L. Modesitt - Fall of Angels

“We could not bring everything we need with us,” answered Nylan haltingly. “Do you not buy food when you travel?”

“You only want food?”

“Or something that provides food, like chickens.”

“The great Skiodra does not deal in chickens, like some common … peasant …”

“Let him offer what he has,” suggested Ayrlyn. “Don’t ask for anything.”

Narliat glanced at Ryba, then Nylan. They nodded at Narliat.

“Noble Skiodra … since my masters know not what you might have to offer, it might be best for you to show what you have.”

“You might best do the same.”

Narliat looked to Nylan, who nodded again.

“We will bring some goods,” answered Narliat.

Skiodra lifted his hand, and the four carts began to wind their way up from the road at the bottom of the ridge.

Ryba turned and gestured. Four armed marines moved toward the piles of supplies near the top of the ridge.

Nylan looked westward to the darkening clouds that promised the first real rain since they had landed.

The first cart held barrels.

“That-the orange one,” explained Narliat, “that is dried fruit from Kyphros. The white ones are flour. The seal means it was milled in Certis …”

“How much do they generally run?” asked Ayrlyn.

Narliat glanced nervously from the redheaded comm officer to Skiodra, who cleared his throat.

Ryba put her hand on the hilt of the blade Nylan had laser-forged.

“Uh … I couldn’t be saying, ser, not exactly, since it’d depend on when Skiodra bought them and where.”

“Three silvers for the flour and a five for the fruit,” said Skiodra.

Narliat’s eyes widened.

Nylan snorted. “That’s about triple what the trader paid for them.”

“You wish to travel to Kyphros to get them for yourself?” asked Skiodra.

“Excuse me,” said Nylan. “Four times what he paid. Maybe five.”

The slightest nod from Narliat confirmed his revised guess.

“So, the noble trader paid-what? — half a silver for each barrel of flour, and he wants three. Six times … that’s nice if you can get it.” Nylan laughed.

“Ah … my friend … how would you pay for the feed for all those horses and men? It is not cheap to travel the Westhorns-and the flour, it came from Certis, and those fields are on the other side of the Easthorns …”

The engineer repressed a sigh. A long afternoon lay ahead, and the air was getting moister with the coming of the storm. “A half silver a barrel for your expenses, for each two barrels, I could see,” he added. “That would be more …”-he groped for the word-“fair.”

“Fair? That would be ruin,” declared Skiodra. “You mages, you think that because you can create something for nothing that every person can. Bah! Even two silvers a barrel would destroy me.”

Narliat’s eyes flicked back to Nylan.

“Such destroying … that would buy you fine furs. Even a handful of …” He looked at Narliat.

“Coppers?”

“Coppers. Even two coppers in gain a barrel would make you the richest trader.”

“I said you were a mage. That may be, but your father had to be a usurer. You would have my men eat hay, and my horses weeds. Even to open trading, as a gesture of good faith, at a silver and a half a barrel, I would have to sell the cloak off my back.”

In the end, they agreed on nine coppers a barrel for the ten barrels of flour.

“What do you have to offer?” asked Skiodra, as a boy, acting as a clerk, chalked the number on a long slate and showed it to Nylan. It looked like a nine, but Nylan still glanced toward Ayrlyn and Narliat, who nodded.

“Try the small sword,” suggested the armsman.

Nylan presented it.

“A nice toy for a youth, but scarcely worth much,” snorted Skiodra.

“Lord Nessil paid a gold for it,” asserted Nylan.

“A gold, and he was a rich lord who was cheated, or sleeping with the smith’s daughter …”

It was going to be a longer afternoon than he had thought. Nylan refrained from taking a deep breath. “Lords don’t have to bargain, noble Skiodra. If they think they are being cheated, they kill the cheater. The blade is probably worth two golds, but a gold is what he paid, and it’s scarcely touched.”

“Your father and your grandfather both were usurers, Mage. How your poor mother survived … I might consider, out of sentiment, and because of your audacity, five coppers for that excuse of a weapon …”

The sun, had it been visible through the heavy clouds, would have been nearly touching the western peaks before Skiodra packed what remained back into his carts and departed-not quite smiling, but not frowning, and promising to be back before harvest.

“So what do we have?” Fierral’s eyes went from the carts of Skiodra to the supplies, but the redheaded marine officer’s hand stayed on her sidearm.

The piles, bales, and barrels represented a strange assortment of goods. Besides nearly thirty barrels of flour, corn meal, and dried fruit, and a waxed wheel of yellow cheese, there were bolts of woolen cloth, a pair of kitchen cleavers, two large kettles and three assorted caldrons, two crude shovels, an adz, two sets of iron hinges big enough for a barn door, but no screws or spikes.

Nylan looked away from the assorted goods and held out his hand, feeling the tiny droplets of rain. As he listened to the rumble of distant thunder, he frowned, feeling that the clouds almost held something like the Winterlance ’s neuronet.

Ayrlyn looked from the clouds to Nylan. “I know.”

Ryba frowned, then asked Narliat, “You think they’ll be back?”

Narliat shrugged. “Maybe yes, maybe no. It matters not.” “It doesn’t matter?” asked Ayrlyn, brown eyes questioning.

“Others will come, now.”

Nylan hoped so. They needed more supplies, a lot more, if the winter were anything like he thought it was going to be. And they needed something like chickens. He thought chickens could last the winter if they were in a place above freezing out of the wind. Then he took a deep breath, realizing that was just a hope. What did he really know about anything like that?

“I hope so,” said Ryba, echoing his thoughts.

A low rumbling of thunder punctuated her words.

“We need to get this stuff into the landers or under cover.” Ryba turned. “Fierral? Have your people get this stored. The cloth needs some dry places-maybe lander three. Nylan, how much covered space is there in your tower?”

“Not a lot yet,” the engineer admitted. “Only the bottom level of the center is covered yet, and that’s where the lasers and firin cells go.”

“Then it will all have to go in the landers for now. That will make things tight.”

“I’ll see about getting the next level floored and roofed,” said Nylan. As he hurried back to ensure that the lasers were stored against the oncoming rain, he wondered if he would ever get caught up to the needs they faced.

He fingered the torch in his pocket, and gave a half-laugh. He’d never even thought about using the beam. That was the way so many things worked-when it came time to use them, he forgot or did something else.

Overhead, the thunder rolled, and the fine rain droplets began to get heavier, and the sky darker.

THE RAIN STILL fell the next morning, but the droplets were fine and sharp, carried by the winterlike wind out of the ice-covered heights to the west. Low clouds obscured Freyja and all the mountains, except for the ridges closest to the landers. Even the partly built tower seemed to touch the misty gray underside of the clouds.

Nylan paused in the door of the lander, looking down at the gooey mess below. After a moment, he stepped into the mist-filled air, and his boots squushed in the mud. Some of the clumps of grass-even the yellow flowers-bore a snowy slush, and he looked back at Ryba. “This is one of the better reasons to get the tower finished. We’re not going to have dry and sunny weather all the time.”