Fall of Angels

XXXII

NYLAN OPENED HIS eyes slowly in the gray light that came through the open tower window. Although fall had scarcely arrived, the nights had begun to chill, enough so that the single blanket seemed thin, indeed. Blankets were not used in large numbers on spacecraft, and the few that had been brought down felt less than adequate for the winter ahead. That meant another set of items to be bought from the all-too-infrequent traders. Nylan blinked as he wondered how they could pay for all that they still needed.

Although the landers had been stripped of what would make the tower more habitable, that had provided little enough. The marines occupied the third level of the tower. Gerlich, Saryn, Ayrlyn, and Narliat occupied part of thefourth level. The fifth was used for miscellaneous storage, and Ryba and Nylan rattled around in a sixth level that had little in it except for the two lander couches lashed together and a few weapons and personal effects.

Only the shutters on the second and third levels were finished, the results of Saryn’s and Ayrlyn’s handicrafts, and there were no internal doors. Rags had been pieced together to curtain off the two jakes and provide some privacy. Nylan hoped that they could finish the bathhouse and additional jakes facilities before too long-not to mention the shutters.

As he moved slightly, Ryba’s eyelids fluttered, and she moaned. He waited, but she did not open her eyes. So Nylan slowly shifted his weight more in order to look out through the casement. A trace of white rime frosted the outer edge of the window ledge, but the whiteness seemed to vanish as the first direct rays from the sun touched the dark stone. The hint of wood smoke drifted in the window, blown down from the chimney momentarily.

Over the crude rack in the corner hung their clothes, including the ship jackets that probably would not be heavy enough for the winter ahead.

Nylan’s eyes shifted back to Ryba’s face, to the curly jet-black hair cut so short and the pale clear skin, to the thin lips and the high cheekbones. Her eyelids fluttered again, and she groaned.

“Not yet … not yet,” she murmured.

Nylan waited, almost holding his breath.

“No …”

He reached out and touched the cool bare shoulder. “It’s all right. It’s all right.”

Ryba shook her head and moistened her lips, but her eyes did not open for a moment. Then she shifted her weight on the lander couch and looked directly at the engineer. “No it’s not. I was dying, and I won’t finish everything that needs to be done for Westwind, or for Dyliess.”

“It was just a dream …” Nylan paused. “It was a dream, wasn’t it?”

Ryba shook her head again, and squinted as she sat up.Then she swung her feet off the couch, letting the blanket fall away from her naked figure, until it covered only her waist and upper thighs. Her back to Nylan, she faced the open window, looking out toward the northern peaks that showed a light dusting of snow from the night before. The faintest touch of yellow and brown tinged the bushes and meadow grasses.

“It wasn’t a dream. It was real. My hair was gray, and I was lying here, except I was in a big wooden bed, and there was glass in the windows, and people in gray leathers were standing around me.” Ryba shivered and then stood, padding to the clothes rack, where she pulled on her undergarments and then the brown leather trousers and an old shirt-both plunder.

“If your hair had become gray, that had to be a long time from now.” He stood and stretched.

“Nylan … I wasn’t finished, and it hurt that I didn’t finish.”

“Ryba,” Nylan offered gently, “no one who really cares about anything is ever finished with life. And you care a lot.” He forced a smile, then began to dress himself.

Ryba finished with the bone buttons of the trousers and then buttoned the shirt. “You’re probably right, but it was real

.. too real.”

“Another one of your senses of what will happen?”

She nodded. “They come at odd times, but some have already happened.”

“Oh?” He hadn’t heard that part.

“Little things, or not so little. I saw your tower almost from the beginning-and I know what the bathhouse will look like.” She sat back on the joined lander couches that served as their bed and pulled on her boots.

“Who is Dyliess?”

“Our daughter. I’m pregnant, and she’ll be born in the spring, just before the passes melt.”

Nylan’s mouth dropped open. “You … never …”

“She’ll be a good daughter, and don’t you forget that, Engineer.” Ryba smiled. “I wanted the timing right. You can’tdo that much in the winter here, and next summer … we’ll have a lot of problems when people realize we’re here to stay. They think the winter will finish us, but it won’t.”

“Promise?” he asked.

“I can promise that, at least so long as you keep building.” She stood in the open doorway at the top of the steps. “I want things to be right for Dyliess, and they will be.”

“A daughter … you’re sure?”

“You wanted a son?”

“I never thought-one way or another.” He shook his head, still at a loss, still amazed.

“You’ll have a son. I’ll promise that, too.” Her voice turned soft, almost sad.

“You don’t …”

“I know what to promise, Nylan. I do.” Her eyes met his, and they were deep and chill, filled with pain. “There’s no time to be melancholy, Engineer.”

The forced cheer in her voice contradicted her calm and pale face. As they looked at each other, Nylan could hear the hum of voices from below, and the smell of something cooking, although he wasn’t sure he was in any hurry to find out what Kyseen had improvised for breakfast.

“We do our best, Nylan, in spite of what may be.”

“May be or will be? Can these visions of yours be changed?” Nylan sat down on the couch-bed and reached for his shipboots, his eyes still on her.

Ryba shrugged. “Maybe I only see what can’t be changed. Maybe it can be. I don’t know, because this is something new.”

“All of this is something new.” Nylan pulled on his shipboots, getting so worn that he could feel stones through them.

“You need new boots. You ought to check the spares. We’ve only got about twenty pair left over.”

“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 hardheels 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 tanningthose 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 pastthe 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 endurasteelbraces, 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 firin 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, stockstill, 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 draggingthe 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 followon 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 the 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 unfastenedthe 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?”

Nylan looked down at the stony ground.

“You look confounded, Mage.”

“My name is Nylan.” The engineer didn’t wish to answer, but even the thought of not answering was increasing his headache.

“Ser Nylan, surely you know where came such blades.”

The engineer took a deep breath. “I … made them.”

“Here? On the Roof of the World?”

Nylan nodded.

“Light! I must be cozened into attacking angels each worth twice any armsman, and supported by a mage the like of which our poor world has never seen.” Relyn struggled into a sitting position on the wall. “You killed three of my men, did you not?”

“Yes.”

“Might I look at that blade?”

Nylan looked down at the blade he had thrust through the tool belt. “This? It’s not finished. The hilt needs to be wrapped.” He eased the blade out, half surprised that he had not cut himself with it, though it was shorter than the crowbars carried by the locals. He showed it to Relyn, who brushed the metal with the fingers of his left hand.

“Would that I had a blade like that,” said the younger man.

“They are for … the guards … of Westwind.”

“Westwind?”

Nylan gestured to the tower. “That’s what we have named it.”

“Westwind.” Relyn shivered. “Westwind. A cold wind.”

“Very cold,” Nylan agreed, thinking about Ryba’s coolness after the battle. What was he supposed to have done? Sprung into the saddle and chased after them? He laughed, thinking of himself bouncing along on the black.

“You laugh? You laugh?”

“Not at you, Relyn. At me. I was thinking about how awkward it is for me to ride a horse.”

“I do not understand. Do not all men ride? All mages?”

“Yes, but we don’t always ride horses into battle.” Nylan turned at the sound of hooves, watching as Huldran and Cessya rode up.

“You’re already organized, ser, aren’t you?” asked Huldran.

“Pretty much,” Nylan admitted.

“Who’s the pretty boy?” asked Cessya.

“I think he’s the guilty one. He thinks his father will disown him for being defeated by a bunch of women.”

“He’s not bad-looking.”

“They think you’re not bad-looking, Relyn,” Nylan said. “Even if you are the one who plotted this. Might I ask why?”

Relyn shrugged. “I am the younger son, and when I heard that Lord Sillek had offered lands and a title to whoever reclaimed the Roof of the World … I spent what I had. Now … I am ruined.”

“If you had succeeded, we’d have been ruined,” pointed out Nylan as he turned to Huldran. “Who did we lose?”

“Weblya and Sheriz. Weindre got slashed up, but Jaseen says she’ll pull through. A bunch of bruises and cuts for everyone else, except the marshal.” Huldran sighed. “It’s going to get tougher. We’re just about out of rounds. Best to use what we’ve got left for the rifles.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Nylan said, “but that would be my suggestion.”

“That’s what the marshal told us.” Huldran turned in the saddle. “We’ve got to make another big cairn. Siret’s bringing down the cart for the bodies. Since you’re all right, ser …”

“Go on.” Nylan waved the two off. “Do what you have to.”

“A curious tongue you speak, Mage. Some words I understand. You are not, properly speaking, an armsman, are you?”

“No. I’m an engineer … like a smith. I build things, like the tower, or this.”

“Yet you slew three men, and you forge blades that …” Relyn groped in the air with his left hand. “And the women, they are mightier warriors than you?”

“For the most part, yes.”

“Demons of light save us, save us all, for they will change the world and all that is in it.”

Of that, Nylan had no doubts. And, from what he’d seen, it would probably be a better world-but would it be one that had a place for him? From Ryba’s actions and gestures, daughter or no daughter, he wondered.