L. Modesitt - Fall of Angels

Ryba looked up from a prone figure where she and Jaseen, the combat medtech, struggled. “We need dressings, Nylan. Gerlich’s out hunting, and he knew the storage plan by heart. Try lander three. Huldran, can you take charge of the diversion in the fields so that we don’t lose any more crops?”

“Yes, ser.” The blond marine was moving as she spoke.

“Will do.” As Nylan turned to go for the medsupplies, he asked, “What happened?”

“One of those skinny little trees with the gray leaves-the storm ripped off a top branch. Kadran didn’t even see it coming in the wind and rain. Went through her shoulder like a set of barbed arrows.”

Nylan winced, but stepped up his pace.

He was halfway through the second bin in lander three when Ayrlyn joined him and started at the other end of the bins.

Nylan ran through an emergency medical kit. “There are a couple of modules missing here.”

“Don’t bother with that, Nylan.” Ayrlyn frowned. “Great help here. This one says it’s the emergency surgery section, and here’s the section for emergency childbirth. Someone’s been into it, but it’s been resealed.”

“Be a while before we need that.” Nylan glanced through the lander door, but did not see the all-too-visibly-pregnant Ellysia. “How Gerlich …” He turned back and discarded the single remaining bone-splint kit.

“There are some stupid ones left. Every generation there always are. Not many, but she’d never considered birth control. Now, what about this-standard first aid-”

“That’s it. We need to run that over to Jaseen.”

“I’ll do that. See if you can find any more. We might need them. Who knows what happened to those who were caught out in the open?” Ayrlyn grasped the sealed package and left while Nylan carefully worked through the dwindling medical supplies, before finding another sealed package of surgical dressings. He decided against taking them, but set the package in the now-empty first bin before leaving the lander.

In the short time he’d been in the lander, Ryba had managed to start the process of restoring order. Kyseen was rebuilding the cook fire, and straightening up that area, while Huldran had managed to divert the main flow of water from the bean field and had a crew working on the potatoes.

Ryba was checking over the mounts, and Istril headed off with two others to see about rounding up two mounts that had left the makeshift corral.

Everything, except the tower, it seemed, was makeshift, and he still didn’t have the demon-damned thing finished-or even the plans worked out for the bathhouse and laundry addition and the jakes in the tower.

Slowly he walked back to the tower, where the lower level lay filled with puddles, one of them almost a half cubit deep. Drains. He had forgotten drains-another mistake to be rectified.

When he reached the tower yard, and the slowly vanishing puddles, he turned and looked up, studying the rain, now only falling steadily in a form somewhere between a fine mist and a heavy drizzle. The piles of white hailstones, like bleached bones, stood out on the green of the meadow.

Then he walked up into the tower and started up the stairs to check on the damage to the east roof.

As he climbed, he wondered about his brick-making and the crude oven, then shook his head. That had been low tech, and if the rains had carried it away, he would find a way to rebuild it.

HISSL STARES INTO the glass, looking at the waving stalks of grass, and at the burned fort, with the few wisps of smoke still threading into the sky. Concentrating again, he waits for the image to re-form, and it does, showing an empty road that would lead to Berlitos, should he desire the glass to follow the track.

There are no signs of the Jeranyi. Hissl tugs at his chin. Ildyrom must have pulled back a long ways, perhaps as far as Berlitos.

The wizard frowns, and the white mists fill the glass, eventually showing a line of horse troopers trudging down a forest road behind the fir-tree banner. Since there are no forests near Clynya, that means Ildyrom has in fact stopped pressing his claim on the grasslands-for now.

The white wizard shakes his head. “You’ll be stuck here for seasons-seasons, angel-damn!” His words are low, but they hiss with frustration.

He looks around the small room, then out the narrow window into the blue of the morning and over the low thatched roofs of Clynya toward the West Fork he cannot seefrom the second story of the barracks. As he does, the image fades from the glass.

“Terek … with you scheming in Lornth, how will I ever get out of here? If I’m successful, Ildyrom won’t get the grasslands back, and I’ll be stuck here. If I’m not …” He shakes his head and looks down at the blank glass.

In time, he studies the mirror once more, and the mists swirl, and in the midst of the swirling white appears the Roof of the World, and the black tower that stands, despite the storm, and the silver-haired figure in olive-black who trudges up the stone steps. The glass also shows the aura of darkness that surrounds the man in the glass.

“A mage, and he knows it not.” After a time, Hissl gestures, and the image vanishes, leaving only a blank and flat mirror on the small table.

Finally, he smiles, tightly, thinking about bandits and the Roof of the World.

STANDING OUTSIDE THE lander, with the light wind that promised fall ruffling his hair, Nylan slowly finished the gruel that passed as morning porridge, along with cold bread, his thoughts on the tower once more.

Huldran and the others had been less than pleased when Nylan had insisted on putting a drain in the bottom of the tower, nor had Ryba been happy when he had used the laser to drill through some of the rock.

“A waste of power …”

Nylan disagreed-the lowest level of the tower needed to be dry. Dampness destroyed too many things. He swallowed the last bite of the lumpy gruel with a shudder and glanced toward the tower. At least the roof and doors were in place, and he could concentrate on making the place livable. Outsidethe front door, Cessya and Weblya had already begun to haul stones in to fill the space between the walls of the causeway.

The engineer walked over to the wash kettle and rinsed the wooden platter before racking it. He hoped that they could finish the tower kitchen before long-but he needed to work out the problems with making the water pipes. If the climate were warmer he could have just built a covered aqueduct, but that would freeze solid for half the year.

He walked back toward Ryba, his eyes rising back toward the dark stones of the tower that was somehow tall, squat, and massive all at the same time.

“What are you thinking?” asked Ryba. “You’re not really even here.”

“About water pipes, kitchens, laundry.” He paused. “About building a bathhouse or whatever.”

“I suppose you want to start a soap factory, too.”

“Someone else can worry about that. I’m an engineer, not a chemist.”

“Good.” She laughed harshly. “The bandits are whittling away at our ammunition. We need more blades. Can you coax out another two dozen?”

“Another two dozen? Don’t most of the marines have one?”

“They’ll need two.”

Nylan pursed his lips. “I can do some. I don’t know how many. I thought the cells would be the problem, but there’s a raggedness in the powerheads.”

“And you had to drill a drain?”

“Yes … if you didn’t want all the supplies to mold and mildew.”

She shook her head. “You’re stubborn.”

“Not so stubborn as you are.” Nylan wondered how long before everyone would think he was obsessed with building, if they didn’t already. Why didn’t they see that they had one chance-just one?