L. Modesitt - The Chaos Balance

“You might be Hisek,” Ayrlyn began gently. “I am Ayrlyn-”

“The angel trader. I have seen you before.” A puzzled look crossed Hisek’s face. “I have naught to trade.”

“We seek a roof for the night. We were told you had a large common.”

“Aye.”

“A few coppers,” suggested Ayrlyn.

“I do not know…a flame-hair and silver-hair…two angel women…” The squat Hisek pulled on a straggly white beard, and his eyes turned to Nylan, who was struggling with Weryl’s efforts to reach the water bottle.

“Nylan is my consort. The angel men often do not wear beards.”

Nylan looked at Hisek. “It would be good if Weryl had a roof over his head in a storm.”

“A man carrying a child-”

“I’m also a smith,” Nylan said. He could tell the business of explaining that he was a man would get old. Still, he was stubborn enough that he didn’t intend to grow a beard. Even though he hadn’t shaved every day, his whiskers were so silver-transparent that they weren’t obvious from any distance.

“And a warrior, I would wager, with the ease you bear those blades. Cold iron weighs heavy.”

“We only fight to defend ourselves,” Ayrlyn said.

Another roll of thunder cascaded across the valley, and the wind whistled, gusting enough that Hisek looked to the east and squinted. “Quite a storm coming out of the east. Quite a storm.” He pursed his lips. “Three coppers, say, and you share our stew.” His eyes twinkled for a moment. “Course it’d taste better if a trader could add something-”

“Some dried meat, that’s about it,” Ayrlyn said with a smile in return.

“Let me show you the shed. Wouldn’t want your mounts out in this, and old Nerm, he likes company. Never knew an ox that didn’t.”

Nylan dismounted, carefully, to avoid squeezing Weryl against the mare, and followed the others to the shed.

“See…like a stall if you tie them at this end.”

The ox looked up placidly, then lowed again.

“Told you, Nerm, he likes company. Oxen better for tilling than horses. Smarter, too.”

“You take Weryl,” Ayrlyn said, turning to Nylan. “He needs exercise, or we won’t sleep tonight. I’ll get the mounts and the gray.”

Nylan carried the bags off his mare and lugged them up to the house, and a squirming Weryl in the carrypak as well. His shoulder had begun to throb before they were halfway to the house.

“Must be a smith. You’re a slender fellow, but don’t know as I could haul two heavy blades, a rollicking child and a stone’s worth of baggage.” Hisek panted as he walked beside the smith.

“Iron is heavy, but working the hammers was the hard part,” Nylan admitted. “There were times when I felt my arms would fall off.”

“My sire-he always told me-yes, he did, never to mess with a smith. ‘Hisek,’ he said, ‘any man who makes his living beating iron won’t have much trouble beatin’ you.’ That’s what he said.”

Nylan didn’t feel that ironlike, not at all, and he wondered again how long before the shoulder would heal completely.

More thunder, closer, rolled out of the east. Overhead, the sky was covered, except for the western horizon, with dark clouds.

“Best check the supper,” puffed the white-beard as he stepped onto the narrow porch and then into the house through the open door. “Just set your stuff in the corner, there.”

The common room had a hearth at the west end, with coals over which a large iron kettle was hung on an iron swivel mortared into the side wall. An oblong trestle table filled the center part of the room, with a bench tucked under each side. In the hearth corner at the back of the room was a narrow pallet bed. A kitchen-type work table stood wedged into the other hearth corner, with pitchers and boxes on it, and several kegs and small barrels underneath.

Nylan unloaded the gear in the corner away from the hearth. Then he eased Weryl out of the carrypak, carted him out to the front porch and set the boy on the stones. Weryl immediately crawled for the front edge of the porch. Nylan scooped him away and set him down by the door, but Weryl started for the edge again. The smith moved him.

“They be determined…young ones.” Standing in the doorway was a heavy young woman, scarcely more than a girl, perhaps not much older than Niera, the orphaned girl at Westwind, whose mother had died in Gerlich’s attack.

“They can be,” he answered pleasantly.

“I be Kisen. Jirt is my consort. He has the flock in the low meadow.” Kisen sat on one corner of the stone porch, letting her feet dangle.

Nylan set Weryl back down. This time, the boy looked at Kisen, his eyes wide.

“Boy?” she asked.

“My son.” Nylan realized that the brown-eyed girl wasn’t really heavy, but pregnant.

“He has hair like you, not like…the other angel. Do the angels all have silver or flame hair?” She shifted her weight, as if uncomfortable.

“No. Some have black hair, or brown hair, or blond hair. Even among the angels the silver and flame hair is not that common.” Even as he spoke Nylan wondered. Only one of the angels with the flame-red hair or the silver hair had died in the first two years, one of six. Only four of the other twenty-seven had survived. Was that luck? Or did the traits tied to hair color…he shook his head. All those with the strange hair could sense the order/chaos/fields, and that had to help with survival.

“First, thought you were another woman angel. Hard like the others. How come you don’t grow a beard?”

“Beards are uncomfortable. Hot.”

Kisen nodded. “They say you folks like things colder. That true?”

“That’s true, mostly.” Nylan lurched to recover Weryl again.

Another gust of wind carried a few raindrops under the porch roof. Ayrlyn hurried around the corner and onto the porch, carrying the saddlebags, her bedroll, and Weryl’s second bag.

“I put them in the back corner,” Nylan said.

“Both of you carry two blades…?” asked Kisen.

“That way you can throw one,” Ayrlyn said dryly, as she stepped into the dwelling, banging the door with one of the shortswords as she did.

“You throw them, too?”

“Yes.”

“Killed anyone?”

Nylan winced, then nodded.

“Lots?” pursued the girl.

“Too many,” Nylan said.

Another gust of wind brought more rain, and Nylan scooped up Weryl. “Time to go inside, Weryl.”

In the common room, Ayrlyn was breaking off a number of chunks of dried meat and easing them into the iron kettle that hung over the hearth. “They should cook for a time longer.”

“Be a while ’fore Jirt gets back anyhow.” Hisek looked at Kisen. “You make some biscuits, Kisen?”

“Can try, anyhow.” Kisen headed toward the table in the corner.

Nylan sat on a three-legged stool by their gear and set Weryl on the floor-rough planks laid edge to edge and smoothed by feet and boots. Weryl grasped Nylan’s trousers and pulled himself up, tottering on short legs for a moment before plopping down in a heap. After a moment, his fingers grasped the leather trousers again.

“He’ll be walking sooner than you think,” said Ayrlyn, taking the other stool and setting it beside Nylan.

“Looks that way.”

After another attempt, and another, Weryl gurgled and smiled.

Nylan sniffed and reached for the boy. “Is there a well or stream?” he asked more loudly.

“Use the well by the shed. Bucket’s there,” said Hisek.

Nylan grabbed a clean cloth undersquare from Weryl’s pack and carted the boy out through the light rain to the well. While the well water was warmer than the icy stream water of the Westhorns, his hands were still red and raw by the time Weryl and the soiled undersquare were clean and they were back at the house.