“As am I,” interjects Sillek. “You may understand, however, that it will take a considerable force to subdue the angels, and one removed a great distance from Lornth itself.”
“Yes. This also occurred to Lord Karthanos.” Viendros turned to the armsmen who stand by the chest. “The chest contains a thousand golds for your use in reclaiming the Roof of the World.” Viendros withdraws a scroll and extends it. “I am also bid to tell you that Lord Karthanos will place score forty armsmen under your orders for this campaign. All will be paid from his treasury. They will be under my command, and subject to your orders.”
“That is most brotherly… and most generous,” says Sillek. “I am overwhelmed.”
Viendros snorts. “I am not a diplomat, Lord Sillek. It is not generous. It is a necessity. Those women have already created much trouble, both for Gallos and for Lornth, and those troubles will only get worse. You cannot, without the support of Lord Ildyrom and Lord Karthanos, afford to hazard your forces so far from Lornth. Nor would Lord Karthanos expect that, given the surprising abilities of these strange angels.” The envoy/armsman shrugs. “There you have it.”
“Yes, we do.” Sillek smiles, a warm smile, yet somehow distant. “Will you remain with me to assist in planning this campaign, or will we meet later to discuss the particulars?”
“I am at your immediate disposal.”
“Then let us find something to eat.” Sillek rises. “We have much to do before the rains of autumn arrive.”
Viendros smiles, the smile of an armsman awaiting a mighty battle.
CXVI
NYLAN STUDIED THE timber that would be the shaft linking the unbuilt wheel with the unforged collar. The shaft, a smoothed and peeled log, lay on the clay next to the wall that would hold it.
With the charcoal stick Nylan made a template on the wooden disc he had brought for the purpose, noting the dimensions with one of the pocket rules from the landers. Then he wrapped the disk in a rag and carried it to the brown mare, where he eased it into a saddlebag.
Then he walked back up on the mill foundation and surveyed the layout again. He frowned. Bearings-he really needed bearings-but a grease collar would have to do.
“You don’t like it, after all this work?” asked Ayrlyn.
“It’s fine. I was thinking about bearings. And about the wheel itself. And the gears we need to get the blade moving fast enough to cut.” His eyes darted to the millpond walls, and the water sluicing out of the open gate, and then to the nearly completed millrace where Weindre and Quilyn were laying the last stones.
Next would come the actual walls, built up from the mill’s foundation, and eventually the mill itself, assuming that Nylan could forge or otherwissmake the reducing and transforming gears, assuming that Ayrlyn and Saryn could build the mill wheel. Assuming, assuming…
He wanted to shake his head and scream. Nothing was ever enough. From brickworks to smithy to sawmill to who knew what next. From blades to arrows to throwing blades to strange magic. And with each new building, each new idea, he could sense ever-growing resistance. Why couldn’t they see?
“Are you all right?” asked the healer. Nylan forced himself to take a long slow breath, then another. “As right as anyone else here, in this crazy world where nothing is ever enough.”
Ayrlyn looked at him. “That was true on Heaven, and I imagine it’s true everywhere, in every universe that has some form of human being. The general condition of being human is that nothing satisfies most people for long. Those with no power want power. Those with power want more power. Those with food want more food or luxuries. Those with a roof over their heads want a castle. But everyone wants someone else to do the work.” She shrugged. “So what else is new?”
‘Thanks for cheering me up.“ He walked down off the mill foundation and toward the brown mare.
“Nylan, please don’t get short with me. I’m not a demon or a local. I don’t take glory in killing, and I don’t like weapons, and I’ve more than tried to be helpful.”
The smith paused. He took another deep breath. “I’m sorry. What you said upset me. I know human beings are human beings, but I guess that I felt that the ‘nothing is ever enough’ feelings were the result of our modern technology, and you’re telling me-rightly, it appears-that, even when people can barely survive, they’d still rather kill and plunder because someone else has more. Or build arsenals of crudely effective weapons because other people feel that way.” He untied the mare, then climbed into the saddle.
Ayrlyn mounted the gelding. “Generally, there’s more charity and less violent self-interest in more technological societies than in low-tech ones. You can’t get to high-tech levels without a greater degree of cooperation-not usually, anyway.”
“Great. You’re telling me that technology enables ethics.” He flicked the reins, and the mare began to walk toward the trail that circled the cliffs and would eventually lead them to the ridge road.
“Not exactly. Stop playing bitter and dumb. You know it’s not that way. Technology allows, in most cases, comparative abundance. Comparative abundance means that the powerful and greedy can amass power and goods without starving substantial chunks of society to death-in some societies, anyway. Sometimes, it just leads to the technological society being more merciful to its own underclass while exploiting the light out of another society. Technology doesn’t make people better. Sometimes, though, it mitigates their cruelties.”
“You’re even more cynical than I am.”
“You’re not cynical, Nylan,” Ayrlyn said gently as she rode up beside him. “You’re angry. You want to know why, because you thought it would be different here, and it’s not. Power still rules, and if you want to control your own life, you have to be powerful. Especially in a low-tech world. Ryba understood that from the first.”
“She certainly did.” Nylan looked at the road ahead, uphill all the way to Westwind. “She certainly did.”
“What do you want to do about it?” asked the healer.
“I don’t know. Everyone else has answers.” He flicked the reins. “Relyn’s turning what I believe into a frigging religion; Ryba’s turned power into a belief system; Fierral accepts Ryba as marshal and goddess. Me-I just want to build a safe place, and I keep finding out that it takes more and more building, more and more weapons, and more and more killing. We’re in the most remote place on the continent, and it’s still that way.”
“You’re angry.” Ayrlyn’s voice was soft. “You’re angry because what you see seems so obvious, and no one else seems to understand. People want what you build, but they ever so reluctantly and quietly want to help less and less.”
“So I look more and more unreasonable, more and more obsessed, more and more like a joke, because people don’t understand what it really takes to build an infrastructure.” Nylan snorted. “Ryba says that’s the way it is, and that I have to accept it. I’m angry because… frig! I don’t know. There ought to be some way to change it, and I can’t find it.”
“You’re a builder, Nylan, a maker, and you want to make the world better. Everyone else wants control, not real change.” Ayrlyn paused. “Except Relyn, and he’s not just founding a new religion; he’s making you its prophet.”
“Me?”
“Who else? Prophets have to be men.” She shrugged. “This place could use a new religion, but new religions don’t always follow their prophet’s words.”
Nylan shook his head. Relyn couldn’t be that crazy, could he? The engineer’s free hand brushed the front rim of the saddle. Then he swallowed.
CXVII
SILLEK MUNCHES THROUGH a honey cake, trying not to scatter too many crumbs on the small table. From the cradle in the corner of the sitting room comes an occasional snuffle or snore.
“I can’t believe it. I’m here, and he’s actually sleeping. He’s really sleeping.”
“He does sleep,” points out Zeldyan.
“Not often. Not when I’m around.” He forces a leer at his blon
d consort.
“Later,” she says, gently taking his hand. “You’re still upset.”
“Upset? Me? The oh - so - cool and disinterested Lord of Lornth. How could I be upset? Lornth is more prosperous and secure now than in any time in centuries. Is anyone happy? Of course not. All the holders are ready to throw me out unless I march an army to the Roof of the World and destroy a tower and twoscore women, and, yes, one black mage, whose crime seems to be that he builds good towers, and forges excellent weapons of self-defense. Actually, they wouldn’t throw me out. They’d execute me for treason. And you and Nesslek as well, at least Nesslek. Why? Because they’re afraid that they’ll have to treat women more like people.
“If it weren’t for their demon-damned pigheadedness, we’d be doing well. We’ve gotten back the grasslands. Your father is getting Rulyarth organized, and trade duties are beginning to flow in, and soon your brother can take over there.” Sillek takes a deep pull of wine from the goblet.
“Why would you have Fornal there?” asks Zeldyan.
“Your father has asked that he not be my permanent representative there. I could use his counsel closer, and both Fornal and I could benefit from Fornal’s service in Rulyarth. So, I imagine, could your father,” adds Sillek dryly.
“Yes, Fornal does chafe at Father’s counsel.” Zeldyan smiles. “But you really think you must attack the Roof of the World?”
“No more than fish must swim, birds fly, and men die, and they will. Between Karthanos, Ildyrom, and my own beloved holders, I’m going to have to attack the Roof of the World. Karthanos got rid of any choice I might have had, without saying a word.”
“How?” asks Zeldyan. Her voice conveys that she knows the answer, but she wants Sillek to speak.
“He sent me a thousand golds and offered score forty armsmen, as well as an experienced commander. What does that tell you about his resources?”
“Are you suggesting that the most honorable Karthanos has intimated that, unless you remove the women from the Roof of the World, he will indeed remove you as Lord of Lornth?”
“Unless I overlooked something, I think that was the message.” Sillek downs the rest of the wine in a single gulp.
“Perhaps you should talk to your mother,” suggests Zeldyan. “She has much experience in such intricacies.”
“She’ll only suggest that I take all the coins and all the armsmen and reclaim my patrimony. She’s played that tune from the beginning-with all her little talks with ‘old’ friends and her letters-all the signs she thinks I’m too stupid to see. And I can do nothing because all those old friends would agree with her, and I’d have even more trouble. After all, I only told her not to talk to me of honor.” He toys with the goblet, then sets it down hard. “Besides, even I can see I have no choices.”
“Then let her convince you,” suggests Zeldyan. “It will make her happy.”
“No, only justified, but it’s a good idea. I don’t know how I managed without you, dear one.” Sillek laughs, rises, steps around the table, and lifts her into his arms. “It’s later, now.”
“You are impossible.” But she lifts her lips to his.
CXVIII
DRY DUST SWIRLED Into the smithy, both from the road and from fields that had not seen rain in more than an eight-day.
Clung! Clung!
Nylan struggled with the metal on the anvil, a chunk of iron that neither looked circular nor like a gear. Even the hole in the center was lopsided. Finally, he took the tongs and set the misshapen mass on the forge bricks, then wiped his forehead with the back of his forearm.
“Does the whole thing have to be of metal, ser?” asked Huldran from behind the older, makeshift anvil, where she continued to hammer out the arrowheads that ought to have been cast.
“It would be stronger.”
“Couldn’t the wood people make something like a wheel, with holes in it where you put through sort of square metal pegs? You could put flanges on the bottom so they wouldn’t slip out, and a smaller wheel inside the other.”
Nylan squinted, trying to visualize what the blond guard had suggested. Then he shook his head and laughed. “It would probably work better than what I’ve been trying to do. In making wooden wheels you can wet-bend the wood. Yes, it would work.”
“You think so?”
Nylan pointed to the misshappen metal. “Look at that. That’s workable?”
A thin woman, painfully thin, wearing leathers from the plunder piles, with dark smears that had been blood, stepped into the smithy. “Ser?”
Nylan turned. “Yes.”
“I was bid… If you please, ser… the marshal… she… ser-”
“I take it that the marshal requests my presence?” Nylan asked to cut off the painfully slow speech for the new guard.
“Yes, ser.”
“Fine.” He set aside the hammer. “I assume I’ll be back before too long, Huldran. Use the good anvil.” Nylan looked back at the messenger. “I don’t know everyone anymore. Who are you?”
“Meyin, ser.”
“Where are you from?” The smith stepped from behind the anvil.
“Dinoz, ser.”
Nylan had never heard of Dinoz, but he’d never heard of most of the small towns from which the new guards had fled. “East or west of the mountains?”
“It’s in Gallos, ser.”
“Let’s go.”
Nylan followed Meyin down the road toward the tower. Nearly a dozen new guard recruits were practicing on the sparring ground. On the stretch of meadow between the road and the fields another handful ran through exercises with wands on horseback.
“Looks more like a boot camp…” Nylan muttered to himself. “Then it is.” How long could Ryba build her forces before someone else decided to take a crack at Westwind? An eight-day? A year? Who knew?
Ryba sat behind a small flat table in the corner of the top level of Tower Black, military and cool-looking in the gray leathers. She nodded, pushing aside the quill pen and the scroll. Nylan stepped into the room, and Meyin slipped down the steps, closing the door behind her.
As he eased onto the stool, Nylan’s eyes flicked to the empty cradle.
“She’s down in the nursery area with Niera and Antyl.”
The smith-engineer looked blankly at the marshal.
“Antyl’s the one who’s so pregnant that I couldn’t figure out how she got here.”
“Oh, the one with the burns?”
Ryba nodded. “What were you working on?”
“Gears for the sawmill. I managed to get the collar for the mill wheel done, but I was having trouble. Huldran came up with a better idea.” Nylan shrugged. “I should have thought of it-or asked-sooner.”
“The sawmill will have to wait-maybe until next year.”
“Trouble?”
“We’ve had trouble from the day the landers planetfell.” Ryba glanced to the window, her eyes traveling to the ice needle that was Freyja and then to the western peaks. “It’s beautiful here. If they’d just leave us alone-but they won’t. We’re going to have to win a big battle. Soon.”
“How big? How soon?”
“Before mid-fall, perhaps sooner. I can’t tell yet, but some of the latest recruits have been bringing tales of armsmen gathering in Lornth, and of lots of mercenaries being hired. I sent Ayrlyn out to get more supplies, and more information.”
“Maybe Lornth expects trouble elsewhere.” Nylan worried about another scouting run for Ayrlyn, but forced his concerns to the back of his mind.
“No.”
“Visions? Images?”
“Those and all the scattered reports.”
“So we need a superweapon? A magic sword that slices armsmen in quarters without anyone holding it? Or perhaps a magic bow?”
“Nylan.” Ryba’s voice was as cold as the ice on Freyja.
“I’m sorry. What am I supposed to do? Make more blades? Even with better blades, we still lost a lot of good guards.” He cleared his throat, his eyes flicking t
o the window and Freyja, the ice-needle that sometimes seemed warmer and more approachable than Ryba.
“We can’t afford those kinds of losses again,” Ryba said. “Even with all the new recruits… we can’t train them well that fast, and half are scared to death of men with weapons. It takes time to overcome that.”
Nylan rubbed his forehead. At times, especially when he thought of weapons, his head still ached. “Huldran is working on arrowheads. She can’t give them that final ordering, but she makes good arrowheads. I can make more, too. I don’t like it, but I can. Or blades. What do you want?”
“The weapons laser. I told you we’d need it for the big battle. How usable is it?”
“We’ve got one bank of firm cells left. They’re at about eighty percent and deteriorating-probably won’t be much good past the coming winter. The generator’s gone; so we’re stuck with what we have in the cells.” He looked at the marshal. “How big a battle?”
“I don’t know the exact numbers, but they’ll have enough troops to cover the ridge fields. They’ll have some siege engines for the tower. That’s why I told you to save the laser for the battle with this Lord Sillek. He’s supposedly using all his loot from taking over that seaport for just two things. Fortifying his hold on the conquered city… and building up and buying armsmen.”
“The laser won’t be enough, then.” Nylan massaged his forehead again. “We need some defensive emplacements. I have an idea-if I can have some guards.”
“How many? I don’t have that many of the original marines left.”
“New ones will be fine, with maybe one experienced one.”
“Can you tell me what you have in mind?”
“It’s an idea. Call it a booby trap. One way or another, it will work.” He sighed. “It will work. Everything I build works.”
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