“I checked the golds this morning. They’re all here,” Ryba said flatly. “He doesn’t have enough coin to do that much.”
“He still stole close to four golds in silver and copper,” pointed out Ayrlyn.
“He took everything he could sneak out, including more than fifty arrows, a packhorse, and some of the more battered blades,” Nylan added.
“Those blades he took are worth close to five golds. He could buy close to a score of armsmen,” explained Ayrlyn. “Hired blades are cheap here.”
“Life is cheap here,” said Ryba. “Look at those cairns.” Her head inclined toward the open tower window.
“You think he’ll do that?” Nylan’s guts already gave him one answer.
“He will, and he will be back, with an army behind him,” agreed Ryba tiredly, shifting Dyliess from one breast to the other.
“You see this?” asked Nylan.
“Not all of it, just a fragment, just enough.”
Ayrlyn frowned, but said nothing.
“What Gerlich took won’t be enough, and he knows it,” Ryba pointed out.
“Narliat left earlier than Gerlich,” said Ayrlyn.
The triangle rang for the evening meal.
“He’s acting as Gerlich’s advance agent. Gerlich tries to let someone else face the dangers first.” Ryba looked down at Dyliess. “Easy there … easy …” A rueful smile crossed her face.
“Should we beef up the standing guard?” asked Ayrlyn.
“For how long? We still need food. We need to get more things working, like the smithy, and possibly a few cows or goats. Not every guard can nurse, and we won’t always have guards with infants at the same time. Guards have to work and guard, or Westwind will fall. I don’t know when Gerlich will try his attack. The only thing we can do is make sure that all the guards have their weapons at hand, whatever they’re doing. Fierral can build a permanent watchpost on top of the ridge, with another warning triangle. Outside of that …” Ryba shrugged.
Nylan and Ayrlyn exchanged glances.
“What can we do, besides what we’re already doing?” asked Ryba. “Let’s go eat.” She slipped Dyliess from her lap into the carrypack, stood, and headed down the stairs. “You’ve eaten, little pig. It’s your mother’s turn.”
Ayrlyn glanced at Nylan and shrugged.
He shrugged back.
As they entered the great room, guards were still straggling in. Nylan almost stopped short at the third table below the first two. It only had one bench, but three of the new guards sat there, flanking Istril and Weryl.
Nylan paused. “Hello there, young fellow.”
Weryl gurgled. Nylan patted his shoulder.
Istril smiled. “He’s good.”
“I’m sure he is.” Nylan returned the smile, hiding a certain dismay. How had he ended up with three children born within a season of each other? His eyes flicked to Ryba’s back, but he kept smiling as he nodded to the three newcomersbefore turning. One was called Nistayna-that he remembered.
A spicy scent Nylan had not smelled before filled the area, and he looked toward the big pot that Kadran set in the middle of the table.
“Something new,” announced the cook. “You take one of those flat biscuit things and pour a ladle of this over the biscuit.”
“It better be good,” muttered Weindre, loud enough for those at all three tables to hear.
“It’s too good for you,” snapped Kadran.
Even the newcomers at the third table smiled briefly.
Ryba slid into her chair, and Nylan and Ayrlyn sat on the benches across from each other.
When the woven grass basket came to Nylan, he broke off a piece of bread, sniffed it, and drew in the spicy aroma. “This even smells good.”
“That’s Blynnal’s new bread,” mumbled Relyn from beside Ayrlyn. “It’s much better.”
“It tastes like real bread,” added Huldran.
Nylan took a thick biscuit and then two ladles full of the main course, a thin stew or thick sauce filled with chunks of meat and assorted chunks of other things, presumably roots or other vegetable matter, and poured it over the flat biscuit.
He looked at the brown mass dubiously, then sniffed. Nothing smelled burned or rancid. In fact, the aroma was pleasant, somewhere between minty and something else. Finally, he took a mouthful of meat, sauce, and biscuit.
Ayrlyn and Ryba watched.
“You’re braver than I am,” murmured the healer.
Nylan nodded, chewed, and swallowed. “It’s good. I can’t tell what’s in it, but it’s good.” As he spoke, he could feel his forehead warming, then his face, and then his mouth and throat. “Whe w w w!” He reached for his mug and downed the cold water. It didn’t help, but the bread did.
“Do you still think it’s good?” asked Ryba with a smile, patting Dyliess’s back as she squirmed in the chest carry-pack.
Nylan nodded, and took a second mouthful, a much smaller one.
“Another Blynnal special?” Ayrlyn asked Relyn.
He looked puzzled.
“Did Blynnal cook this?”
“Yes. She is a good cook. You are fortunate to have her.” Relyn ate without water, and without apparent discomfort.
“They clearly like food hotter than we’re used to,” observed Ryba.
After taking a very small bite of her dinner, Ayrlyn nodded.
Nylan broke off another chunk of bread, but kept eating, ignoring Ayrlyn’s amused smile.
LXXXIX
NYLAN WIPED HIS forehead and looked down at the coals, at his quick-built forge. Without a chimney and in a structure without completed walls, with no doors, open gaps for windows, and no roof, Nylan was trying to implement a combination of basic metallurgy and low-level technology, and use his particular abilities with the local magic field to create a piece of metal shaped and strong enough to pierce plate armor and to maim or kill those who wore such armor-or do worse to those who didn’t.
He’d already tried to melt the iron, and that hadn’t worked. It took both charcoal and green wood, and the bellows, and half the time the iron burned rather than melted.
As he thought of the arrows and blades Fierral had pleaded for, he sighed twice-once for the thought that damned little was settled in human affairs without some kind of force and once for his unfulfilled promise. He still hadn’t finished the clamp device he’d promised Relyn-anothertool of war, except, for the one-handed man, it seemed more defensive than offensive.
Nylan raised his eyes to Huldran, standing by the bellows. The bellows hadn’t been that hard, just three pieces of wood joined with leftover synthetic sheeting and using flap valves and a nozzle. Creating a tube under the center of the throwntogether brick forge had been tricky, finally accomplished by having Rienadre fire more than a dozen bricks with a hole in the center and lining them up and mortaring them in place. The air nozzle was a modified lander fuel sieve-greatly modified.
The first charcoal burn hadn’t worked. More than half the wood turned into ashes. Another quarter hadn’t burned at all. About a quarter had been transformed into charcoal. The second burn had gone better. Maybe half the wood had become charcoal. So after more than an eight-day, Nylan had two heaping piles of charcoal behind the smithy and a half-dozen disgruntled and sooty guards. They hadn’t cared that he was sooty.
It was early summer, and the purple starflowers had bloomed and were fading, and the crops seemed to be taking, at least the potatoes, which were critical. One of the remaining ewes had lambed, and three of the mares had foaled, and yet another woman, older than the others, had claimed refuge. Nylan was losing track of all the names of the newcomers. Names or not, Fierral slammed them into blade and bow training, and into logging or field work-except for the timid Blynnal, who had transformed mealtime from an ordeal into something less arduous.
Nylan looked down at the open forge. To save the charcoal, he had built the fire with wood and let it burn down to coals before easing the charcoal into place.
Now, he had two hammers, and a makeshift anvil created by cold-hammering sheet alloy around a stone block wedged between the sides of a green spruce log buried in the ground. The anvil, such as it was, stood waist-high. Nylan hoped that was correct. He had one chisel, and a makeshift pair of tongs.