Fall of Angels (14 page)

 
 
"Tell Istril to come with me, and get Gerlich and have him wear that big crowbar he's so fond of. And have Ayrlyn and Narliat come." Ryba turned to Nylan. "You, too. That will make three and three."

  
"I wouldn't know how to swing one of those things. I've had maybe three lessons, and Istril died laughing the first time," protested Nylan.

  
"Strap on a pistol and the blade. The locals don't see the slug-throwers as weapons. We need to get moving. Meet me over by those rocks as quickly as you can. I need to gather up the coin and jewelry we've got, and some of those crowbars that pass for blades." Ryba untied the reins and vaulted into the saddle of the roan.

  
As Ryba and Kadran rode off, Nylan shouted up into the unfinished structure. "Huldran! Cessya! Weblya! We've got company. Drop what you're doing, and form up with Fierral."

  
"Where, ser?"

  
"Up by those rocks, I think. On the double!"

  
Huldran laughed. "That's Svennish. 'Double-quick' is marine."

  
"Double-quick, then."

  
Nylan began to half walk, half run toward the lander that held his sidearm and the blade he had formed and did not still know how to use.

  
By the time he had reclaimed his gear and splashed water on his face and hands to get rid of the worst of the dirt and grime, and hurried up to the meeting point, Fierral and two others watched from the top of the western ledge, the weapons laser ready.

  
Nylan hoped they didn't have to use it. He fingered the pocket torch he had gotten from the lander, wondering if such a simple item would be useful, but he wanted something that would suggest power that didn't involve hurting or killing anyone else.

  
The remaining sixteen marines-all wearing sidearms- were deployed in two groups, each group with a clear field of fire. Kyseen, her face white, and her leg still in a heavy splint, sat on a boulder at one end of the rocks with the easternmost group.

  
The traders, dressed in half-open quilted jackets and cloaks, had halted downhill from the trading banner.

  
Ryba glanced around the group, all in thin uniforms or shipsuits, some still sweating from their haste. "Before we start... the one thing we don't trade is any of our weapons- or the new blades Nylan has forged."

  
"Those blades ... they are worth golds ... many golds," suggested Narliat.

  
"They'll cost us far more than that if the locals get their hands on them. We can trade any of the captured blades, but that's it."

  
"How much are those armsmen's blades worth?" Nylan asked Narliat.

  
"Whatever Skiodra will pay." Nylan gave the smaller man a sharp look. Narliat stepped back a pace, then stammered. "That is true, but the worst of them would have cost Lord Nessil nearly a gold."

  
"Good. That should help."

  
"Let's go. We'll leave our pile of trading goods here." Ryba fingered the leather pouch at her waist that contained almost all their local coins.

  
The six walked slowly down to the banner. "Where do we stop?" Ayrlyn hissed to Narliat. Her eyes flashed blue.

  
"A dozen paces this side."

  
As the six angels stopped, eight of the traders stepped forward, leaving perhaps a dozen men with the horses and the four carts.

  
The traders stopped on the far side of the banner. For a moment, the only sound was that of the wind, and the faintest dink of harness chains from the traders' cart horses below. After another moment, the biggest trader, wearing a huge blade like the one Gerlich bore, and a breastplate, stepped forward another two paces. "I am Skiodra," he declaimed in Old Anglorat with an unknown accent so thick that Nylan could barely follow the simple declaration. "You wish to trade?" Skiodra inclined his head to Gerlich, the biggest man in the angel group.

  
Before Gerlich could speak, Nylan stepped forward and smiled politely at the bandit-trader. "Yes." Then he gestured to Ryba. "This is Ryba . . ." He groped for the Old Anglo-rat word, and added, "Our marshal... leader."

  
Skiodra squinted slightly. One of the traders behind Skiodra, with a bushy blond beard, grinned broadly.

  
"And you do not let anyone else do the speaking, O Mage?"

  
Mage? Nylan certainly hadn't thought of himself as a mage, especially with a blade in an ill-fitting scabbard strapped around his waist.

  
"Pardon ..." Narliat cleared his throat and looked at Ayrlyn and then Nylan.

  
Nylan nodded.

  
Skiodra's eyes flicked to the splint on Narliat's leg and to the ruined hand. The blond man behind him continued to grin.

  
"Honored Skiodra," began the armsman from Lornth, "best you and your men tread lightly with your laughter. Lord Nessil did not, and he lies under a pile of rocks above the cliff. Even his wizard could not save him. The ... marshal"-he struggled with the unfamiliar word-"hurled one of those angel blades through his breastplate. Never in my years as an armsman, never have I seen anything more terrible."

  
"You may not have seen much," suggested Skiodra, before looking past Narliat to Nylan and then Gerlich. "Can she not speak for herself?"

  
"I... speak..." answered Ryba in Anglorat, "but not your words well."

  
"How do we know you speak the truth?" asked Skiodra. "This . . . minion . . . speaks well, but fine words are not truth. Nor do they buy goods."

  
"Does that matter?" asked Nylan. "You are traders. We would trade. If you insist..." He shrugged and turned to Gerlich. "Take out that crowbar, slowly, and show it to him ..."

  
A thin trader with a scar on his face and a mail vest showing through a tattered tunic scowled at the word "crowbar."

  
As Gerlich extended the hand - and - a - half blade, Skiodra's eyes widened.

  
"That... it is a great blade," he admitted.

  
"Put it away," commanded Ryba. "Just be ready." Without letting her eyes leave Skiodra, she said in an even voice to Nylan, "Tell him that he's dead meat if he tries anything funny, but that we can probably make him some credits or whatever they call it."

  
"You understand that, Narliat?" asked Nylan.

  
"Yes, ser." Narliat cleared his throat. "Most skillful trader . . . you have seen Lord Nessil's great blade. Lord Nessil came here with threescore armsmen. A dozen or less escaped with their lives . .."

  
"Why do you speak for them?"

  
Narliat looked down at the splint and raised his ruined hand. "What else would you have me do? They are angels, and who with wits would cross them?"

  
"I see no angels."

  
Ryba stepped back and raised her hand.

  
Hhsssttt!

  
A single flare of light flashed, and the top of the pole and the trading banner that had flown from it vanished. A few ash fragments drifted down around the Candarian traders.

  
Nylan tried not to wince at the power used in that quick burst.

  
Narliat gulped, but cleared his throat. "I did say they were angels."

  
Skiodra managed to keep his face calm. "Why would angels trade?"

  
"We could not bring everything we need with us," answered Nylan haltingly. "Do you not buy food when you travel?"

  
"You only want food?"

  
"Or something that provides food, like chickens."

  
"The great Skiodra does not deal in chickens, like some common . . . peasant. .."

  
"Let him offer what he has," suggested Ayrlyn. "Don't ask for anything."

  
Narliat glanced at Ryba, then Nylan. They nodded at Narliat.

  
"Noble Skiodra ... since my masters know not what you might have to offer, it might be best for you to show what you have."

  
"You might best do the same."

  
Narliat looked to Nylan, who nodded again.

  
"We will bring some goods," answered Narliat.

  
Skiodra lifted his hand, and the four carts began to wind their way up from the road at the bottom of the ridge.

  
Ryba turned and gestured. Four armed marines moved toward the piles of supplies near the top of the ridge.

  
Nylan looked westward to the darkening clouds that promised the first real rain since they had landed.

  
The first cart held barrels.

 
 
"That-the orange one," explained Narliat, "that is dried fruit from Kyphros. The white ones are flour. The seal means it was milled in Certis . . ."

  
"How much do they - generally run?" asked Ayrlyn.

  
Narliat glanced nervously from the redheaded comm officer to Skiodra, who cleared his throat.

  
Ryba put her hand on the hilt of the blade Nylan had laser-forged.

  
"Uh ... I couldn't be saying, ser, not exactly, since it'd depend on when Skiodra bought them and where."

  
"Three silvers for the flour and a five for the fruit," said Skiodra.

  
Narliat's eyes widened.

  
Nylan snorted. "That's about triple what the trader paid for them."

  
"You wish to travel to Kyphros to get them for yourself?" asked Skiodra.

  
"Excuse me," said Nylan. "Four times what he paid. Maybe five."

  
The slightest nod from Narliat confirmed his revised guess.

  
"So, the noble trader paid-what?-half a silver for each barrel of flour, and he wants three. Six times ... that's nice if you can get it." Nylan laughed.

  
"Ah ... my friend ... how would you pay for the feed for all those horses and men? It is not cheap to travel the Westhorns-and the flour, it came from Certis, and those fields are on the other side of the Easthorns . . ."

  
The engineer repressed a sigh. A long afternoon lay ahead, and the air was getting moister with the coming of the storm. "A half silver a barrel for your expenses, for each two barrels, I could see," he added. "That would be more ..."-he groped for the word-"fair."

  
"Fair? That would be ruin," declared Skiodra. "You mages, you think that because you can create something for nothing that every person can. Bah! Even two silvers a barrel would destroy me."

  
Narliat's eyes flicked back to Nylan.

  
"Such destroying ... that would buy you fine furs. Even a handful of..." He looked at Narliat.

  
"Coppers?"

  
"Coppers. Even two coppers in gain a barrel would make you the richest trader."

  
"I said you were a mage. That may be, but your father had to be a usurer. You would have my men eat hay, and my horses weeds. Even to open trading, as a gesture of good faith, at a silver and a half a barrel, I would have to sell the cloak off my back."

  
In the end, they agreed on nine coppers a barrel for the ten barrels of flour.

  
"What do you have to offer?" asked Skiodra, as a boy, acting as a clerk, chalked the number on a long slate and showed it to Nylan. It looked like a nine, but Nylan still glanced toward Ayrlyn and Narliat, who nodded.

  
"Try the small sword," suggested the armsman.

  
Nylan presented it.

  
"A nice toy for a youth, but scarcely worth much," snorted Skiodra.

  
"Lord Nessil paid a gold for it," asserted Nylan.

  
"A gold, and he was a rich lord who was cheated, or sleeping with the smith's daughter . . ."

  
It was going to be a longer afternoon than he had thought. Nylan refrained from taking a deep breath. "Lords don't have to bargain, noble Skiodra. If they think they are being cheated, they kill the cheater. The blade is probably worth two golds, but a gold is what he paid, and it's scarcely touched."

  
"Your father and your grandfather both were usurers, Mage. How your poor mother survived... I might consider, out of sentiment, and because of your audacity, five coppers for that excuse of a weapon ..."

  
The sun, had it been visible through the heavy clouds, would have been nearly touching the western peaks before Skiodra packed what remained back into his carts and departed-not quite smiling, but not frowning, and promising to be back before harvest.

  
"So what do we have?" Fierral's eyes went from the carts of Skiodra to the supplies, but the redheaded marine officer's hand stayed on her sidearm.

  
The piles, bales, and barrels represented a strange assortment of goods. Besides nearly thirty barrels of flour, corn meal, and dried fruit, and a waxed wheel of yellow cheese, there were bolts of woolen cloth, a pair of kitchen cleavers, two large kettles and three assorted caldrons, two crude shovels, an adz, two sets of iron hinges big enough for a barn door, but no screws or spikes.

  
Nylan looked away from the assorted goods and held out his hand, feeling the tiny droplets of rain. As he listened to the rumble of distant thunder, he frowned, feeling that the clouds almost held something like the Winterlance's neuronet.

  
Ayrlyn looked from the clouds to Nylan. "I know."