Fall of Angels (The Saga of Recluce #6)(102)

"Engineer's a tough little bastard."

"... quiet, a lot of the time... have to be tough to deal with the marshal... leopard's probably easy by comparison ..."

Ryba, tougher than a snow leopard? Nylan chuckled to himself. No question about that, but he'd prefer to fight neither.

As the two cooks vanished, he stood and walked toward the steps, and the antiseptic, the cleaning he wasn't looking forward to, and soreness in muscles he'd forgotten he had- and the headache, the headache that seemed not quite constant.





LIV



OUTSIDE THE FROSTED window, the day is dull gray. Even the snow on the fields in the distance is gray. That on the roads below Hissl's room has been tramped into a fro/en mixture of brown and gray.

The warmth from the small brazier in the corner is more than welcome. Hissl shifts his weight on the stool to warm his right side, without taking his eyes from the glass on the table.

Centered in the swirling white mists are the images of the black mage and the woman warrior. Each drags a carcass, but the mage drags that of a snow cat up the slope toward the line of smoke that rises from the tower chimneys.

Two other figures, also on the long wide skis, sweep down the slope toward the pair.

The mage appears awkward on the skis, but he is the one who drags the snow cat. Their breath puffs through the scarves that cover their faces, then falls in the bright light in powdery crystals toward the snow through which they climb.

Hissl's eyes focus on the bows both carry, then narrow. He smiles. "No thunder-throwers now."

Neither of the two skiers who stop on the white expanse above the toiling pair wear thunder-throwers, either, and Hissl's tight smile broadens. He tries not to think about a mage who will stand fast before a snow leopard, and his eyes flick to the window.

The grasslands beyond Clynya are still covered with white, but the days are again lengthening, and even on the Roof of the World the snows will vanish in time.





LV



CARRYING A CLEAN outfit, Nylan padded down the stairs in his boots and old trousers, trying to ignore the chill that seeped around him. He slowed as he neared the fourth level.

Gerlich unloaded his gear, racking the quiver in the shelf space that was his, and hung the long bow beside it, his fingers running over the wood, almost lovingly. Then he removed the shoulder harness and the great blade.

The big man slid the blade from the scabbard, studied it, and took a small flagon from the bag that hung from one of the pegs. After extracting a pair of rags from the leather bag, he used one rag first to dry the blade and afterward the scabbard, before draping the damp rag over a shoulder-high peg on the long board fastened to the wall. Then he unstoppered the flagon and poured a small amount of oil onto the other rag before closing the flagon. Gently, the hunter oiled the blade from hilt to tip.

As he watched the hunter, Nylan puzzled over several items. Although Gerlich brought back no game, he had brought back fewer arrows, and shafts and arrowheads were not easy to come by. Had Gerlich lost the shafts?

Nylan smiled. Perhaps the great hunter was not so great after all. He shook his head as he studied Gerlich. Why did the hunter carry the huge blade on a hunting trip? Any sort of sword was difficult to use on skis. In fact, anything was hard to use trying to balance on wooden slats spanning deep powder snow.

Based on his encounter with the leopard, Nylan could certainly testify to that. He lifted his right shoulder, felt the soreness. Despite the antiseptic, one section of the slash had become inflamed, enough so that Ayrlyn had been forced to use her healing talents-a way of forcing out the disorder of infection.

After having watched her do it, Nylan had practiced on the shoulder wound himself, keeping it chaos-free. That talent might come in useful at some point, especially when the few remnants of the medical supplies were exhausted. The talent didn't seem to speed healing much, but it stopped infection and would reduce scarring, Nylan suspected.

"Any luck?" Nylan asked from the steps.

Boredom replaced surprise on Gerlich's face. "Not this time. We've killed most of the dumb animals, and I've got to travel farther every time."

"Sorry to hear that." Nylan nodded and continued down the steps.

There were people near the hearth in the great room, but the engineer continued onward toward the north door. He shivered as he hurried through the ice-lined archway and into the bathhouse. The stove was yet warm, and some water lay on the stone tiles of the first shower stall, but no one remained in the building. Huldran probably had used the shower-or Ryba-or both.

Nylan stripped off the boots and trousers and checked the knife valve. Then he stood under the frigid water only long enough to get thoroughly wet, before lathering himself with the liquid concoction that Ayrlyn had claimed was the local equivalent of soap.

The amber liquid looked like oil laced with sand and flower petals. That was also what it smelled like-rancid flower petals. It felt like liquid sandpaper as Nylan stood, damp and freezing, on the cold stones of a shower stall without a door, trying to scrub grease off his hands, frozen and thawed sweat out of his stiff hair, and grime off most of his body.

He had to wet his body twice more just to get lathered half properly, and then it took three short rinses-just because he couldn't stand under the cold water that long. Cold? The water had been warmed some by the bathhouse stove's water warmer.