“Now what, ser?” asks Koric.
“We follow them, discreetly.”
“We could ride ‘em down, maybe get rid of them.”
Sillek holds in a deep breath, purses his lips, then finally responds. “How many armsmen did we lose?”
“Why, none, ser.”
“How many did they lose?”
“Three.”
Sillek nods. “And what happens if we do this every time they stop, until we chase them back to their earthen fort?”
“It won’t get rid of their fort.”
“No… but if we can kill five or ten troopers every time we meet and not lose anyone-how long before Lord Ildyrom is going to think about abandoning that fort? We can do the same to supply forces, you know?”
“He’ll think of something, ser.”
“He probably will, and we’ll have to think of something better.” Sillek motions, and the purple banners flutter in the light wind as the Lornian forces follow those of Jerans. “Preferably before he does.”
XXVI
THE WHITE-YELLOW sun beat down across the Roof of the World, and Nylan wiped his forehead, glancing across the fields. The melting ice from the mountains to the south provided some water, but the two small streams that wound out of the rocks and meandered across the meadow area before they joined seemed to shrink daily. The meadow area around the fields now bore no flowers, only grass and low bushes, except for the stony patches where nothing grew.
Nylan’s eyes followed the general path of the stream to the cut on the north end of the eastern plateau where the stream plunged over the edge, dropping in a thin line of silver to the creek bed on which, far below, lay the gorge that contained Nylan’s fledgling brick-making operation. He hadn’t tried the clay piping yet. The bricks were proving difficult enough. He took a deep breath. With the laser, he could work what seemed miracles, so long as the firin cells lasted, and yet trying to get the consistency and texture of a demon-damned low-tech brick…
With a shake of his head, Nylan turned, and as he walked back from the space in the rocks, feeling relieved, his eyes flicked over the tower. The outer walls were complete, and so were most of the inner walls. Cessya, Huldran, and Weblya had the roofing timbers in place, and the three of them were working on the cross-stringers, while he got the tiles ready.
At the southern base of the tower were the stacks of slate tiles that had slowly been split by Huldran, Cessya, and Weblya with the sledge from Skiodra and the wedges he had made with the laser-just waiting to be drilled so that the tower could be roofed.
He swallowed.
He’d never made provisions for waste disposal in the tower.
“Shit…” he mumbled. How could he have overlooked that? It didn’t seem all that bad now, in the warmth of summer, but with ice and snow deeper than a man or woman, or deeper than that, some provisions definitely needed to be thought out-and he hadn’t.
He walked toward the work yard and studied the tower again.
He could convert one of the fourth-level casements into a small facility, with an exterior drop shaft into a cistern-type enclosure with a drain for liquids. Maybe he could add another on the fifth level. But some sort of bathhouse or the like would have to be separate, and for safety’s sake, have a separate water line-plus a covered and walled passage that could be blocked off in cases of attack, if necessary. Some part of the bathhouse probably ought to have laundry tubs, as well.
How… how could he have overlooked those needs, and what else had he overlooked? Then again, the difficulty of covering the piping and the heights had forced him to put the tower’s cistern on the lower level.
Back in the yard, he rechecked the power levels on the block of firin cells-down to thirty percent-mentally calculating and deciding he might, might, make it through the day before replacing the block. He’d also planned to use the laser to craft another blade or two-Ryba was insisting that he needed to provide more weapons before the laser gave out. In between times, he’d already managed to forge nearly a dozen of the black blades that all the marines clamored for. After scratching the flaking and itching sunburned skin on his forearm, he inspected the laser’s powerhead with both eyes and his senses, still trying every trick he could think of to eke out the best use of the stored power that he was running through faster than the emergency generator would ever be able to recharge-assuming the laser even outlasted . the generator.
Nylan finally eased the laser on and focused the beam, as much now with his mind as with the manual controls, to drill the necessary holes in the slate roofing tiles that Stentana would stack as he finished each.
The barrel of heavy spike nails that Ayrlyn had charmed out of a traveling trader two days toward the plains of Gallos was definitely going to be a help. Making nails was not something he even wanted to try with a laser, assuming he could even figure out how. The transaction, according to Narliat, had taken not only Ayrlyn’s charm, but more than a gold in coin-and a gold was worth plenty in this culture- something like a season’s work for a laborer-the looming presence of armed marines, and Narliat’s guile. She’d also come up with another pair of heavy hammers and a huge chisel, plus, of course, some food. Nylan had appreciated it all, especially the cask of dried fruit from someplace called Kyphros.
He was drilling three holes in each slate, after having tested the idea by spiking several to sections of stringers that had proved flawed.
Once he got back into the rhythm of the work, Nylan moved through the big slates quickly, and that was a relief, because he felt everything he could do to stretch more life from the laser would make everyone’s life easier.
In time, his arms began to ache, as they always did after using the laser, and his vision began to blur.
Clang! Clang! Clang! Someone banged the alarm triangle.
“Bandits!” yelled another voice, and before Nylan could finish the hole he was drilling and cut the. power flow and look away from the laser, Ryba and a handful of marines were galloping across the meadow and up the ridge.
“I thought we got the bandits earlier,” said Cessya, wrestling a rough-cut stringer toward the makeshift earthen ramp that led to the tower door.
“This is probably another group,” pointed out Nylan, his eyes on the additional marines taking up positions on the rocky heights that controlled the approach to the tower and the meadow and fields. He took a deep swallow from the cup and munched some of the stale flat bread, feeling guilty as he did, but knowing that he couldn’t do what he did without the additional nourishment.
“Take a break, Stentana,” he suggested. “It’ll be a little bit before I can fire it up again.”
“Power, ser?”
“Sort of.” He smiled wryly, not wanting to explain that he was the underpowered part of the equipment. He walked up the ramp and into the shade of the second level of the tower, where he sat on the next-to-the-bottom step.
The triangle sounded again, and Nylan heaved himself up off the step and back out into the sunlight.
Three riders guided their mounts down toward the landers, following the trail past the tower yard. On the fourth mount, riderless, a body was slung across the saddle, a body in the black olive drab of a marine.
“Who?” asked Huldran as Istril led the horse past the tower yard.
Nylan looked at the laser and then toward Istril and the dead marine, but the body was facedown.
“Frelita.”
Nylan didn’t know the marine by name, since he hadn’t learned them all, but he’d probably recognize her face-or recognize when she wasn’t there at dinner. For a time, the tower crew watched the horses and their riders.
“We can’t help them by looking,” Nylan finally said.
“I’ll be glad when the tower’s finished,” added Huldran.
Weblya laughed once. “Then we’ll have to build a real ramp, and some stables. There’s a lot to do.”
“How about a bathhouse with showers?” suggested Nylan. “And a place to do laundry?�
�
“Showers with ice-cold water? No, thank you,” answered Stentana.
“He’s working on a furnace,” said Huldran. “Maybe he can give us a hot-water heater.”
Nylan groaned.
Huldran grinned. “I can ask, ser.”
“Let’s worry about getting a solid roof on the tower first.”
“Yes, ser.” The blond squared her shoulders.
Nylan finished the last of the roof slates before the sun even touched the western peaks, with enough time-and power left-for him to shape two more of the black blades, although they couldn’t be used, not easily, until some of the hides of the big cats killed by Gerlich were tanned-or until they got some kind of leather to wrap the hilts.
After that, Nylan stowed the laser cells back in the space under the tower stairs. Then he trudged to the upper stream and washed up as well as he could before making his way toward the cook fires.
Three repeated rings on the triangle called all but the sentries around the fires.
Ryba stood on one of the lengths of logs, and studied the group, waiting for silence. Her face was grim. “Frelita’s dead. It didn’t have to happen, but she really wasn’t paying attention.”
“… poor woman…”
“… should have watched closer…”
“You idiots!” snapped Ryba, her voice cold as a winter gale, cutting off the low murmurs. “Did you think that after one round of bandits, they’d all go away? We can’t afford to lose one of you every time some idiot brigand shows up. Do you want to be the next one skewered by one of those arrows? There’s no such thing as one band of brigands in a place like this. You kill one bunch, and more show up. And life is so frigging hard here that they don’t care much if they die, so long as they have some fun along the way. Fun is food, wine, beer, and women-and they don’t care how they get their women.”
Saryn fingered the sharp edge of her blade, one of the better ones Nylan had done, and one of the matching pair that the former second pilot wore. “… I do…”
Her words were as clear as if she had been standing beside Nylan, and he frowned. How had he heard Saryn so clearly?
Ayrlyn, halfway between Nylan and Saryn, shook her head, then glanced at the engineer, raising her eyebrows. He shrugged back, trying not to cough as the smoke from the cook fire twisted toward him.
Perhaps it wouldn’t be too long before Rienadre and Denalle had fired enough bricks to start building the big stove and the furnace in the lower level of the tower. Maybe completing the tower would help with some of the security. He pursed his lips. Who was he kidding? Crops had to be tended. Someone had to hunt. Others had to keep watch. The tower would be great against the winter, and at night-but not that much help in the warm days, except as a higher vantage point.
“Women are slaves here-outside of Westwind. And don’t you forget it. There are few men off the Roof of the World who wouldn’t want to kill you, humble you, rape you-or all three. We’re the evil angels to a lot of these people. Now we can change that, and we’re going to-but we can’t do it if you get yourselves killed.” A cast of sadness crossed the captain’s face. “I’m sorry about Frelita. I wish it hadn’t happened. And I’m still sorry about Desinada. But let’s not let it happen again.” She stepped down and walked through the marines toward Nylan.
He touched her forearm, and she looked at him, then nodded toward the tower. So they walked back up the gentle slope until the black stones loomed over them.
“It always takes death or force to get people’s attention. And one death sometimes doesn’t even do it,” Ryba began. “I’ve got to act like some ancient dictator just to get people to follow common sense.”
“Not all of us,” suggested Nylan.
“Thank the darkness.” Ryba sighed. “But they complain about sawing planks, cleaning saw blades, or making bricks. Don’t they?”
“Sometimes.”
“And what do you tell them?”
“I ask them if they want to spend the winter with a thin layer of metal between them and snow twice their height, eating frozen food and breaking their teeth-if they’ve got the strength to eat.” Nylan paused. “Selling the tower’s easy. They can see it. It’s hard to sell alertness, or general preparedness, or anything people can’t touch.”
Ryba nodded. “Sometimes… sometimes, I get so tired.”
Nylan put his arms around her.
She stiffened for a moment, then relaxed. “Have to remember to take comfort when I can.”
“That’s all we can do.”
After a time, they separated and walked slowly back toward the cook fires and a late supper. Overhead, the cold stars blinked out and shone down on the Roof of the World, each as cold as the ice that coated Freyja, as cold as the latest cairn in the southwestern corner of the Roof of the World, where there were getting to be too many cairns, too quickly.
XXVII
THE LOW GRAY clouds that had brought the long-overdue afternoon rain scud eastward and toward the mighty Westhorns as Sillek peers on his knees through both the twilight and the chest-high, damp grasses. Less than a thousand cubits away, across a slight depression, lie the earthen ramparts that sit on the last raised ground controlling the approach to the ford-and the road to Clynya. Behind the ramparts are several tents, and more than a handful of long rough-planked buildings with sodded roofs. The air smells of damp grass, soil, and woodsmoke.
“Can you set those buildings on fire, Master Mage?” he asks Terek.
“This grass is damp, ser.”
“The buildings?” hisses Sillek.
“Yes, ser, but I’d have to get closer, much closer. They’ve cut away all the grass-”
“Burned it, I think,” corrects Sillek. “You can see in the dark, can’t you? Mages are supposed to be able to do that.”
“In the dark? You want us to do this in the dark?”
“As I told Koric, I’m not a slave to an outmoded code of honor, Master Chief Wizard. That bastard Ildyrom disregarded honor and traditional boundaries when he seized the grasslands west of Clynya and built this fort to hold them. Honor says I should send my armsmen against a bunch of mongrel scum to have them killed? Frig honor. I intend to get the grasslands back without killing my men.”
Terek shifts his weight from one knee to the other in the high damp grass, all too aware he does not wear the hip-length boots that Sillek does.
“When it gets dark, Koric and a handful of the best will escort you and the two other wizards down as far as you need to go. I want everything in that fort to burn-everything.”
“But they’ll flee.”
“Of course.” Sillek smiles. “I’ve thought of that, too. Now, let’s get back and get ready.” He glances to the darkening western horizon, then back to the thin lines of smoke coming up from the wooden huts behind the earthen walls.
Terek shivers, but follows the lord as the two creep back through the grasses, hoping that the sentries in the fort can see nothing but grass waving in the evening breeze. “… all this sneaking…” Terek mumbles to himself. “Do you want to ride up front in a charge to take that fort, Master Wizard?” asks Sillek, still easing through the damp grasses in a crouch, grasses that bend and then spray Terek with the rain that has coated them. Terek wipes his forehead. “No, ser.”
“Then stop complaining. I’m a lot more interested in winning than in being a dead hero, and, from what I’ve seen, so are you.”
When they reach the low hill that shelters the Lornian forces, Sillek straightens and massages his back.
Koric waits and listens as Lord Sillek explains.
“… won’t be too much longer before it’s dark enough for you to start, Koric.”
“Yes, ser.”
Sillek touches his arm and lowers his voice. “Who else can I trust to ensure these… wizards… do as they’re supposed to? I can’t spare a score of horse or the archers.”
“I understand, ser. I’ll do my duty.”
Both Sillek and Koric underst
and the words that Koric does not speak. But I don’t have to like it.
“I know,” Sillek says. “Just remember. It’s the results that count.” He studies the almost-dark sky and the stars that have appeared. “You’d better get started.”
Koric nods.
Sillek wipes what moisture he can from his leathers, and boots, before mounting and beginning his instructions to the horse troopers.
As the skies continue to clear, and the white firepoints of the stars blink across the grasslands, Koric leads the three wizards through the grass. Watch fires glimmer at the four corners of the fort, spilling light into the darkness.
Another group from Lornth circles behind the wizards, heading for the ford in the West Fork. The dozen men bear longbows and filled quivers.
Farther from the Jeranyi redoubt, sheltered by the slope of the land and the, chest-high grass, Lord Sillek and his horse wait, then he nods, and, almost silently, the troopers begin their roundabout ride to the south side of the road that leads from the ford to the fort.
The grass bends and whispers, showering Hissl with droplets. He wipes his face and follows, at a crouch, Koric and the chief wizard.
“Keep down,” hisses Koric. “You mages get us discovered, and you’ll spend the next season in cold iron, if the Jeranyi don’t catch us, and do it first.”
Hissl takes a deep breath and wipes more water out of his eyes. Jissek just puffs along after Terek. Behind them follow a half squad of armed troopers, also creeping through the damp grass and darkness.
“Is this close enough?” asks Koric as he pauses and glances toward the watch fires that are little more than a hundred cubits away, their flames flickering in the light but steady wind out of the west that brings with it the smell of wood fires, probably from wood ferried downstream from the headwaters of the West Fork. Mixed with the wood smoke is the odor of cooking grease.
Hissl licks his lips, trying to ignore the growling in his guts.
“Close enough,” admits Terek, “even for Jissek.”
“You start when you’re ready,” orders Koric. “The others will watch for the fires.”
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