“Greetings!” called Ayrlyn as she dismounted.
Nylan watched as a heavyset, white-haired man stepped out under the porch.
“You might be Hisek,” Ayrlyn began gently. “I am Ayrlyn-”
“The angel trader. I have seen you before.” A puzzled look crossed Hisek’s face. “I have naught to trade.”
“We seek a roof for the night. We were told you had a large common.”
“Aye.”
“A few coppers,” suggested Ayrlyn.
“I do not know… a flame-hair and silver-hair… two angel women…” The squat Hisek pulled on a straggly white beard, and his eyes turned to Nylan, who was struggling with Weryl’s efforts to reach the water bottle.
“Nylan is my consort. The angel men often do not wear beards.”
Nylan looked at Hisek. “It would be good if Weryl had a roof over his head in a storm.”
“A man carrying a child-”
“I’m also a smith,” Nylan said. He could tell the business of explaining that he was a man would get old. Still, he was stubborn enough that he didn’t intend to grow a beard. Even though he hadn’t shaved every day, his whiskers were so silver-transparent that they weren’t obvious from any distance.
“And a warrior, I would wager, with the ease you bear those blades. Cold iron weighs heavy.”
“We only fight to defend ourselves,” Ayrlyn said.
Another roll of thunder cascaded across the valley, and the wind whistled, gusting enough that Hisek looked to the east and squinted. “Quite a storm coming out of the east. Quite a storm.” He pursed his lips. “Three coppers, say, and you share our stew.” His eyes twinkled for a moment. “Course it’d taste better if a trader could add something-”
“Some dried meat, that’s about it,” Ayrlyn said with a smile in return.
“Let me show you the shed. Wouldn’t want your mounts out in this, and old Nerm, he likes company. Never knew an ox that didn’t.”
Nylan dismounted, carefully, to avoid squeezing Weryl against the mare, and followed the others to the shed.
“See… like a stall if you tie them at this end.”
The ox looked up placidly, then lowed again.
“Told you, Nerm, he likes company. Oxen better for tilling than horses. Smarter, too.”
“You take Weryl,” Ayrlyn said, turning to Nylan. “He needs exercise, or we won’t sleep tonight. I’ll get the mounts and the gray.”
Nylan carried the bags off his mare and lugged them up to the house, and a squirming Weryl in the carrypak as well. His shoulder had begun to throb before they were halfway to the house.
“Must be a smith. You’re a slender fellow, but don’t know as I could haul two heavy blades, a rollicking child and a stone’s worth of baggage.” Hisek panted as he walked beside the smith.
“Iron is heavy, but working the hammers was the hard part,” Nylan admitted. “There were times when I felt my arms would fall off.”
“My sire-he always told me-yes, he did, never to mess with a smith. ‘Hisek,’ he said, ‘any man who makes his living beating iron won’t have much trouble beatin’ you.‘ That’s what he said.”
Nylan didn’t feel that ironlike, not at all, and he wondered again how long before the shoulder would heal completely.
More thunder, closer, rolled out of the east. Overhead, the sky was covered, except for the western horizon, with dark clouds.
“Best check the supper,” puffed the white-beard as he stepped onto the narrow porch and then into the house through the open door. “Just set your stuff in the corner, there.”
The common room had a hearth at the west end, with coals over which a large iron kettle was hung on an iron swivel mortared into the side wall. An oblong trestle table filled the center part of the room, with a bench tucked under each side. In the hearth corner at the back of the room was a narrow pallet bed. A kitchen-type work table stood wedged into the other hearth corner, with pitchers and boxes on it, and several kegs and small barrels underneath.
Nylan unloaded the gear in the corner away from the hearth. Then he eased Weryl out of the carrypak, carted him out to the front porch and set the boy on the stones. Weryl immediately crawled for the front edge of the porch. Nylan scooped him away and set him down by the door, but Weryl started for the edge again. The smith moved him.
“They be determined… young ones.” Standing in the doorway was a heavy young woman, scarcely more than a girl, perhaps not much older than Niera, the orphaned girl at Westwind, whose mother had died in Gerlich’s attack.
“They can be,” he answered pleasantly.
“I be Kisen. Jirt is my consort. He has the flock in the low meadow.” Kisen sat on one corner of the stone porch, letting her feet dangle.
Nylan set Weryl back down. This time, the boy looked at Kisen, his eyes wide.
“Boy?” she asked.
“My son.” Nylan realized that the brown-eyed girl wasn’t really heavy, but pregnant.
“He has hair like you, not like… the other angel. Do the angels all have silver or flame hair?” She shifted her weight, as if uncomfortable.
“No. Some have black hair, or brown hair, or blond hair. Even among the angels the silver and flame hair is not that common.” Even as he spoke Nylan wondered. Only one of the angels with the flame-red hair or the silver hair had died in the first two years, one of six. Only four of the other twenty-seven had survived. Was that luck? Or did the traits tied to hair color… he shook his head. All those with the strange hair could sense the order/chaos/fields, and that had to help with survival.
“First, thought you were another woman angel. Hard like the others. How come you don’t grow a beard?”
“Beards are uncomfortable. Hot.”
Kisen nodded. “They say you folks like things colder. That true?”
“That’s true, mostly:” Nylan lurched to recover Weryl again.
Another gust of wind carried a few raindrops under the porch roof. Ayrlyn hurried around the corner and onto the porch, carrying the saddlebags, her bedroll, and Weryl’s second bag.
“I put them in the back corner,” Nylan said.
“Both of you carry two blades… ?” asked Kisen.
“That way you can throw one,” Ayrlyn said dryly, as she stepped into the dwelling, banging the door with one of the shortswords as she did.
“You throw them, too?”
“Yes.”
“Killed anyone?”
Nylan winced, then nodded.
“Lots?” pursued the girl.
“Too many,” Nylan said.
Another gust of wind brought more rain, and Nylan scooped up Weryl. “Time to go inside, Weryl.”
In the common room, Ayrlyn was breaking off a number of chunks of dried meat and easing them into the iron kettle that hung over the hearth. “They should cook for a time longer.”
“Be a while ‘fore Jirt gets back anyhow.” Hisek looked at Kisen. “You make some biscuits, Kisen?”
“Can try, anyhow.” Kisen headed toward the table in the corner.
Nylan sat on a three-legged stool by their gear and set Weryl on the floor-rough planks laid edge to edge and smoothed by feet and boots. Weryl grasped Nylan’s trousers and pulled himself up, tottering on short legs for a moment before plopping down in a heap. After a moment, his fingers grasped the leather trousers again.
“He’ll be walking sooner than you think,” said Ayrlyn, taking the other stool and setting it beside Nylan.
“Looks that way.”
After another attempt, and another, Weryl gurgled and smiled.
Nylan sniffed and reached for the boy. “Is there a well or stream?” he asked more loudly.
“Use the well by the shed. Bucket’s there,” said Hisek.
Nylan grabbed a clean cloth undersquare from Weryl’s pack and carted the boy out through the light rain to the well. While the well water was warmer than the icy stream water of the Westhorns, his hands were still red and raw by the time Weryl and the
soiled undersquare were clean and they were back at the house.
Another figure stood inside the door, and Nylan had to stop suddenly to avoid running into the shorter man.
“This be my son, Jirt,” offered Hisek. “These are angel folk, travelers, ‘cepting that the flame-hair’s also a trader at times. Silver-hair’s a smith.”
“My sire’s guests are welcome.” Jirt frowned as he looked at Nylan, obviously confused at the lack of whiskers until he saw the stubble.
“The flock?” asked Hisek.
“They’re in the corral. No cats-so the lambs are all there. Cats be out later.” Jirt was square like his sire, but brown-haired and brown-bearded.
“Good! We can eat now. You brought the meat, trader lady. You serve,” said Hisek. “Sit.” Hisek indicated that Ayrlyn and Nylan should take the end places on the benches.
As the others sat at the trestle table, Ayrlyn ladled out the stew. Another crash of thunder seemed to rock the house just as Ayrlyn served herself, and the rain splashed down in sheets.
“We’re very thankful to be here,” she told Hisek.
The stew wasn’t bad, neither as awful as the messes that Kadran had made in learning to cook nor as good as Blynnal’s cooking. It was plain and filling, and the dried venison helped a lot. Kisen’s biscuits were heavy, but the one that Nylan offered Weryl seemed to keep the boy busy, half as food and half as a teething ring of sorts. At least, Nylan managed to eat a good dozen mouthfuls before he went back to alternating spoonfuls between Weryl and himself.
“You have a lot of trouble with the cats?” Nylan asked Jirt.
“Depends. Last year was bad. Lost half the lambs,” answered the herder, his mouth full. “This year… not so bad. Yet. Cold winters make easier springs.”
“Why is that?” asked Ayrlyn.
“The deer. .Cold winter, the deer have it hard. They get weaker, and that makes it easier for the cats. Cats are smart. Rather go after a deer than a sheep and a herder that could kill ‘em.” Jirt reached for another heavy biscuit. “Solid biscuits, sweet. Like ’em that way.”
Kisen smiled.
“True what they say about the angels,” ventured Hisek, “that they-you folk-destroyed all Lord Sillek’s armsmen and some eighty score of Lord Karthanos’s folk?”
“That’s about right. We didn’t want to, but when you have two thousand armed men trying to kill you-” Ayrlyn shrugged.
“Idiots…” mumbled Hisek through his food. “Can’t live there. Can’t even pasture up there ‘less you’re a rich lord. All it’s good for is bandits, and been a lot less of them since the angels showed. Got more from you, trader, than from the folk out of Lornth.”
“Peace, now,” said Nylan. “Both Karthanos and the regents of Lornth agreed to let Westwind be if Westwind keeps the roads safe of brigands.”
“Some sense after all,” noted Jirt.
“Only one who gets killed is the common man,” said Hisek. “Golar was a levy. Lucky to come back alive. Brother didn’t. That grassland lord of Jerans killed him. Him and his bitch consort.”
After more small talk and after all the biscuits were gone, and after Nylan changed Weryl again-thankfully he was only wet-the three men dragged the table to one side of the room.
“There’s the best we can do,” offered Hisek.
“That’s fine,” said Ayrlyn.
“Much better than outside in this weather,” Nylan agreed.
Jirt and Kisen retreated through the mishung door to the small bedroom, and Nylan rolled out his bedroll in the corner away from the fire, letting Ayrlyn have the closer space. After easing Weryl onto the side closest the fire, he stretched out, glad to get the weight off his feet and buttocks. For a time, he felt better. Then he began to notice that the plank floor was hard, as hard as if it were made of the rock that comprised the walls.
Plick! A raindrop splatted on the floor behind his head.
The engineer turned his head toward Ayrlyn. Her eyes met his, and she gave a half-shrug with the shoulder she wasn’t lying on.
“Better than being outside,” she said.
Plick! Plick! As if to emphasize her statement, the hissing of the rain became a heavier splashing, and another set of thunder rolls echoed outside.
Nylan turned slightly, careful not to roll onto or into Weryl, or to put his weight on the healing shoulder.
Plick!
Across the room, the older man began to snore, like a crosscut saw that rasped across Nylan’s nerves.
Plick! Plick!
He closed his eyes again.
Plick!
The engineer opened them and turned, whispering to Ayrlyn, ‘Tell me how it’s better than being outside again.“
In the darkness she smiled, and her hand reached out and squeezed his. “It is. You’re dry.”
He was dry. He was also tired, and his wounds and muscles ached.
Plick!
He took a deep breath, trying to relax.
Beside him, Weryl turned, but Ayrlyn squeezed his hand again.
XXVIII
NYLAN GLANCED ALONG the road, a road that now bore a few more cart tracks and hoofprints, then overhead at a patchwork of green-blue sky and white and gray clouds that moved rapidly westward.
In the fields to the left of the road stood a small hut, surrounded by gardens, where a woman in tattered trousers and a frayed gray shirt mechanically scraped away weeds with a warren. She did not even look toward the road.
“You still think we should go to Lornth? Why?” asked Nylan, shrugging his shoulders and enjoying the freedom of not carrying Weryl.
“Call it a feeling…” This morning, she wore the carrypak that held Weryl, and the silver-haired boy was awake and quiet-watching the long-horned cattle behind the split-rail fence on the south side of the road.
In turn, Nylan had the rope that led back to the gray. He glanced over his shoulder, but the gelding followed quietly. The ironwoods again flanked the north side of the road, and Nylan wondered how many kays they stretched. There were none on the south side. Because the peasants got rid of them immediately? Nylan would have. They couldn’t remove those on the north side because the lands belonged to the lord of Lornth, at least from what Nylan had figured out.
“You have any thoughts on why you feel Lornth is where we should go?” he pursued.
“Not really. Something tells me-it could be because one of the regents is a woman-that Lornth would be better.”
“That’s like saying Ryba would be more merciful.” Nylan laughed harshly. “Women aren’t necessarily more charitable because they’re women. You’re more charitable because you’re you.”
“That may be.” Ayrlyn shrugged. “It doesn’t change the way I feel about it.”
“I hope you’re right.” Nylan grinned at Weryl. The boy waved both arms, jabbing one back into Ayrlyn’s ribs.
“Ooohhh… you’ve got sharp elbows, Weryl.” The healer rubbed her ribs. “We need to think about designing some sort of seat, behind the saddle, perhaps.”
“Behind?”
“It’s safer, and it would leave your arms free for a blade or a bow if we ran into brigands. Or have you forgotten how you got all chopped up.”
“No. You’re right. I’ll think about it… when we get someplace where I could make it.” Ahead, around the gentle curve in the road that arced to the right, Nylan could see another hut, similar to the last, except that no one tended the garden.
“You said you had a dream? What sort of dream?” Ayrlyn asked, easing the chestnut closer to Nylan.
“Trees-old trees, and they were struggling against something. Order and chaos were twisted together. But what was funny was that it made sense, and I don’t see how twisting order and chaos together could make any sense at all.”
“Daaa!” called Weryl, thrusting a chubby fist into the moist air.
“Daaa to you, too,” answered Nylan.
“Waaa-daaaa…”
“All right, all right,” said Ayrlyn a
s she reached for the water bottle. “Try not to drool all over me.”
“Good luck.” Nylan laughed.
“I’m doing this because of my great good will… and because I love you, you hardheaded smith, but don’t push it. That shoulder is getting well enough.”
“Thanks to you.”
“The order-healing helps, especially against infection, but we really need antiseptics.”
“We could distill alcohol out of wine.”
“How? Isn’t tubing and that sort of thing hard to forge?” She eased the bottle to the boy’s lips. Surprisingly, little spilled.
“You’re good at that.”
“Of course.” Ayrlyn grinned as she slipped the cork back in the bottle and stowed it in the holder.
“Hmmm… tubing would be hard, but maybe only a little has to be metal. Fire and glaze the rest. Also, we could increase the alcohol content by freezing the wine or whatever, and removing the ice. They used to make winter-wine that way.”
“I thought you’d think up a way.” Ayrlyn disengaged Weryl’s hand from the hilt of her blade. “Was there anything else about your dream?”
“There must have been. It seemed to last a long time, but the order and the chaos and the trees were all mixed together.”
“It means something,” mused Ayrlyn.
A shadow passed across the road, extending far around the curve, as a cloud scudded across the sun.
“Probably.” But what? That trees needed both order and chaos? Nylan frowned. True chaos would kill trees… wouldn’t it? And what did the trees have to do with the future-another idea pushed forward by his subconscious that indicated how mixed up he was? He pushed the ideas to the back of his mind, then glanced upward. The sky remained the same mixture of sun and clouds, but the breeze seemed cooler without the sunlight.
“How far to Lornth?” he asked after a time.
“Another five days or so.”
“Five days?” Nylan groaned.
“Or so.”
Nylan glanced at the road, at the seemingly endless range of ironwoods to his right. Maybe there were other ironwood areas. He couldn’t believe that a stretch of ironwoods that took five days to ride was worthless.
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