Fall of Angels (68 page)

  
He laughed. Might improve? It also might turn a dull and serviceable crowbar of a weapon into scrap metal. But the marshal of Westwind needed better weapons for the new recruits, blades sharper, tougher, and lighter than the huge metal bars favored by the locals.

  
There was another difference. The locals seemed to want to beat each other to death. It almost seemed that the equivalent of cavalry sabres were looked down on, as though it were a badge of honor to carry the biggest and heaviest weapon possible. Ryba just wanted to find the quickest and most efficient way to win.

  
"Are you ready for this?" he asked Huldran as he set the blade aside on the brick forge shelf to the right side of the forge proper. He picked up a thin strip of alloy with the tongs, setting it on the coals.

  
Huldran pumped the bellows slowly and without comment. The alloy began to heat, more slowly than the local blade would. After a bit, Nylan eased the blade into the coals, almost next to the alloy, and waited for it to heat.

  
Once the crude steel blade had heated, he laid it on his makeshift forge. Then he eased the hot alloy strip on top of the cherry-red blade, and lifted the hammer, his senses extended as he tried to feel how he would meld the two.

  
Three blows later, he knew he was in trouble. The alloy went right into the local steel like a chisel through wood.

  
"Frigging alloy," he mumbled under his breath. "Of course it wouldn't work the simple way."

  
"It never does, ser," pointed out Huldran.

  
"Unfortunately."

  
It took Nylan longer to separate the barely hammered pieces than it had to half join them.

  
"If that doesn't work . . ." He walked to the unfinished Smithy door. High cumulus clouds-with dark centers that promised lightning, thunder, and high winds-filled the sky. Too bad he couldn't harness lightning bolts into an electric furnace. "Right!" he snorted as he walked back to the forge.

  
What if he flattened the alloy into a paper-thin sheet and then smoothed the local steel over it? Then if he heated the sheets and folded them back and flattened them together- always with a layer of the alloy on the bottom-would that work?

  
He set aside the mangled blade and used the tongs to put the alloy into the forge.

  
"You think you can make this work?" asked Huldran, pumping the bellows, sweat running out of her short blond hair.

  
"For a while. We're just about out of the thin alloy sheets from partitions and the like. I don't have the tools to take apart the lander hulls. If I had the tools and talents of a good local smith, I might be able to, but I don't."

  
After a time, he eased the alloy from the forge and began to hammer it into a flatter sheet. The alloy lost heat quickly, and he had to reheat it before he was even a third of the way down the narrow strip.

  
It took until mid-morning just for Nylan to flatten the alloy and the blade, and to hammer-fold the two together once. His arms ached. His shoulders were sore; his hands were tired; and he understood why, the old pictures showed smiths as men with arms like tree trunks.

  
He eased the once-folded metal onto the side of the forge.

  
"Now what?" asked Huldran.

  
"We take a break. Then we go back to work."

  
"You mean this works?"

  
"Oh, it's working. It's slow, like everything in a low-tech culture." Nylan stood and stretched, trying not to wince too much. "Why do you think that even a terrible blade is worth almost a gold?" He took a deep breath and lifted and lowered his shoulders, trying to loosen them. "I read somewhere that a good smith might have to fold and refold iron and steel together dozens of times to get the right kind of blade."

  
"Dozens of times. It took half the morning for once."

  
"That's what I meant," pointed out Nylan dryly. "Lasers and lots of energy make that sort of thing a lot easier. Now all we've got is charcoal and hammers and muscles. It takes longer." He walked toward the tower. After a moment, Huldran followed.

XCIX

SILLEK STANDS ON the pier. Gethen stands several paces inshore of him. The armsmen at the foot of the old pier hold torches, but the light barely carries to where the Lord of Lornth stands a dozen cubits out on the rickety structure that sways with the incoming tide. The sound of surf rises beyond the bay. The harbor is empty. So are the warehouses that held goods, though a handful still hold grain.

  
"Only because they couldn't get enough ships in," Sillek says to himself.

  
"What did you say?" asks Gethen.

  
"Nothing. Nothing."

  
"You thought this might happen, didn't you, Sillek?" Gethen looks down at the dark water. "That the traders would pull out without a fight?"

  
Below them bobs a waterlogged chunk of wood, and beyond that some unidentifiable bit of moss-covered and slimy debris. The cold air coming off the Northern Ocean smells of salt with a hint of rotten fish and ocean-damp wood.

  
"I hoped they would. Wars cost money, and they've always kept Rulyarth as a place to bleed, not to fight over. This was the easy part. Now it gets harder." Sillek looks into the darkness. "We'll have to bribe the independent traders, with something, and rebuild at least one of the piers. And probably reinstate the barges on the lower section below the rapids."

  
"You'll get some cargoes. My wines alone-"

  
"Your wines will likely save us, Gethen. For that I am grateful."

  
"I've been tired of seeing the Suthyans eat up the profits with their port charges." Gethen kicks the rotten wood of the pier, and a chunk flies out into the dark water of the harbor.

  
"We'll need some charges, or we won't have a port," cautions Sillek. "We've got some hungry people here who are going to be very unhappy. And then there's Ildyrom."

 
 
"He hasn't moved on Clynya."

  
"No, but that ties up more armsmen and a wizard. I really can't afford another campaign this year. That's why that business with Karthanos bothers me. I could care less about the middle of the Westhorns. The land doesn't feed my people, and there aren't any precious metals there. But because a bunch of women took it over, it's going to create a real problem with a lot of the traditional holders." Sillek takes another few steps seaward, testing the planks underfoot. One creaks and bends under his weight. He shakes his head. "When you solve one problem, you get two more."

  
"You're right about the Roof of the World." Gethen laughs. "That's why I'm glad you're the lord, and I'm not."

  
"Well ... if anything happens to me, you'll inherit the mess. So don't laugh too hard."

  
"Me?" Gethen's amazement is unfeigned.

  
"Who else? The holders wouldn't accept my mother as regent, for which I am grateful, or Zeldyan, for which I am not. So I've named you as head of the regency council, with Zeldyan and Fornal as the other two counselors. You're respected, and your blood runs in Nesslek. Besides, you don't want the job-not that I hope you ever get it, you understand." Sillek's voice turns dry with his last words.

  
Both men laugh.

  
Behind them the torches flicker in the wind, and before them the faint phosphorescence of the waves outlines the distant breakwaters.

C

THE STOCKY CLOAKED figure climbs the outside stairs to Hissl's quarters and waits outside the door, silhouetted against the late twilight horizon of summer.

  
Hissl opens the door.

  
"I have come to see how things are going," says the cloaked armsman.

  
"Matters are not so simple as the great hunter would think," snaps Hissl, motioning the other into his rooms, but leaving the door ajar. "If I leave here while Lord Ildyrom remains a threat, no amount of success on the Roof of the World will leave my head attached to my body, unless I stay on the Roof of the World." The wizard glares at the armsman. "How did you like winter on the Roof of the World?"

  
"I am not a wizard, ser," answers the armsman.

  
"I am not a devil angel, either, raised in the cold of Heaven and suckled on teats of ice."

  
"How soon can you gather what you promised?"

  
"Lord Sillek is still in Rulyarth, and may well be there until close to the end of summer"

  
"The end of summer?"

  
"The great hunter wishes a reward. The reward must.come from Lord Sillek. If we offend him . . ." Hissl shrugs. "So we must wait, until I can be relieved, for when he returns, I can certainly request relief for a time after a year in this hole. Wizards are not that easy to come by."

  
"If your good lord does not wish to relieve you?"

  
"Then I can leave my position-but I would leave in good enough humor to claim His Lordship's reward. Not so if I deserted, especially not when he is waging war, such as it is, against the Suthyans." Hissl smiles sardonically.

  
"Can you get armsmen that late in the year?"

  
"I have the coin. With coin, I can obtain twoscore of armsmen, maybe more if the harvest is poor." Hissl looks toward the window and the darkening courtyard below. "Come back when you hear that Lord Sillek is returning."

  
"I will be back." The armsman bows and slips out the door.

  
Hissl's eyes turn to the blank glass. He smiles.

CI

As THE SUN neared the western peaks, Nylan eased the blade he had labored over for more than a day into the quench, watching the color intently, noting the flickering effect created by the wavelike patterns of the hard-forged intertwinings of alloy and steel. When the purplish shade crossed the edge he eased the weapon out of the liquid and onto the bricks to cool in the gentle and dying heat from the forge.

  
The slightly curved blade, similar to but subtly different from the laser-forged blades, carried order and strength without as much of a black sheen to the metal.

  
"Another good one," offered Huldran.

  
"Tomorrow, you can start one."

  
"Me? It won't be near as good as yours."

  
"Mine weren't as good as mine when I started, either, but I'll be demon-damned if I'm going to be the only one slaving over weapons. Let's bank this down. I've had it."

  
Huldran nodded. "Cessya's working on doors and shutters for us, sometimes."

  
"Good. We might get them before the frosts."

  
"That's a season away, ser."

  
"I know." After piling the coals into the corner of the forge, Nylan took a strawgrass broom and began to sweep the now-packed clay floor clean. "The paving crew's going to put in a stone floor next eight-day."

  
"Do we need it?"

  
"No more than doors and windows."

  
The blond guard gave the engineer-smith a crooked smile as she racked the tongs and the hammers.

  
A cough caught Nylan, and he looked up.

  
Relyn stood in the unfinished door. He pointed to the cooling blade. "That is better than those you forged with the fires of Heaven."

  
"I don't know about that," Nylan said slowly, setting down the broom. "I do know that it's slower-a lot slower."

  
The one-handed man gave a single headshake. "With a simple forge, you create almost a master blade a day. No smith I know could touch that. It is as though you could see inside the metal."

  
"Not that fast." Nylan frowned. He did see into the metal with his senses, but didn't most smiths on this crazy planet? He looked down at his hands. "I need to wash up."

  
"I'll finish here, ser. You did the hard work."

  
"Pumping that bellows is no fun."

  
"You can do that tomorrow," Huldran suggested as Nylan walked out into the cooler air outside the smithy.

  
Relyn followed.

  
"What have you been doing?" Nylan turned downhill.

  
"What a one-handed man can do. Gather grasses for drying, find leaves from the teaberry bush for Blynnal, lead cart horses with loads of paving stones. I keep busy. This is not a place where a man should be lazy."

  
"You could slip away."

  
"Where would I go?" asked Relyn. "I am nothing in Lornth, and anywhere he is not known, a one-handed man is first considered a thief."

  
"They don't cut off hands for that here?"

  
"Not everywhere, but it is said they do in Certis and Lydiar. So . . ." Relyn shrugged. "I make myself useful here. Some of the women, like poor Blynnal, do talk to me. None of the angels do, except you, the healer, and some of the other silver-heads. You are the true angels, the ones who can hold the black of order."

  
"I don't think you have to have silver hair to appreciate order," Nylan answered, his boots scuffing on the stone of the road.

  
The paved sections of the road ran from the causeway past the smithy and up to the mouth of the stable canyon and to the bridge over the outfall. Piles of stones lined the upper section of the road leading to the ridge, indicating where the next paving and road-building would occur.