Fall of Angels (The Saga of Recluce #6)(140)

"More mortar." Nylan grinned. "Are you sure you want to make yourself useful here?"

"Grinding that lava rock for mortar is better than grubbing through the mud or having that fir sap fall all over you. The rock dust washes off. Besides, what you do lasts, and I can say that I helped do it."

"Well ... I appreciate that honesty. We'll all learn, you and Huldran and I, how to build and operate a smithy."

"Sounds good. I'll be back in a bit. I need to get those mallets and a bucket of water." Cessya inclined her head and was gone.

Nylan set the tools and parts in the corner. Because he needed some of the cruder and heavier tools in the lower level of the tower, he'd start work on Relyn's knife-holder-grip after the midday meal, hoping he wouldn't need to actually forge it, but just bend metal.

He looked around the unfinished smithy. With Cessya's help, it might not be that long before they had the building and the forge done. The charcoal was another story, and trying to forge metal was going to be a disaster.

"A smith, yet? Probably not..." He shook his head, then began to carry in bricks.





LXXXVI



NYLAN STUDIED THE completed rear wall of the would-be smithy, and took a deep breath. He was getting tired of the building that seemed endless. His eyes flicked to the high puffy clouds. Would it never end?

His mother had been right, though. No one else cared about his troubles, except Ayrlyn. He smiled, tentatively, then blanked his face at the sound of boots on the road.

"How soon will you have this forge operating?" asked Fierral as she stepped within the uncompleted walls.

Nylan glanced around the area, trying to estimate. "A while," he finally said. "Only have half the walls done. The forge itself. . ." He shook his head.

The guard leader frowned.

"Why?"

"We don't have that long. We're reaching the limits of the blades you forged. We've never had enough of those bows. And we're getting more and more women showing up. They don't have the training the best locals do. Most of us don't, but we're getting there." Fierral ran her hand through her short-cropped fire-red hair. "What gives us a chance is your weapons."

"But you need more?" asked the engineer.

"We need more of everything. Arrowheads first. Frigging Gerlich-he took off hunting this morning with a good fifty shafts. Showed how few we have left."

Nylan pursed his lips. Gerlich, again. Now what was the man up to?

"Ser . . ." Fierral asked quietly. "Do you really need a smithy built like the tower? We just can't wait for that. The locals won't."

Nylan looked around again. "I can put together a forge of some sort in the next few days-I have to have that-and develop a bellows of some sort. And you'll have to help me make charcoal. You can't smith without coal or charcoal."

"Whatever it takes, ser." Fierral's eyes drifted to the practice yard below the front of the tower. "I'm just a guard leader. I'll never be that much more, not like you or the marshal. But the guards, all of the women, they need the weapons."

Nylan understood that the words were as close to a plea as Fierral would ever offer; that, like him, she kept the doubts and fears and concerns held tightly.

"I'll get working on it," he promised.

"Thank you."

Nylan did not sigh until she was halfway back to the practice yard.





LXXXVII



THE SCOUTS RIDE vanguard nearly a kay before the column that follows, riders under the purpled banners of Lornth and trailed by a far longer column of foot soldiers, levies leavened with professionals from Carpa, Lornth itself, and even from Spidlar and far Lydiar.

As it takes the road skirting the rapids, the army approaches the ford that prefaces the split in the trading road. Less than a kay below the rapids lies the junction of the greater and lesser rivers. Another kay below that is the ford, and beyond that the river flows smooth and deep on its northward course to Rulyarth. On the east side of the ford, the road splits, the left-hand highway following the river, the right slowly rising into the hills until it reaches the west branch of the River Arma where it follows Arma all the way to the city of Armat, capital of Suthya.

By straining, Sillek can see the edge of the fields in the flat below and to the northwest of the hills through which the road passes and the river rapids pass. Those fields are a lighter green than those in Lornth, and half the ground shows brown where the crops have not spread so early in the year.

With the wind out of the east, occasional drops of moisture fly from the rapids to the road, and more than once Sillek looks to the clear sky in surprise, before turning his head toward the dull roaring of the river.

On Sillek's right rides Ser Gethen. Behind them, flanked on each side by hard-faced armsmen, ride Terek and Jissek.

"Fornal was reluctant to remain at the Groves," says Gethen.

"Someone we can trust has to," answered Sillek easily.

"Don't speak of trust loudly, Lord Sillek. Soldiers might presume that such planning implies an expectation of failure." Gethen laughs. "Call that the insight of an old man."

"You're scarcely old, with those few gray hairs," points out the younger man, looking to the low hill beyond, the last hill before the ford. His face tightens as one of the scouts in the van pauses his mount at the hill crest, then turns and gallops back toward the main force.