L. Modesitt - Fall of Angels

“He could,” suggests Hissl. “Anything is possible for a great lord.”

“You are so dense. What would Lord Ildyrom be doing once he discovered Lord Sillek and his engineers and most of his armsmen were upon the Roof of the World?”

“So Lord Sillek leaves them alone? Is that so bad? It’s only good for summer pasture anyway, if that. What does he lose?”

“Honor … face. We told Lord Nessil about the strangers. If his son and heir cannot defeat them, what do you think he will do to us? And it will be us, not just me, Hissl.”

Hissl pulls at his chin. “It could be a cold winter.”

“In irons below the castle, your hands and arms would be burned apart-if you lasted that long.” Terek glances at the glass. “See if you can find anything else.”

“What?”

“Anything.”

Hissl concentrates once more, and a band of riders now appear in the screeing glass, with one of the lead riders bearing a white banner with a dark square in its center.

“Traders …” mused Terek. “Almost armed like bandits.”

“Skiodra, probably …” muttered Hissl, the sweat beading more heavily on his forehead with the effort of holding the second image.

“Can you open it a little more?”

Hissl concentrates, and more sweat pours off his forehead, even as the mists widen to reveal dark pines and rocks, and a needle peak in the background.

“It looks like the Westhorns, along the high road toward the Roof of the World.” Terek smiles. “Skiodra is just the type to steal what he can and destroy the rest. He only trades when he has to.” The chief wizard rubs his hands together.

“What if he trades them weapons?” Hissl releases the image and blots his forehead.

Terek frowns and stops rubbing his hands. “That’s not the problem. They have weapons. They have more weapons than they have soldiers, if that’s what those women in dark gray are. What if they trade weapons for goods? Even a poor sword is worth half a gold.”

“You said Skiodra is not much better than a bandit.”

“Let us hope he is an effective bandit-a very effective bandit.”

Hissl nods, but his eyes drop to the glass.

NYLAN STUDIED THE staircase again, considering the wisdom of such a massive central pedestal. He’d had five purposes in mind-to provide a central support for the square tower, to make flooring each level easy, to provide an interior storage space, to allow for firm stone steps, to provide for chimneys, and to provide an interior air tunnel for ventilation. All that was well and good, but its construction had slowed that of the tower wall, still only slightly above the second level.

He put his foot on the nearest brace, wiggled it gently. Because Nylan had no really accurate way of calculating loads, he was estimating and feeling the bracing, setting the stripped logs that formed the bracing for the floors only about three handspans apart.

“Cessya, this isn’t solid on the outside.”

“Weblya is bringing up some wedges now. Then we’ll mortar it in place.” Using the crude tripod crane, Cessya and another marine eased another timber toward the stone-lined slots.

“Frig! It’s still too big. Needs more trimming.”

As the big roan bearing Ryba neared the tower, Nylanstepped away from the long flat section of stone that would anchor the next section of the staircase and started down the stone stairs.

Ryba had tied the roan’s reins around one of the larger building stones when Nylan met her. She now carried one of the Sybran blades and the second blade Nylan had forged in the other Sybran scabbard-as well as the holstered slug-thrower.

Nothing like a walking armory, he reflected. “Where have you been?”

“I’ve been checking out the approaches from the west. We’re better protected than I thought. You can’t get here except by coming up the ridge. I stopped to see how you were coming before I go check out the road. There still haven’t been any signs of travelers-just scouts from Lornth.”

“How do you know?”

“They wear purple. Subtleness isn’t exactly ingrained in the local culture.” Ryba started up the steps. “Let’s see how things are going.”

“Not bad, actually.”

When they reached the spot where Nylan had been working, he glanced down toward the fields and the meadows that surrounded them, now dotted with the small sunflowers. A silver-haired marine weeding in the field suddenly dropped her hoe and dashed across the ditch, where she vomited.

“Ryba? Did you see that?”

“What?”

“Look down there. She looks sick.” The engineer pointed.

“That’s Siret. She’s sick, but it’s not an illness. I suspect her contraceptives have worn off-if she’s been taking them at all.”

“I haven’t seen Gerlich with her.” Nylan didn’t think the thoughtful silver-haired marine was the type to go for Gerlich.

“Who’s been looking?” Ryba shrugged.

“You did make a point about stud value with him.”

“That’s true.” Ryba half laughed. “You’d think you were building this tower to stand forever.”

“I figure that it will be a generation before anyone can expand on what we build. If they’re prosperous, fine. If not, this buys them time.”

“Assuming we can finish it.”

“We could roof what we have now and get better shelter than the landers.”

“You’re talking four levels?”

“Six. We’ve almost cut enough stone for five on the outside walls, and I could do the inside walls with mortar and uncut stones if necessary.”

“What about heat?”

“I’m thinking about a crude furnace. But that’s the reason for a tower with an underground foundation, except we’ll cover part of the lower level with stone and soil on the outside. Heat rises, and that’s going to be important in the kind of winter we have here.”

Ryba shook her head. “You’d better hope the laser holds out. Or that you learn to forge with local materials.” She paused. “Is there any way you could shape those local blades into something better? That wouldn’t take as much power as cutting and forming them from the lander braces, would it?”

“I don’t know. Do you want me to try?”

“Let me think about it. How many of those killer blades have you done?”

“Three so far.”

Ryba glanced toward the ridges where Nylan had quarried the black stone. “We’re going to need more. Demon-damn, we’ll need more of everything.”

“I know.”

“What about the stable?”

“We can’t do everything. I’ve been cutting the stone so the space could be used for storage, or for stables. The overhead would be low.”

“Outside of spacecraft, Nylan, they’re called ceilings.” Ryba laughed.

“I might get used to it someday.” He cleared his throat,then shrugged his shoulders, trying to loosen them. “Back to work.”

The sound of hooves echoed from the west, and Ryba glanced toward the top of the ridge and the approaching rider. “Kadran’s in a hurry. We’ve got close to enough mounts, but not nearly enough people who know how to ride.”

“Most of us were raised to ride ships, not horses.”

“Look where it got you.”

Nylan grinned ruefully. Sometimes, he really wondered about Ryba. She was planning to build a culture, a kingdom, as a matter of fact, without even a look back. She’d killed one marine and threatened to cripple Gerlich. At the same time, Nylan didn’t see that much of an alternative, not when everyone seemed to respond only to force.

He moistened his lips. For all Ryba’s apparent indifference to the past, the engineer still couldn’t help wondering about his family, his sister Karista, and his mother. They’d all be told he was dead, and he wished they knew he was alive. He shrugged to himself. Assuming they were in another universe, was it better for them to think of him as dead? No, but there wasn’t a thing he could do about it.