L. Modesitt - Arms-Commander

“Why?” she repeated.

“Mother says…we need him, and so do you,” replied Aemra. “We were just trying to help, because no one else was.”

“He…he’s like a puppy dog,” added Kyalynn.

Saryn wanted to laugh at the efforts the two were making to conceal something, and she probably would have-if she’d been able to determine what they really had in mind. But she could only sense what they didn’t have in mind. “What are you two hiding?” The question was worth asking, if only to see their reaction.

“We’re not hiding anything,” protested Aemra indignantly. “We’re just trying to help you.”

“If we get him so he can defend himself,” added Kyalynn, “then he can do what ever you need him to do.”

Both statements were true, and both girls believed them…but there was more, and Saryn knew she wasn’t going to get to what ever else was there. She finally did laugh. “All right. Don’t hurt him too badly, and listen to your mothers.”

“Yes, ser.”

Saryn turned away and started back toward the smithy.

“Saryn!”

At the sound of the Marshal’s voice, the arms-commander turned again and headed toward Ryba, who was walking over from the east side of the practice field.

“What was all that about?” asked Ryba.

“I wanted to know how they felt Dealdron was coming and if he’d had enough training so that he could spend more time with Siret doing stonework.”

A brief look of amusement crossed the Marshal’s face. “He probably does know enough to defend himself. The girls can be quite thorough. How soon before you leave?”

“Another glass or so. We’re loading out now.”

“Good. I got another report. Arthanos is still getting supplies, and the scouts think he returned to Fenard. If that’s so, we have several days, possibly more, but I’ll keep you posted.”

“I’d appreciate that,” Saryn replied politely.

“It would still be good if you placed everything as soon as possible. Then take a position there and wait for us. Take care. I’ll see you in about an eightday.” With a nod, Ryba headed back toward Tower Black.

Saryn hurried toward the smithy and the carts, still pondering her exchange with the girls and Ryba’s reaction. The Marshal could be most protective of the trio, and yet, for all of Ryba’s former doubts and concerns about Dealdron, she hadn’t seemed in the slightest worried about the three sparring with the young Gallosian. She’d been amused…but about what? It couldn’t just have been about the bruises Dealdron was taking, could it?

Comforting as that might have been, Saryn didn’t think so.

Eightday afternoon found Saryn stretched out on rough red rock, peering over the edge of a precipice, a rope fastened tightly around her chest. Some ten yards behind her, toward the center of the mesa, two guards from fourth squad held the other end of the rope. A chill wind whipped her short hair around her face as she tried to see down into a split in the rock a yard and a half in width. On the other side of the split was a stretch of rock some fifty yards in width, and a good two hundred yards from east to west.

Another gust of wind slammed into her, half-inflating the back of her riding jacket. She could feel the pressure of the wind lightening her body, as if trying to pull her away from the rock, but after a moment, the pressure lessened. She understood all too well why the top of the mesa was barren, except for a handful of stunted trees. Wind or no wind, she needed to find where to place the explosive penetrators, not only where they would dislodge the most rock but where she could make sure that the fuses could be lit with the right timing. She edged forward until her head was well out over the opening between the mesa and the spurlike section of rock, trying to see and sense whether the narrow crevice was wide enough to lower the penetrator into it as far as necessary and whether a targeted explosion would break the section loose.

She couldn’t see any light farther down in the crevice, but there was a thin line of light halfway down on the north end that suggested that section might be easier to break away. She needed the bulk of the overhang to break loose, but that was the part opposite from where she was stretched out. If that section didn’t break away, there wouldn’t be enough rock cascading down into the valley below to reach the road with the volume necessary to be effective.

After easing back just a bit, Saryn tried to relax enough to let her senses probe the depths below. At first, she could sense nothing except small creatures she thought might be some form of bat. After a time, she began to sense faint lines, some of them more like dark gray, and others more a pinkish white gray. Below her, and to her right, near where she “felt” the crevice ended and the two sections of rock joined-or split, depending on which way she looked at it-there was a “knot” of both blackness and the faintest whitish red. Was that a vulnerable spot where she could place one of the penetrators? Or was it a stronger area that the chaos could not weaken?

Could she find a smaller area-a much smaller one-somewhere else on the mesa with the same sort of knot where she could experiment to see what the knot was? That would have to wait. She glanced at the sky to the west, which was darkening rapidly as a line of thunderheads began to build, as they often did in the afternoons over the Roof of the World. Finally, she rose to her feet and edged some fifteen yards to the north, until she felt she was standing above the knot. She slipped the charcoal-grease stick from its bag, then knelt and scrawled a large arrowhead, its tip pointing toward the juncture of order and chaos.

As she stood, another gust of wind buffeted her, and she crouched and moved back away from the edge of the cliff, moving carefully over the patches of crumbling rock. She glanced westward again. She had about a glass before the storm reached the mesa, and they needed to be off the exposed surface and back down in the rough rocky shelter they’d put up in the middle of some ancient twisted mountain pines in the saddle between the rise from the lower hills to the west and the mesa. The mounts and the wagons and carts were almost a kay farther down, because that was as far as anything with wheels could go and because there was no shelter at all for the horses any farther up the rocky saddle.

She hurried westward, back along the edge of the crevice another fifty yards or so, followed by the two guards holding the other end of the rope. Then she knelt, close to the middle of the long crevice, and again tried to sense the order below on the sides of the crevice. The dark gray and pinkish gray lines were almost random, and there were no junctures or knots.

She stood and moved back, then walked farther west, where she tried again. This time, she sensed another juncture, slightly less obvious than the first one. She took out the grease stick and marked the stone, then glanced northward. Dark sheets of water engulfed the peaks north of the hills on the other side of the valley. The grease ought to hold the marker in place, but, if not, she could always locate the junctures again, now that she had a fair idea where they were.

Her last attempt was near the end of the crevice, where it was barely a yard in width, but, as she suspected even before she tried to sense any weakness in the rock below, the patterns of darker gray were more defined-stronger, she thought-than those of the pinker gray. She stepped back and motioned to the two guards. “We’re heading back down to the shelter.”

“Yes, ser.”

As she walked back toward the west end of the mesa, and the sloping, rocky, ridgelike saddle back down to the upper camp, she stopped. Had she sensed something like another juncture?