Magic Engineer

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  The trader has shivered, whimpered once, and ceased his struggle long before Dorrin releases him.

  “You’ve killed me,” the older man sobs. His hands rip at his clothes, then he turns and shambles from the stable scratching his neck, and pulling at his garments.

  Dorrin does not watch, instead returning to the stall and lifting the pallet, Liedral and all, into the cart. Then he leads the cart horse and Meriwhen out of the stable.

  Jarnish is standing in his underdrawers beside the well, pouring a bucket of cold water over himself. “Another one… another one.”

  Jaddy scurries through the mud toward Dorrin.

  He waits. At least he owes her that.

  “A terrible curse you put upon him! No good will come from that, and I thought you were a nice young fellow.”

  Dorrin smiles sadly. “I only blessed him with a desire for order.”

  “Oh… that be an even more terrible curse! How could ye be so cruel?”

  Dorrin looks pointedly toward the cart bed.

  “You’ll be thinking he beat her… I know he didn’t.”

  “Had he beaten her,” Dorrin says slowly, “he would not stand. Ever.”

  “A just man you are, and that makes you all the more terrible.” Jaddy looks back toward Jamish, who shivers under another rush of cold water. “No one could curse you more than you already are. For all those around you will suffer, and suffer.”

  “They already are,” Dorrin admits. “They already are.” He climbs onto the cart seat and flicks the reins.

  The cook watches as the cart lurches through the mud of the yard and out to the road.

  CIV

  CREAAKKK… DORRIN GUIDES the cart around the uphill turn and back onto the straightaway. Behind the cart, Meriwhen whickers, still complaining about the packs she carries. Liedral, lying on blankets and between two pillows, sleeps in the small space behind the cart seat.

  Driving the cart is worse than learning to ride had been. The seat is hard, and the roads a mess of mud and slush. And Liedral still moans, sleeping or half-awake.

  “Holloa, the cart!”

  Two ragged figures sit on the fallen tree beside the road. Dorrin’s heart beats faster, and his perceptions fly toward the men. There are only two of them, and neither carries a bow. Still, he reaches down with his left hand and eases the staff into a position where he can grab it easily.

  He might as well continue up the gentle slope and through the trees too far apart to be a forest, since he cannot turn the cart quickly enough to escape-and because he needs to get back to Diev.

  The two men amble into the road. Each carries a sword.

  “Holloa. We’d like to collect the tolls.” The dark-bearded man stands a half-head taller than Dorrin and waves a battered sword.

  “I wasn’t aware that there were any tolls on this road.”

  “There are now, my peddler friend.”

  “Aye, and they’re steep, too,” growls the shorter man, who holds his sword more like a bludgeon.

  Dorrin bends and brings the staff up with a one-handed fluid motion.

  “Ah… the peddler has a toothpick.”

  Dorrin reins the cart to a halt and drops to the muddy road, sliding as he does.

  “Poor peddler… Aye, and he can’t even stand.” Both men come around the left side of the cart horse toward Dorrin.

  Dorrin wiggles his boots, trying to get a firmer footing in the muddy road, then squares the staff and waits.

  The taller man stops. “Now. Let’s have the purse.”

  “No.” Dorrin doesn’t care that much about the purse, but he has no illusions that providing the purse will allow their escape.

  “Poor peddler… poor dumb peddler…” The tall man swings the sword.

  Before the blade even reaches forward, the black staff has thrust, then cracked across the man’s wrists. The sword lies in the mud, but the would-be bandit lifts a knife and lunges. This time Dorrin is even quicker, and one body lies in the road mud.

  The smaller, ginger-bearded man’s sword sweeps toward Dorrin before he can recover fully with the staff, and he ducks, but the blade tip rakes across his forehead.

  Dorrin’s feet slide on the muddy road, but he manages to lurch into position with the staff before the remaining bandit can bring the sword back. He waits for the clumsy swing with the old blade, parries it, and then slams the end of the staff into the bandit’s diaphragm. Even as the man falls, Dorrin automatically follows up with a second blow.

  Then, as the white agony sears through his brain, he leans on the side of the wagon, barely able to hang on.

  After the pain subsides to hammers banging through his skull, he checks the wagon, but Liedral still moans in her sleep, and Meriwhen whickers when he touches her neck. Then he drags the bodies into the melting snow beside die road, and, atempting to be practical, checks the robbers’ purses. He finds one silver and four coppers, plus a gold ring, all of which he slips into his own purse. He leaves the battered swords next to the bodies, which he does not even attempt to bury. The winter has also been hard for the scavengers.

  Dorrin has no illusions about his prowess. Neither man was a real highwayman, and his work with the staff was clumsy at best. He uses one of the clean rags he brought from Jarnish’s to clean and blot the cut across his forehead, trying to sprinkle it with some crushed astra, which burns as he applies it.

  After climbing back onto the cart, he flicks the reins. Is this the sort of desperation Brede and Kadara deal with all the time? What can a mere smith do? He shivers, even as his free hand brushes Liedral’s fevered forehead, trying to instill yet more order and reassurance.

  The cart slides over the hill crest, and Dorrin can see the haze of Diev in the distance, reinforced by the kaystone on the curve at the bottom of the hill.

  “Thirsty…”

  With one eye on the road, he fumbles with the water bottle, dribbling some on Liedral’s cheeks, but getting most of it into her mouth.

  “… Dorrin…”

  “I’m here.”

  Creakkkk… The cart hub scrapes the kaystone as Dorrin tries to guide it around the curve while still reassuring Liedral. The wheels barely have purchase on the slush that remains of the rolled and packed snows of winter.

  “I’m here,” he repeats, glancing toward die Westhorns beyond Diev, and the gray clouds that promise another cold rain, even more miserable with the pounding that surges through his skull. He hopes they will make it to his holding before the rain does. “I’m here.”

  CV

  DORRIN LOOKS AT the plate on the anvil. He has never done much cold-working, but armor, even shields, requires cold hammer work. Yet black iron cannot be hammered.

  He sets the larger plate aside and takes a smaller chunk of iron, scrap from a strap, and uses the tongs to ease it into the forge. As he watches the color of the metal, Vaos wheels in another load of charcoal in the iron-tired wheelbarrow. The front wheel drips mud all over the smooth clay floor.

  “Vaos, after you… Just clean up the mud.”

  “But, ser, the floor is just clay, and I’ll get more mud on it when I go out again. It’s pouring.”

  “The mud bothers me. It may be unreasonable, but I need it cleaned up.”

  “Yes, ser.” Vaos trudges toward the broom.

  “Brush it off the wheel, too, if you would.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Dorrin brings the iron to the anvil, strikes the metal to thin it down to the thickness of armor, slowly infusing order to turn it into black iron. When he is done, he sets the fullered and ordered iron on the back edge of the forge to anneal, and searches for another chunk of scrap.

  The second chunk he fullers down to plate thickness and then turns into black iron, placing it in turn on the back of the forge.

  Next he gets out the charcoal and tries to calculate on the smoothed plank he uses for his smithy figures. If the shield is roughly a twentieth of a span in thickness… He checks the figures. Just the m
etal surface of a shield one and a half cubits across will weigh more than a stone.

  “Darkness!” The braces and frame straps will add more than a half stone. What if he thins the metal further? Will it withstand a White Wizard’s firebolt? He wishes he knew more, Even Brede would not want to carry a shield weighing a stone and a half. If he decreases the size of the shield, and thins the metal…

  Dorrin sighs and refigures again, and again.

  While the metal anneals, he goes back to work on a hand-cranked, metal-bladed fan-a novelty item for Jasolt-wishing that he had an answer for Brede, besides the small shields for wizard fire.

  Hammering out the curved blades and setting them in the circular centerpiece that connects to the two gears takes most of the afternoon, but that is the hardest work left, since the gears are already forged and cut on his makeshift cutter.

  Vaos has to bring in charcoal-and sweep out the mud- twice more before Dorrin nods that he is done with what he will do on the fan.

  Then he picks up the chunk of black iron forged to plate thickness and lays it on the anvil. He takes the half-stone hammer and strikes. The shock nearly paralyzes his arm. There is the faintest of scuffs on the metal. No, black iron cannot be forged cold.

  Setting aside the plate-thickness chunk, he retrieves the piece fullered to the proposed thickness of his shield and sets it on the anvil’s cutting edge. Positioning the cold chisel, he lifts the hammer.

  The same shock runs through his arm, and the iron holds.

  At least, he can hot-forge the shields, since he doubts that any sword wielded by a trooper can bring any more force to bear than his chisel under the power of the heavy hammer. He lifts the roughly cubit-square sheet of plate into the forge and motions to Vaos.

  “The light sledge.”

  “You’re going to let me strike it?”

  “I don’t have a lot of choice if we’re going to get this done. Strike just one blow on each point where I show you, and make sure the face of the sledge is even.”

  “I know. I watched you and Yarrl.”

  As he watches the youth lift the sledge, Dorrin wonders how Hegl ever stood it with him. On the third blow, Vaos is off center, and Dorrin dances aside as the hot iron sails toward his legs.

  “Vaos!”

  “Sorry, ser.”

  “Don’t be sorry. Just bring it down straight. We can make some extra time. We can’t make extra arms or legs.”

  “Yes, ser.” The hammer strikes are slower, but more careful from that point on.

  Finally, when the iron, still iron, is roughly the thickness Dorrin wants, he calls a halt. “That’s enough for tonight. I need to do the frame tomorrow, and then I’ll use the bench shears to cut it before turning the edges to accept the frame.”

  “But I was just getting the hang of it.”

  “You were also getting ready to hit my legs again with the plate. Now, get this place swept up again, while I bank the forge.”

  Vaos sets down the sledge. His arms shake. “Yes, ser. But I could have done more.”

  Dorrin grins. “You will. Don’t worry about that.” He turns to attend to the forge. When he is done and has racked his tools, he looks at Vaos, still sweeping the clay. “Don’t forget to rack your tools.” He takes off his leather apron and hangs it on the peg beside his tool rack.

  “Yes, ser.”

  After leaving his boots on the mat inside the door, Dorrin washes in the kitchen, trying to avoid Merga’s efforts with the mutton and potatoes, before heading to the bedroom to check on Liedral.

  “Will your lady-”

  “She’s not my lady, at least not yet.”

  “Will the lady be joining us for dinner, master Dorrin?”

  “I would doubt it, but let me talk to her and check.” He steps into the short hall and walks to the end, easing through the doorway.

  Liedral is lying on her stomach, looking at the healers’ book Dorrin has borrowed from Rylla. “This is interesting.”

  He touches her shoulder, and she winces. “Sorry.”

  “It’s not that… I don’t know. Something’s not quite right.”

  “You kept saying that I hurt you… but I didn’t. I couldn’t even find where you were. And I came as soon as I could.”

  “I know.” She eases into a sitting position on the bed. “This is a lovely bed, and you’ve been wonderful… and dear. Every one has been. Reisa, she came today in this rain, and she was so nice.” Her face crumples, and a tear oozes from her right eye.

  Dorrin wants to touch her, to hold her, but senses that it would be wrong. He is frustrated, because he can sense no permanent injury, no lingering chaos, no compulsions laid upon her. Yet something is definitely wrong. How could a whipping change everything between them? Yet it has.

  “Are you hungry?” he asks softly.

  “Yes! I’m starving, and I’m tired of lying around. I can wear one of your shirts over this.”

  “Are you strong enough-”

  “Of course, I’m strong enough to eat with everyone in the kitchen. Just let me get something on besides this shift.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Dorrin.”

  He shrugs and grins.

  “Shoo. Let a woman have some privacy.” She gestures toward the door, and he closes it behind him.

  Dorrin looks into the small room next to the main bedroom, empty except for the table he uses as a writing desk, a stool, and the pallet he is using as a bed. He wishes that Liedral were better. It would also be nice to sleep in a more comfortable bed. Right now, even Vaos and Merga have more comfortable sleeping arrangements than he does.

  With another deep breath, he steps into the kitchen.

  “Master Dorrin,” asks Merga, “would you carve the mutton while I finish the biscuits?”

  Dorrin is reluctant to cut the mutton, but he is the head of the household, such as it is. He takes the knife and begins to carve, awkwardly, aware that Vaos sits at the table, leaning forward, staring intently at the slab of meat. “Stop drooling, Vaos. You won’t get fed any sooner.”

  “I’m hungry, and we don’t get slabs of meat that often.”

  “Thank Liedral for that. Reisa was so glad she came that she brought over the mutton leg for us.”

  “Thank me for what?” Liedral stands in the doorway.

  Dorrin, carving knife in hand, looks up and turns. “For fee-”

  “NOOOOOOOoooooooooo…” Even as the blood flows from her whitened face, Liedral is crumpling to the floor.

  Dorrin drops the knife on the table and stumbles to Liedral, touching her wrists. Merga’s biscuits spew across the floor.

  Frisa, sitting on the stool next to Vaos, lets out a small shriek.

  Dorrin can feel the pounding of Liedral’s heart, but there is no resurgence of chaos, no renewed illness or infection.

  “What happened?” asks Merga, looking over the two of them.

  “I don’t know.”

  “She looked at us, and she screamed.”

  Vaos and Frisa stare from the table.

  “You can heal the nice woman,” Frisa insists.

  Dorrin gently lifts her limp form, trying to keep his hands off the welts and wounds on her back, and carries her back to bed. He lays her gently on her stomach on the double bed.

  “Don’t just leave her there like a sack of grain.” Merga fusses at the unconscious woman, gently turning her head, and making sure Dorrin’s shirt does not bind against her back.

  “Oh… the knife…” Liedral shudders. “Why did you hurt me?”

  Dorrin and Merga exchange glances.

  “Daft… out of her mind… You couldn’t hurt a soul, her especially.”

  “She thinks so,” Dorrin whispers. “I’m here. I didn’t hurt you, and I never will.”

  “But… it hurt… so much… so much… and you did so often.” The White Wizards-what did they do? How did they link the torture to him?

  “She’ll still need something to eat,” Dorrin whispers.
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  “I’ll bring a plate.”

  “I’m here,” he says helplessly as he sits on the stool. “I’m here.”

  Liedral struggles up slowly, easing up until she sits on the edge of the bed, her feet dangling. “What happened?”

  Dorrin frowns. “I was carving the mutton. You came in and looked at me. Then you screamed, and began muttering about how much I hurt you.”

  She blots her face with her sleeve. “It’s stupid! I know you won’t hurt me, but I’m so scared. I hate not being in control of myself. I hate it!”

  Merga steps back at the violence of Liedral’s words.

  “And I’m not going to eat in here. I’m not a baby.” Liedral pauses. “Have you finished carving the mutton?”

  “Merga can finish it.”

  “That I can. I’ll just put your plate on the table, lady.”

  “I’m Liedral.”

  But Merga has gone back to the kitchen.

  Dorrin extends a hand to Liedral. Shivering, she still takes it, but lets go once she is on her feet. They walk quietly to the kitchen.

  CVI

  “WHY AREN’T YOU working?” Liedral stands in the doorway to the kitchen.

  “I came in to see about you. I keep worrying.”

  She shakes her head. “What about your projects for Brede and Kadara, or your engine? You always used to talk about your engine.”

  “This business… between us… your fears that I’ll hurt you, that I have-makes it hard. I hate the damned White Wizards.”

  “So do I. But you tell me that you can’t do anything to heal me.”

  “I’ve tried everything.” Dorrin clenches his fists. “Rylla has no ideas, either. We know what they did. Somehow, they linked the torture to images of me. But I don’t know why.”

  “Darkness! Standing around won’t solve either our problems, or anyone else’s.” She walks to the table and looks at the wedge of cheese, then at the knife. Almost without thinking her hands reach for the hilt, and her fingers curl around it.

  Dorrin rums toward the table, frowning slightly. What can he do to remove the distance between them? He rubs his head and turns.