Fall of Angels

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “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 th
e 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?”