Dorrin laughs softly, and just as softly, the blackness melts, and he looks out on the morning, drinking in the short grass waving in the breeze, the puffy clouds over the foothills to the Westhorns, just holding a vision he knows may depart at any instant.
Finally, he stands and begins to walk downslope to the house, still taking in the brightness of the day. Not until he sees the strain on Yarrl’s face, and the newly-forged shortsword at the smith’s hip, does the blackness return.
CLIII
DORRIN STEPS ACROSS the yard toward the barricade where Liedral and Pergun stand. Pergun wears the blade Yarrl made for him, and Liedral’s bow lies on a makeshift stand.
Both watch the road below, where, at the moment, despite the growing twilight, another handful of herders, or farmers, trudges not toward Diev, but uphill toward the road leading to a narrow trail into the Westhorns. They have found no ships in Diev-except for the occasional smuggler.
Even the Black Diamond is not at Tyrel’s pier, but anchored three or four rods offshore, at Tyrel’s insistence. Few boats of any size remain in Diev.
Liedral points eastward toward a pillar of smoke. “That’s a day away for us, probably three the way the Whites are moving.”
Dorrin fingers his chin. “We need to finish loading the Black Diamond.”
“Is it ready?”
“No. But we’re close.”
“Begging your pardon, master Dorrin,” Pergun says respectfully, “but could you tell me why we’ve waited so long?” His hand strays to the scab on his forearm, the result of an encounter with a desperate farmer who climbed the barricade.
Dorrin looks to the three mounds on the hill before he answers.
“Because the White ships are off the coast, and unless I can get the engine working right, we don’t have much chance of escaping them.”
“With all their fireballs, do we have any chance? Why can’t you make fireballs?”
“The engine should make it possible for us to go where they can’t. A White Wizard has to get close to use a fireball. But you’re right. We’ll load up everything that’s left tonight and leave at dawn for the shipwright’s. Yarrl and Reisa and Vaos took some things down yesterday when no one was around.”
“Why are the Whites taking so long? It’s been more than an eight-day since they took Kleth.”
“They’re taking control of every town and hamlet. That’s why it’s been so slow, thank darkness. Their leader is very methodical.” Dorrin shivers. His senses have shown him exactly how methodical. The route of the White horde is etched across Spidlar in fire and written on the land in ashes. “You’ll tether the geese, later?”
“Aye, and we will,” affirms Pergun as Dorrin walks back down to the house.
Merga is fussing in the kitchen, slicing cold mutton and checking something in the oven. By the table are two rough boxes, into which she has been packing the contents of the cupboards. “I stopped to fix a bite for Kadara. The rest of you will just have to slice off what you want.”
“That’s fine. I need to check her arm. Then I’ll be going back to the smithy.”
Merga does not answer, but looks to her daughter. “Frisa, see if you can find those two little pots in the bottom cupboard and set them on the table.”
“Yes, mommy. Do you want the tops?”
“Child, what would I do with pots without tops? Without tops, indeed!”
Dorrin slips into the storeroom, now mostly empty, since Liedral has packed the contents into the cart, and digs out an- other dressing from his pack, carrying it back to the room where Kadara lies. “I need to check that arm.”
Kadara does not speak, instead turning her head toward the wall as Dorrin changes the dressing. The stitches are rough, but stitching is not something he has practiced much, and, in time, he can use his healing skills to remove any scarring.
He checks the edges of the slash, but they are firm, with none of the signs of infection, and no red-white of chaos within the wound. Then he checks the bruise-cut above her ear. Through his ministrations, Kadara clamps her lips, uttering not a sound.
Finally, he steps back.
“Why did you save me? Why didn’t you just leave me?”
“For what? For the Whites to burn you into charred meat?” Dorrin’s patience is wearing thin.
“Brede would still be alive if you’d stayed with us. You could have stopped more of them if you’d only tried. And he could have used a healer.” Kadara’s voice is colder than the water that flows into the holding tank in the kitchen. She tries to reach for the mug by the bed, the narrow bed that Dorrin had been using, but her right arm just trembles. “And maybe I’d still be able to use my arm.”
“In time, you will,” Dorrin adds quietly.
“What good is a one-armed blade? Or a one-armed mother?” She shakes her head, and the short ragged hair lifts away from the still-scabbed scar above her left ear.
Scccffff… Dorrin glances up as Merga eases through the open doorway from the hallway, a plate in her hand. “You need be getting back to work, Dorrin. I’ve some dinner here for her.”
“Yes, Dorrin. You need to be getting back to work. After all, your work was more important than stopping the White bastards…”
Dorrin refuses to argue, even though he knows that he personally has doubtless killed more souls than anyone on the Spidlarian side. “Had I stayed, the only thing I would have done is get killed, or get someone else killed.” His head still aches intermittently. At times he cannot see, for the blindness still comes and goes.
“Then what good are you? Where were you when Brede needed you?”
“I did what I could,” Dorrin answers. “I’m not a fighting man. Call me a coward, if you will.”
“You aren’t a coward, Dorrin. You just never found anything worth fighting for. Not me, not Liedral, not Recluce…”
“What do you call the mess I created at Kleth?”
“That was engineered destruction, not fighting-”
“Here’s your supper,” interrupts Merga gently.
“Why should I eat?”
“Because of your son.” Merga says.
“Who won’t have a father…”
Dorrin does not answer as he steps into the hall. He glances at the back bedroom. A faint smile creases his lips. Under the press of people, at least he and Liedral are sharing the same bed-in a way. Although there is a definite wall down the middle, the arrangement is an improvement. Sometimes, at least, he can reach out and touch her gently.
He walks back to the kitchen, where he stops, glancing at the steam rising from the kettle. The steam, again, reminds him of the painfully built engine that he can only hope will work.
But what good is he, Kadara has asked. Brede is dead, the victim of the concentrated forces of the wizards, and Dorrin is alive, alive because he was so pain-scarred and blinded that he could barely ride.
Slowly, he walks from the kitchen out onto the porch and down into the yard and around the cottage to the smithy. Overhead, the heavy gray clouds mass. He rubs his forehead. What can he do to stop the oncoming Whites? Certainly, killing large numbers of relatively innocent troopers and levies will not stop the horde. In the few eight-days remaining, can he devise a way to stop the White Wizards-or some of them?
Under the gray skies, light rain continues to fall.
Inside the smithy, the warmth of the forge is comforting, as is the sound of hammers. Yarrl has not only built the new condenser, but improved the design considerably, and his touch with the grindstone, with the physical efforts of Rek and Vaos, has resulted in a much truer finish on the clutch parts that are not black iron.
“I’ve been thinking, Dorrin…” Yarrl sets the hammer on the anvil.
The younger smith grins. “What else could I have done easier?”
“Not easier… and we can’t do it now, but if you build another ship, Froos showed me an idea for holding a shaft in place. You take two rings, one smaller than the other, and flange the edges, so
rt of, and put metal balls between the two, and lubricate the balls with grease. Now if you made it out of black iron, and collared the inner ring to the shaft…”
Dorrin nods. “How would we get the balls to be round? They’d have to be really round.”
“Make them big.”
Dorrin thinks. “Why use balls? How about something shaped like a barrel or a pail? We could make them out of rod stock, and fuller the ends smaller, and turn them like a grindstone or a lathe.”
“That might work better.” Yarrl wipes his forehead. “I roughed out those sections of the clutch the way you drew it with the charcoal, except I made the angle on the teeth different, because it seemed like they’d bind.” He steps toward the forge and gestures with the hammer.
Dorrin tries not to smile, or to kick himself. Had he enlisted Yarrl’s help earlier, he could have avoided darkness knows how many problems.
The clutch pieces gleam on the firebricks.
“You polished them?”
“A little.” Yarrl yawns, and Dorrin notes the circles under his eyes.
“You’re tired.”
“Time enough to rest later. The boys and I need to pack the tools and these parts into the wagon. Morning’s coming all too soon.”
Morning, and the Whites.
Dorrin reflects upon the pillar of black smoke, upon the question of fireballs. How is a fireball that different from fireworks? Could he build something that throws a firework of sorts in a thin black iron tube?
He picks up the hammer, and absently uses the smaller tongs to pull out a small irregular piece of plate. A tube with a handle, and a cylinder with a small open end. If he made the small end long and narrow, then expanded the front end? He shrugs. “Look out, Vaos,” cautions Yarrl. “He’s got that look.” Dorrin slips the iron into the forge. The night may be long, but he will have time to rest later, if there is a later.
CLIV
IN THE GRAYNESS before dawn, Dorrin turns in his saddle and looks at the cottage, and the barn, the barricade of brush-and at the charred timbers that remain of Rylla’s cottage. Even the herb garden is flat, with all the herbs cut, bagged, and stacked on Liedral’s cart. He studies the southeast, seeing the lines of smoke where the Whites camp at the edge of the valley.
Liedral’s cart leads the way, with Reisa and Dorrin riding before her. Vaos sits beside Liedral, his fingers on a blade that Dorrin hopes the youth will not have to use. Kadara is propped up in part of the cart, sharing it with the remainder of Dorrin’s and Liedral’s trading goods and herbs.
The wagon follows, with Petra holding the reins, and Merga beside her. They also wear blades. Yarrl and Pergun ride just behind the wagon, which, in addition to the last of the smithy tools, three small barrels, and a grinder, carries Rylla, Frisa, and Rek. The healer talks gently to the girl and Yarrl’s apprentice.
Dorrin’s fingers brush the staff, and perversely, the blackness drops across his eyes once more. He takes a deep breath, and sits straight in the saddle, letting his fingers caress the staff for a moment. Then he thinks about herbs, and the bitter strength of the brinn.
“Reisa,” Dorrin says quietly.
“Yes.”
“I’m having a little trouble seeing, right now.”
“Well, you don’t need to for a while, do you? The road’s clear ahead.”
Dorrin rides silently, letting Meriwhen keep pace with Reisa’s mount.
“Will anyone be out this early?” Vaos’s voice carries to Dorrin.
“We hope not,” answers Liedral, “but in these times, nothing is certain.”
“What will happen to Diev?”
“I don’t know. There’s not much left of Kleth. It was razed and burned. But the Council fled Spidlaria and left the city open, according to travelers. The Whites killed just the people who tried to fight or who were tied to the blue guards or to the traders. So far they’ve left most people there alone.”
“So why are so many people running away?” asks Vaos.
“It’s not certain what the Whites will do. They can do great cruelty, but they also can be merciful and sometimes even do good. They keep the peace in their cities, and there is little violence. They have already started rebuilding Elparta. They are terribly cruel to their enemies and those who oppose them.”
“That’s why we have to leave?”
“Yes. Dorrin and Kadara and Reisa and Yarrl and I have all opposed the Whites-Dorrin perhaps most of all.”
“They’d kill us because we worked for him?”
“Yes.”
Vaos tightens his fingers on the hilt of his blade.
Dorrin rides silently, trying to concentrate on the orderly things in his life-the herbs, the healing, the smithing, and Liedral. As they pass the turnoff to Honsard’s cartery, the blackness lifts. Dorrin breathes more easily. Petra glances toward the deserted buildings, and Dorrin follows her glance. So does Reisa.
“Sometimes the wicked prosper,” she says.
“Too often, it seems.” He adds, “It’s better this early.”
“So far.” Reisa’s words are measured. “You all right now?”
“For now.”
They ride up a gentle rise that is the last hill before the River Weyel and the bridge to Diev. Dorrin’s stomach tightens.
A small group of men, and several women, armed with cudgels and pitchforks has gathered by the bridge. In the field to the east of the road wait the children and several older women.
“Trouble,” observes Reisa unnecessarily.
“I’d rather not fight.” Dorrin rubs his forehead, then his shoulders.
The rudely armed men and women turn toward Dorrin and those who follow him. They lift cudgels and pitchforks.
“They got food! Horses!”
“Damned traders! Make ‘em pay.”
“… too proud to accept the Whites…”
Reisa wraps the reins around her right forearm and puts her left hand on the hilt of her blade. “Do you have any ideas how to avoid a fight?”
“Let me try something.” Dorrin urges Meriwhen in front of Reisa and rides down the gentle slope toward the peasants.
“… get the bastard…”
“… uppity coin-counter…”
When he is perhaps two rods from the group, seeing no bows and hoping there are none, he reins up.
“We would appreciate passage.” Scarcely eloquent, Dorrin knows, but no words will suffice in any case.
“Oh… he would appreciate passage, would he?”
“Not without some hefty tariffs… and some trade from the ladies…”
Dorrin waits for a moment, then lifts the staff, letting its blackness spill forth. Then he wraps the light around himself and Meriwhen.
“… he’s gone…”
“… frigging wizard…”
Dorrin guides Meriwhen forward, focuses on the iron of a pitchfork, then thrusts with the staff.
“…ooofff…”
Leaning forward, he begins an effort to clear a path through the mob.
“… get him!”
“…how? Can’t…”
A thunder of hoofbeats follows him, and he can sense two others on horses sweeping toward him.
“… run!”
“Standfast…”
“You stand fast!”
“… not worth it…”
Dorrin drops his shield as he reaches the bridge, reappearing in the sight of the others as Reisa and Yarrl join him. But the peasants have scattered. One man cradles an arm, eyes blazing. He spits toward the road. Several others glare as the cart and wagon cross into Diev, but none move back toward the road. Dorrin’s head throbs, but he can see, for the moment.
“For someone who’s not a wizard, you do a fair imitation,” states Reisa.
“I am a wizard of sorts,” admits Dorrin, “just a poor one, just like I’m a poor healer and a poor smith.”
“Not a poor smith, just a young one.” Yarrl edges his mount off the road. The smith is so at home in the
saddle, and the blade seems so much a part of him, that Dorrin wonders how he failed to see how dangerous an adversary Yarrl could be.
As soon as the wagon crosses the bridge, Dorrin and Reisa follow, then ride on the shoulder of the pavement to return to the front of the entourage.
“Was the smith once a blade?” asks Vaos as Dorrin passes.
“He hasn’t said,” Dorrin responds. “I’d guess so, but that’s his business, not mine.”
The streets of Diev are empty, and the shutters are tightly fastened on all the structures. Even the Red Lion is locked and shuttered, and the Tankard’s front doors are boarded tight.
The wheels of the cart and the wagon echo through the scarcely post-dawn shadows of the streets of lower Diev as they make their way to and past the piers. A barricade of planks and barrels bars the way to Tyrel’s.
“Holloa!” calls Dorrin. “Tyrel?”
A shutter opens from the single window facing the street. “Oh… it’s past time-hoped you’d be here yesterday. Afraid you got into trouble with the mobs.” The shutter slams shut.
The tattered tents are gone from the hillside beyond the shipwright’s.
“Open that section. Make it quick. Bully-boys could be back any time. Move it, Styl!” Tyrel’s voice sounds hoarse, but a section of planks is lifted away. Liedral guides the cart through. Petra follows with the wagon.
The planks are dragged back into place after Pergun awkwardly rides through. The cart and wagon roll toward the pier, where the Black Diamond is once more tied.
“Master Dorrin.” Tyrel bows as Dorrin dismounts. “We got enough coal to fill those bins. Don’t ask me how.”
“I won’t. How long will it take to load up all of this and the rest of the gear in the shed?”
“Maybe till midafternoon.”
“We need to make those repairs on the engine.” Behind Tyrel, Dorrin sees Rylla leading her charges toward the ship. Dorrin represses a grin as he sees that she has also ensured that they carry their bags.
“I’d be doing it quick, were I you.”
“We’ll try.”
Dorrin finds Yarrl, who is tying his horse to a rail beside unused boat blocks inside the nearly empty structure. “Can you help me get those clutch pieces and the condenser on board and in place? We’re running out of time. The others can handle the loading, I think.”
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