Fall of Angels

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “I think there are some deer, and maybe a snow leopard, downhill and to the right. The wind’s coming uphill here, and I might be able to get close enough,” whispered Saryn.

  “If I’m not stamping along?”

  She nodded.

  “Go on. We’re always on the verge of running out of meat.”

  “Can you just wait here?” asked Saryn, her voice still low. “With your bow ready?”

  “I’ll wait with a bow handy. How much good it will do I’m not sure.” Nylan tried to keep his own voice down.

  As the wind whispered through the evergreens, clumps of snow splattered around them, leaving pockmarks scattered on the once-smooth white surface, depressions that the wind seemed to begin to fill immediately with feathery white powder that scudded along the snow.

  The engineer glanced back uphill. Already, sections of the packed trail they had followed had begun to disappear beneath the drifting snow. Another shadow darkened the Roof of the World, and he looked up at the white cloud that scudded across the sun.

  “You’ll do fine. Just don’t let our supper get away.” Saryn raised her left hand and then slipped down the steeper section of the partly packed snow trail ahead. In moments, she was out of sight in the trees, gone as silently as if she had never been there.

  Nylan shrugged and unlimbered the composite bow, wishing that he had practiced more with the weapon. The shadow of the cloud passed, and for a long time, nothing moved in the expanse of white beneath the overhanging firs, nothing except snow scudded between trunks by the light wind that rose and fell, rose and fell.

  A gray-winged form plunged from nowhere into a swirl of powdered snow, and a quick geyser of white erupted, then died away as the gray-hawk flapped away, a small white-coated rodent in its claws.

  As the hawk vanished, Nylan inched forward on the skis, mainly to shift his weight and keep his hips and knees from cramping in the cold. He looked back in the general direction of the tower, but could see nothing but snow, tree trunks, and the white-covered green of the fir branches.

  A rhythmic swishing, almost a series of whispering thuds, rose, just barely, over the hissing of the wind.

  Nylan squinted, looking downhill, when the snow cat bounded across the hillside toward the trail where he stood, moving so quickly that what had seemed a small figure swelled into a vision of knife claws and glinting teeth even as Nylan released his first arrow and reached for the second, triggering reflex step-up. The second arrow flew as the leopard reached the snow beside the flat section at the crest of the trail.

  Both Nylan and the snow cat seemed to be moving in slow motion, but the engineer forced his body to respond. The third arrow left the bowstring as the cat stretched toward Nylan.

  Bow still in hand, he managed to dive into the snow at the side of the trail as the snow cat lunged at him. A line of fire slashed down his shoulder as he half twisted away from the mass of fur and claws. His skis linked together, and he toppled like a tree blasted by a microburst into the deep snow, a heavy weight on his back.

  That weight did not move, and, in time, Nylan levered it away from him and, through a combination of rolling, twisting, and gasping, finally struggled into the light.

  His knees ached. One leg burned, and the other threatened to cramp. Half sitting, half lying in the snow, he managed to reach one of the poles he had abandoned to use the bow, and with it, to retrieve the bow itself. He laid it on the edge of the harder snowpack of the trail. Then he looked at his boots and the mass of snow and ice around the thongs.

  With a groan and more rolling he finally managed to totter erect.

  The claws had sliced through the heavy leather shoulder of the hunting jacket he had borrowed from Ayrlyn, but blunted the impact enough that the wound was little more than a thin line skin-deep.

  He looked at the snow-covered leopard, then downhill, but the forest was silent. After prodding the cat with one of his poles, he took a deep breath, regretting it instantly as the chill bit into his lungs, and then edged his skis toward the dead leopard.

  Nylan knelt and removed the first arrow shaft, wiping it clean on the snow, then replacing it in the quiver. Then he searched for the second.

  The sun was well past midday when Saryn trudged uphill, pulling the carcass of a winter deer behind her. By then, Nylan had dragged the snow leopard out onto the trail and worked out the three arrows.

  “I’m sorry, Nylan, but… we do need the meat, and it took me longer-What happened to you?” Saryn stopped and stared at the bedraggled engineer, her eyes going from his shoulder to the body of the snow leopard.

  “It decided I’d make a good dinner. I tried not to oblige.”

  “You were lucky.”

  Nylan nodded. His jaw still chattered, and his knees were wobbly, especially as he looked at the stretched - out length of the cat.

  “But they’re all your shafts. So you get the fur. We all share the meat. That’s a dubious benefit.” Saryn laughed, and Nylan joined her.

  Snow-cat meat was tough, gamy, and no pleasure for teeth or tongue, even in a well-cooked stew.

  Nylan adjusted the bow in its cover and checked the quiver.

  “What will you do with the fur?” Saryn asked. “That’s yours, you know.”

  “Mine?”

  “Meat you can split, but not the hide. We all agreed that the choice is up to the one who brings the animal down, especially if you get wounded.”

  Nylan’s eyes flicked to the slash in his jacket. “It’s only a cut.”

  Saryn laughed. “Your skis didn’t move much.” Her eyes looked to the depression beside the trail.

  “That would have been futile,” Nylan admitted.

  “So you stood there and fired three arrows at a charging leopard?”

  “It does sound stupid, when you put it that way.”

  “Necessary,” Saryn said. “What would have happened if you’d tried to ski away?”

  “I’d be under ten cubits of snow or a midday meal for the leopard.”

  “So the pelt is yours. You earned it.”

  “I suppose it will make a good coverlet for Dyliess. It’s light and warmer than anything else.”

  “Dyliess? Ryba’s… ?”

  Nylan nodded. “Mine, too.”

  “That’s a beautiful cradle you’re making.”

  “Thank you. It’s almost done, and that’s hard to believe.” Nylan took a deep breath. “Don’t we have to drag this beast somewhere?”

  “You get to drag it home. I’ve got the deer,” Saryn said. “I even have some rope.”

  “You are so obliging.”

  “Think nothing of it.”

  How Nylan got the cat carcass back to the tower he didn’t know, only that his legs ached even more, his shoulder burned, as did his eyes, despite the eye black under and around them-which he’d have to wash off sooner or later. He felt light-headed.

  He had taken off his skis and leaned against the causeway wall and watched as Kadran and Saryn set up the tripod and skinned and gutted the deer and then the leopard. With the pelt off, the cat’s carcass was thin, and Nylan felt almost sorry for the dead animal, even though it had certainly tried to kill him. “Thin,” he murmured. “So fearsome, and so thin.”

  “It’s a hard life, even for the animals who live here,” answered Saryn.

  A taller figure skied to a halt beyond the causeway, then bent and unlaced the thongs of his skis. Gerlich looked at Saryn and Kadran. “So you finally got something besides a deer. A real snow leopard. Congratulations, Saryn.”

  Saryn smiled politely, pulling her scarf away from her mouth. “Thank you, but it isn’t mine. I got the deer. Nylan put three arrows through the cat. All of them in the chest, not much more than a span apart.”

  “In the chest?”

  Saryn rotated the carcass on the fir-limb tripod and pointed. “Here, here, and here.”

  Gerlich inclined his head to Nylan. “My congratulations to you, then, Engineer. Your bows must carry farthe
r in the winter.”

  “I wish I’d been able to use them at that range,” Nylan offered, pointing to the slash in the jacket. “Then this wouldn’t have happened. He got a little closer than I would have ideally preferred. It’s hard to fire arrows with claws in your face.”

  After a moment, Gerlich answered, “I can see that.” With a look back at Nylan, he crossed the causeway and entered the tower.

  “Ser,” said Saryn, “we really don’t need you. You might think about cleaning and dressing that slash. Relyn and I- we’ll start tanning the pelt… don’t you worry.”

  Nylan heaved himself erect and picked up the skis and poles. “Thank you. You’re probably right.”

  After carting the skis down to the lower level and racking them and the poles, he started back up toward the fifth level, where the medical supplies were kept. He stopped at the main level and staggered into the great room, where he slumped at the empty table, too tired to climb the steps.

  While he really needed to wash out the cut on his shoulder, that meant climbing four more flights of steps, and digging out the antiseptic, what little there was left, and then going to the bathhouse. He took a deep breath.

  The main door opened, and Kadran struggled inside with a deer haunch, followed by Kyseen. Neither looked toward the dimness of the great room.

  “… should have heard the engineer… ‘got a little closer than I would have ideally preferred.’ I thought I’d die. Gerlich was going to shit building stones…”

  “Engineer’s a tough little bastard.”

  “… quiet, a lot of the time… have to be tough to deal with the marshal… leopard’s probably easy by comparison…”

  Ryba, tougher than a snow leopard? Nylan chuckled to himself. No question about that, but he’d prefer to fight neither.

  As the two cooks vanished, he stood and walked toward the steps, and the antiseptic, the cleaning he wasn’t looking forward to, and soreness in muscles he’d forgotten he had- and the headache, the headache that seemed not quite constant.

  LIV

  OUTSIDE THE FROSTED window, the day is dull gray. Even the snow on the fields in the distance is gray. That on the roads below Hissl’s room has been tramped into a fro/en mixture of brown and gray.

  The warmth from the small brazier in the corner is more than welcome. Hissl shifts his weight on the stool to warm his right side, without taking his eyes from the glass on the table.

  Centered in the swirling white mists are the images of the black mage and the woman warrior. Each drags a carcass, but the mage drags that of a snow cat up the slope toward the line of smoke that rises from the tower chimneys.

  Two other figures, also on the long wide skis, sweep down the slope toward the pair.

  The mage appears awkward on the skis, but he is the one who drags the snow cat. Their breath puffs through the scarves that cover their faces, then falls in the bright light in powdery crystals toward the snow through which they climb.

  Hissl’s eyes focus on the bows both carry, then narrow. He smiles. “No thunder-throwers now.”

  Neither of the two skiers who stop on the white expanse above the toiling pair wear thunder-throwers, either, and Hissl’s tight smile broadens. He tries not to think about a mage who will stand fast before a snow leopard, and his eyes flick to the window.

  The grasslands beyond Clynya are still covered with white, but the days are again lengthening, and even on the Roof of the World the snows will vanish in time.

  LV

  CARRYING A CLEAN outfit, Nylan padded down the stairs in his boots and old trousers, trying to ignore the chill that seeped around him. He slowed as he neared the fourth level.

  Gerlich unloaded his gear, racking the quiver in the shelf space that was his, and hung the long bow beside it, his fingers running over the wood, almost lovingly. Then he removed the shoulder harness and the great blade.

  The big man slid the blade from the scabbard, studied it, and took a small flagon from the bag that hung from one of the pegs. After extracting a pair of rags from the leather bag, he used one rag first to dry the blade and afterward the scabbard, before draping the damp rag over a shoulder-high peg on the long board fastened to the wall. Then he unstoppered the flagon and poured a small amount of oil onto the other rag before closing the flagon. Gently, the hunter oiled the blade from hilt to tip.

  As he watched the hunter, Nylan puzzled over several items. Although Gerlich brought back no game, he had brought back fewer arrows, and shafts and arrowheads were not easy to come by. Had Gerlich lost the shafts?

  Nylan smiled. Perhaps the great hunter was not so great after all. He shook his head as he studied Gerlich. Why did the hunter carry the huge blade on a hunting trip? Any sort of sword was difficult to use on skis. In fact, anything was hard to use trying to balance on wooden slats spanning deep powder snow.

  Based on his encounter with the leopard, Nylan could certainly testify to that. He lifted his right shoulder, felt the soreness. Despite the antiseptic, one section of the slash had become inflamed, enough so that Ayrlyn had been forced to use her healing talents-a way of forcing out the disorder of infection.

  After having watched her do it, Nylan had practiced on the shoulder wound himself, keeping it chaos-free. That talent might come in useful at some point, especially when the few remnants of the medical supplies were exhausted. The talent didn’t seem to speed healing much, but it stopped infection and would reduce scarring, Nylan suspected.

  “Any luck?” Nylan asked from the steps.

  Boredom replaced surprise on Gerlich’s face. “Not this time. We’ve killed most of the dumb animals, and I’ve got to travel farther every time.”

  “Sorry to hear that.” Nylan nodded and continued down the steps.

  There were people near the hearth in the great room, but the engineer continued onward toward the north door. He shivered as he hurried through the ice-lined archway and into the bathhouse. The stove was yet warm, and some water lay on the stone tiles of the first shower stall, but no one remained in the building. Huldran probably had used the shower-or Ryba-or both.

  Nylan stripped off the boots and trousers and checked the knife valve. Then he stood under the frigid water only long enough to get thoroughly wet, before lathering himself with the liquid concoction that Ayrlyn had claimed was the local equivalent of soap.

  The amber liquid looked like oil laced with sand and flower petals. That was also what it smelled like-rancid flower petals. It felt like liquid sandpaper as Nylan stood, damp and freezing, on the cold stones of a shower stall without a door, trying to scrub grease off his hands, frozen and thawed sweat out of his stiff hair, and grime off most of his body.

  He had to wet his body twice more just to get lathered half properly, and then it took three short rinses-just because he couldn’t stand under the cold water that long. Cold? The water had been warmed some by the bathhouse stove’s water warmer.

  The only excuse for a towel was a napless synthetic oblong that might have qualified as a hand towel on Heaven except for the fact that it was designed to shed water-not absorb it. So Nylan had to use it more to wipe the water off his body, letting a combination of evaporation and what felt like sublimation do the rest.

  While he looked and smelled more human at the end of the process, the bluish tinge to his skin spoiled the feeling. The goose bumps and shivers remained long after he donned the relatively clean clothes that had taken two days to dry after he had washed them. Finally, his feet were dry enough for him to pull on the wool-lined boots.

  The bathhouse remained empty, except for him.

  When he had stopped shivering violently, he marched resolutely toward the brick archway that had become a solid arc of ice. The ends of his damp hair still froze before he got into the tower and closed the north door behind him. After carting his old trousers up to the top level, he returned to the great hall, and the coals in the hearth.

  In the dimness, Relyn sat on one side, Murkassa on the other, each one’s
back to the coals. Neither looked at the other. Both shivered.

  “A cheerful group,” Nylan observed.

  “Feeding fowls-that is all I can do that is useful,” snapped Relyn, raising his artificial hand. “Or sheep. It is so cold that I can barely hold the bag.” His eyes turned on Nylan. “Your hair is wet.”

  “I couldn’t stand being dirty and unshaven any longer. I took a shower.”

  “You have ice in your veins.” Relyn shuddered. “You are more terrible than the women. They are merely angels, trying to live as people.”

  “That’s nonsense,” Nylan retorted. “I’m trying just as hard.” He stepped toward the residual warmth of the hearth.

  “They did not think of the tower and build it. They did not find the water that flows when all is frozen. They did not forge the blades of black lightning. They did not build the small bows that send arrows through plate mail.” Relyn stood, but his eyes were on the stones of the floor. “They only fought and grew crops and hunted. You forged Westwind, and all that it will be. I have finally seen the truth. You are the first true black mage.”

  Nylan snorted. “Me? I’m the man who can barely cross the snows on skis. The one who couldn’t get a thunder-thrower to kill anyone…”

  Relyn laughed… gently. “The thunder-throwers do not belong in Candar. Nor did the magical tools you first used. Yet all the weapons you created and all the buildings you built will remain. Everything you forged belongs here on the Roof of the World, and everything will last for generations. If you died today, what you have wrought would remain.”

  “That was the general idea. You seem to be the first one to fully understand that.” Nylan paused, and in the silence could hear the sounds of voices and tools and cooking coming up from the lowest level of the tower. “What’s so strange about it? I helped to build a tower, but there are towers all over Candar. I forged some blades, but armsmen all over Candar carry blades. I created bows, but archers have existed for years.”