Fall of Angels

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “I checked the golds this morning. They’re all here,” Ryba said flatly. “He doesn’t have enough coin to do that much.”

  “He still stole close to four golds in silver and copper,” pointed out Ayrlyn.

  “He took everything he could sneak out, including more than fifty arrows, a packhorse, and some of the more battered blades,” Nylan added.

  “Those blades he took are worth close to five golds. He could buy close to a score of armsmen,” explained Ayrlyn. “Hired blades are cheap here.”

  “Life is cheap here,” said Ryba. “Look at those cairns.” Her head inclined toward the open tower window.

  “You think he’ll do that?” Nylan’s guts already gave him one answer.

  “He will, and he will be back, with an army behind him,” agreed Ryba tiredly, shifting Dyliess from one breast to the other.

  “You see this?” asked Nylan.

  “Not all of it, just a fragment, just enough.”

  Ayrlyn frowned, but said nothing.

  “What Gerlich took won’t be enough, and he knows it,” Ryba pointed out.

  “Narliat left earlier than Gerlich,” said Ayrlyn.

  The triangle rang for the evening meal.

  “He’s acting as Gerlich’s advance agent. Gerlich tries to let someone else face the dangers first.” Ryba looked down at Dyliess. “Easy there… easy…” A rueful smile crossed her face.

  “Should we beef up the standing guard?” asked Ayrlyn.

  “For how long? We still need food. We need to get more things working, like the smithy, and possibly a few cows or goats. Not every guard can nurse, and we won’t always have guards with infants at the same time. Guards have to work and guard, or Westwind will fall. I don’t know when Gerlich will try his attack. The only thing we can do is make sure that all the guards have their weapons at hand, whatever they’re doing. Fierral can build a permanent watchpost on top of the ridge, with another warning triangle. Outside of that…” Ryba shrugged.

  Nylan and Ayrlyn exchanged glances.

  “What can we do, besides what we’re already doing?” asked Ryba. “Let’s go eat.” She slipped Dyliess from her lap into the carrypack, stood, and headed down the stairs. “You’ve eaten, little pig. It’s your mother’s turn.”

  Ayrlyn glanced at Nylan and shrugged.

  He shrugged back.

  As they entered the great room, guards were still straggling in. Nylan almost stopped short at the third table below the first two. It only had one bench, but three of the new guards sat there, flanking Istril and Weryl.

  Nylan paused. “Hello there, young fellow.”

  Weryl gurgled. Nylan patted his shoulder.

  Istril smiled. “He’s good.”

  “I’m sure he is.” Nylan returned the smile, hiding a certain dismay. How had he ended up with three children born within a season of each other? His eyes flicked to Ryba’s back, but he kept smiling as he nodded to the three newcomers before turning. One was called Nistayna-that he remembered.

  A spicy scent Nylan had not smelled before filled the area, and he looked toward the big pot that Kadran set in the middle of the table.

  “Something new,” announced the cook. “You take one of those flat biscuit things and pour a ladle of this over the biscuit.”

  “It better be good,” muttered Weindre, loud enough for those at all three tables to hear.

  “It’s too good for you,” snapped Kadran.

  Even the newcomers at the third table smiled briefly.

  Ryba slid into her chair, and Nylan and Ayrlyn sat on the benches across from each other.

  When the woven grass basket came to Nylan, he broke off a piece of bread, sniffed it, and drew in the spicy aroma. “This even smells good.”

  “That’s Blynnal’s new bread,” mumbled Relyn from beside Ayrlyn. “It’s much better.”

  “It tastes like real bread,” added Huldran.

  Nylan took a thick biscuit and then two ladles full of the main course, a thin stew or thick sauce filled with chunks of meat and assorted chunks of other things, presumably roots or other vegetable matter, and poured it over the flat biscuit.

  He looked at the brown mass dubiously, then sniffed. Nothing smelled burned or rancid. In fact, the aroma was pleasant, somewhere between minty and something else. Finally, he took a mouthful of meat, sauce, and biscuit.

  Ayrlyn and Ryba watched.

  “You’re braver than I am,” murmured the healer.

  Nylan nodded, chewed, and swallowed. “It’s good. I can’t tell what’s in it, but it’s good.” As he spoke, he could feel his forehead warming, then his face, and then his mouth and throat. “Whewww!” He reached for his mug and downed the cold water. It didn’t help, but the bread did.

  “Do you still think it’s good?” asked Ryba with a smile, patting Dyliess’s back as she squirmed in the chest carry-pack.

  Nylan nodded, and took a second mouthful, a much smaller one.

  “Another Blynnal special?” Ayrlyn asked Relyn.

  He looked puzzled.

  “Did Blynnal cook this?”

  “Yes. She is a good cook. You are fortunate to have her.” Relyn ate without water, and without apparent discomfort.

  “They clearly like food hotter than we’re used to,” observed Ryba.

  After taking a very small bite of her dinner, Ayrlyn nodded.

  Nylan broke off another chunk of bread, but kept eating, ignoring Ayrlyn’s amused smile.

  LXXXIX

  NYLAN WIPED HIS forehead and looked down at the coals, at his quick-built forge. Without a chimney and in a structure without completed walls, with no doors, open gaps for windows, and no roof, Nylan was trying to implement a combination of basic metallurgy and low-level technology, and use his particular abilities with the local magic field to create a piece of metal shaped and strong enough to pierce plate armor and to maim or kill those who wore such armor-or do worse to those who didn’t.

  He’d already tried to melt the iron, and that hadn’t worked. It took both charcoal and green wood, and the bellows, and half the time the iron burned rather than melted.

  As he thought of the arrows and blades Fierral had pleaded for, he sighed twice-once for the thought that damned little was settled in human affairs without some kind of force and once for his unfulfilled promise. He still hadn’t finished the clamp device he’d promised Relyn-another tool of war, except, for the one-handed man, it seemed more defensive than offensive.

  Nylan raised his eyes to Huldran, standing by the bellows. The bellows hadn’t been that hard, just three pieces of wood joined with leftover synthetic sheeting and using flap valves and a nozzle. Creating a tube under the center of the throwntogether brick forge had been tricky, finally accomplished by having Rienadre fire more than a dozen bricks with a hole in the center and lining them up and mortaring them in place. The air nozzle was a modified lander fuel sieve- greatly modified.

  The first charcoal burn hadn’t worked. More than half the wood turned into ashes. Another quarter hadn’t burned at all. About a quarter had been transformed into charcoal. The second burn had gone better. Maybe half the wood had become charcoal. So after more than an eight-day, Nylan had two heaping piles of charcoal behind the smithy and a half-dozen disgruntled and sooty guards. They hadn’t cared that he was sooty.

  It was early summer, and the purple starflowers had bloomed and were fading, and the crops seemed to be taking, at least the potatoes, which were critical. One of the remaining ewes had lambed, and three of the mares had foaled, and yet another woman, older than the others, had claimed refuge. Nylan was losing track of all the names of the newcomers. Names or not, Fierral slammed them into blade and bow training, and into logging or field work-except for the timid Blynnal, who had transformed mealtime from an ordeal into something less arduous.

  Nylan looked down at the open forge. To save the charcoal, he had built the fire with wood and let it burn down to coals before easing the charcoal into place.


  Now, he had two hammers, and a makeshift anvil created by cold-hammering sheet alloy around a stone block wedged between the sides of a green spruce log buried in the ground. The anvil, such as it was, stood waist-high. Nylan hoped that was correct. He had one chisel, and a makeshift pair of tongs.

  Huldran still stood by the bellows, waiting. “Tell me when, ser.”

  “I wish I really knew,” Nylan muttered to himself, as he took the square of alloy, one of the ones he knew was iron-based and lower-temperature-rated, in the tongs and thrust it into the coals. “Now… slowly.”

  The engineer watched until the metal finally turned cherry-red, when he put it on the anvil and picked up the chisel. “Hit the chisel,” he told Huldran, and the guard struck the chisel squarely.

  Nylan tried not to wince. “You hold the tongs, and let me have the hammer.”

  Huldran took the tongs without comment, and Nylan brought the hammer down, trying to use his senses to find some grain, some pattern in the metal. In a dozen strikes, he finally had a shape that looked remotely like the war arrow that lay in the unframed and unshuttered front window.

  Nylan reclaimed the tongs, and sent Huldran back to the bellows.

  After the next heat, he bent the sides back and forged or welded them back on each other. With the third heat, he drew out the edges. With the fourth came more ordering through his senses, and finally a slightly overlarge arrowhead lay on the alloy anvil.

  “Going to have to do this quicker - or find some other way.”

  “Could you cast them?” asked Huldran.

  “Right now, I don’t see how. This is as hot as I can get this with just charcoal, and the metal’s nowhere close to melting. Casting would be a lot easier, but I can’t seem to melt it without burning it.”

  “What about copper or bronze?”

  Nylan shrugged. “Even if we melted down the copper buried in the landers, copper arrowheads wouldn’t do much good against even iron plate.”

  “Oh…”

  “Exactly.” Nylan lifted the tongs. “So I’d best get a lot faster.”

  When Nylan looked up from the sixth arrowhead, he could sense that the charcoal was almost gone. Each of the killer arrowheads had been easier, but each still took time.

  Since the wood made a good base and stretched the charcoal, he set down the hammer. “We’ll build up the fire with those heartwood logs. Then we’ll take a break while it burns down to coals. All right?”

  “That’s fine by me, ser.” Huldran blotted her sweat-dampened forehead. “Do you think Smithing’s always this hard?”

  “We’re making a lot of mistakes. I just don’t know what they are, but it’s always been hard work.” He walked out through the open space that was meant for doors to the pile of split and cut logs. Huldran followed.

  Once the open forge was blazing, and Nylan hoped the heat wouldn’t crack too many bricks, he headed down the road toward the tower. Under the clear sky, the sun beat down, so much that he still did not cool off much once he was away from the forge.

  He walked across the short causeway, but stopped short of the door. He could sense people in the great room- guards and infants. Between meals, the great room had become almost a de facto nursery, which made a sort of sense to Nylan, because it had the most ventilation and the best light.

  After entering the tower, he slipped along the side away from the great room and to the bathhouse, where he managed to remove some sweat, soot, and grime. Then he squared his shoulders and headed for the great room.

  Siret was the closest to the door, and she had Kyalynn in one arm, and Dephnay in the other.

  Nylan looked down at his silver-haired daughter, her eyes the darker green of Siret’s. Kyalynn looked back. He smiled. She did not, although her mother did. Slowly, he extended his index finger, gently letting it slide into Kyalynn’s open palm. Almost as slowly, her chubby fingers wrapped around his finger. He wiggled his finger, and her hands tightened. He wiggled again, and Kyalynn gurgled.

  “She’s strong,” he said.

  “Yes.” Siret smiled again.

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t know,” he confessed.

  “I know that. The marshal told me a long time ago. Do you mind?”

  “Mind?” asked Nylan, wiggling his finger to keep Kyalynn interested.

  “That I agreed to have your child? After the battle with the demons, I thought… I never would have a child.” The silver-haired guard shook her head gravely. “I hadn’t thought that would ever upset me, but it did. It really did. Then after the first battle here, I decided that…” Siret paused. “You’re not mad at me?”

  “I was a little upset-but not at you,” he admitted.

  “You came when I-when we-needed you.”

  “I didn’t know then, either, but I knew you needed help.”

  Siret looked down for a moment, then met his eyes. “I am not yours, and I will never belong to any man. But… I’m glad you are Kyalynn’s father.”

  Nylan finally looked away. “It’s hard for me.”

  “You are a healer, as well as an engineer. The other healer… you know that she cries when she thinks no one is listening?”

  Ayrlyn, the self-contained and competent healer and trader? “No. I didn’t know. Or… maybe I didn’t want to see it.” He paused. “And you, Siret, what about you? The night vision, the feeling that you can sense things you cannot see?”

  “They help. This is a strange world, but in many ways better than what I left.”

  “I trust you will always find it that way.” Nylan cleared his throat. “And that you keep working on those new skills.”

  “I hope that Kyalynn has such skills. I wouldn’t want her to be just a guard.” Siret’s green eyes darted toward the stairs, as if to ask if Ryba were descending.

  Kyalynn yawned.

  “Well… work on your own skills.” Nylan wiggled his finger out of the sleepy Kyalynn’s hand and stood.

  Siret offered a smile and rose. “I need to put them to sleep while I can. Ellysia can watch them while I practice and do a few things for me.”

  Istril and Weryl were at the next table, and Nylan crossed the stone tiles. Weryl’s eyes were already green, and they locked in on Nylan as the engineer approached his son.

  “He knows his father,” Istril said quietly.

  “I should have realized earlier. There were clues there, but I just never thought…” Nylan shook his head.

  “I’m not upset. It was my choice. You’ve saved my life twice, you know.” Istril gave a wry smile. “And I don’t even know what to call you. Part of me thinks of you as an officer and ‘ser,’ and part as Nylan.”

  “Whatever you feel comfortable with.”

  “ ‘Nylan’ in private and ‘ser’ in public.”

  Nylan smiled. “All right.”

  “You know,” Istril said quietly, “I’m stuck here. When I’ve been hunting, I’ve gone down lower, especially last summer. The air was so hot and thick that I felt like I couldn’t breathe. Ayrlyn can do it. She’s from Svenn. I couldn’t. The guards that go with her-they all lose weight, and it takes them days to feel good after they return. That’s why Ayrlyn takes different ones each time. You’re only half Sybran. You could handle the heat and thick air. So could Weryl. He’s young… but I couldn’t.” She shrugged. “It’s not bad here, though, and it’s getting better. I’m glad Blynnal came.”

  Weryl made a stretching motion, as if to reach out to Nylan. Nylan took the small hand and let Weryl’s fingers curl around his.

  “Oooohhh…”

  “He likes you.” Istril shifted the boy onto her other knee, closer to Nylan.

  “I’d hope so.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “Right now, I’m trying to figure out a faster way to forge arrowheads. We need a lot of them. If I can solve that problem, I might go to work on planning and building a sawmill…”

  In time, Nylan finally stood.

  “I understand, Nylan, if you don
’t want to spend too much time with me. But keep stopping to see Weryl.” Istril’s face was calm, somewhere between content and resigned.

  “I will.” What else can I do? he thought. They are my children. Why… why did you do this to me? Why did I refuse to see what was happening? Because it was easier? He forced a smile, which softened as Weryl “gooed” again.

  Either Istril or Siret would have been warmer to him than Ryba, and Siret really wasn’t that interested-or so she said-in any man. Yet he never even considered them-because he was still bound in the officer-marine separation? And Ayrlyn, crying in the night?

  Again, nothing was quite what it seemed on the surface, even with people. He supposed people still thought he and Ryba slept together. That was another problem they hadn’t resolved-or he hadn’t. Surprisingly, Ryba hadn’t pushed. What else did she know?

  He snorted once, ironically, as he started up the steps to the fifth level. Wasn’t that always the way it was? Ryba knowing, and not saying, and Nylan the great mage, bewildered and struggling. He snorted again.

  In the dimness of the fifth level, Ellysia was practicing, puffing, with Saryn, Hryessa, and Ydrall. Nylan eased around the sparring and toward the section of storage shelves above the unused weapons laser. He scooped the parts he had taken from the lander and roughly bent into shape into a worn leather bag that had been some poor raider’s purse.

  Then he headed back down to the lower level. As he passed the third level, he saw Siret rocking Kyalynn to sleep. Dephnay, on her knee, looked wide awake. Nylan found Relyn in the space off the kitchen, laboriously smoothing what looked to be a wooden tray.

  “That looks good,” observed the smith-engineer.

  “I said I’d help her. She’s too quiet.” Relyn looked up. “Blynnal. She won’t ask for anything.”

  “Some people won’t. She’s improved the food a lot.”

  Relyn grinned. “Sometimes, I get a little extra.”

  “I haven’t forgotten my promise,” Nylan said, taking out the pieces of metal. “Like everything around here, it’s taking longer. If you’ll come here, I’d like to measure these. I’ll probably have to hot-hammer-or whatever they call it- these together, but I wanted to check the fit first.”