L. Modesitt: The Chaos Balance

Nylan shook his head and removed his jacket, hanging it on one of the wooden pegs beside the front double doors. Reminiscing and mentally complaining wouldn’t forge blades-and Ryba wanted more of the deadly weapons he had developed. For her all-too-accurate visions indicated that, in the seasons and years ahead, scores of women would seek out the refuge that Westwind had become. Was that his destiny-armorer of the angels, forger of weapons of death and destruction? And involuntary stud? So far he’d avoided repeating that-since the great battle-but he could feel the pressure building.

The smith took the flat and crude shovel formed from lander alloys and eased the scarce charcoal from the basket across the forge coals. He nodded to Huldran, and the blond guard pumped the great bellows while Nylan took out his hammers and a strip of lander alloy-not that there was much left, but he would use it while he could. Then he’d have to figure out another way to make high-quality blades-if he could.

On the forge shelf rested a local blade-broken and melted around the edges from the devastation Nylan had created by merging one dying weapons laser with the “order fields” of this unknown world, so like and yet so unlike the powernets he had ridden as the engineer of the Winterlance . More than a thousand such local blades were stacked, like cords of wood, behind the smithy. Some were whole, some partly melted, and some broken.

A wry smile crossed the smith’s lips. And a year ago he’d worried about metal stocks?

“Ready, ser?” asked Huldran.

“Ready as ever.” He laid the alloy on the coals. From bitter experience he’d learned that, in the initial stages of forging blades, the softer local iron had to be forge-welded into the alloy, not the other way around.

By the time the midday chimes rang from the tower, they had managed to flatten the iron of the local blade into the strip of alloy, flatten the mixed metals, fold them and flatten them once, twice, and three times, then yet again. A dozen or more such fold-weld-flattenings, and Nylan would have metal ready to forge into a blade itself. He knew that even more of the pattern-welding would have been better, but time was short, and Ryba less than perfectly patient. In any case, the later forge steps would go more quickly.

All winter long he and Huldran had forged blades, spurred on by Ryba’s insistence that every guard-every recruit-should have at least two of the shortswords that were equally deadly as blades or missiles. All of the blades were essentially modified copies of the pair that Ryba had brought down from the Winterlance- the Sybran nomad blades the Marshal and former captain of the angel ship had carried and practiced with throughout her service career.

“I’ll bank the coals, ser, not that we’ve much to bank.”

“You up to starting one of your own this afternoon?”

“Why not?”

“Then dump some logs on the fire.”

Huldran grinned. “You going to practice after you eat? That’s dangerous.”

“I’ll be careful.” Either Saryn or Istril or Siret would single him out. He and Ryba avoided practicing skills against each other-there was too much resentment there for it to be safe for either of them.

Nylan racked the hammers and checked the metal blank that would soon be another deadly shortsword, then eased on his jacket before heading out of the smithy and down toward the tower.

A handful of newer guards, led by Murkassa, one of the first locals to seek out Westwind, walked swiftly down from the canyon that held livestock and mounts, but they were several hundred paces up the road from the smithy. The round-faced and brown-haired guard lifted a hand in greeting, and Nylan returned it before turning onto the road.

Nylan had barely cooled off before he stepped through the main door to Tower Black. He squinted in the far dimmer light of the tower, but took a deep breath of the fresh-baked dark bread that Blynnal did so well and the aroma of something else-the mint-spiced stew, he thought, probably created around the remnants of the deer that Ayrlyn had brought in two days earlier, after the light dusting of snow from a spring storm.

“Nylan?” Istril, carrying her son Weryl in her arms, motioned from the de facto nursery on the left side of the tower entry area.

He turned and crossed the stones of the entry hall.

Her face was slightly flushed, as though she had been outside in the cold. Weryl’s face was also red.

“You were outside?” Nylan asked.

“We walked up to the stables with Siret and Kyalynn. Ydrall went with us, but she was cold the whole way. Kyalynn and Weryl just babbled the whole time.” Istril grinned down at her son. “The cold like this doesn’t bother him at all.”

“With what you wrapped him in, I imagine not.”

“I am glad you got another snow cat. Once I have it tanned, it will make a good parka.”

“For a year or two.” Nylan laughed.

“Da!” offered Weryl, thrusting a chubby hand toward his father.

“Da to you, too,” returned Nylan, taking his son, and still half wondering at the circumstances that had resulted in three of the four infants in Westwind being his-when he’d only slept with Ryba at that time.

“We’ll have five more lambs,” the silver-haired Istril announced quietly.

“Practicing your healing, again?”

Weryl tugged at Nylan’s index finger, his grip firm. Nylan smiled at his son.

“The more healers the better. You and Ayrlyn can’t do it all, and what happens if you’re hurt, like in the big battle with the Lornians and the Gallosians?” asked Istril.

“I was glad you’d practiced.”

“So was the Marshal. Her arm was a mess.”

“You wouldn’t know it now.”

“She used to get tired faster when she practiced blades, but she’s almost over that now,” noted Istril.

“Slow, she’s faster than anyone else.”

“Except you and Saryn. You’re as fast as she is, but you don’t like to go for the kill. Saryn’s even more of a killer than the Marshal.” Istril held out her arms for Weryl. “You need to eat. He’s eaten.”

“What about you?” asked Nylan as he handed his son back to Istril, disengaging Weryl’s fingers from his own index finger.

“Antyl will watch him while I eat.” Istril smiled warmly and carried their silver-haired son back to the nursery.

Nylan turned, then stopped to avoid running into one of the cooks.

“Greetings, ser.” Blynnal bowed her head, about all she dared bow, as pregnant as she was and carrying the large baskets of fresh-baked bread up from the kitchen on the lower level of the tower.

Nylan had no doubts about the father. Blynnal had worshiped Relyn before the one-armed man had slipped out of Westwind one step ahead of a vengeful Ryba. And Relyn had worried a lot about the cook-pretty, but timid, and one of the few women in Westwind with no desire to lift a blade against the majority of men in Candar.

After following Blynnal past the lower tables, Nylan slipped around her and into the space at the end of the bench at the first table, the position that had always been his. The hearth to his right was dark-but between the warmth that drifted up from the kitchen on the level below and the residual heat from the wood-fired furnace, the high-ceilinged room was warm enough.

Saryn sat across from Nylan, while Huldran eased onto the bench on Nylan’s left. Ayrlyn, her flame-red hair seemingly glinting with its own light, slipped onto the bench across from the smith-engineer.

Even before Nylan poured the steaming tea in his mug, Ryba sat down at the end of the table in the only chair in the great hall.

“How is the forging coming?” she asked politely.

“We’re working on two more blades,” he answered. “From what I figure, that will bring us to nearly a hundred of them-about a score more than two per guard. We’ve had to go back to starting the forge with wood, and we’ll be out of charcoal in another eight-day.”