“What about the blond?” asked Huruc.
Nylan smiled. “He should live. We stopped the chaos early enough. Even so, he won’t lift a blade for seasons. Not until the bones knit. You’ll have to make him a cook’s helper or something. It’ll free someone else to fight.”
Ayrlyn asked politely, “What happened?”
“We ran into one of their raiding parties. They didn’t expect us.” Fornal smiled. “Not many escaped.”
“How many in the party?”
“A score and a half, I’d guess.”
Nylan held back a frown. His guess was that Fornal had caught a scouting group of sorts, not that Nylan had any problems with the coregent’s decision to take them on-not after he’d seen the bodies of innocent Lornians scattered across Kula. “A few more times, and they may wish they’d picked on some other land.”
“Not the white demons. They will stay until the last man.”
“Then, we’ll have to get rid of them to the last man-even if we do it one at a time.”
Huruc laughed gently. “A merchant’s approach to fighting.”
“No,” answered Nylan, after swallowing another mouthful of bread and mutton, “one that works.”
“You angels did not do such,” pointed out Fornal.
“We didn’t have much choice, and where we could follow that doctrine we had almost no losses. Westwind lost two-thirds of its original forces in pitched battles against more numerous opponents.” Nylan frowned at the twinge through his skull. He should have remembered that the order forces of the damned planet never let him exaggerate without reminding him-often painfully. Still, the point was basically true.
“Because we have not attacked the enemy encampment, some holders would claim I have lost honor.” Fornal shrugged. “I would not regain it by dying in battle.”
Nylan wasn’t sure if that were an apology of sorts, or an observation. “If you drive out the Cyadorans, won’t that suffice?”
“For some. For others…they would find some other reason to find fault.” Fornal shook his head with a sad smile and then stuffed a large chunk of bread into his mouth. He did not look back at Nylan.
After eating, Nylan walked around to the front porch where Sylenia held Weryl.
“Weryl!” Nylan held out his arms.
“Daaa!” The boy lurched from the nursemaid’s arms and across the planks.
Nylan scooped him up, and, for a time, just held the silver-haired boy, letting himself feel the warmth, the aliveness. Weryl finally began to squirm.
“Sorry, son. You felt so good.” Nylan eased himself down onto the plank floor and set Weryl on the planks beside him. “So good.” He still asked himself at times if he were carrying out Istril’s charge as well as he could. He supposed he always would.
“Ser Nylan?” asked Sylenia.
“Yes?”
“Might I depart for a time?”
“Of course.” He paused. “Try not to get into too much trouble with your armsman.”
Sylenia blushed as she rose from the bench.
“That was unfair, Nylan,” said Ayrlyn from the doorway.
“I apologize, Sylenia.”
The nursemaid blushed again, but smiled shyly as she slipped past the angel smith.
Ayrlyn sat on the bench.
“Ah-yah!” Weryl tottered toward the redhead. “Ah-yah!”
Nylan followed the nursemaid’s progress toward the makeshift barracks.
A squat armsman eased his mount toward Sylenia, then spurred the horse away after she spoke. The smith frowned and glanced at Ayrlyn.
“We’ll need to watch that.”
He nodded slowly. Along with how much else, he wondered.
LXV
“I wasn’t ready for my first fight.” Nylan offered a grim smile to the levies ranked in three lines before the sheep-shed barracks. “That’s one reason why we’ve pushed you. I was lucky, but that’s not something you can always count on.” He nodded to Tonsar. “Have them mount up, and check each man’s gear. Then I will.”
“…never lets anything past him…”
“…he talks…she looks through you…and they say she’s warm, compared to most angels…”
Always the stereotypes-Nylan glanced at Ayrlyn as they walked toward the corral and their waiting mounts. “And they think you’re cold,” he said with a low laugh, thinking about Ryba.
“For them…I am. Ryba wasn’t far off about the men in Candar.” She shook her head. “If I appeared at all human, they wouldn’t respect me. It’s the same for you, except you’re a mean bastard and I’m just a cold bitch. Bastards get more respect than bitches.”
“Both earned with force.”
“Unfortunate, but true. Then, that was true in the U.F.A. It just wasn’t quite so blatant.” Ayrlyn checked her gear, then swung up into the saddle with a fluid grace that Nylan knew had been hard-earned.
The saddled mounts at the other end of the corral circled uneasily, as if they knew the day were different.
Nylan refocused on his mare and mounted. With a glance at the levies as they moved toward the corral, he guided his mount toward the dwelling where Sylenia stood on the front stoop holding Weryl. He reined up at the edge of the lane, beside Ayrlyn, then looked at Weryl and Sylenia. He eased the mare closer to the porch/stoop, until he was less than ten cubits from them.
“Just take care of him,” he finally said.
“I will, ser. I will.” Sylenia met the smith’s eyes.
“Take care of yourself, too.” Nylan nodded and forced a smile to Weryl.
“Daaa.”
“Be good to Sylenia, Weryl.” With a last smile, he turned the mare back toward the space to the north of the sheep shed where the levies were mounting and sorting themselves into ranks. He had to squint momentarily as he looked east, where the sun had barely cleared the low hills.
“Children make it harder,” said Ayrlyn. “Even for me.”
He looked at the redhead riding beside him.
“He’s sweet, like you must have been,” she said, the corners of her mouth not quite smiling.
“Me? The terrible angel?”
“To fight at all, gentle souls often have to be the most terrible, to overcome their nature.”
Did they, Nylan wondered, or were gentle souls really gentle at all? He looked toward the space before the sheep-shed barracks, where men and mounts milled.
“Form up!” ordered Tonsar as he glanced over his shoulder toward Nylan and Ayrlyn. “Nesru! You be the one I’m talking to!”
“Ser!”
Nylan repressed a smile as a single chicken skittered along the planks of the former sheep shed, snapping its beak down to retrieve the smallest of dark bread crusts discarded by some levy. How had it survived? Or were they the equivalent of wild chickens?
“Give them a last chance to make sure every man’s water bottle is full,” Nylan suggested in a low voice as he eased the mare up beside the subofficer. “That’s if you haven’t already.”
“Told’em twice, ser.”
“That’s once more than they deserve,” said Ayrlyn, “but they’re new at this.”
Even newer than we are, Nylan reflected, holding in a smile as he caught the grin in Ayrlyn’s brown eyes.
Slowly, he rode down the line of levies.
“Mearet…where’s your water bottle?”
“…check that rear girth…”
Finally, he nodded at Tonsar. “We’ll wait for the regent.”
“You ready, angels?” came the call-seemingly within moments.
“Ready,” Nylan confirmed.
With a last look at the dwelling where Sylenia and Weryl still stood watching the riders, Nylan forced his concentration away from his son and onto the ride to Hesra-supposedly the next target of the Cyadorans, if Huruc’s scouts were correct, although it didn’t take much guessing. After their initial swift raids, the Cyadorans seemed to be moving from the nearest target to each hamlet successively more distant from the copper mines.
Dust swirled up around the angels before the column even had left the holding that had become the Lornian camp, and sweat had begun to trickle down the engineer’s neck.
From out of the dust ahead, Fornal gestured.