Magic Engineer

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “We’ve got to do another batch of spikes for the Council.”

  “Oh…” Vaos wilts. “Spikes? Will you use the rod stock?”

  “We’ll use the scrap. I know it’s more work, but they’re not paying for this. Get those rusted brackets at the end of the pile there.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Dorrin levers the bracket into the forge with the heavy tongs and waits until the metal heats enough to cut it. Then he brings it to the anvil and lifts the hammer, thankful at least that his muscles no longer ache all day, only in the late afternoon. With his slender frame, he will never have the massive biceps of a smith like Yarrl.

  … clung…

  Vaos says nothing as the hammer comes down on the iron, cutting the bracket into two workable sections.

  Dorrin nods at the piece on the floor. “Take the tongs there and set it aside for later.” As he talks he returns the half in the tongs to the fire.

  “A little more on the bellows. Then, while I work this into shape, you need to break up the charcoal and bring in a couple of barrows full. We’ve got a lot of spikes to do, and I want to work on the condenser case.”

  “Condenser case?”

  “Part of the steam engine.”

  Vaos puts the cut section of the bracket against the forge where Dorrin can reach it when the time comes, then racks the tongs. “I was going to help Liedral with the hay.”

  “You still like the horses?”

  Vaos looks at the hard-packed floor. “Never mind. After you bring in the charcoal, you can go with Liedral to get the hay. You did carry the potatoes down to the root cellar.”

  “Yes, ser. Merga made sure I put them in the right places.” Vaos pauses. “You’re buying a lot more food this year, master Dorrin.”

  “This winter may be even worse than last.”

  “Do you think the White Wizards will come here?”

  “Eventually… maybe sooner.” Dorrin pulls the iron from the forge. “Get the middle sledge. There…” Clung… The sounds of iron work preclude further conversation.

  CXXIII

  “MOVE, DAMN IT!” screams Kadara at a gray-haired woman with twice her weight upon her shoulders, as she stumbles into two other women, equally laden. The woman looks up dumbly as the redhead reaches down from her saddle and yanks the woman upright. “Move, if you want to live!”

  On the other side of the gate, another guard in blue stretches from his saddle and slams a figure in the crowd with the flat of his sword. The thief drops the chest and runs, while a heavy, bald, and bearded old man staggers onward toward the open northern gate, and the downriver road to Kleth. The wiry trooper glances at the red-headed squad leader until he catches her eye. Then he gestures toward the road.

  Kadara studies the thinning crowd and the long line of figures trudging northward toward the clouds rolling up the river valley from the distant Northern Ocean. Then she yells, “Green squad! Green squad!”

  The six troopers ease their mounts through the jostling crowd.

  “Please… take me…” A pale and thin young woman reaches and grabs for Vorban’s saddle. “Don’t leave me here! Please! I’ll do anything.” The trooper reaches back and touches her shoulder, then reaches farther, but the girl does not protest, instead tries to swing up behind the trooper.

  “Vorban!” snaps Kadara. “Either carry her or leave her.”

  The trooper lifts the woman behind him.

  “… scheming bitch! Harlot… !” Mutters run through the crowd, even as the fleeing Elpartans spread on the far side of the causeway, some plodding through the mud and grass to avoid bumping into others.

  Most carry more than they will be able to manage on the long walk to Kleth, and some items-a stool here; a box there, ripped open by some later refugee-already line the stone-paved road. Those lucky enough to have had mounts or wagons are visible on the ridge line ahead.

  Kadara and her squad form a tight-knit wedge as they trot toward the first bridge below the city, where they will re-form with the other squads.

  “‘Ware horses! ’Ware horses!”

  “Why couldn’t you save us?” screams a white-haired woman.

  “Greedy guards! Saving their own skins…”

  Kadara glances over at Vorban, and her blade flashes, then turns and smacks the shoulder of the fair-skinned woman. A knife drops to the stone below, but the clink is lost in the hubbub.

  Vorban looks up.

  “Take your purse back,” Kadara snaps.

  The young woman smiles, and says, “I’ll throw it.”

  “You do, and you’re dead!” snaps Kadara to the woman.

  The woman hands the purse to Vorban.

  “Get down!” commands Kadara.

  The woman sneers. Kadara’s blade flashes, turning and leaving a red welt across the thief’s temple-even as a dull clunk sounds and the young woman’s fingers loosen on Vorban’s jacket.

  “Dump her!”

  Vorban sets the dazed figure on the road. She staggers to the side and sits in the muddy grass. The trooper slips his purse into his tunic.

  Brede and the other two squads wait at the bridge. The blond officer turns toward the west, where the sun touches the rim of the low hills that lead up to the more distant Westhorns. “Let’s get across!”

  Three troopers swing out into the road, and halt the pedestrians.

  “Armed bastards…”

  “… own the roads…”

  The rest of the squads cross the swirling and steaming waters, trying not to breathe deeply of the odors of boiled fish and sewage. Brede calls a halt several hundred rods beyond the bridge, on a flat rise where the low walls of Elparta can barely be seen.

  “Why we stopping?”

  “Hold!” snaps Brede. “Watch Elparta. Just watch!”

  Even as he speaks, the ground shivers, then shudders. Firebolts play across the distant walls.

  Another shudder rolls across the plains, and a handful of horses whinny and whicker.

  Several older refugees stagger and sprawl on the road or the grass, then try to regain their footing before another quake shakes them back onto the ground.

  A trooper’s mount skitters, staggering as if one leg had given way.

  With yet another shudder, the ground heaves. To the south, the walls of Elparta shiver, and the stones begin to tumble. Fires play across the city, and the pall of smoke begins to increase.

  With each successive temblor, more stones fall from the walls, some into the river, others into the city. But in the end, the walls are rubble, and a column of greasy smoke pours into the sky.

  “Anything left?” rasps Vorban.

  “The center parts, away from the walls and the river, don’t look too bad,” hazards Kadara.

  “Just enough for their winter quarters,” Brede says dourly. He looks northward, toward Kleth. “Let’s go.”

  They ride past stumbling men and women, past crying children, past discarded packs of clothes, past old men and women panting in the muddy grass, past a troupe of brightly painted women who shriek obscenities, and past a dead, white-muzzled mule…

  None of the troopers speaks as they ride north, girding themselves against the occasional ground shock that persists.

  CXXIV

  TIME-THERE IS never enough. Dorrin rubs his shoulder, and sets down the mug on the kitchen wash table. The sky is gray, but no rain falls. He wishes Hasten had not come with the Guild demand for caltrops-not that it was at all unexpected. He still worries about Kadara and Brede, but with the chaos to the south no one has heard who survived the fall of Elparta.

  Instinctively, he would know if Kadara had fallen… but where are they?

  He thinks again about forging caltrops and shakes his head. All he can do is ask Yarrl for a trade… or pay the older smith. He crosses the kitchen and slumps into the chair at the end of the table, knowing that he should either return to the smithy or ride over to see Yarrl about the caltrops. Instead, he tries to massage his shoulder with his left h
and.

  “Are you stiff?” asks Liedral, lifting her eyes from the ledgers spread across the other end of the kitchen table.

  He shakes his head. “Not really.”

  “That means you are.” She rises from her chair and edges behind him with the faintest of limps. Her fingers knead into his shoulders.

  “Ah…”

  “Not stiff? Really?”

  “You lift hammers all the time, and sometimes you’ll get stiff.”

  “You’re upset about the Guild order?”

  “Of course. Caltrops are edged weapons, even if they’re designed to be used against horses. They want three score within a couple of eight-days. I really should go to see Yarrl… see if I can trade with him, or pay him.”

  “You could afford to pay him. You’re on your way to being a wealthy man.” Liedral continues to work out the knots in his shoulders.

  “You’re the one who’s making it possible.” He tries to relax under her fingers, enjoying the quiet before Merga and Frisa return.

  “How about us?”

  “All right. I’ll take that. I just wish…” He wishes that he could hold her for more than a few instants fully clothed-but even that is an improvement.

  “So do I, but talking to Rylla helps.”

  Dorrin should spend more time with the older woman, or in the smithy.

  “You need to go.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “You’ve got that expression. You need to get back to work.” As Liedral shakes her head, the dark hair fluffs away from her face for a moment. “And you still worry about your friends.”

  “What can I do? I’m not a soldier. Darkness, I feel like I can’t even get everything done around here.”

  “If it helps… I did arrange for regular shipments of the brinn to Suthya. Old Ruziosi likes the idea, and he hates the Bristans. That’s worth twenty golds a consignment. Will that help?”

  “All I have to do is grow it.”

  “You have three years’ worth in the cellars. Your first consignment is due at Vyrnil’s-he’s their agent here-in two eight-days.” Liedral sits back in front of the ledgers.

  “You do work wonders.”

  “Too bad we have to rely on their ships.”

  “I’m working on that,” Dorrin says. “It’s all because of something you said.” Dorrin takes a last bite of the bread, crusty and not all that fresh.

  Liedral holds the heavy mug as though it were a crystal goblet, then sets it upon the wooden table. Dorrin admires the grace of the gesture.

  “Something I said?”

  “We’ve talked about this before. About the importance of speed in trading, and going where and when other people couldn’t. And I wondered about ships. They have to go where the wind goes. Well, fans make the air move, and I asked why they couldn’t make the water move.”

  Liedral’s heavy eyebrows knit, but she does not speak.

  “Well… if you paddle a boat, you sort of move the water, and that moves the boat. It’s really not that simple, but it works. So I thought about a machine that would move paddles, but that seemed really too complicated, and you’d have to build a huge wheel to hold all those paddles.” Dorrin grins. “Anyway, that’s why I was building the toy boats.”

  “You’ve been working on those, according to Reisa, since the day you arrived in Diev-or almost.”

  “It takes time. The engine is mostly built.”

  “I still can’t see why it would be better than a well-built sloop or brig.”

  “Trust me… even if I can’t explain exactly why.” Dorrin stands. “I guess I will go talk to Yarrl.”

  Liedral smiles. “Don’t take too long. It looks like rain.”

  “I don’t mind a little rain.”

  As he saddles Meriwhen, he can sense the wind rising, but Yard’s is only a short ride, and Meriwhen needs the exercise.

  Vaos waves from the herb garden, where he is helping Merga and Rylla cut the last herbs for drying. Dorrin waves back, then turns the mare downhill.

  The light rain gusts around the smith, but, by the time Dorrin reins up in Yarrl’s yard, the falling water slices in almost like knives.

  Reisa steps onto the porch. “Put her in the barn.” Her voice barely carries above the howling of the wind and the splatting of the cold rain.

  Dorrin rides over to the barn, dismounts, and leads Meriwhen inside. The third stall is still vacant, and he ties the mare there. As he steps away from the stall, a white form butts him in the leg. He stops to scratch the nanny between the ears. “How are you, girl?”

  Zilda looks up almost placidly, then tries to nibble on his trousers. Dorrin shakes free, and the goat attempts to follow, until the chain brings her up short.

  “Still at it…” He closes the barn door and hurries through the rain and across the muddy yard to the smithy. He should have paid more attention to the weather, but the Council summons delivered by Hasten has bothered him.

  Reisa stands inside the smithy. “This came up so sudden. Wizards’ doing, you think?”

  “No. Just a nasty storm. It feels normal, anyway.” He casts a feeler at the low clouds, but the storm winds are clean and cold.

  “How’s Liedral?”

  “Fine. She was more tired than she realized, but she’s resting up.”

  “ Yarrl’s working on his services. The Council extended it beyond Guild members.” As Reisa gestures toward the glow of the smithy, Dorrin looks at her left arm, and the bruises. He lifts his hand, as if to touch her arm, but she starts to back away, then laughs, harshly. “You are a healer.” She lets him touch the bruises, and infuse some order, although they are nothing more than bruises.

  “Left-handed?” he asks. “You and Petra?”

  “What else can we do? You heard about Elparta?”

  Dorrin nods. “But they’ll winter there.”

  “And come next spring?” Reisa asks.

  “They’ll use the river to take Kleth and Spidlaria.”

  The wind shakes the smithy roof.

  “You’re here to see Yarrl?”

  “Yes. I wanted to ask if I could trade some services.”

  “You don’t do blades or sharp things, do you?”

  Dorrin looks at the damp clay underfoot. “How did you know?”

  Reisa chuckles. “You’re a healer, and you use a staff. Go talk to Yarrl. I’ve got some bread in the oven.”

  Dorrin steps into the circle of light cast by the forge, watching. Rek controls the bellows lever as Yarrl works a length of iron perhaps a span long and half as thick. With even strokes, Yarrl points each end, then reheats the iron in the forge. Deftly, he retrieves the piece and splits each end on the hardie. After another return to the forge, each split end is bent at forty-five degrees. The result looks like a four-pointed iron star.

  After he sets the star on the forge bricks, alongside at least half a dozen others, Yarrl lowers the tongs and hammers, and nods to the youngster on the bellows rod. “That’s enough, Rek. Go get yourself a drink of water.”

  “Yes, ser.” Glancing from Dorrin to Yarrl, Rek heads for the open door.

  “He’s a good boy, Dorrin.”

  “I’m glad.” Dorrin nods toward the metal stars. “Those your services?”

  “Caltrops. For cavalry. Scatter them on a road, especially one that’s got a muddy surface, and you chew up a lot of horses’ hoofs.”

  “Cruel weapon,” Dorrin says. No matter how the caltrop is thrown, one pointed end will always face up, ready to impale anything that steps or falls upon it. “Do you think the Whites will attack this winter?”

  “No one’s saying. Does your red-headed friend know?”

  “Kadara? I haven’t seen them. I hope they survived the fall of Elparta. We all knew this was coming a long time ago.”

  “After the Whites brought the mountains down on Axalt…”

  Dorrin recalls the guard captain friend of Liedral’s, so certain that Spidlar would fall first. “A Council request?” H
e points to the caltrops.

  “More like a Council order. All the smiths have to provide five score every two eight-days for the next season.”

  “I know,” Dorrin says dryly. “I have a small problem. I can’t make them.”

  “Course you can. Easier even than butt hinges…”

  “I’m a healer, remember?”

  “Oh… darkness…”

  “Exactly. I wanted to know if I could trade some other services for my quota or pay you. Vaos isn’t far enough along to do them quickly.”

  “He still likes the horses?”

  Dorrin grins.

  “Told you so. Rek likes the metal, bad leg or no. Well…” muses Yarrl. “I promised Fentor an iron moldboard plowshare. Scratch job-you supply the iron and do it, and I’ll do-how many are you supposed to do?”

  “I’m considered an artisan, because of the toys-so my share is three score over the next two eight-days.”

  “Do you have plate for the share?” asks the older smith.

  “Yes. I’ve some left from another job.”

  “All right. I’ll give you some rod stock. You have the plow done in ten days, and I’ll have the caltrops and the stock for you.”

  “I can use Liedral’s cart to bring it down.” Dorrin inclines his head. “Thank you.”

  “It’s not a problem, young fellow.” Yarrl looks toward the door. “Rek! Let’s be at it.”

  “Yes, ser.” The boy limps up to the bellows lever. “Good day, master Dorrin.”

  “Good day, Rek.”

  Yarrl swings the stock into the forge for another caltrop.

  Dorrin nods to the smith again, and steps from the smithy into the gusting wind and icy rain.

  “Dorrin!” Petra gestures for him to come into the kitchen.

  After knocking the mud from his boots and wiping them as dry as he can on the tattered mat, he steps into the warmth of the kitchen.

  “You need to take this,” Reisa explains as Petra hands him a battered basket covered with a waxed canvas. “There are a few things that your trader lady should enjoy.”