Fall of Angels (The Saga of Recluce #6)(179)

DRY DUST SWIRLED Into the smithy, both from the road and from fields that had not seen rain in more than an eight-day.

Clung! Clung!

Nylan struggled with the metal on the anvil, a chunk of iron that neither looked circular nor like a gear. Even the hole in the center was lopsided. Finally, he took the tongs and set the misshapen mass on the forge bricks, then wiped his forehead with the back of his forearm.

"Does the whole thing have to be of metal, ser?" asked Huldran from behind the older, makeshift anvil, where she continued to hammer out the arrowheads that ought to have been cast.

"It would be stronger."

"Couldn't the wood people make something like a wheel, with holes in it where you put through sort of square metal pegs? You could put flanges on the bottom so they wouldn't slip out, and a smaller wheel inside the other."

Nylan squinted, trying to visualize what the blond guard had suggested. Then he shook his head and laughed. "It would probably work better than what I've been trying to do. In making wooden wheels you can wet-bend the wood. Yes, it would work."

"You think so?"

Nylan pointed to the misshappen metal. "Look at that. That's workable?"

A thin woman, painfully thin, wearing leathers from the plunder piles, with dark smears that had been blood, stepped into the smithy. "Ser?"

Nylan turned. "Yes."

"I was bid ... If you please, ser ... the marshal. . . she ... ser-"

"I take it that the marshal requests my presence?" Nylan asked to cut off the painfully slow speech for the new guard.

"Yes, ser."

"Fine." He set aside the hammer. "I assume I'll be back before too long, Huldran. Use the good anvil." Nylan looked back at the messenger. "I don't know everyone anymore. Who are you?"

"Meyin, ser."

"Where are you from?" The smith stepped from behind the anvil.

"Dinoz, ser."

Nylan had never heard of Dinoz, but he'd never heard of most of the small towns from which the new guards had fled. "East or west of the mountains?"

"It's in Gallos, ser."

"Let's go."

Nylan followed Meyin down the road toward the tower. Nearly a dozen new guard recruits were practicing on the sparring ground. On the stretch of meadow between the road and the fields another handful ran through exercises with wands on horseback.

"Looks more like a boot camp . . ." Nylan muttered to himself. "Then it is." How long could Ryba build her forces before someone else decided to take a crack at Westwind? An eight-day? A year? Who knew?

Ryba sat behind a small flat table in the corner of the top level of Tower Black, military and cool-looking in the gray leathers. She nodded, pushing aside the quill pen and the scroll. Nylan stepped into the room, and Meyin slipped down the steps, closing the door behind her.

As he eased onto the stool, Nylan's eyes flicked to the empty cradle.

"She's down in the nursery area with Niera and Antyl."

The smith-engineer looked blankly at the marshal.

"Antyl's the one who's so pregnant that I couldn't figure out how she got here."

"Oh, the one with the burns?"

Ryba nodded. "What were you working on?"

"Gears for the sawmill. I managed to get the collar for the mill wheel done, but I was having trouble. Huldran came up with a better idea." Nylan shrugged. "I should have thought of it-or asked-sooner."

"The sawmill will have to wait-maybe until next year."

"Trouble?"

"We've had trouble from the day the landers planetfell." Ryba glanced to the window, her eyes traveling to the ice needle that was Freyja and then to the western peaks. "It's beautiful here. If they'd just leave us alone-but they won't. We're going to have to win a big battle. Soon."

"How big? How soon?"

"Before mid-fall, perhaps sooner. I can't tell yet, but some of the latest recruits have been bringing tales of armsmen gathering in Lornth, and of lots of mercenaries being hired. I sent Ayrlyn out to get more supplies, and more information."

"Maybe Lornth expects trouble elsewhere." Nylan worried about another scouting run for Ayrlyn, but forced his concerns to the back of his mind.

"No."

"Visions? Images?"

"Those and all the scattered reports."

"So we need a superweapon? A magic sword that slices armsmen in quarters without anyone holding it? Or perhaps a magic bow?"

"Nylan." Ryba's voice was as cold as the ice on Freyja.

"I'm sorry. What am I supposed to do? Make more blades? Even with better blades, we still lost a lot of good guards." He cleared his throat, his eyes flicking to the window and Freyja, the ice-needle that sometimes seemed warmer and more approachable than Ryba.

"We can't afford those kinds of losses again," Ryba said. "Even with all the new recruits ... we can't train them well that fast, and half are scared to death of men with weapons. It takes time to overcome that."

Nylan rubbed his forehead. At times, especially when he thought of weapons, his head still ached. "Huldran is working on arrowheads. She can't give them that final ordering, but she makes good arrowheads. I can make more, too. I don't like it, but I can. Or blades. What do you want?"