Fall of Angels

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 clayfilled 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.