Fall of Angels

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  Nylan had no bow. That was no great loss, since his accuracy with the weapon was less than most of the guards, especially at a distance, and the number of bows-the good composite ones-was limited. Besides, with everything else, he had scarcely practiced with the bow since winter.

  He looked at Ayrlyn, also without a bow, and motioned to the ropes behind them. “We leave after they start to fire,” he mouthed.

  She raised her eyebrows.

  Nylan repeated his words, and she nodded.

  The sun, early as it was, warmed Nylan’s back, but the end of the canyon remained in shadow.

  Nylan nodded again as he realized Ryba had planned better than he had thought. Gerlich’s troops would come around the final turn in the canyon with their eyes facing right into the rising sun. Nylan bet the big hunter hadn’t even considered that fact, but he hadn’t the slightest doubts that Ryba had. When it came to using force, she tried to consider everything.

  The sun climbed a bit higher, and the air remained still. Not even a bird chirped, and Nylan worried about that. Would Gerlich sense the unnatural quiet?

  The faintest of clinks echoed across the rocks.

  Ryba raised her hand, and nearly a score of guards nocked arrows, but Ryba kept her hand just above shoulder level.

  A single rider turned the corner into the low-angled sunlight, his hand up to shield his eyes. Two more followed, their mounts walking easily. Ryba’s hand remained up until more than a score of armsmen squinted their way into the sunlight.

  Then her hand snapped down.

  The second snap was that of bowstrings.

  Nylan saw several riders pitch forward and one reach for a shaft through his upper arm.

  “Arrows!” came Gerlich’s bellow. The big man dropped down low on his mount almost as the shafts flew. “Follow me!”

  Nylan scrambled back and down the rope, noting just as he ducked that the armsman he thought was Narliat had ‘gone down with at least two shafts through him. The white wizard and his mount vanished, just as the one had in the very first battle on the Roof of the World.

  Nylan came down the hillside in a haze of dust and struggled up into his saddle, trying to get the mare moving toward the canyon mouth, realizing that, for all Ryba’s training, the guards might be too slow if someone weren’t near the canyon mouth to slow the attacking armsmen.

  He leaned back and whacked the mare’s flank, and she jumped forward so quickly that Nylan almost lurched backward out of the saddle. He grabbed the front rim of the saddle with his free hand and levered himself forward, wondering what he was doing trying to hold off a charge of horsemen by himself.

  Another horse drew up beside him on his right. “Demon-damned way to run a battle,” yelled Ayrlyn. “Not exactly the best people to blunt an attack,” he answered without looking at her, just doing his best to guide the mare around the rocky hill and toward the mouth of the canyon.

  He glanced ahead to his right. The canyon opening was ahead, and none of the attackers had emerged. Maybe Ryba had planned it right. He hazarded a quick glance over his shoulder. At least a handful of guards were mounted and following them.

  He looked back ahead, and the first armsman came charging out of the canyon, almost without seeing Ayrlyn, lost in the glare of the early sun. Although the invader turned toward her and raised a long blade, she slipped under it, and her own blade flashed, driving into the angle between chest and neck. Blood welled up everywhere, as did a white haze that shivered the healer where she rode, even as she beat back a feeble thrust from the dying armsman by instinct.

  “Back off!” called Nylan, knowing that she could not see. That white impact of death had seemingly shivered against him, against his blade, but he shook it off. He hadn’t done the killing, and that helped.

  Another handful of riders rode out of the canyon, circling south, so as to avoid riding straight into the sun, and reforming into a line.

  Behind him, Nylan could hear hoofbeats. He hoped there were enough.

  An arrow arched over him and toward the invaders, but passed through them. Nylan half wondered who was good enough even to shoot while riding. That took two free hands, and half the time, he needed one hand to grab the mare’s mane or the saddle to keep from getting jounced off.

  A firebolt hhissssed past Nylan, its heat skin-searing. The wizard had reappeared beside Gerlich, who waved the big sword in Nylan’s general direction.

  Another firebolt flared across the distance between the mounted groups.

  Aeeeüi!

  The sickening scream was cut short, as if by a knife.

  “Aim for the wizard!” ordered Nylan, and almost immediately several shafts arrowed toward the white-clad man.

  Nylan could sense the white wizard throwing up some short of shields, and parts of the arrows flared into flame. The arrowheads tumbled forward untouched.

  “More!” snapped Ryba. “He can’t use his powers while cold iron’s flying at him.”

  How did Ryba know that? wondered Nylan. It made sense, but how had she known?

  HHHssstttt!

  Another of the wizard’s firebolts flared toward Ryba, and she raised her blade and half ducked, half parried it.

  “To the tower!” ordered Gerlich, spearheading a wedge of horsemen aimed slightly to the left of the center of the guards.

  The invading horsemen charged forward, and the wizard vanished. Nylan extended his senses, probing for the wizard… and finding him behind a wall of unseen white. Maybe… maybe, he could do something like that, or figure out a way to break down-

  “Nylan!”

  At the scream, Nylan blinked, then lifted his blade as a bearded armsman bore down. The engineer wanted to turn and flee, but he’d just get himself cut down from behind.

  Nylan barely managed to get the blade up to deflect the smashing blow, and his entire arm ached. He urged the mare sideways, raising his own weapon again, and hacking the bearded man, who caught Nylan’s blade with the big crowbar. Again, Nylan’s arm shivered, but he actually gouged a chunk of iron from the huge sword.

  He wished he had had the time to try his shield idea, but the armsman brought the huge blade around in a sweeping, screaming arc, and the engineer was forced back in the saddle. He could no longer see what else was happening, though he could feel the lines of white-red force flying toward and around Ryba.

  Almost automatically, as the attacking armsman overbalanced, Nylan felt the moves that Saryn and Ryba had drilled into him taking over, and his blade flashed-once… twice.

  The bearded man’s surprised look stayed on his dead face, even as the white shock of his death shivered through Nylan.

  “Move, ser! Move!”

  At the sound of Huldran’s voice, Nylan forced his eyes back open, despite the needles of pain that shivered through them, and weakly lifted his blade. Three guards had swept in before him and seemed to hold back twice their number.

  His guts churned, and his eyes burned. His arm just hurt.

  Another armsman rode up, circling toward Huldran’s blind side, and Nylan, again mostly reacting, threw the heavy balanced blade, and immediately grabbed for his second blade.

  As the thrown blade sliced through the armsman’s chest, Nylan’s fingers groped for, and almost lost, his other blade. For a moment he sat on the mare, paralyzed, knives of liquid lightning stabbing through his eyes, and lines of ionized fire streaming down his arms.

  He forced his blade up, but, for the moment, it wasn’t needed. The last armsman attacking Cessya wheeled his mount, turned, and started to flee. Cessya threw one of her blades through his back, then rode after the trotting mount to reclaim it.

  HHHssttt!

  Nylan’s stomach churned as the ashes that had been Cessya flared into the morning air, but he forced himself to turn the mare toward the white-clad figure and raised his remaining blade. “Let’s go.”

  Extending his perceptions again, ignoring the fire that ran through his body, he let the mare trot forward, afraid a run would
jolt him right out of the saddle.

  Huldran rode on his right, Weindre on his left, and two others he didn’t look back to identify slightly behind.

  Another firebolt flared, but Nylan raised his blade, using his senses somehow to deflect it.

  A third firebolt slammed at Nylan, cascading around his blade, and almost singeing his hair.

  The engineer felt as though he were riding in slow motion, but he kept moving, holding the blade like a talisman, ignoring the soreness in his muscles as he and the guards narrowed the distance between them and the wizard.

  Two firebolts, in quick succession, flashed toward them, but Nylan, with his senses, eased them aside.

  As the white wizard saw the guards beating their way through the armsmen, he glanced left, then right, and squinted.

  Nylan could feel the sense of distortion, the wrenching feeling twisting at his sight, and he fought it, muttering under his breath, “I will. I will see what is. I will… will…”

  His head seemed to split as unseen lines of fire stretched from the wizard to him, but he held firm, his eyes blurring, only knowing that the wizard’s defenders were melting under the flashing, often crudely hacking, blades of the Westwind guards.

  Suddenly, the wizard turned his mount and started to gallop away. Two blades flashed through the air. One struck, almost a glancing blow, Nylan thought, but the wizard almost seemed to disintegrate.

  “Get those blades!” ordered Huldran.

  Nylan, ignoring the blinding knives that accompanied each glance at the bodies strewn across the area around the fields, and the gash in his arm that he had not even noticed before, urged the mare toward the knot of armsmen besieging Ryba and the guards around her.

  As the two guards reclaimed their blades, Huldran, Weindre, and Nylan rode over the corner of the bean field toward the dust-shrouded figures struggling in the mid-morning light.

  Gerlich loomed over the group, and his blade cleared a guard from her mount, almost bisecting her.

  Nylan winced at the additional pain of more death, but leaned forward in the saddle, still gripping his blade.

  “Now, we’ll see, Angel and Marshal!” yelled Gerlich, spurring his mount toward Ryba, pushing aside one of his own armsmen as he came up on her left side, the huge blade spinning like night toward the marshal, even as she turned.

  The dark-haired leader dived sideways as the blade clove through the neck of the roan. The big red horse crumbled, but Ryba tucked and rolled out, staggering erect into a space in the midst of the dust and horses.

  One of Ryba’s arms hung loosely as Gerlich wheeled his mount toward her.

  Her shoulders slumped, and Nylan watched helplessly. Gerlich’s blade rose again.

  At the last moment, the forgotten slug-thrower came up… and four even shots stitched four welts of red across Gerlich’s chest. The big blade slipped from his fingers as his mouth dropped open.

  As the ten or so armsmen turned, as if to attack the dismounted marshal, Saryn lifted both her blades. Each glittered like black fire in the midday sun, each impossibly reflecting the sun. Saryn and the half-dozen guards beside her charged the remaining armsmen, splitting off half the group and backing them away from Ryba. The guards’ black blades glittered in the late morning light, glimmered like black fire.

  A second group of five guards, led by Fierral, formed a tight circle around Ryba against nearly twice their number.

  Nylan turned toward Ryba’s attackers, and the mare pulled up short, almost slamming into an armsman’s mount from behind. As the man turned, seemingly in slow motion, Nylan’s iron blade slashed.

  With the cold white of another death, Nylan shuddered, and his senses screamed.

  No matter how hard he tried to hold on, the engineer could feel himself slumping in the saddle, almost in slow motion, as the power of that exploding whiteness slammed into him, and his fingers grasped at the mare’s mane, trying to hold on. Trying…

  CXI

  ZELDYAN SITS NEARLY upright in the rocking chair, Nesslek on her shoulder, patting him as he cries. “Now… now…” She nods to Sillek. “What did Terek tell you? You went running out of here like the Westhorns had burst into flame.”

  Sillek looks down at the uneaten remnants of his midday meal. “I’m worried.”

  “That is obvious.” She continues to pat Nesslek.

  Her son arches his back slightly and gives an uuurpppp.

  “There… does little Nesslek’s tummy feel better? There…” Zeldyan raises an eyebrow. “Does this have to do with your adventuresome wizard’s exploits?”

  “He’s dead. Somehow they turned his wizardry back on him and cut him down with cold iron.” Sillek stands and walks to the window, his eyes looking toward the fields filled with grain turning gold, a gold he does not see though his eyes rest upon the fields. “They have demon blades-or angel blades-or something. Hissl threw his fire at the head angel, and she turned it with her blade. I didn’t see it in the glass, but Terek swears it happened.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  Nesslek whimpers again, and Zeldyan brings him up to her shoulder, patting him once more.

  “I’ve never seen him look that shaken.”

  “How many of Hissl’s armsmen survived?”

  “A handful, if that. They were led by a big man who was one of the best I’ve seen. He had a big blade, as big as my father’s, and he used it like a toothpick. It wasn’t enough.”

  “What about the angels?”

  Sillek turns from the sunlight and the window. “They lost some. How many I couldn’t say, but there seem to be as many as before. Their leader was wounded, but she was still giving orders. I don’t know about their mage. They were carrying him off the field, but the glass didn’t show any blood. Terek thinks he was only stunned, says that he tied Hissl’s magic in knots at the end.”

  “You’re very worried.”

  “You know why,” Sillek answers. “They’ll get more women after this. They know how to train them. They have blades that turn wizards’ fire and cut through plate armor. They have bows that send arrows through anything. I have Ildyrom stirring up* rumors that I’m a coward, and that I intend to turn Lornth over to the women. I have my own holders who will demand that I destroy this abomination, and what will I get out of it?” Sillek snorts. “If I’m unlucky, I’m dead. If I’m lucky, I’ll win a victory that will destroy me. To win, I’ll need to raise an army-not a force, but an army as big as the one that took Rulyarth-and I can’t pull your father out of Rulyarth, or the forces that support him. So I need more mercenaries and levies, and both are expensive. That means a tax on the holders. Who else has got coins? That will make them mad, and they won’t remember that it’s their bitching that created the mess.”

  “It is that bad, isn’t it?”

  Nesslek burps again before his father can respond.

  “It’s worse. I hate those women. Just by existing, they’re going to destroy me, one way or another.”

  “No they won’t. Life is never easy, but you can defeat them. I know you don’t want to, and I don’t, either, but we don’t want a holder revolt, either.” Zeldyan smiles. “When you come back, then you certainly won’t have any trouble with Ildyrom.”

  “No. That’s true. One way or another I won’t have to worry about Ildyrom.” He walks over to the chair. “Let me take Nesslek. You haven’t had a bite to eat, and all I’ve done is talk.”

  “Careful,” says Zeldyan with a laugh. “You shouldn’t let anyone see you acting like a nursemaid.”

  “Bother that,” mutters Sillek, lifting Nesslek up to his shoulder. “I’m a nursemaid to all those holders who are afraid that, if those women survive up on that mountain, they won’t be able to keep beating their own up.”

  “I never would have thought you’d say that.”

  “I’ve learned a lot from you.” Sillek pats his son on the back and smiles at Zeldyan.

  CXII

  WHEN NYLAN WOKE, he was lying on his lander cot
bed. The light from the windows, while dim, burned through his eyes. He turned his head slightly, eyes slit, and a sledge smashed across his temples. Whiteness and blackness washed over him for a time, and he lay motionless, eyes closed, until the hammering and the knives that slashed at his eyes subsided.

  Slowly, without moving his head, he eased his eyes open.

  The gentle creaking of the cradle seemed more like the rumbling of a mill beside his head, and Dyliess’s breathing like a high wind that whipped through the tower.

  Ryba sat in the rocking chair, one arm bound tightly in a sling, the other rocking the cradle. The left side of her face was scraped and blackish blue, with thin red lines running across her cheek.

  “You…” rasped Nylan. His eyes still burned.

  “I know,” she said. “You look almost as bad. They had to pry your fingers out of your poor mount’s mane.”

  Nylan tried to move his fingers. They were stiff, sore. His head throbbed even with the attempted movement.

  “You don’t look that wonderful,” he said after a time.

  “It’s not too bad. It was only dislocated, but badly. Istril has some of the healing talent. It must go with the silver hair. It’s a good thing, too, because whatever you did to that wizard backfired all over both you and Ayrlyn. Last time I looked she was flattened like you.”

  “No…” Nylan tried to moisten his lips. “I got… through the wizard. It was the killing. Killing’s hard on me, hard on healers.”

  “The killing was the easy part,” said Ryba, as though she had not even heard Nylan’s last words. “Getting guards trained is the hard thing, and making sure they do what they’re supposed to. These women, half are scared to lift a blade against a man. Got to change that.” She coughed, wincing.

  “Sore ribs, too?”

  “I don’t notice you doing much moving.”

  “If I did, my head would fall off,” Nylan admitted.

  “Denize, she froze, just sat there on her mount,” Ryba continued, again almost as though she had not heard Nylan. “They hacked her apart, and I couldn’t reach her in time. De-sain, Miergin, and poor Nistayna, they did their best and it wasn’t enough. The wizard got Jaseen and Berlis, too.” Ryba shivered, then stopped rocking the cradle. “Killing’s easy. Too easy for men.”