water, he went back to work on the next bow. The powerhead wavered more; Nylan strained more; and he took even more time gasping and recuperating. Five bows rested on the stones.

   The third bow of the afternoon creased his arms with lines of fire long before he finished, and left a knifelike pounding inside his skull. As he started on the final smoothing and melding, coaxing power out of the cells and through the powerhead, the line of light and power stuttered more and more in green bursts. Sweat poured from his forehead and around his goggles and even inside them.

   His eyes burning, Nylan completed the last smoothing and flicked off the power to the wand, then set it aside and stepped toward the quench tub. He slipped on the clay, but caught himself as he dipped the bow into the quench for its momentary bath before laying it on the stone.

   He sat on the stone for a long time, sipping water, eyes closed.

   "Are you all right, ser?" Cessya finally asked.

   "I will be." / hope, he added mentally, considering I've created six bows that might not even work, nearly destroyed the laser in the process, and feel like the local mounts have tromped me into the stone.

   "Are you sure?"

   The engineer opened his eyes and nodded.

   "What are these?" asked Cessya.

   "A new kind of bow-if they work."

   "Do you need some help?"

   "Well . . . if you could take the firin bank back to storage," Nylan admitted.

   "Selitra! Give me a hand here. We need to store the energy cells," called Cessya.

   Nylan slowly disassembled the power cables and the wand and powerhead while they carried the cells back into the tower. Then he followed with the laser components and stored them on the shelves above the power cells.

   When he returned, the three were back at their stonework. Nylan extracted the woven bowstring from his pocket and tried to string the first bow. It took him three tries, probably because his arms were still aching.

   Then he had to go back into the tower and find some arrows. Instead, he found Gerlich off the main hall.

   "Are you ready to test the bow?" asked the engineer. "We'll need arrows and a target."

   "Sure. Why not? I've got an area where I've been practicing at the south end of the meadow, near those scattered firs. We'll see what your toy will do, compared to the wooden one I worked out." Gerlich grinned, but the grin made Nylan uneasy.

   The two walked back to the north tower yard, Gerlich with his own bow and quiver. The western wind felt good as it ruffled through Nylan's hair, and the engineer realized he was still hot. He handed the composite bow to Gerlich.

   "Hmmm ... a little heavy, and probably too short."

   Nylan looked at the curves. "Too short?"

   "Well, Relyn says that a proper bow should be chin high, about three and a half cubits local."

   Nylan shrugged. His bows were not quite chest high, but, easier, he suspected, to carry on horseback.

   "Let's see about the draw." Gerlich took the bow and mock-nocked an arrow. "Stiffer than it looks, but probably not strong enough for the average armsman." He grinned again. "Then, there's accuracy. Let's go and see."

   Nylan followed the long-legged former weapons officer across the meadow to the half-dozen scattered firs. Circular targets on ropes dangled from the limbs.

   "Those just twist and flap unless you hit them square and hard," said Gerlich. "Good training."

   The engineer watched as Gerlich took a long arrow from the quiver, nocked it, and released the shaft.

   The shaft clunked against one of the targets, spinning it, but the shaft did not hold and angled to the ground. Gerlich released two more shafts. The same thing happened twice more.

   He handed the bow back to Nylan. "What you've got is accurate; it's easy to carry; and it's probably all right for hunting. I'd like something with more power, and I think most of the locals would also. It's good, but not in the class of your blades."

   Gerlich lifted and strung the big bow, then sent a shaft whistling toward the target. Thunk! The target swung in the light breeze, but the shaft held in place. "See the difference?"

   Nylan nodded politely. One difference he had noted was that Gerlich had not drawn the composite bow to its full capability.

   "I'll stick to my own bow and my toothpick, if you don't mind. Smaller weapons are fine for marines." Gerlich paused. "Is that all, Engineer?"

   "That's all."

   "I need to see about some game to fill the pots." Gerlich walked toward the trees, reclaiming the arrows and checking them, and resetting the targets. Then he raised an arm and walked briskly toward the canyon corral.

   Nylan followed more slowly, wondering about both the bow and Gerlich. Why had Gerlich not drawn the bow fully? Was he worried that the metal might splinter? Nylan would never have given him a bow that he thought would fail.

   "Is that your new bow?" Istril rode up to Nylan as he neared the causeway. "Could I try it?"

   Nylan shrugged and handed it to her. "Gerlich wasn't impressed. He said it wasn't strong enough."

   Istril laughed. "Brute strength isn't everything." She tried the draw. "It seems as heavy as his." She looked at Nylan. "We've got a target range up near the corral canyon. Do you want to see how it works?"

   Nylan glanced to the west, where the sun hung just above the peaks. He wasn't going to get much more done before supper anyway. "All right."

   "Climb up behind me," invited the marine. "Benja can carry double for a short ways, and it's faster."

   "You're sure?"

   "I'm sure."

   Nylan clambered up awkwardly behind the slim marine.

   "You're going to have to put an arm around me, ser, or you'll get bounced off after four steps."

   Nylan flushed, but complied, and Istril flicked the reins. Nylan still bounced, but Istril seemed welded to her saddle, able even to open and close the crude gate without dismounting. When they reached the corral area, Nylan slid down gratefully into the shadows. "Thank you. I think I do better in the saddle than behind it."

   "Most people do, ser." Istril slid down and unsaddled Benja. "You won't mind if I rub her down?"

   "Of course not." As she worked on her mount, Nylan walked up the canyon to where he had cut the stone. The brickwork for the stables was almost finished, and rough fir timbers were stacked beside the walls. He ducked through what would be the door and studied the interior.

   The rafters wouldn't be that far above his head, but the horses would have shelter at least. He walked outside. Braaawwwk. . . awwwkkkk . . . awwkk. From the smaller and more crudely bricked space where Nylan had tried to quarry more stones, before finding the rock fractured, came the sound-and the definite odor-of chickens.

   Nylan turned and headed downhill. Istril had just patted Benja on the flank, and the mare whuffed, then walked to the water trough.

   "The targets are up there, on that side." Istril strode briskly uphill, and Nylan followed, marveling that the slender guard had so much energy so late in the day. She paused. "There they are."

   Three man-shaped figures-sculpted from what seemed to be twisted fir limbs-stood before a backdrop of gray that flowed from the canyon wall.

   "The gray stuff behind them is sand and dirt. No sense in blunting arrowheads." Istril nocked a shaft with a fluid motion and released it.

   Whunk! The shaft vibrated in the target, right where an armsman's heart would have been. "Nice!" she exclaimed. "Gerlich said it wasn't strong enough."

   "Friggin' idiot. Beggin' your pardon, ser, but he is." Istril nocked and released a second shaft, which appeared beside the first. "Sweet weapon, ser, and there's plenty of pull here.

   I'll show you. Might cost me a shaft, but we might as well find out."

   The marine walked toward the target on the far right. When she reached it, she bent down and pulled a battered breastplate from behind the target, fastening it in place. Then she walked back to Nylan.

   "We'll see how it does against the local armor."

   "Can you spare a shaft?"

   "I'd rather lose a shaft than my neck." Istril laughed, a warm sound. "It's better to find out now instead of in a fight." She set her feet, nocked a third shaft, and let it fly.

   A dull clunk followed the impact, but the shaft slammed through the metal and held. At the sound, Benja barely looked up from where she chewed off a few clumps of mostly brown grass.

   "I don't know what the big idiot's talking about." Istril shook her head. "This is smaller than his monster. It's easier to carry. It aims better, and it goes through armor. What else do you need?"

   "The reputation for carrying the biggest bow and blade?" suggested Nylan.

   Istril laughed again. Then her face cleared. "This is a killer weapon, ser. Any of the marines-I guess we're guards, now-any of us would carry this over anything else I've seen or used. Do you have any more?"

   "Five others, but I don't have strings for them."

   "Five? That's a good start."

   "I don't know how long the laser will last," Nylan explained, "and I didn't want to make any more unless they were good."

   "Good? With this and your blades, the locals won't stand a chance."

   "Please don't humor me, Istril," Nylan asked.

   "I'm not humoring you, ser. I wouldn't do that. We're talking our necks and lives."

   "I didn't mean-"

   "I know." Istril extended the bow.

   "You can keep it. I wouldn't have the faintest idea of how to use it."

   The faint sound of the triangle gong announced the evening meal.

   "Thank you, ser. We'd better be headed down."

   They walked in silence down to the tower, ducking through the fence poles and following the path to the causeway.

   "Bread smells good," said Istril as Nylan swung open the heavy front door to the tower.

   "Kyseen does that well."

   "I think Kadran's been helping since her shoulder was torn up."