Arms-Commander (2 page)

In the late afternoon on the Roof of the World, the guards stood silent on the practice ground, their eyes fixed on the blackness rising just above the western horizon as Istril stepped out of the main door of Tower Black and crossed the causeway. Saryn, arms-commander and former command pilot, stood beside Ryba of the swift ships of Heaven and Marshal of Westwind. The tip of the Marshal's wooden practice wand touched the ground, and she gestured toward the silver-haired guard and healer to approach.

Istril continued her measured pace toward the Marshal and the arms-commander. The other guards waited, their eyes moving from the Marshal to Istril and back again, while Saryn of the flashing blades studied the darkness rising in the western sky.

The silver-haired healer halted three paces from Ryba and inclined her head. “Marshal?”

“What do you think of that?” Ryba glanced from the pregnant and silver-haired healer to the west, beyond the imposing ice needle that was Freyja. “That has to be the engineer.”

Darkness swirled into the sky, slowly turning the entire western horizon into a curtain of blackness that inexorably enfolded the sun, bringing an even earlier twilight to the Roof of the World. For a moment, Freyja shimmered white, then faded into the maroon darkness that covered the high meadows and Tower Black.

“I could already feel the shivering between the black and white,” Istril said slowly. “So did Siret.”

“And you didn't tell me immediately?” asked the Marshal.

“What could we have done? Besides, it's more than him. More than the healer, too. Something bigger, a lot bigger.”

Ryba shook her head before asking, “Do you still think it was right to send Weryl?”

“He's all right. I can feel that.” Istril paused. “That means Nylan is, too…but there's a lot of pain there.” Her eyes glistened, even in the dimness.

“When the engineer gets into something…there usually is.” Ryba's voice was dry.

Saryn said nothing, wondering still how Ryba could be so chill.

“He doesn't do anything unless it's important.” Istril continued to look past Ryba toward the horizon.

“That just makes it worse, doesn't it?” Ryba's voice was rough.

“Yes, ser.”

It's worse because you forced him out, you and your visions.
But Saryn did not speak the words, nor look in at the Marshal.
Visions have high prices, and deeper costs.

After another period of silence, Istril nodded, then turned and walked swiftly back across the practice ground and the causeway into the tower.

For a time, Ryba continued to study the growing darkness of a too-early night as the faces of the guards shone bloodred in the fading light. Then, Saryn gestured, silently, and the guards slipped away, filing quietly back into the tower for the duties that never ended.

The faintest of shivers ran through the ground beneath the Marshal's and the arms-commander's feet, and the meadow grasses swayed in the windless still of unnatural twilight.

Another ground shudder passed, then another, as the gloom deepened. The Marshal waited…and watched. Then, abruptly, she turned and walked back across the practice ground and the causeway into Tower Black.

Long after the Marshal had returned to Tower Black, Saryn remained on the stone causeway just outside the door to the tower, her eyes still gazing toward the west and the darkness that glowed, framing the ice peak of Freyja, as if to suggest that even the mightiest peak on the Roof of the World was bounded by forces beyond mere nature.

Between darkness and darkness.
Again, she did not voice her thoughts. That, she had leaned from the engineer and the singer…that was unwise.

With the coming of spring on the Roof of the World, most of the snow around Tower Black and its outbuildings had finally melted, rushing down the stonelined channels to the reservoir and the waterfall. The one exception was on a shaded section of the north side, where more than a yard of snow and ice yet remained. Once the reservoir was full, the water that came over the spillway followed the old channel to the cliff, where it poured downward into the small lake below, created by another stone-and-earth dam that Nylan had designed to provide power for the mill and ceramic works beyond the dam, although Saryn had been the one to oversee the actual construction.

Saryn walked swiftly along the south side of the stone road from the tower up toward the smithy. So early in the season, the ground around the tower was swampy, and her boots would have sunk up to the calf everywhere except the arms practice field, which had been laid over stone and was well drained, and the stone-paved roads and causeways. The starflowers had begun to bud, covering the stone cairns to the south and east with green, but the delicate blooms bent to a gentle though still-chill breeze out of the north. The south-facing sloping meadow to the north and east of the tower was a pale green haze. Saryn could remember all too well when it had been seared gray. Now, even the small stone cupola from where Nylan had wielded the last laser in all of Candar, and perhaps the first and last in the world, had been removed, its stones incorporated in the foundation of the larger complex of towers and quarters that Ryba had ordered begun the previous year. Just to the south of the foundation and the courses of stones that reached head height in some places was a low building—the so-called guest cottage—where messengers or travelers could stay, not that the interior was all that elaborate.

A squad of junior guards was running through warm-up exercises as Saryn left the practice field behind. They were the newest of more than two companies of guards—nearly two hundred armed women—and another hundred who had some weapons training. Saryn shook her head. Who—except Ryba and Nylan—would have believed Westwind could have mounted an effective armed force of so many women? And who among the marines and ship's officers who had landed more than ten years earlier would have realized that those ten years would have been filled with fighting off attack after attack—largely because Westwind was controlled by and for women?

She kept striding up the stone-paved road, and, shortly, she stepped through the half-open door into the far warmer air of the smithy. Both anvils were in use. Cessya and Huldran worked a short-sword blade on the larger, and Daryn and Ydrall used the smaller to forge arrowheads, with Zyendra standing by. Nunca and Gresla—two junior guards—alternated working the forge bellows. Neither Huldran nor Cessya looked up until Cessya took the partly worked blade from the anvil with the tongs and returned it to the forge for reheating.

Daryn gave Saryn a quick glance and a nod, but did not miss a beat with his hammer. The year after Nylan and Arylyn had departed Westwind, Daryn had asked to be allowed to help at the forge, pointing out that his artificial foot made him a poor field worker and an even poorer hunter, but that it mattered little in the smithy. Because he'd been willing to undertake the dirtier work and pump the bellows whenever asked, Huldran had agreed…and Ryba had said nothing. Although Ydrall had begun almost a year before Daryn, after nine years she and the one-footed man were about equal in smithing skills, and both were adequate smiths.

Daryn had also become a father twice, and both his son and daughter were with Hryessa, the brunette local who'd shown such fire and such a zest for arms that she'd become the guard captain of the second company. Saryn had no doubts that Hryessa was actually a better leader than Llyselle, the captain of first company, but Llyselle had been one of the original angels from the
Winterlance,
and her experience—as well as her silver hair—had resulted in her becoming the first guard captain, after Istril had refused to take the position, noting that her healing skills made it ever more difficult to kill.

Saryn stopped well back of the anvils, then asked Huldran, “How long before you can provide the last twenty blades?”

“Arms-commander,” Huldran replied, “with everything else, it's going to be midsummer.”

The master smith might have asked why Saryn had pressed over the past year for another two hundred blades—enough to equip another full company with the twin blades—when there was only a handful of guards even available to begin forming a third company. But such decisions were made by the Marshal of Westwind, and none questioned Ryba.

“Arrowheads?” Saryn asked, her words directed at Daryn.

“We're still way ahead of the fletchers, ser,” replied Daryn.

“As for the bows, Commander,” Huldran said, “we've tried everything, but if we start with the composite strips, we burn what little of the composite is left. If we try to forge even the thinnest iron around it, we get something that separates when there's any tension on the bow.”

“So how can we get bows with power and compact enough to use from the saddle?”

“Falynna comes from Analeria. She was a bowyer's apprentice because her father didn't have any sons. They use horn bows there. They can pierce armor. She's been working on several since last summer, and I've got some ideas about strengthening the central core…”

Saryn listened as Huldran explained before asking, “How soon will you know whether this will work?”

“Two weeks at most, ser.”

Saryn hoped the idea would work because wooden bows with penetration power were too long and only a score or so of Nylan's smaller composite bows remained.

Once she finished with the smiths, Saryn headed back down toward the practice field. Above her on the road, two squads of the newest recruits were walking toward the stables, doubtless for their tour at mucking out the stalls and using the wheelbarrows to cart the manure down to the fields, largely for root crops that would last through the long and cold winters.

Three other guards walked up from the practice field. Flanking Hryessa were the two more experienced guards acting as squad leaders for the newest recruits.

“…keep them working on the exercises to build their arms and shoulders.”

Saryn smiled.

“Ser!” offered Hryessa, catching sight of Saryn.

“Guard Captain,” returned Saryn. “A moment, if you will.”

“Yes, ser.” Hryessa gestured uphill toward the stables. “I'll be with you two shortly.”

Saryn waited until the two guards were several yards away. “How are the recruits in your newer squads doing?”

“About the same as any others after their first winter on the Roof of the World. Vianyai looks to be the most promising.” Hryessa had picked up Temple well enough to be conversant in both Old Rat and Temple, one of the reasons why Saryn had made the spitfire a guard captain.

“She's the one that brought in the snow cat after the blizzard?”

Hryessa nodded. “She's not the strongest, but she wants to be the best.”

“That sounds like someone else…”

The faintest touch of a smile appeared at the corners of Hryessa's mouth, then vanished. “We'll see. Jieni works hard, too. They all do, I'd have to say.”

Saryn nodded. The remoteness of Westwind and the reputation of the angels weeded out women who were not serious about changing their lives long before they reached Westwind.

“Of the latest to come before the snows last autumn, there are twenty-six from Gallos, and nine from Analeria,” the arms-commander said, not quite conversationally.

“Relyn, you think?” Hryessa pursed her lips. “It could be. The only one to mention the one-handed man in black was Saachala. She claims she never heard him, but her cousin did. Vianyai said that Saachala had only brothers, and that was why she fled Passera.”

“Passera? She crossed all of Gallos, then the Westhorns?”

“It cost her dearly. Her child will come due by summer. The healer says it will be a girl.”

Ryba might appreciate another future guard, but every local woman who had arrived in Westwind had paid dearly in some way. That might also be why few declined to be trained to bear arms. “I need to report to the Marshal.”

“Yes, ser.” Hryessa nodded, then hurried up the stone road toward the stables.

As she walked swiftly down toward the causeway, Saryn caught sight of three slender figures in gray at the eastern end of the practice field, practicing bladework with wooden wands. Kyalynn and Aemra were pressing the third—Dyliess, the daughter of the Marshal, who, at almost eleven, already could handle the twin blades better than most of the Westwind guards. But then, she'd been trained from birth, not so much by Ryba as by Saryn and Istril. The three silver-hairs—that was the name the locally born guards called the trio of Dyliess, Kyalynn, and Aemra, the daughter of Istril and a year younger than the other two, so alike that they might have been full sisters rather than the half sisters that they in fact were.

“Technique!” called Saryn. “All three of you are relying on speed and not your technique! If you're going to practice by yourselves, do it correctly.”

All three lowered their wands.

Aemra smothered a grin. Dyliess and Kyalynn inclined their heads solemnly.

“Do you three want to join the recruits up at the stables?”

“No, ser.”

“I didn't think so. But why don't you go up there and offer to walk the horses while they're cleaning the stables? Keep them on the road. Otherwise, you'll end up having to clean them as well. The ground's too swampy. You can tell the guard captain that I sent you.”

“Yes, ser.”

The three hurried toward the tower to put away their wands. Saryn followed, closing the heavy door behind her and starting across the gloomy lower foyer when she saw a junior guard coming down the steps with a basket heaped with linens and other cloth.

“Why aren't you with the others?” asked Saryn.

“I'm the one assigned to the healer today, ser,” replied Calysa. “I was taking these over to the bath house to wash.”

“Go ahead, then.” With a faint smile, Saryn stepped to one side.

The young woman looked around before asking, “Guard Commander?”

Saryn had almost started up the steps but halted at the hesitant words of the girl, a thin figure who had walked the roads and trails all the way from Fenard in the waning days of the previous fall, literally clawing her way through the last snowdrifts to a guard post three kays below the ridge overlooking Tower Black. “Yes, Calysa?”

“Is it true…that…?” The brunette looked away.

“Is what true, girl?” Despite her irritation at being waylaid on her way to see the Marshal, Saryn refrained from snapping because Calysa never complained, never whined, and gave her all to anything she was asked to do.

“The stones, ser. They say that they were cut from the heart of the world by…”

Saryn wanted to shake her head. Nylan had been gone little more than ten years, and already the engineer was a legend. The mighty Nylan…the mage who had humbled two rulers, then toppled the white empire, if with Arylyn, the singer of life and death. And the man who had fled the wrath of the terrible Ryba, she reminded herself. “Yes, every stone in Tower Black was shaped in fire by Nylan. Is that what you wanted to know?”

Calysa nodded, but a question remained in her eyes.

“And you also want to know why someone so mighty would leave Westwind?” Saryn smiled wryly. “He and Ryba did not view matters in quite the same fashion, and she can see not only what is but what will be. Not even Nylan wished to cross her knowledge of what was, is, and will be.” That was an oversimplification, but after years of having to explain, Saryn knew what satisfied the young women who had sought Westwind as a refuge.

“Thank you, ser.”

“You best get on with the wash,” Saryn said, gently but firmly.

“Yes, ser.” Calysa continued on with the basket.

Saryn made her way up the solid stone steps that formed the center of the tower, all the way to the topmost level—and the Marshal's study.

At the sound of Saryn's boots, Ryba lifted her eyes from the maps spread across the simple circular table and rose from the straight-backed chair. “How is Huldran coming?”

“By midsummer we should have enough blades for another full company. She can't duplicate the bows, not the way Nylan did them—”

“If you please.” Ryba's voice was cool. “Just the status.”

“One of the Analerian herder girls has been working on ways to make a better horn bow, and Huldran has some ideas for coring it that might work.”

“What about firearms?”

“With all those white wizards?” Saryn shook her head. “Using black powder for explosives and roadwork is one thing, but making firearms by hand would take far longer than the blades. We haven't found any sulfur anywhere in our territory, or even nearby. And the white mages could explode the powder in battle. We've barely managed to trade for enough sulfur for explosives for the roadwork.”

“Save it. No more roadwork this year, not that requires blasting. Press the smiths for all the blades and arrowheads they can deliver. How much of the second company can you mount?”

“About two-thirds without any spares. All of them if we had to,” Saryn conceded. “We were hard-pressed for fodder for the mounts we had this winter.”

“We'll have to find a way to do better next year. Much better.” Ryba's words were calm, as if finding another fifty mounts and five months of fodder for them was the easiest of tasks upon the Roof of the World.

Saryn merely nodded, then asked, “Why are you so concerned about weapons for a company we won't likely fill for another few years?”

“We'll fill it sooner than that. We have to.”

“Who's likely to cause trouble? It can't be from Lady Zeldyan in Lornth or Lord Gethen, not after…all that happened there.”