L. Modesitt: The Chaos Balance

The wiry and silver-haired man paused at the end of the causeway from Tower Black, his breath white in the sunlit chill. His eyes lifted from the cleared stones that led from Tower Black-the tower whose stones he had wrested from the mountains, the tower he had raised to shelter the angel crew of the Winterlance .

Another dozen steps before him, the causeway melded into the metaled road. Beyond the road was the expanse of softening snow that stretched in every direction-eastward to the kay-plus-deep drop-off that overhung the high forest, and to the mountains that bordered Westwind on the south and west. Softening or not, the snow was still well over Nylan’s head just about everywhere and twice that in spots. That depth explained the ski traces and trails that paralleled the road, though many were just there as remnants of training exercises for the newer guards.

From the mountains to the south rose Freyja, that impossibly ice-needled peak that dominated the Roof of the World, glittering through the cold green-blue skies.

Nylan, wearing only a light jacket over his smithing clothes, walked slowly out to the road, nodding at the barely raised patterns in the snow to his right that marked the walls outlining the outdoor weapons practice yard.

Beyond the practice yard the stones of the road rose slowly to the west, past the smithy he had built, to the canyon that held the stables carved out of the stone of the mountainside itself. A thin plume of white smoke rose from the forge chimney. To his left, the road ran eastward for a hundred paces or so, then curved northward over the stone bridge that marked the channel for the tower drains and outfalls. Beyond the bridge, the metaled road began to climb the slope to the top of the ridge, and the watchtower.

Nylan shivered as his eyes traversed the snow-covered slope to the north, east of the road. Beneath the melting snow lay the ashes that were all that remained of the armies of Gallos and Lornth-and of a third of the guards of Westwind. Once the snow melted, in the eight-days ahead, he hoped that the spring grasses would cover that desolate grayness quickly.

From the east his eyes turned south, toward the hummocks where dark stones had begun to protrude from beneath the snow. Three large cairns-and twenty-two individual cairns-bore witness to the harshness of two years of struggle against the lords of Candar and the Roof of the World itself.

Yet Tower Black held more than the nine survivors of the thirty-one from the Winterlance who had made planetfall. More than two score filled the six levels of the black stone tower-most of them women and refugees who had sought a new life on the Roof of the World. Of the seven ship’s officers, there remained four-Ryba, Nylan, Saryn, and Ayrlyn. Of the twenty-four elite marines, five remained-Huldran, Llyselle, Istril, Siret, and Weindre.

Outside of Daryn, the blond young standard-bearer from Gallos who had been wounded on the north side of the ridge and protected by Hryessa-no one wanted to cross the spitfire from Lornth-Nylan was the only adult male remaining in Westwind, scarcely surprising given Ryba’s distrust of most men.

He began to walk uphill between the heaps of snow and ice that flanked the road toward the smithy. Until an eight-day earlier, the road itself had been covered with that ice and snow, packed into a thick crust, but with midday temperatures slightly above freezing, Saryn had had the guards clear the sections near the tower, extending the cleared areas daily-as much to begin physically conditioning the upper bodies of refugees as for the need to return the road to the condition necessary for the timber carts that would begin to roll once the way to the high forests below Westwind was clear.

The smith frowned as he turned off the road and crossed the packed snow to the door of the smithy. This winter there had been enough wood for the furnaces, and for hot water in the bathhouse, unlike the first winter on the Roof of the World. They’d still had to slaughter some of the sheep for lack of fodder, but only a few.

Nylan eased open the smithy door, closing it behind him, before he spoke to Huldran. “You were up here early.”

“It was noisy this morning. Dephnay was howling, and neither Siret nor Istril could quiet her. So,” the stocky blond guard beside the forge shrugged, “all three were awake. Yours, thank darkness, don’t howl. They just babble. But I don’t sleep that well with babbling.”

“I’m sorry, Huldran.”

“It isn’t your fault. Istril keeps telling me that, as if every guard doesn’t know it.”

“She didn’t have-”

“Ser…you’re not perfect and neither is the Marshal, but between the two of you, you’ve saved us, and a lot of women on this forsaken planet. No one else could have designed and built Tower Black.”

Nylan reached for the leather apron.

“Not much left in the way of charcoal.” The stocky Huldran fed another set of short logs to the forge fire. “We’re back to starting with wood coals.”

“Saryn said the wood crews could do a charcoal burn early this spring. She’s got enough bodies.”

“Warm bodies we’ve got,” Huldran snorted. “Trained guards we don’t, and two of the best are Siret and Istril.” She broke off.

“I know. I know.” And Nylan did. Both the silver-haired guards had children less than a year old, and both children were his-through Ryba’s manipulation of the last residue of angel high-technology. He tightened his lips. While he loved both Kyalynn and Weryl-and Dyliess, his daughter by Ryba-having been an involuntary and ignorant stud still grated on his nerves.

Yet what could he do? He had to admit Ryba had been right about the cultures that surrounded them, and angels weren’t exactly welcomed anywhere. Nor did he feel right even thinking about leaving his children, whether he’d been an involuntary stud or not.

Yet Ryba was getting harder and harder to take, and each day felt like a balancing act. Ryba, former captain of the U.F.F. Winterlance , was now Marshal of Westwind, and undisputed ruler of that chunk of the Westhorns known as the Roof of the World-a land so high and cold that very few of the locals could survive more than short stretches outside in full winter. Then, Ryba and all of the surviving ship’s marines-now the guards of Westwind-were full-blooded Sybran, born to an even colder heritage than the Roof of the World, unlike Nylan and Ayrlyn.