L. Modesitt - The Chaos Balance

“Good.” Ayrlyn, wearing only a dry shirt extracted from her pack, looked out the door before closing it. “It’s raining hard.”

“I’d say so.” Nylan wiped water from his hair and face, then stripped off his shirt and walked to the corner where he wrung out a stream of liquid. Then he hung his shirt next to Ayrlyn’s damp clothes. He pulled off his boots and did the same with the rest of his clothing, then extracted a shirt and trousers that were only marginally damp.

“Nice figure,” commented Ayrlyn.

“I notice you changed while I was getting water. That wasn’t fair.”

“Some things aren’t.” Ayrlyn spread some straw on the planks beside Weryl and eased herself down, very carefully.

Weryl reached for her, and she picked him up. “In a moment. Daddy will get out the food.”

Nylan pulled on the trousers. Then he emptied the food pack, taking out the last section of the yellow brick cheese that left an aftertaste of goats or…something, four travel biscuits, and three strips of dried venison. “Not much left to eat.” He sat on the straw between Weryl and Ayrlyn. “We need more food.”

“We should reach Lornth tomorrow.”

“Will anyone sell us food?” He broke off a section of biscuit and handed it to the silver-haired boy.

“I don’t know. We’ll have to see.” Ayrlyn sliced two thin slivers of the yellow cheese and handed one to Weryl, the second to Nylan. She cut another for herself.

“Tomorrow, let’s see if we can buy anything from the herder. All he can say is no.”

“He won’t if he can spare it,” Ayrlyn prophesied. “Hard coin is too hard to come by. It always is for agricultural types.”

“I hope you’re right.”

They ate silently for a time. After that, in between chasing Weryl around the hay shed, Nylan packed away the remnants, remnants that were getting slimmer and slimmer. He paused. “It’s still raining.”

“I’m not tired…and neither is our little friend.”

“Why don’t you sing something,” Nylan suggested, “something that you’d like.”

“Do you think our friend would stand still long enough?”

“He’s tired, but not sleepy.”

“I’ll try.” Ayrlyn walked over to the lutar case and extracted the instrument before sitting on one of the hay bales.

Nylan picked up Weryl and sat on another bale across from her.

At the first sound of her fingers tuning, Weryl’s eyes flicked toward the singer. “Ooooo…”

“I’m not that good, Weryl, but I appreciate the flattery.” Her fingers crossed the strings. “How about something cheerful?”

“Fine with me,” Nylan said, “and with Weryl, I’d guess.”

Ayrlyn cleared her throat and began.

“When I was single, I looked at the skies .

Now I’ve a consort, I listen to lies ,

lies about horses that speak in the darks ,

lies about cats and theories of quarks…”

“Aaaalaaan…daa, daaa,” said Weryl as she finished the tune.

“I think that translates as ‘more.’” Nylan laughed.

“Well…we’ll give him a song about you.”

“Not that one.”

“Why not?”

“It’s awful.”

“You’ll just have to get used to it.” The healer grinned in the gloom, and her flame hair glittered with a light of its own.

“Oh, Nylan was a smith, and a mighty mage was he .

With lightning hammer and an anvil of night forged he ,

From the Westhorns tall came the blades and bows of the night ,

Their lightning edges gave the angels forever the height…

“Oh, Nylan was a mage, and a mighty smith was he .

With rock from the heights and a lightning blade built he .

On the Westhorns tall stands a tower of blackest stone ,

And it holds back the winter’s snows and storms all alone….”

“All right, all right,” said Nylan as he picked up Weryl and began to rock the child. “Something softer?”

“You don’t mind the Sybran song?”

He shook his head.

“When the snow drops on the stone

When the wind song’s all alone

When the ice swords form in twain ,

Sing of the hearths where we’ve lain…”

Midway through the second stanza, Weryl lurched in Nylan’s arms, his fingers grasping, and for a moment, Nylan saw the chubby fingers actually touch the silvered note that hung in the gloom.

The smith blinked, and only silvered dust motes shimmered in the air-and vanished.

The child was oddly silent, an enigmatic smile across his lips.

Ayrlyn glanced toward Nylan. “He saw the notes.”

“We saw the notes. Because of him?”

She shook her head. “Did we ever look?”

The question bothered Nylan. Where else had he failed to look? How much else was there that he had not seen because he had not realized it could be possible?

Ayrlyn’s fingers flicked across the strings, and Weryl settled back as Nylan rocked him and the singer hummed gently.

Outside, the rain drummed on the shed roof.

To the left of the highway, to the north beyond the flatter grasslands where grazed the herds of the Lord of Cyador, lay the grass hills, green enough in the winter, but brown by late spring, and sere and dusty by summer.

At times, Majer Piataphi could glimpse those hills, hills similar to those through which he must lead his force once they reached the terminus of the Great North Highway in Syadtar on the next day.

The wind that ruffled his hair was warm and far drier than the moist breezes that made Cyad and Fyrad so comfortable. He stood in the white saddle to stretch his legs and looked ahead to the white and green banners of the van.

A single steamwagon passed, its trailers loaded with sealed barrels, hugging the north shoulder of the highway, headed west toward distant Cyad.

“I wish we were done and headed in that direction,” said Miatorphi. “There’s no honor in defeating barbarians.”

“We have to defeat them and keep them defeated before we need concern ourselves about honor,” answered the majer.

A messenger galloped up. “Majer!”

“What is it?” Piataphi eased his mount around Captain Azarphi’s horse.

“Serjeant Funssa-he wants you to know that steamwagon seven is leaking, and that he has no more spare fittings.”

“Watch the van, Miatorphi,” ordered the majer. “I need to find out what seven’s cargo is. They may need to shift things.” He turned his mount westward and rode back toward the steamwagons that followed the first three divisions of Mirror Lancers.

“If it’s not one thing with those damned wagons…” murmured Miatorphi to Azarphi.

“They carry a lot, though.”

“When they work. Half the time they don’t, and it’s getting worse. Fewer of them, too. Once there were hundreds. Now…what? They’ve got a score that really work, and they run them all the time, and even more break down. Give me a good horse team any day.”

The two captains looked to the banners that led the Cyadoran force. Neither glanced back to the trails of smoke that marked the steamwagons.

High hazy clouds swirled slowly across the sky as the three horses plodded along the rutted clay road and northward toward Lornth. Nylan glanced to the east, but the trees on the hills above the scrubby meadow were deciduous, or what passed for it on this world, and they had, he suspected, finally left the thorny ironwoods behind.

“The herder’s cheese wasn’t bad,” the smith said.

“For three coppers, it shouldn’t be. The loaf of bread was better, and cheaper.”