L. Modesitt - The Chaos Balance

“It isn’t?”

Ayrlyn eased the chestnut closer to the mare. “You know, Nylan,” she began with a grin, “sometimes you are such a noble and honorable pain in the ass, such an agonizingly long-suffering and noble pain. Nylan will take it on; Nylan will make it right.” The grin grew wider. “And then you do.”

“I’m not that bad,” he protested. “I’m not.”

“Ryba thinks so.” The grin vanished. “I’m serious. Why does she have you working so hard, making weapons that the guards won’t need for years? Why is she suggesting that you train more smiths?”

“I’d wondered about that, but she thinks so far in advance.”

“It’s about time we did.”

“We?” Nylan forced a grin.

“We. Istril got the last favor. The very last favor of that nature.”

“I was thinking that Siret…”

Ayrlyn put her free left hand on the hilt of the shortsword and drew it enough to show black steel. “You do, and I won’t wait for Ryba for this gelding business.”

“I get the point, woman.”

“If you don’t, you will.” Ayrlyn resheathed her blade with a wicked grin. “And no more of this sleeping alone.”

Nylan groaned, loudly. Then he grinned.

After a moment, so did Ayrlyn.

The wind whistled, more loudly, and they both looked up to see the leading edge of a cloud bank appearing over the cliff edge above.

Ayrlyn shivered. “I’m cold. Can we start back?”

Nylan nodded, and flicked the mare’s reins. Ayrlyn eased the chestnut up beside him as they began the long and muddy ride back up to Westwind.

Geldings? Was that what he had to look forward to? Why didn’t he want to face the fact that Ryba had killed or driven out every man who’d opposed her will?

Because you share a child? Because you fear an unknown world? Because your feeling of responsibility for children you didn’t intend to sire is at war with your common sense?

He tried not to sigh, tried to focus on the healer-the woman by whom he had no children, and yet who cared more for him than Ryba ever had.

As Nylan set the iron-alloy mix back on the coals to reheat, the alarm triangle rang from the watchtower on the ridge-two doublets.

Nylan set the hammer on the rack, and used the tongs to ease the metal to the forge shelf. “Traders. I suppose I should go. Do you want to finish this one?”

“I’d rather work one myself, if you don’t mind.” Huldran nodded toward Ydrall, who straightened from the bellows. “That way I can show Ydrall what I’m doing. Besides, you do strange things to the metal. I can’t get something you’ve started working to come out quite right.” Unlike Nylan, who labored over a true anvil, Huldran used the smith’s original makeshift anvil, created by bending lander alloy around a stone block and wedging the result between the fork of a green fir sunk into the ground.

“Traders…” mused the smith. “Early this year. I should see why.”

“You’re just tired of doing blades, ser.”

“I admit it.” The smith took a deep breath. “Let’s get two dozen of the best of those local crowbars out from the covered stack in back. I’ll have Ayrlyn send the cart for them. Use the good anvil, and have Ydrall try something simple-like spikes-from one of the broken blades.”

Spikes weren’t that simple-nothing was, but she’d have to start somewhere.

“A merchant’s daughter, and I am learning to be a smith,” said the dark-haired young woman. “Mother would be pleased.”

“And your father?”

“He would be most offended. That is why I am here.” Ydrall offered a musical laugh at odds with her muscular figure. “That is why there will be others.”

Nylan didn’t doubt that, not from what little he’d seen of Candarian treatment of women. And the mysterious Cyador was supposedly worse? “Let’s get the blades.”

It took only a few trips for the three to stack the Lornian and Gallosian blades that Nylan selected beside the front door of the smithy. Then Nylan headed down toward the tower and the bathhouse. He had time to wash up. In Candar, trading, while not snaillike in progress, was definitely a leisurely pursuit.

As he reentered the tower from washing and shaving, with only a single cut on his chin and dressed in dark gray leathers, Ryba was coming down the stairs, wearing the lighter gray leathers of the Marshal of Westwind. “You intended to go?”

“I thought I might be useful. We also could use another anvil and some hammers, if you’d like us to make better progress in training Ydrall.”

“I’ll have the mare waiting for you. Saryn’s bringing down mounts from the stable,” Ryba said. “You are getting your blades? Traders around here aren’t always the most peaceful.”

“They’re laid out,” the smith confirmed, biting back a retort. He’d been there the last time Skiodra had tried his treachery. So why had Ryba brought it up? Another attempt to put him in his place? Or what Ryba thought was his place?

He hurried up the steps to his quarters where he strapped on both blades, one at his waist and one in the shoulder harness. He descended more carefully, still cautious about tripping over the scabbard and going down the stone steps headfirst. Except for meeting traders and possible battles, he didn’t carry a blade. They just got in the way.

Everyone was waiting by the causeway by the time he hurried across the stones.

Ayrlyn held the reins to the brown mare and extended them to him. “We just got here.”

“Let’s go,” said Ryba.

A chill wind blew across the ridge, coming in from the northeast, as they followed the stone road up toward the watchtower. Farther behind creaked the cart pulled by a single horse. The carthorse was led by Effama, another new guard Nylan knew only by name.

“Which traders?” asked the Marshal.

“Skiodra’s bunch, it looks like,” answered Saryn.

“Good thing we’ve got a full squad.”

“That’s why we do,” affirmed Saryn. “They’ve all got the engineer’s bows.” She stood in the stirrups as they reached the top of the ridge and looked downslope. “They’re set up to trade all right.”

Nylan and Ayrlyn rode side-by-side behind Ryba and Saryn down the damp clay track on the north side of the ridge, a track that should be turned into a metaled road, Nylan reflected. He smiled ironically as he recognized the way he’d thought of the need-not as something he had to do, but something that needed doing. Was he accepting emotionally, not just rationally, the truth of what Ayrlyn had been telling him?

“That’s an odd smile,” the redheaded healer said.

“I’ll tell you later,” he whispered back, hoping his words were lost in the hissing of the wind and the clop of hoofs…and the more distant creaking of the cart carrying the swords that would be used as trading currency.

At that, recalling another trading incident, he extended his order senses to the trees that flanked the base of the ridge, but could detect no hidden armsmen or archers.

“Nothing in the trees,” he reported.

“Good” was the only answer from Ryba. Saryn nodded, as if his report were expected.

The traders, dressed in half-open quilted jackets and cloaks, had halted to the north of the trading banner they had planted in the flat and damp ground at the foot of the ridge. Seven traders stood, hands very clear of their blades, behind the banner, with ten others farther west, tending the horses and the three carts.

As Ryba and Saryn reined up, then Nylan and Ayrlyn and the armed guard squad following, led by Llyselle, for a long moment, the sole sounds were those of the wind and the breathing of the angels’ mounts.