L. Modesitt - Fall of Angels

As Huldran rode across the grass, leading the brown mare, Nylan took another deep breath, conscious that he had recently been taking a lot of deep breaths, a whole lot-and that nothing had changed. He still had to destroy hundreds of men, just so Westwind would be left alone. He walked behind the emplacement and started to check the mare’s saddle before he mounted.

The triangle rang three times-twice. A squad or group of guards rode down past the smithy and the tower, and over Nylan’s short bridge and up the hill past the end of the paving. As they vanished over the crest of the ridge, the triangle rang again in triplets, and Nylan swung into the mare’s saddle and started toward the pike emplacements.

Another set of riders passed the tower, and one turned her horse toward the laser emplacement, then changed her direction toward Nylan.

Behind her, the three newer guards hurried across the meadows, followed by a man in black-Relyn.

Nylan reined up and waited for Ryba.

The marshal drew up beside him, and began to speak. “The Lornians are forming up and beginning to march toward the flat down on the other side of the ridge. The scouts say that they’re two kays down past the flat.” The marshal glanced toward the sun. “I’d guess it would be after mid-morning before they’ll be in your range. Longer if we’re successful.”

“Then I hope you are most successful,” Nylan said.

“We’ll see. That’s something I don’t know. I’ll try to send you messengers, if we have any to spare.” Her eyes were bleak.

“Don’t worry,” he answered. “I’ll do what I can.” As if I had any real choice at all, between you and them.

As Ryba spurred her horse back toward her guards, Nylan glanced to the great forest beyond the steep eastern cliff that dropped away in its nearly sheer fall. The forest was almost a black outline against the morning sun, and Nylan’s eyes rose to Freyja, glittering mercilessly in the cool and the clear morning light.

After a moment, he urged the mare up the hill.

Rather than dismount and risk revealing too much, just in case the Lornians’ wizard could see what he did, he rode past each post of the lower line slowly, letting his senses range over what he had constructed. The weights and links seemed sound, and all the cords were in place. Then he repeated the effort with the upper line before easing the mare up to the crest of the ridge.

All he saw on the northeastern side was what he always saw. There were no massed bodies, no horse soldiers, just grasses and road and trees.

He squinted and studied the area to the west. Perhaps there was a low cloud of dust rising above the trees that bordered the wide meadows leading toward Westwind, but the trees shielded his vision.

After a time, he turned the mare and rode back down the road and across the meadow to the laser.

“See anything, ser?” asked Huldran as he rode past the front of the quickly bricked emplacement.

“Some dust, I think, but it wasn’t moving that fast.”

“It never is,” said Relyn, “unless it’s on the field and moving right toward you. Then the horses and dust rush at you. At the same time, you feel like they move so slowly.”

Nylan reined up and tied the mare in back, beside Huldran’s mount where she would be largely sheltered from stray arrows or crossbow bolts or whatever missiles the Lornians might employ. Then he checked the laser again.

For a while, as the sun climbed, and he began to sweat under the leathers, he walked back and forth. Then he wandered out into the grass. Except for the six of them, the entireRoof of the World appeared empty. The tower was barred and silent, and even the insects seemed quieter than normal. Or was that his imagination?

“Why are battles always fought on clear days?” asked Nylan to no one in particular as he sat down in the narrow slit entry, his boots resting on packed clay that had once been grass.

“They are not,” answered Relyn from the left side of the emplacement. “I have fought in rain and mud. Not snow.”

The smith-engineer nodded. Then he looked at the man in black. After a time, he got up and walked back and forth behind the silent and still unpowered laser. He looked at Relyn a moment, then beckoned, and walked away from the emplacement, letting the one-armed man follow. He stopped a hundred cubits out into the meadow and turned.

Relyn frowned. “What is it?”

“After this is over, it’s time for you to leave-as soon as you can.” Nylan glanced uphill, but nothing had changed.

“The Angel?”

Nylan nodded. “One way or another, I won’t be in very good shape after this. Too much killing is hard on me.” He met Relyn’s eyes. “I promised. But don’t lay a hand on anyone, or I’ll chase you to the demon’s depths.”

Relyn shivered. “I would not, not after all this. Not after what I owe you.” He shrugged, then smiled bitterly. “First, we must triumph.”

“Don’t prophets always win?” Nylan gave a wry grin and walked back toward the laser emplacement.

Relyn followed more slowly, fingering his chin with his left hand.

Huldran glanced from Nylan to Relyn, then just shook her head.

Shortly, a small group of riders appeared just over the crest of the hill, but turned their mounts to face the other way, presumably down on the advancing Lornians. Nylan thought he saw Ryba’s latest roan, but he couldn’t be quite sure.

Nylan was blotting his forehead, and even Relyn had opened his jacket by the time a single rider cantered downthe road from the ridge. Nylan didn’t know her name, though he had seen her in training, and she rode well.

“Ser! The enemy is about a third of the way up the ridge. The marshal said that she won’t be able to send any more reports.”

“Fine. Tell her to make sure the field is clear when the enemy comes down. Do you understand that?”

The guard’s face crinkled. “The field must be clear when the enemy comes down?”

“The field must be clear of guards when the enemy comes down.” Nylan corrected himself. “Do you have it?”

She repeated the words, and Nylan nodded. Then she turned her mount and started back up toward the ridge.

Relyn looked at Nylan’s face. “You plan some terrible magic.”

“It’s not magic. Not mostly,” Nylan added as his head throbbed as if to remind him not to lie, “but, if it works, it will be terrible.” He muttered under his breath afterward, “And if it doesn’t work, it’s going to be terrible in a different way.”

“What do you want us to do?” asked one of the new guards.

“When the engineer works his magic,” answered Huldran, “his body will be here, but his thoughts will not. Our job is to protect him from anyone who would attack.”

Nylan hoped no one got that near, but somehow nothing worked quite the way it was planned in any battle. Or in anything, he added mentally.

As the faint and distant sounds of the tumult mounted and purple-clad riders finally crested the ridge, Nylan powered up the firin cell assembly-seventy-seven point five percent. Could he smooth the flows for the fiery weapons head, the way he had for the industrial laser heads?

Another wave of purple riders reached the ridge top, and the Westwind guards began falling back, drawing back across the ridge top, sliding westward toward the road to the tower.

The Lornian forces slowed where the pikes should havetriggered, but Nylan could not see what exactly had occurred, except for the unseen whiteness that signified death and more death.

Nylan sent out his perceptions, his eyes still on the hillside above. He could almost sense the Lornian commander, the arrows falling around him as the man gestured with the big blade. Idly, Nylan thought that he could have shot the man. Then he nodded, and his stomach chilled into ice. Ryba had ordered her guards not to kill him. She was not aiming for the defeat of the Lornians. She wanted to keep the Lornian army whole and moving into the laser’s range, and she was gambling on the laser and Nylan to destroy them totally.