“I can help.”
“No, you can’t. You just watch Weryl. You’ve lost more blood than you think.”
Weryl looked toward Nylan. “Wah-dah?”
Ayrlyn fumbled with the harness on Nylan’s mare and handed him the bottle.
“Thank you,” he said, unstoppering it and offering it to his son, trying not to wince as he bent forward.
Ayrlyn started toward one of the bandit horses, her steps heavy in the gloom.
XXV
I DO NOT think your stratagem was terribly effective,“ said Gethen, looking over at his daughter and his grandson. ”This scroll-it promises to flay us for our discourtesy, with all the might of Cyador.“
“No one else had a better one.” Zeldyan laughed, a trace of bitterness creeping into her tone. Nesslek sat in a small chair and grabbed at pieces of biscuit as she offered them. “We would be flayed anyway, discourtesy or not. How come your efforts to gather levies and armsmen?”
“Those in Cerlyn and the south are willing. They will even offer more than the required levies.” Gethen snorted. “Their memories are long. They recall the old days when any woman could be bought as a concubine and any father who protested executed.”
“I think they remember the executions more than the dishonored daughters.” Zeldyan sliced a small corner of a pearapple and offered it to her son. Nesslek rolled it around his mouth before finally swallowing.
“Sadly, daughter, I would have to agree, but we must take any way station possible in this storm.”
“Have you heard from Fornal?”
“No. I fear he will have difficulty in obtaining any armsmen from Dosai.”
“Could he not use the levies for the border patrol with Jerans?” Her eyes went to the window and the thunderstorm that had rolled out of the southeast.
“I suggested that to him, and that may free a few good armsmen, but we will have to leave some there for seasoning and expertise.”
“You still do not trust Ildyrom?” She took a few sections of pastry herself and ate slowly, then sipped cold greenjuice from the goblet.
“Ahhhh…” Nesslek reached for the goblet.
“This is your mother’s,” Zeldyan said firmly, looking toward her own father. “I will feed you more later.”
“Sillek did not, and I did not, and I see no reason to change my views.” Gethen coughed. “Ildyrom will show the sharp side of his blade again when it suits his needs.”
“As will most holders and lords,” Zeldyan said, more to herself than her sire.
Gethen raised his eyebrows, but did not answer.
XXVI
NYLAN TURNED IN the mare’s saddle and glanced back to the east at the tree-covered hills that concealed most of the rocky and ice-covered peaks of the Westhorns. He almost shook his head. Eight days, or was it nine? But three had been spent recovering from the bandit attack.
“Darkness…” he murmured, shifting Weryl in the carrypak. His son seemed to grow heavier with each kay they rode, and he hadn’t been really carrying Weryl much until the last day or so. With his bad shoulder, Ayrlyn had done most of that.
“Do you want me to take him? You shouldn’t overdo it.” Ayrlyn turned her eyes from the tether to the gray that followed with the extra packs on it. The other bandit horse that hadn’t fled had been so lame that they had left the beast free.
“Overdo it? I haven’t done much of anything—except ride.”
“You did enough in the last two years for three people. Why are you so hard on yourself?”
“We’ve actually ridden six days,” Nylan said, to change the subject. “Did it take you this long on your trading runs?”
“Five to this point, I think. But we also didn’t run into bandits, and we didn’t have to stop so often.”
“I can’t ride if he’s uncomfortable,” Nylan admitted. “Not hard-hearted enough, I guess.”
“It’s been hard for me, too,” Ayrlyn admitted. “I sense when he doesn’t feel good. Or when you don’t.”
“My sensitive healer.” In medically primitive Candar, Nylan had again become very glad she had that talent. At times his shoulder didn’t even hurt.
“Just remember that. You’re also my sensitive engineer, mage, and smith.”
“I still don’t know about the mage part.”
“You’re a mage. Don’t fight it.” The healer studied the forest to the left, the south side of the road. “More broad-leafed trees there. You can tell we’re lower.”
After Nylan blotted his forehead in the still air, his eyes went to the clear blue-green sky. “It’s hotter.”
“It’s getting comfortable.”
“By the time you’re comfortable, I’ll be roasted or broiled… or something.” He cleared his throat. “We still haven’t seen anyone.”
“There were sheep in the meadows between the woods up ahead, last fall. It might be early for that, yet. I don’t know.” The redhead stood in the stirrups for a moment.
“Stiff?” the engineer asked.
“A little.”
“You weren’t last night.”
Ayrlyn flushed. “You are impossible. After a wound like that… I wouldn’t have believed-”
“You’re a good healer.”
“Too good…”
Nylan’s mare whuffed as the road curved to the north around a hill crowded with evergreens bearing grayish green needles. Nylan patted her shoulder, then Weryl’s back. The boy squirmed, and jabbed a heel into Nylan’s diaphragm.
“I felt that. Kick him again, Weryl. He deserves it.”
Instead, Weryl looked up at his father and said, “Daaawaa!”
“If that means something, I haven’t decoded it yet.” Nylan glanced at Ayrlyn. “Aren’t there any people here?”
“Not many. Lornth isn’t that heavily populated around here. There’s a town, or a hamlet, or a village, whatever you want to call a collection of huts about a half-day on.”
“That’s something.”
“Not much more than something,” replied the healer. “It’s pretty bleak.”
“Isn’t there some civilization… somewhere?”
“Well… Lornth must have some. They have good metalwork, wines, and traders.”
“Lornth-isn’t that the name of the country?”
“Nylan,” said Ayrlyn slowly. “Lornth is a city-state. The capital is a city called Lornth. The locals say this road goes to the city of Lornth. The lord of Lornth holds these lands, except he has other lesser lords that-”
“Please… not an elementary civics lesson. I asked a dumb question. Next time, just tell me it was a stupid question.”
“You don’t like women who tell you that.”
Feeling like he had been gut-punched in a different way, the smith took a deep breath, then glanced beyond Ayrlyn to his right. “The trees are different.” Nylan wiped his forehead, although he wore no jacket, just a shirt and tunic.
“I hadn’t noticed,” Ayrlyn said.
“They are different,” Nylan repeated.
“How?”
“Their tops barely move in the wind, and… look at the roots. They’re gnarled and huge and above the ground.”
“What wind?” Even Ayrlyn had blotted her forehead.
“Higher on the hills-see the tops of the broadleaves. They’re bending. We must be down in a protected area.”
Ayrlyn eased the chestnut closer to the side of the road, extended a hand, then drew it back quickly. “They’ve got thorns, like spikes. They’re like the ironwoods we were going to make charcoal out of, except bigger and thornier.”
“You get spiked?”
“No. Almost. That was a dumb idea.” She took out her own water bottle and drank.
“Waaa-daaa,” demanded Weryl.
“That’s water, in Weryl’s terms,” noted Ayrlyn.
Nylan got out the water bottle, and ended up getting more water on the carrypak and his own trousers, but Weryl kept gulping for a time. Nylan tried to keep the bottle from
bouncing into his son’s face, and ended up getting his fingers half-gouged by the few teeth Weryl had. Finally, he put the bottle back in the holder.
Ahead the road ran straight for a time toward a dip between two hills. The one on the right was covered with the gray-green ironwoods; the one on the left with high grass. Nylan squinted. Was there a hut in the middle of the meadow?
“So… the trees are different. What does that mean?” asked Ayrlyn.
“Nothing, I suppose. Except ironwoods aren’t something that you can cut. The branches don’t bend.”
“Ironwoods…” mused Ayrlyn. “That’s it!”
“What’s it?” Nylan sniffed, suspecting an all too familiar odor creeping upward from the carrypak.
“Da… wa-wa!” Weryl grinned.
“These are the ironwoods. You can’t cut them. You can’t ride through them without getting slashed to bits.”
“So…” Nylan wrinkled his nose and looked down at his grinning son.
“Relyn… he attacked Westwind to get lands and a title, Lord of the Ironwoods, I think was what he told me.” Ayrlyn laughed. “And the lands are almost worthless to this culture. They can’t have the kind of tools you need to use the wood. How can you clear something that tears you to shreds?”
“You can’t. You mean that Sillek, or someone, was offering mostly worthless lands to encourage attacks on Westwind?”
“That’s what it feels like.” Ayrlyn shook her head. “Darkness… the politicians never change. He sounds as bad as half the U.F.A.”
“I don’t think we’re going to have to worry about the United Faith Alliance ever again. The descendants of some Rationalists, but not the U.F.A.”
Ayrlyn eased the chestnut closer to Nylan. “Oh… I can smell him from here.”
“The stream gets closer to the road ahead, there.” Nylan’s shoulder had begun to throb more strongly, again, and he probably needed to let Ayrlyn carry Weryl, much as it bothered him to ask her-even if he had been the one to insist on his turns once he had felt the shoulder would take the strain. He just hoped they wouldn’t run into any more bandits-not any time soon.
“We can’t get there too soon.” Ayrlyn eased her mount slightly away from Nylan-and Weryl.
Nylan tried not to breathe deeply and looked ahead to the stream.
XXVII
NYLAN GLANCED FROM the white-orange sun that hung in the deepening green-blue sky, barely above the rolling hills to the west, to the group of houses-or hovels-that clustered on the uphill side of the road that stretched before them.
A dull rumble of thunder cascaded down from the hills, and the engineer-smith turned in his saddle. A line of white and gray clouds roiled above the Westhorns, headed westward and toward the travelers, clouds that swelled skyward and blackened as Nylan watched.
“We’ve been lucky,” Ayrlyn observed. “Ten days in the open, and no rain. You couldn’t have asked for better weather. We can find a shelter up there.”
Nylan looked from the hamlet ahead back to the storm, trying to sense the energy patterns. He failed, as he usually did unless a storm was almost on top of him. “It seems like it’s going to rain for a long time.”
He looked down at Weryl. The rain wouldn’t be good for him, or his still-healing wounds, and it wouldn’t be good for his son.
“It’s a big storm,” Ayrlyn confirmed.
As their mounts plodded down the gentle grade, and the gray gelding plodded after them, the smith studied the hamlet ahead. The walls were of crudely chipped stones, not so much mortared in place as stacked and chinked. The roofs were rough-boarded wooden planks, the joints covered with thinner strips of wood.
Even from more than a hundred cubits east of the village, Nylan could see the gold and brown chickens clustering behind one hut. “Chickens… they have chickens.”
“Everyone has chickens here. Even farther south on the flats, where it’s hotter, they have chickens.”
“It gets hotter and flatter and lower?”
“Of course.”
Nylan groaned. “It’s only spring.”
Behind them, closer now, the thunder rolled again. Weryl shivered in the carrypak, as if he could sense while asleep the order and chaos conflict in the storm as it bore down on them.
“How were you received here?” asked Nylan.
“They didn’t close all the shutters.”
“Oh?” Nylan shifted Weryl again, ignoring the twinges in his shoulder.
“They don’t have shutters-or much of anything else here, except food. Actually, they do have shutters. They don’t have glass for their windows, though.”
“Can we buy some food? Some grain would be good for the horses.”
“I have before, but it depends on how their harvests were.”
“We got some coins from the bandits.”
“Five silvers and a dozen coppers-not exactly fair compensation for the wounds and bruises.”
“And a gray packhorse and saddle.” Nylan took another quick look over his shoulder, but the storm was not that much closer. Then, distances tended to be deceiving in the clear air of Candar. The two continued to ride as the thunder rolled again out of the Westhorns.
“A solid storm,” affirmed Ayrlyn as they neared the hamlet. “Lots of chaos up there.”
“You can feel that?”
“You can’t?”
“No, not until it gets close,” he admitted. “You’re better with the winds, I think.”
“Fancy that… and you admitted I was better.”
“It’s hard.” He forced a grin.
He got a quick smile that faded as Ayrlyn turned her eyes back to the hovels ahead. There were no walks between the dwellings, just pathways worn in the soil by years of foot travel, and small structures to the side or rear of the main houses. Outhouses, Nylan realized, as a certain odor drifted in his direction on the stiffening breeze-outhouses not too carefully tended.
Cleared and turned plots behind the houses were clearly gardens, and their careful tending contrasted with the scattered debris piled beside the doors of several dwellings.
“It’s the trader woman! No one has hair like that… there’s a silver-haired one with her.” The youth.darted inside the second dwelling.
“They’ll be disappointed to see I’m a man.” Nylan shifted his weight in the saddle and Weryl yawned. Of course, the boy was waking up. They were about to stop.
‘The men will be. I don’t know about the women.“ Ayrlyn grinned. ”You’d better not try to find out, either.“
“With my friend here?”
“Are you saying you would if Weryl weren’t here?”
“No…” stammered Nylan. ‘That’s not what I meant.“ .
“That is not what you said.”
Nylan wanted to wipe his forehead. Why was he always saying dumb things? On the one hand, Ayrlyn wanted him to be more forthcoming. On the other, being forthcoming meant being less cautious, and less cautious meant… He sighed.
“Why the sigh?”
“Later,” he temporized as an old woman stepped out from the first hovel.
Ayrlyn slowed, then stopped the chestnut, and Nylan reined up beside her, glancing around. Three houses farther along the road a man appeared at the door, bearing a staff, but the bearded figure did not move, just watched.
“Trader? Where is your cart?” asked the gray-haired woman.
With a start Nylan realized the woman was not that old, possibly not much older than he was. Behind her, in the doorway of the stone-walled structure, stood a child, perhaps waist high, with a twisted leg that dragged as the girl limped out onto the rock stoop.
The gray eyes beneath the gray hair turned to the smith.
“A silver-hair bearing a child.”
“He is a man and a smith,” Ayrlyn said.
“He has no beard. Are all the silver-haired men such as that? A man with no beard? A silver-haired man with a child. No man of Lornth would carry a child.”
“A beard is too h
ot,” Nylan said quietly as Weryl began to squirm. He winced as heels jabbed into his diaphragm, but he didn’t want to get his son from the carrypak until he knew how friendly their reception was going to be.
“Waaa-daa.”
He compromised by unfastening the water bottle and letting Weryl drink-and drool water over his left trouser leg. A gust of wind whistled through Nylan’s hair, and a roll of thunder rumbled across the hamlet.
“A smith, you say… well… the angels are different.” She laughed, almost a cackle. “And with those blades and the fires of Heaven, so I’ve heard tell, I’ll not be one to question. Need you any chickens, lady trader?”
“No chickens. We are traveling, not trading.” Ayrlyn paused. “Who might share a roof with us?”
“Hisek might have room, and he has a large shed that would shelter your mounts.” The woman pointed. “At the other side, just beyond the burned hut. That was Jirt’s place. Not much, and since Hisek’s consort died, Jirt and his woman live with Hisek. Hisek’s his sire. They have a large common, and even a separate room for the two. Imagine that. Hisek built it for Gistene. Said it was what they did in Lornth. Much good it did her.” The eyes sharpened. “Why be you traveling so early in the year?”
“Because it would not have been healthy for me or my son to remain on the Roof of the World,” Nylan temporized.
“That place be not healthy for many, so I’ve heard.” The lame girl tugged at her mother’s arm, and the gray-haired woman nodded. “The pot’s boiling. Go see Hisek.”
The brown-bearded man merely watched as they rode past his house, his eyes flicking from Nylan to Ayrlyn and then to Weryl. Nylan nodded politely, but the man did not respond. Then they rode past the burned home-little remained beyond the blackened stones and the charred remnants of roof timbers.
“That must have happened this winter,” Ayrlyn remarked.
“Winter…” Of course-winter was when people had fires for heat, and when few were outside to see if a spark had caught something.
Ayrlyn and Nylan reined up outside the larger stone house-it even had a rudimentary covered porch, and there was a long shed to the side of the dwelling. A long, lowing sound indicated that at least one ox was in the shed.
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