Fall of Angels (60 page)

  
"We'd better start now," answered the healer. "I've avoided any large towns, places where there would be armsmen, but everywhere I've been, there are women ready to leave. There aren't too many in any one place, but. . ."

  
"I'm glad you avoided the armsmen. It has to be getting more dangerous." Nylan added quickly, "What do we make mattresses from?"

  
"I tried not to be too obvious . . . and thank you for saying that you care." Ayrlyn smiled as Nylan swallowed, then said, "Grasses might do for mattress filling, if they're dried well and thoroughly debugged, but we don't have that much cloth to cover them, or sew them."

  
"I wouldn't sew them all the way," suggested Nylan. "Leave an end open so it could be folded shut. That way-"

  
"That makes sense. We could tuck dried flowers in there. They might help." Ayrlyn glanced at Cessya. "We need to finish unloading the cart."

  
Nylan shifted his weight from one sore foot to the other. "I've got more brickwork to do, and I need to raid a lander lock. Maybe I'll do that first."

  
"A lander lock?" asked Ayrlyn.

  
"Something I promised for Relyn."

  
"That's something I like about you, Nylan, another thing," Ayrlyn said before turning to Cessya. "You keep your promises."

  
A small face peered out the window from the great room, and Nylan waved to Niera. Was she helping with the infants? Or just keeping their mothers company or running errands?

  
Niera gave the smallest of waves, then ducked back from the window. Nylan crossed the causeway and headed inside.

  
After reclaiming a tool kit from the fifth level of the tower, Nylan trudged uphill to the lander used for grass storage. "I promised him eight-days ago, longer." He shook his head.

  
The lander door was ajar, as always, since the lock mechanism had been disconnected and the lock plates removed, and most of the guards didn't bother using the sliding bolt that had replaced the automated system.

  
After removing three access plates, and sneezing intermittently the whole time from the hay and grass dust that rose every time he moved his boots, he found something that might work-more like an inside lock-plate shim with large screw holes at each end. If he could bend a control arm. That meant removing another access plate and disconnecting the other end of the rod.

  
Nylan was sweating, his tattered work shirt soaked through, by the time he had all the miscellaneous parts he needed-or thought he needed. But he smiled as he carried them, and the tools, back to the smithy where Cessya greeted him.

  
"Now that we stowed the trading goods, the healer said I'm supposed to make myself useful, ser," she announced, "and I've got no interest in pulling weeds or sawing timbers. What, do you need?"

  
"More mortar." Nylan grinned. "Are you sure you want to make yourself useful here?"

  
"Grinding that lava rock for mortar is better than grubbing through the mud or having that fir sap fall all over you. The rock dust washes off. Besides, what you do lasts, and I can say that I helped do it."

  
"Well ... I appreciate that honesty. We'll all learn, you and Huldran and I, how to build and operate a smithy."

  
"Sounds good. I'll be back in a bit. I need to get those mallets and a bucket of water." Cessya inclined her head and was gone.

  
Nylan set the tools and parts in the corner. Because he needed some of the cruder and heavier tools in the lower level of the tower, he'd start work on Relyn's knife-holder-grip after the midday meal, hoping he wouldn't need to actually forge it, but just bend metal.

  
He looked around the unfinished smithy. With Cessya's help, it might not be that long before they had the building and the forge done. The charcoal was another story, and trying to forge metal was going to be a disaster.

  
"A smith, yet? Probably not..." He shook his head, then began to carry in bricks.

LXXXVI

NYLAN STUDIED THE completed rear wall of the would-be smithy, and took a deep breath. He was getting tired of the building that seemed endless. His eyes flicked to the high puffy clouds. Would it never end?

  
His mother had been right, though. No one else cared about his troubles, except Ayrlyn. He smiled, tentatively, then blanked his face at the sound of boots on the road.

  
"How soon will you have this forge operating?" asked Fierral as she stepped within the uncompleted walls.

  
Nylan glanced around the area, trying to estimate. "A while," he finally said. "Only have half the walls done. The forge itself. . ." He shook his head.

  
The guard leader frowned.

  
"Why?"

  
"We don't have that long. We're reaching the limits of the blades you forged. We've never had enough of those bows. And we're getting more and more women showing up. They don't have the training the best locals do. Most of us don't, but we're getting there." Fierral ran her hand through her short-cropped fire-red hair. "What gives us a chance is your weapons."

  
"But you need more?" asked the engineer.

  
"We need more of everything. Arrowheads first. Frigging Gerlich-he took off hunting this morning with a good fifty shafts. Showed how few we have left."

  
Nylan pursed his lips. Gerlich, again. Now what was the man up to?

  
"Ser . . ." Fierral asked quietly. "Do you really need a smithy built like the tower? We just can't wait for that. The locals won't."

  
Nylan looked around again. "I can put together a forge of some sort in the next few days-I have to have that-and develop a bellows of some sort. And you'll have to help me make charcoal. You can't smith without coal or charcoal."

  
"Whatever it takes, ser." Fierral's eyes drifted to the practice yard below the front of the tower. "I'm just a guard leader. I'll never be that much more, not like you or the marshal. But the guards, all of the women, they need the weapons."

  
Nylan understood that the words were as close to a plea as Fierral would ever offer; that, like him, she kept the doubts and fears and concerns held tightly.

  
"I'll get working on it," he promised.

  
"Thank you."

  
Nylan did not sigh until she was halfway back to the practice yard.

LXXXVII

THE SCOUTS RIDE vanguard nearly a kay before the column that follows, riders under the purpled banners of Lornth and trailed by a far longer column of foot soldiers, levies leavened with professionals from Carpa, Lornth itself, and even from Spidlar and far Lydiar.

  
As it takes the road skirting the rapids, the army approaches the ford that prefaces the split in the trading road. Less than a kay below the rapids lies the junction of the greater and lesser rivers. Another kay below that is the ford, and beyond that the river flows smooth and deep on its northward course to Rulyarth. On the east side of the ford, the road splits, the left-hand highway following the river, the right slowly rising into the hills until it reaches the west branch of the River Arma where it follows Arma all the way to the city of Armat, capital of Suthya.

  
By straining, Sillek can see the edge of the fields in the flat below and to the northwest of the hills through which the road passes and the river rapids pass. Those fields are a lighter green than those in Lornth, and half the ground shows brown where the crops have not spread so early in the year.

  
With the wind out of the east, occasional drops of moisture fly from the rapids to the road, and more than once Sillek looks to the clear sky in surprise, before turning his head toward the dull roaring of the river.

  
On Sillek's right rides Ser Gethen. Behind them, flanked on each side by hard-faced armsmen, ride Terek and Jissek.

  
"Fornal was reluctant to remain at the Groves," says Gethen.

  
"Someone we can trust has to," answered Sillek easily.

  
"Don't speak of trust loudly, Lord Sillek. Soldiers might presume that such planning implies an expectation of failure." Gethen laughs. "Call that the insight of an old man."

  
"You're scarcely old, with those few gray hairs," points out the younger man, looking to the low hill beyond, the last hill before the ford. His face tightens as one of the scouts in the van pauses his mount at the hill crest, then turns and gallops back toward the main force.

  
"I'd say that means a Suthyan force holds the ford," Gethen says.

  
"Probably."

  
They continue to ride toward the messenger.

  
"Suthyans, Lord Sillek," announces the rider in the purple tunic.

  
"How many?"

  
"Not more than score twenty, I'd say. Two- to threescore mounted, and none are archers."

  
Sillek nods. "Stay back on the hill. Don't let them see you. We'll be there presently."

  
"Yes, ser." The messenger heads back toward the five other scouts.

  
"What do you plan, Lord?" asks Gethen.

  
"To destroy them," answers Sillek.

  
"You have more than enough forces to make them retreat." Gethen turns in the saddle to survey the more than two thousand troops following.

  
"If I let them escape, then I'll have to fight them later."

  
"They are outnumbered, and will fight desperately, and that will cost you disproportionately," advises Gethen.

  
"In a head-to-head battle, yes."

  
The older man waits. "I await your orders, Lord."

  
"With the option to disengage if I plan something too stupid, Ser Gethen?" asks Sillek with a smile.

  
"You are both your father's and your mother's son, I think."

  
They proceed to the grassy back side of the hill overlooking the ford-and the Suthyans-where Sillek gathers in the chief armsmen and the two wizards.

  
"Hold the body of the troops just below the hill crest on this side," Sillek orders the chief armsmen. "Keep them still. About half the mounted troopers will come with me. We'll hold the hill crest in full view of the Suthyans."

  
Gethen frowns, but says nothing.

  
Sillek turns to Terek and continues with his instructions. "You and Jissek will be with us, and when I give the order, you're to start casting those firebolts into their ranks. We'll start downhill, slowly, but stay short of really effective bow range. They don't have any Bleyani bowmen, thank the light."

  
Sillek pauses and scans the faces, then bites back the words he might have said, instead adding, "We'll be showing less force than they have, and by coming downhill, we're also showing that I'm young and inexperienced. The firebolts will get them angry, because that's not fighting fair, and they'll come charging after us-"

  
"If they don't?" asks Gethen.

  
Sillek shrugs. "Then we stop a third of the way down the hill and let Terek and Jissek fry as many of them as we can. I'm not in this for honor. The idea is to take the river and Rulyarth as effectively as possible. If you would, Ser Gethen, I'd like you to arrange the forces here so as to trap the Suthyans once they cross the hill crest. Could we set the pikes so their horse couldn't stop in time?"

  
Gethen purses his lips. Then his lips twist. "You have a nasty turn of thought, Lord Sillek. Nasty ... but it should work."

  
The chief armsmen nod in agreement.

  
Sillek looks to the armsmen. "Don't let anyone charge down that hill. If anyone tries it, I'll have Terek turn him into charred bacon. Let them all know that, if you have to."

  
The grizzle-bearded armsman on the right coughs and spits from his saddle and onto the damp grass. "Isn't that being a mite hard, ser? Especially when it's an easy fight, us havin' so many more than them?"

  
"No. We'll need every man we have alive and well when we reach Rulyarth. I'm not interested in glory hounds. You can tell them that, too. I want to win with the fewest lives lost."

  
The slightest nod from the oldest armsman greets his statement.

  
Shortly, Sillek leads more than twoscore mounted troops over the hill crest and slowly downhill under a pair of purpled banners. To the right of the hill is the river, and from farther east comes the muted rumbling of rapids above the point where the two rivers meet.

  
A trumpet sounds from the Suthyan forces, and the Suthyan horse, numbering nearly twice those Sillek leads, form up on the flat before the long gentle slope that leads up toward the banners of Lornth.

  
The Suthyans wait as Sillek's troop descends. In time, Sillek gestures, and his troopers rein up.

  
The Suthyans continue to wait.

  
Sillek shrugs and says, "Make ready, Wizards."

  
"We are ready, Lord," answers Terek.

  
"Now!" orders Sillek.

  
Terek concentrates, almost wavering in his saddle, but a white-red bolt of fire arcs downhill and into the mounted Suthyans.

  
A single horse rears, flame rising from where the rider had been, and screams as only a horse in pain and agony can.