“You’re the best thing I’ve seen today, except for your mother.”
“I’m a thing now?” Zeldyan’s voice carries but a faint edge.
“Of course not. That wasn’t what I meant.” He looks down at his son in his arms and puts his forehead gently against the boy’s. “Was it? We didn’t mean any insults to your mother.” . “Oooooo…” offers Nesslek.
“That’s what he thinks,” responds Zeldyan, “for all your fancy words.” She smiles fondly at her consort.
“Would you read that abomination I dropped on the table and tell me what you think?”
“A lordly matter? Your mother would not approve, my lord.” Zeldyan smiles again, more ironically, as she lifts the scroll. “Why do you want me to read it?”
“You know why,” Sillek counters with a laugh, “but I’ll tell you anyway. Because you’re your father’s daughter, and you can think. He’s stuck in Rulyarth trying to rebuild that mess the traders left, and I need someone with brains that I can also trust.”
“Your mother would definitely not approve of that.”
“Of course not. You have brains, and you love me. She didn’t approve of our joining after she found out I’d fallen in love with you. ‘Love is dangerous for rulers, Sillek.’ It gets in the way of honor and patrimony.” He walks to the window and stands there, still carrying Nesslek, ‘waiting as Zeldyan reads through the scroll.
After a time, he finally asks, “Have you got it?”
“It’s a letter from Ildyrom, renouncing all interest in the grasslands. There are many flowery phrases, but that’s what it says… I think.”
“Exactly.” Sillek bites off the word. “Exactly. It came with a small chest of golds.”
“That seems odd,” muses Zeldyan. “Last year he built that fort to try to take them from you. I wouldn’t trust him.”
“I don’t, but I think the gesture is real, and it’s a danger.”
“Not having to fight over the grasslands is a danger?”
“All my holders will know that Ildyrom has sued for peace. Your father holds Rulyarth, and the locals there seem to be pleased with his efforts. We offered a percentage of our trade revenues from Rulyarth to the Suthyan trade council-”
“You did?”
“It was your father’s idea-much cheaper for both of us. They couldn’t really maintain three ports anyway.”
“And we can even if the traders couldn’t?”
“If we expand trade, we can. They just wanted quick golds.” Sillek shrugs and lifts Nesslek to his shoulder. The infant burps-loudly. “The bay is much better than Armat…”
Zeldyan laughs. “I’ve heard this before. What about Ildyrom?”
“It’s demonish. We have peace with both Suthya and Ildyrom. All our borders are secure-except for those devil women on the Westhorns.”
“Oh.” The smile fades from Zeldyan’s face.
“You see? The chest of golds-that’s already known. You can’t keep that a secret. It even means I can hire mercenaries. More women have left the holdings. Genglois had three petitions waiting for me-demanding I do something.” Sillek lowers Nesslek and wipes his mouth gently.
“What will you do?”
“Stall.” Sillek lowers his voice. “Make obvious preparations. Send dispatches to your father. Stall and hope. Hope for an early winter, or the need to do something urgent in Rulyarth or the grasslands.”
“And neither Ildyrom nor the traders will offer the slightest pretext while your stodgy traditional holders bombard you with demands to reclaim the Roof of the World.”
“That’s the way I see it.” Sillek sighs. “But I have a little time. Not much, but a little. I can hope.”
A frown crosses Zeldyan’s forehead, but she forces a smile.
CIII
“WE DON’T TALK much anymore,” Ryba said quietly. “I miss that.”
“I’m sorry. I guess I don’t much feel like talking a lot of the time,” Nylan said quietly, as he rocked the cradle and watched his daughter’s face through the darkness.
“Could I ask why?” The marshal’s voice was calm, soft. “Is it just me? You go off and talk to Ayrlyn.”
“I worry, and I worry about things that seem set in stone. I feel like, when I talk to you, we talk in circles.” When Ryba did not answer, he continued, his eyes still on Dyliess. “We go back and forth saying the same things. If you try to avoid using force, people die. If I don’t build towers and weapons and what amounts to a low-tech military infrastructure, people will die. If you don’t play tyrant and I won’t play stud, our children won’t have any future.” His voice dropped into silence.
Again, Ryba was silent, and he continued to rock the cradle and to watch the sleeping Dyliess. In time, he spoke. “Even as each killing hurts more, I become better at making weapons and using them. I can’t walk away from you, or Istril, or Siret, or little Dephnay who won’t know her mother or her father-not now-but I keep asking myself how long I can continue doing this.” He gave a rueful grin he doubted Ryba could see through the darkness. “How long before I’m so blind in a battle that I get spitted? And if I don’t kill my allotted one or two, who else will get killed?”
“You think I like it?” asked Ryba, her voice still calm. “I can’t ask anything without the threat of some sort offeree. I can’t get anyone to see what I see. If I try to use reason, even you fight me. If I use coercion and trickery, then what does that make me? But I have to, if I want a daughter, and if I want her to have a future. There aren’t any choices for me, Nylan. And there aren’t many for you.”
Nylan looked back at Dyliess’s peaceful and innocent face, asking himself, Were we like that once? Does life force us into the use of force and violence, just to survive?
“You have visions of what must be, and when you don’t follow those, people suffer and die,” Nylan finally said. “You’ve told me that, and I see that. I see it, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
“All I want is for us to be free, for the guards, me, Dyliess, not to be trapped in a culture in which some horses are treated better than women. That’s not asking a lot.”
“It doesn’t seem so,” agreed Nylan. “But for us to be free seems to require more recruits and more and more weapons. More recruits makes the locals madder, and that means we have to defend ourselves, which leads to more deaths, and more plunder. That allows us to get stronger, but only if we keep our deaths few, which means better training and more weapons. Better training means less food-growing and hunting, and that means a military culture, probably eventually hiring out to the powers that be.” Nylan cleared his throat. “Is that what you see? Is that what you want?”
“I wish I could see a more peaceful way, but I don’t. Westwind will have to hire out some guards, but from what little I do see, we will be able to prosper by building better trade roads, by levying tariffs on them, and by protecting them.” Ryba paused. “I don’t see this as the clear and unified picture you paint, either. I catch an image here, or there, and I have to try to visualize how it fits. I always worry that I won’t put the pieces of this puzzle together right, and that I’ll fail and someone else will die who shouldn’t.”
Nylan slowly eased the cradle to a stop. Dyliess gave the smallest of snores, then sighed. He slipped under the light and thin blanket that was all he needed in the summer evening.
“Would you hold me?” asked Ryba. “I know you’ve been forced, tricked, and coerced, and I’m not proud of it. But it’s lonely. I’m not asking for love. Just hold me.”
In the darkness Nylan slipped from his couch to hers, where, uncertain as he was, Nylan put his arms around her, his eyes open to the rough planking overhead, wondering how long he could hold her, yet knowing she had no one else.
CIV
“HISSL HAS REQUESTED relief from his post in Clynya for three eight-days,” Sillek says, looking up from the table and stifling a yawn. His breath causes the candles in the nearer candelabra to flicker.
“He�
��s been there for a while, hasn’t he?” asks Zeldyan, gently bouncing Nesslek on one knee, while occasionally picking up a morsel from the small sitting room table and eating it.
“Yes.”
“Why does it bother you?”
“Terek says he’s up to something, something not exactly wizardly. Strange people have been visiting him-armsmen no one recognizes. He’s been laying up enough provisions for a small army. Koric told me that. He laughed. Said that Hissl has no idea how to do something secretly.”
“He’s not… surely he wouldn’t try to… he’s not stupid enough for treason.”
“No. And he’s not subtle enough to try it that way. If he were out to overthrow me, his best chance would have been to murder Koric and open the grasslands to Ildyrom in return for support from Jerans. He is smart enough to consider that. Since he didn’t, it’s something else.” Sillek yawns and looks at his son. “When will he go to sleep?”
“Soon,” says Zeldyan with a laugh. “Keep talking. Your voice soothes him. So what is Hissl doing?”
“I’m just guessing, but I’d say he’s going to mount his own expedition to the Roof of the World.”
“Why? He wouldn’t know a sword from a dagger.”
“He is a wizard, and he told Terek last year that he thought the thunder-throwers of those angel women would not last a year.”
Zeldyan frowns. “Why would he risk such a thing?”
“He dislikes being second to Terek. He would like lands in his own right and a title. I could not back down on my promise on that, especially if Hissl defeats them, and he knows that. My word would be forfeit to every holder and every wizard in Candar.” Sillek frowns, then stifles another yawn.
“You’re more tired than your son. Perhaps you should be the one going to sleep.”
“I’m not that tired.”
Zeldyan laughs and cradles Nesslek in her arms. “His eyes are drooping, and I’ll be able to put him in the cradle soon. Your mother thinks ill of my closeness with him.”
“I know. She says nothing, though.”
“You don’t mind, do you? He’ll grow so fast. I saw that happen with Fornal and Relyn.”
“Have you heard anything about Relyn?”
Zeldyan shakes her head. “Why are you worried if Hissl is going to attack the Roof of the World? If he wins, you don’t have to go. If he loses, he still may weaken them.”
“I ‘m no longer sure about that. I wonder if I see Ildyrom’s fine hand behind all this.”
“Keep talking,” says Zeldyan as she slips to her feet and steps toward the cradle.
“Terek says that every time that someone has attacked those devil women, the women have gotten a lot of plunder. They’re selling a lot of plate armor and blades to traveling traders for supplies. They’ve got mounts and some livestock, and a tower and they’re building more buildings…” Zeldyan nods to Sillek to keep speaking as she eases Nesslek into the cradle and starts to rock it gently.
“… now Ildyrom is as devious as a giant water lizard and about twice as dangerous. What if he’s backing Hissl, not directly, but through some adventurers? Ildyrom can’t lose. If Hissl wins, I lose the wizard that’s kept him at bay. I also lose face, and that’s a problem with the holders that will tie me up. If Hissl loses, that’s worse. Those angels will have enough plunder that it will take all the free armsmen in Candar to pry them out. And even more women will start fleeing unhappy situations here and in Gallos, and whatever it is, those people on the Roof of the World know how to fight and to teach other to fight. So all my holders will be up in arms if I don’t act. So will Karthanos. And Ildyrom, with his pledge not to take the grasslands, loses nothing, only a small chest of coins. Even if I win, it will be a bloody mess, and it will be years before we could consider more than holding on to what we already have.”
“That’s more than enough now,” Zeldyan points out. “I know that. But from Ildyrom’s position, a few coins behind Hissl is a cheap way to weaken Lornth no matter what happens. And I can’t afford to stop Hissl, either. That’s what’s so demonish about it.”
Zeldyan lets the cradle slow and steps back. Nesslek snuffles momentarily, but continues to sleep. She turns to Sillek. “You can tell me more later. We can talk when he’s awake. Unless you’re too sleepy?”
“Never.”
“Good.” She leans over and blows out the candles.
CV
THE AIR WAS still, hot, and humid-for the Roof of the World-in the brickworks canyon. The three who toiled beside the stream were soaked in sweat, except where their boots and trousers were damp from the running water.
One knee-high line of rocks and bricks mortared together ran from the north side of the stream to the canyon wall. On the south side of the stream a trench extended toward the hill that straddled the middle of the canyon. There, Rienadre, Denalle, and Nylan struggled to remove the silty and clay-filled soil, at least enough to provide footings for the crude retaining wall that would, Nylan hoped, form the millpond.
Nylan paused and leaned on the shovel, wishing he had explosives, even crude black powder, but while he could make charcoal, he hadn’t seen or heard of anything resembling sulfur or potassium nitrate. As for more sophisticated explosives-gun cotton or blasting gelatin-he was no chemist. None of them were.
Clank…
“Friggin‘ rocks,” muttered Denalle, attempting to lever a stone more than a cubit long and half as thick and wide out of the trench. Nylan lifted his shovel, and the two of them levered it out of the way.
The engineer-smith blotted his forehead and began digging again.
Rienadre walked up from where she had been toiling nearer the stream, halted by Nylan, and gestured. “Is where I’ve outlined that second channel far enough from the first?”
Nylan stopped digging momentarily. His eyes followed her gesture. “Should be. We’ll put a small gate in each spot. That way we can drain the pond if it’s necessary for repairs.”
“Why two?” puffed Denalle.
“The stream has to have somewhere to go while we’re working on the first one,” answered Rienadre for Nylan. “Same’s true when we go back to work on the second one.”
“Just when I think we’re done making bricks,” commented Denalle as Rienadre passed, “the engineer comes up with something else. We’ll never be done.”
“We weren’t ever done when we were marines, either.” Rienadre started to walk down toward the stream. “Rather take my chances against the locals than the demons of light.”
“Maybe,” grunted Denalle as she thrust the shovel into the ground. “But dying here is dirty, and it hurts more.”
As Nylan kept digging, his thoughts spun through the shafts, the gearing and mill structure. He was probably stuck with an overshot wheel, just because he knew how to make that work, but somewhere he had the notion that an undershot wheel was more efficient-or was it the other way around? How would he have known that kind of knowledge would come in useful?
Nylan lifted out another shovelful of dirt and clay. He had to have thought of a sawmill, hadn’t he? And half the guards had to bitch about it, because none of them could see that the mill mechanism could be used for dozens of applications. Why was it that no one ever liked the practical side of things, in songs, trideo dramas, or in real life? No, the people who were practical always lost to the warriors and the glory hounds. He shook his head and kept digging.
CVI
CLOUDS SCUDDED QUICKLY across the greenish-blue morning sky, leaving the Roof of the World intermittently darkened by fast-moving shadows. Gusts of wind, cooled by the ice-capped peaks to the west, whipped back and forth those few scrawny firs that clung to crevices in the walls of the narrow canyon above the Westwind stables.
Nylan checked the shovels and other gear strapped to the back of the mare’s saddle. Another long day of earth-moving and rock-mortaring! In an eight-day or so, they might even be able to start work on the mill’s foundation. He patted the mare’s shoulder and led
her out into the light. “Come on, lady.”
At the end of the stables, Ryba stood, talking to Istril, Hryessa, and Ydrall. All three guards stood before saddled mounts, and all three were fully armed with twin blades and bows.
Nylan paused, then strained to listen, his hand absently patting the mare to quiet her.
“… they won’t try a frontal attack. Even Gerlich isn’t that stupid. So your job is to scout around the area and discover any possible place they could bring up horses and armed men… start with the second canyon there. Look for traces on the trees and bushes, up high. Remember, the snow was deep…”
The engineer-smith swung up into the saddle, teetering there awkwardly for a moment. He still wasn’t totally comfortable riding, but one way or another he’d eventually learned. He didn’t have any real alternatives to horses and skis, it appeared. He flicked the brown mare’s reins and slowly rode toward the three guards who listened intently to Ryba.
“Just a moment. I need a word with the engineer before he heads off down to the lower works,” Ryba said, stepping back from the guards and turning toward Nylan.
The engineer-smith reined up.
“Do what you can down at the mill over the next few days.” Ryba lowered her voice. “After that, I’d like you and Rienadre and Denalle to stay close to the tower.”
“Gerlich?”
Ryba nodded. “I can’t tell when, but it feels like it won’t be long.”
“Do you want me to get the weapons laser ready?”
“No. We’ll need that later, when we face a real army.”
“If we don’t stop Gerlich, there won’t be a later.”
“I know.”
The flatness of her voice stopped Nylan. After a moment, he said, “All right.”
After another silence, she added, “You can work on more blades, if you would. We’ll need those, too, as many as you and Huldran can make.”
Fall of Angels Page 50
