The Magic Engineer

by Jr. L. E. Modesitt

  “Go get some breakfast.” He nods toward Vaos.

  “Yes, ser.”

  Magic knives—the White Wizards deserve those and more. His fingers whisper across the iron bars.

  CVIII

  Dorrin reins up outside the barracks. He wipes the mixed sweat and water from his eyes, wondering if the continuing rain will wash Spidlar away and save the White Wizards the problem.

  Where will he find Brede or Kadara? He finally dismounts, tying Meriwhen to the only rail he can find outside the long one-story building. A single trooper lounges outside the door. As Dorrin approaches, the man sits up.

  “I’m looking for a strike leader named Brede,” Dorrin says.

  “Who are you?” The trooper, hand on blade hilt, eyes the staff, the saddlebags, and the flat and leather-covered object that Dorrin carries.

  “Dorrin. I’m a smith.”

  The trooper straightens. “Wait here, master Dorrin. I’ll be right back.”

  Dorrin waits in the cold drizzle, but not for long.

  The door opens, held by the trooper, who beckons Dorrin inside. Dorrin shifts his grip on his things and turns sideways to get past the soldier.

  “Dorrin. It’s good to see you. Kadara has her squad on a local patrol. She’ll be sorry to have missed you.” Brede is clean-shaven. His leathers and blue tunic are clean, and his boots polished. But the circles under his eyes remain, and his face is so thin as to be gaunt.

  Several troopers watch from the space before the hearth, which contains only dying embers.

  “It’s not a pleasure call.”

  “Before we get to that…” Brede clears his throat. “We have a mystery. Dorrin, didn’t you just bring Liedral back from Kleth? She was sick, Kadara tells me.”

  “She was tortured and beaten,” Dorrin says sharply.

  “At least she’s alive. With you, she should get better.” Brede coughs. “Did anything strange happen to you on the way back?”

  “Was it that obvious?”

  Brede chuckles, almost harshly. “Two dead bandits with all their clothes. One has a broken neck, and the other’s chest is caved in with a single blow. Their blades are lying by the bodies, and there are cart tracks in the mud.”

  “Yes, I had some trouble. Liedral was fevered, and I wasn’t sure she was going to make it.”

  “Why did you travel with her, then?”

  Dorrin sighs. It gets so complicated. “Because Jarnish is tied up with the Whites, and she was there.”

  Brede stares. “You didn’t do anything? When we’re in a war for our lives?”

  “I didn’t say that,” Dorrin snaps. “The last time I saw Jarnish, he was in his undergarments scrubbing chaos off his body with freezing well-water.”

  “You did that?”

  “I just made sure he couldn’t ever get near chaos again.”

  Two of the troopers who have been inching closer abruptly turn away and edge back toward the fire. Brede shakes his head.

  Dorrin starts to lose his grasp on both the saddlebags and the heavy leather-covered object, and he fumbles with all that he carries.

  “You need a hand?”

  “Take the big one. It’s yours, anyway.”

  Brede reaches for the leather, then grabs, as he realizes the weight. “What…? This is heavy.”

  “It’s as light as I could make it. That’s the problem.”

  Brede pulls back a corner of the leather to see the black metal, then motions toward the left end of the long building. Dorrin follows the gesture toward a small room with an oblong table and half a dozen armless chairs. Brede closes the door to the small room and sets the shield on the table.

  Dorrin takes one of the armless chairs, turns it sideways, and sits.

  Brede lifts the shield. Then he sets it down and adjusts the straps before trying to use it. “It’s not too bad, but it’s really not quite big enough.”

  “I can make them bigger, but they’re heavier. There has to be a certain concentration of the black iron for it to throw off white fire. There’s probably some trick to it that I don’t know, but I thought I’d make one for you to try out.”

  “I’ll see.” Brede nods. “You look like you have something else.”

  Dorrin points to the saddlebags. “I think I might have something like a magic knife.”

  Brede raises his eyebrows. “I thought you couldn’t deal with edged weapons.”

  “I can’t. I have trouble even carving meat for more than myself.” Dorrin opens the bag and extracts what he has brought.

  “What is it?” Brede frowns.

  “This is really a model.” Dorrin explains, as he stretches the wire taut between the two black bars. “You can wedge the black iron bars—I could make them as handles—in trees or behind boulders.”

  Seeing Brede’s confused expression, Dorrin takes out the dried cheese and sets it on the table, then stretches out the wire and forces the bars apart.

  Thump… The wire slices through the cheese, and both halves bounce on the table.

  Dorrin hands one half to Brede. “Try to cut it with your belt knife.”

  “No, thank you.” The strike leader fingers the hard cheese. “How would this help?”

  “You told me that the levies will have to use the roads. This wire is strong enough—I’m sure—to cut through a man or a horse that rides into it. Because it’s black and order-based, it’s hard to see, especially in the rain or at dusk.”

  Brede winces. “I don’t know. There’s something…almost evil…about something like this.”

  “You don’t know?” Dorrin snorts. “You complain that you want weapons, and I do what I can, and you’re upset because it’s nasty. Darkness! Any weapon is nasty. That’s why I get sick when I use a staff.

  “You want nasty? What about the Whites? They tortured Liedral with whippings and beatings—and visions of me. They did it to plant an image of her using a knife on me, and she did. They’re twisting minds—”

  “The trader took a knife to you?” Brede studies Dorrin.

  “The slash is just about healed.” Dorrin shrugs. “Anyway, they’re twisting minds, and you’re worried about whether their levies get chopped in half by your strong right arm or by my cheese-slicer.”

  “Cheese-slicer?”

  “That’s where I got the idea.”

  Brede smiles wryly. “I’d hate to think what you’d be like if you didn’t have some restraints.”

  “It would make life easier.” Dorrin takes a deep breath. “How many of these can you use?”

  Brede reaches for his purse and empties two golds on the table. “As many as I can buy. No…don’t give me that business about food. If you won’t use the coin personally, buy more iron to make your cheese slicers. But don’t give them to anyone but me or Kadara. And don’t tell anyone else.”

  Dorrin understands. The more it seems like unknown magic, the better.

  CIX

  Cold rain drizzles across the panes of the closed tower window. A small fire in the hearth warms the room.

  The thin wizard concentrates on the glass on the small table. The oil lamp in the wall sconce flickers. Perspiration has beaded his forehead for a time before the white mists in the mirror finally part.

  The red-headed smith sits on one side of a rude table; the brown-haired woman sits on the other. They talk, and the smith frowns. The woman cries. A serving woman sets a platter on the table, but neither looks up.

  “Light!” mutters the White Wizard, as the mists close over the scene in the glass. He walks to the desk where a map of Spidlar is unrolled.

  Diev is a goodly distance from Fenard, Elparta, or even Kleth, and there are few ways to get there easily except by the main roads—or by the sea. “The Northern Ocean?” He shakes his head. “Traders are still strong on the water.”

  His eyes study the map once more before he takes the weights off the corners and rolls it up. The winter has been long, but spring is arriving, even in Spidlar.

  III. />
  Trader and Engineer

  CX

  The three mounts gallop around the last switchback. One is riderless. One White guard wavers in the saddle, crossbow bolt through his shoulder. He mumbles as they rein up before the White Wizard.

  “You see how they reacted,” the unhurt guard snaps.

  Jeslek’s eyes blaze. “Idiot! What did you say?”

  “Just what you told me. Offered them amnesty if they opened the gates. Big fellow told us Axalt had stood for a millennium and would stand after we were dead. Then he turned the crossbowmen on us.”

  One of the guards in the retinue surrounding the two wizards finally grabs the reins of the riderless mount, while two others ease the wounded trooper from the saddle. The second wizard, red-headed and female, smiles as she watches the fires of chaos build around the High Wizard.

  “They probably had us in their sights from the beginning. There’s no way to approach the walls without being totally exposed.”

  The High Wizard nods. “We don’t need to approach the walls.” He laughs. “So mighty Axalt has stood for a millennium. We shall see about that.”

  He dismounts and walks toward the canyon wall. His senses penetrate deep beneath the rocks. Shortly, the road shivers underfoot, once, twice.

  The wounded trooper moans from the wagon where he lies. Two other guards glance from each other toward the white mist that surrounds the High Wizard.

  The road shivers again.

  “So…mighty Axalt.”

  Beyond the switchback, which lies less than fifty cubits from the Fairhaven force, beyond the point where the canyon widens, the ancient stones of Axalt’s walls climb a hundred cubits. The iron-bound gate is closed, and the squads of soldiers in gray-quilted uniforms have their crossbows trained upon the narrow gap through which the Fairhaven soldiers must come. The stone sentry box outside the wall remains vacant.

  “Just wait,” calls the broad-shouldered guard captain. “It has been such a long time since you were able to practice on real targets. But now you can use your bolts on the White guards. If they even dare approach again.”

  The boulders and solid rock underneath the walls shiver—once, twice.

  Nerliat’s eyebrows lift.

  The wall shakes, and one soldier loses his balance and sprawls on the stones behind the parapet. The walls rock, and stone cracks like thunder.

  A thin spout of hot gas lances upward through the crumbling wall, sulfurous, followed by steam and boiling water.

  The crashing rocks, the steam, and the falling walls and avalanches from the west rim of the Easthorns all drown out the brief screams of human flesh.

  By sunset, all that remains is a steaming, boulder-strewn depression blocking the mountain road between Certis and Spidlar.

  A small party of white-clad individuals rides quietly eastward. No one speaks to the two White Wizards. No one speaks, except for the wounded guard, who moans with each turn and switchback.

  CXI

  “This isn’t smithing,” grumbles Vaos, as he carries a basket full of mixed weeds and grass downhill.

  “No,” agrees Dorrin cheerfully. “But it is coin. Do you want to have me fire up the forge and work on the scrap pile?”

  Vaos groans. “That’s not much better than being a farmer.”

  “Smithing’s not easy work.” Dorrin turns the soil along the row, leaving small depressions for the herb seedlings he has nursed through the late winter and cold spring. He hopes they will grow quickly and provide Liedral with another trading good when the last of the ice floes clears the Northern Ocean.

  “…not smithing…” Vaos dumps the greenery into the compost pile.

  Dorrin stoops and plants, stoops and plants, taking seedling after seedling from the crude flats and patting the soil around each. “You can start bringing the buckets of water over here.”

  “I didn’t want to be a light-busted farmer…”

  “Neither did I,” Dorrin responds, “but I like eating, and so do you.”

  “Doing the iron scrap might be easier…”

  “We’ll do that later, when it’s dark.”

  “Darkness…you never rest, master Dorrin.”

  “That’s for when I’m too tired to do anything else.”

  Vaos slowly picks up the buckets and trudges to the pipe faucet Dorrin has added to the water line to the house. “At least, I don’t have to climb up from the pond.”

  “After you water all these—and don’t wash them out, or you’ll work all night on the scrap with me—clean up and meet me in the smithy.”

  “Yes, ser.”

  Dorrin follows Vaos to the crude faucet. It leaks, and he has been forced to put stones down, and a trench to the garden to carry away the thin dribble of water, but at least it reduces some work. When it gets cold, he will have to remove it, and bury the piping more deeply so that the line does not freeze the way it did on the colder days of the last winter.

  After Vaos fills his buckets and heads toward the seedlings, Dorrin washes off with the cold water and shakes the excess off his hands before drying them on a towel that is really a rag. “Don’t forget to wash up,” he calls.

  “Yes, ser.”

  Grinning at the resignation in the youth’s voice, Dorrin walks across the slowly greening grass on the west side of the house toward the door to the smithy. Once in the smithy, he dons the leather apron and then begins to bring up the fire, setting in the charcoal.

  Asavah wants a plow fixed. The share has been worn down and rusted, the point ripped off by a buried rock. Although Dorrin does not usually do plows, Asavah’s help with the foundation and framing of the house saved Dorrin many days, and Jisle’s chief hand needs the plow for planting—now.

  Dorrin sets out the fullers and the hammers, studying the scraps he has already begun to gather and the rod stock. Finally, he pulls out a partial plate left from the shield-making and sets it on the anvil.

  Vaos trudges into the smithy, still shaking the water off his hands. He looks at the plate on the anvil and grins. “I get to do some striking?”

  “We’re replacing the share point on Asavah’s plow. Actually, it’s Jisle’s plow, but I owe Asavah.” Dorrin shrugs. “Then I need to make some more wire for Brede.” He points to the bellows lever.

  “Do those wire things work?” Vaos pulls the lever to build the forge fire.

  “Kadara says they do.” Dorrin takes the heaviest tongs and sets the iron in the forge. “They won’t do enough, but I hope they help.”

  “Can you forge something else?”

  “Forging isn’t the problem. Finding what to forge is.” The smith readjusts the position of the heavy iron in the fire.

  CXII

  “There they are!” yells the first squad leader.

  A squad of Spidlarian troopers, apparently upon seeing the green banners of Certis, rein up, quickly re-form, and retreat back down the road to Elparta.

  The Certan strike leader studies the depression between the two hills, but sees little but meadows barely turning green. A rock wall, tumbled in places, runs along the left side of the road that angles along the highest point in the depression between the two ridges before turning due north again.

  Near the lowest point of the road, just before it widens into a wagon turnout, on the side opposite the stone wall are two gnarled trees bearing pink blossoms.

  The Certan officer studies the road and the trees, but there is no cover in the lower area, and the Spidlarians have already disappeared.

  “Let’s get the bastard traders!”

  The first two squads, maintaining their order, spur their mounts into a quick trot. The strike leader nudges his mount after the lead squad.

  Despite the attempt at order, by the time the first squad is nearing the wagon turnout several riders are moving faster than a mere trot.

  Abruptly, the leading trooper flails in midair, and his body seems to separate into a top and a bottom half separated by a bloody mist. Two other troopers twist of
f their mounts, and a horse crumples under another rider.

  Suddenly the depression is filled with bodies and horses.

  Then the arrows begin to fall, and they fall like death upon the congealed mass on the road.

  The strike leader and half a squad struggle back uphill in time to watch the Spidlarians return, led by a blond giant.

  When two Spidlarian squads detach themselves from their completed massacre and start up the hill, with a handful of mounted bowmen, the strike leader digs his spurs into his mount’s flanks, and the handful of Certan troopers flee for the camp beyond the border.

  CXIII

  Dorrin sets the kettle-piston on the forge bricks and feeds charcoal around the banked coals. He adjusts the air nozzle and gently pumps the bellows’s lever. Then he adds the water to the kettle and flicks the clamps in place over the fill plate. Finally, he eases the kettle into place on the adaptor to the hanging iron he has added to the forge. Once the device is clamped in place, Dorrin eases the angled iron over the forge fire and increases his pumping of the bellows.

  Before long, the thin trail of steam from around the fill clamps betrays the increasing pressure within the kettle, but neither the piston rod nor the wheeldriver attached to it move. Dorrin uses the narrow-edged pickup tongs to move the piston. He wipes his steaming forehead as the piston chugs through two cycles and stalls again.

  “Darkness!” He swings the kettle off the forge. The intake valve has jammed—again. Theoretically, the valve should be easier to make in a larger size, but he cannot afford the materials to experiment in large sizes.

  As he waits for the kettle to cool, his senses study the piston and valve assembly. It should work, but it does not. He wipes his forehead once more. Even though all the doors to the smithy are open, the air is so still that it seems to weigh down everything.