L. Modesitt - Arms-Commander

“We’ll need to do more work on the expansion, then. I’d thought we’d have a few years.”

Saryn couldn’t help the puzzled look that crossed her face.

The Marshal actually sighed before she replied. “Saryn…I see things. Everyone thinks I see a map of the future. I don’t. I see images, sometimes groups of them, and sometimes not for months at a time. All that I’ve seen about our times since landing has come to pass. The images haven’t necessarily meant what I thought they did. Nor did they always occur when I thought they would happen. Wild as I thought some of them were, what led to them often I could not have guessed even with an imagination far wilder than mine. Some of the images I see are of only partial success. Some are of failure. Some of those I tried hard to prevent. I did not succeed. Because I wondered about how true they might be, I’ve always written them down. No, I won’t share them. But I have to try to piece where each one fits. There’s an image of the new section of Westwind, with guards struggling to complete a section against fall snows, with women so jammed into Tower Black that there’s hardly room to move.” Ryba stopped, turned from the window, and looked at Saryn. “Now…tell me what I should do. If I turn more guards to cultivating and gathering in a time when harvests are lean, will that be enough to sustain us when Arthanos sends his army against us? And will this lone tower suffice for protection against an army when we don’t have the engineer or his magic laser?”

“We have you, ser,” Saryn pointed out.

“For better or worse.” Ryba’s face remained expressionless. “You’ll have to work in more arms training. They’ll be tired, but then they’ll be tired when they have to fight.”

“More stonework?”

“More of everything, and we can only hope that it will suffice.” Ryba turned back to the window. “That’s all.”

Saryn slipped out of the small chamber. When Ryba was so distant, she’d had another vision. Saryn just hoped it wasn’t that terrible.

Just past mid afternoon on sixday, as Saryn walked down from the stables, she saw Ryba and a guard wearing the green sash of a courier ride up to Tower Black, followed by two other guards. The Marshal vaulted out of the saddle, then handed the reins of her mount to the courier, and hurried inside, as the other three rode past the causeway. Did the courier mean an urgent message? Why had Ryba gone out to meet the courier, or had she been riding with a road patrol? Saryn didn’t bother asking Zandya as the courier rode past, nodding to Saryn. She knew that Ryba wouldn’t have told Zandya. Besides, Saryn would find out soon enough.

Still…she wondered as she continued down toward Tower Black. Couriers early in spring usually were not the bearers of good tidings-not for Westwind, at least. She studied the ground flanking the road, now far firmer than it had been, and that had allowed the guards to return to full training with mounts.

The stones on the tower causeway were dry, but there was far too much loose sand and grit there. She’d have to mention that to Hryessa.

Saryn had barely taken three steps across the entry foyer when Dyliess bounded down the stone steps. “Mother…I mean, the Marshal. She’d like to see you if you’re free, Commander.”

“Thank you, Dyliess.” Saryn smiled, knowing full well that Ryba never would have used the phrase “if you’re free.”

“You’re welcome, Commander.”

Saryn headed up the steps, slipping past two guards cleaning the wall on the third level, and making her way to the topmost level of the tower.

Ryba was in her working grays, with the usual black belt and boots, but there were splatters of mud on her trousers, and her riding jacket was draped across the back of one of the straight-backed chairs at the round table. She turned from the window. “You saw the courier?”

“I did. You two looked to be in a hurry.”

“We were.” Ryba held up a scroll. “I’ve thought something like this might be coming. I’d thought it might have happened last fall, but I didn’t expect it while I was riding with third squad. So I rode back here with the courier. A Suthyan envoy should be here on eightday…with some traders.”

“An envoy? What might he want?”

“From Suthya? Think, Saryn.”

“He’ll suggest we don’t trade with Lornth and offer a cloaked bribe and a threat?”

“That’s by far the most likely possibility, but it will be very veiled in generalities and the like. Or he might suggest that an alliance or trade with Suthya might be to our benefit, given what is likely to happen in Gallos.”

“Or both,” offered Saryn. “Do you want a demonstration of what the best archers and Hryessa’s top squad can do?”

“That might be useful. I’d also like you…” Ryba smiled, but did not finish the sentence.

“My little act?”

“It can’t hurt, if only to make their envoy wary.”

Saryn nodded. Whether one dealt with lands where rulers used cavalry or worlds using neuronets and mirror towers, shows of prowess were necessary. And that need is almost endless.

“I don’t like it, either,” Ryba added, “but these people have been conditioned so that, without a show of power, even repeated displays of it, they can’t respect others. They respect tyrants, not coordinators. That’s where the engineer went wrong. He’s out there looking for a way to make things work without force.”

“For someone who didn’t like force, he mustered a frigging load of it. The whole world shivered. Cyador’s pretty much collapsed, and what was left of their fleet sailed off to Hamor. That was what the traders said some years back.”

“Something like that. A good chunk of the eastern section of Cyador is reverting to that strange forestland, and most of the rest of the country is in chaos. It will be for years, if not centuries, until someone musters enough force to put things back together.”

Saryn just nodded, although she had the feeling that Ryba was seeing what she wanted to. “Have you actually…visualized…that?”

Ryba shook her head. “I never get any insights there. I think it’s because there are too many possibilities for now.”

“Do you know when on eightday the Suthyan will arrive?”

“Plan for a demonstration in late afternoon, before the evening meal. And have the juniors clean up the guest cottage.”

“I checked it the other day, but it won’t hold all that many armsmen.”

“Duessya will have to clean out the end section of the stable, then. That’s more than adequate for Suthyan armsmen. I’ll see you at supper.”

“Until then.” Saryn smiled, then turned and left the study, walking down all the flights of stairs to the tower’s lowest level.

A Suthyan envoy? And Ryba had been expecting him for half a year?

The wind whipping around Tower Black on sevenday night when Saryn finally dropped off to sleep told her that the weather was about to change. When she woke in the early chill the next morning, a thin layer of wet snow lay across the fields and meadows around Westwind, but the roads and causeways were only wet. By the time the white sun first cleared the peaks to the east, the blue-green sky was empty of clouds, and the snow had nearly all melted away, but the air was chill. Even in mid afternoon, when she had received word from the scouts that the Suthyan party was less than a glass away, and she walked back downhill after checking the stables, the air was cold enough that her breath steamed as she entered Tower Black.

Ryba was standing inside the foyer, talking to Dyliess.

Saryn stopped well short of mother and daughter, out of courtesy, although she could hear their words as clearly as though she had been standing between them.