LX
SILLEK WALKS INTO the armory, followed by Terek. The Lord of Lornth spots the assistant chief armsman, sharpening a blade with a whetstone. "Rimmur?"
The thin man looks up from the stool, then stands quickly. "Yes, ser?"
Behind Sillek, Terek closes the door.
"How can I help you, ser?"
"Since Koric remains to hold Clynya, I need you to make sure that our armsmen are ready to travel as soon as the roads firm. I don't mean an eight-day later. I mean the day I lift my blade. Do you understand?"
"Yes, ser. Where do we make ready to go?"
"I'm not telling you. Nor will I until we start to march." Sillek's smile is grim.
"Ser . . . that'll make it hard . . ." Rimmur's words die under Sillek's glare. "I mean ... the men ..."
"Let me explain it," answers Sillek. "I have Ildyrom and the Jeranyi to the west, and these evil angels to the east. If I announce I'm going after the angels, Ildyrom will be in and through Clynya within days after the snows melt, or the rains -stop, and the roads firm. If I go after Ildyrom, the traders will raise their prices and lower what they pay, and the angels will be free to take over more of the Westhorns, including the trade routes and the lower pastures. If I do nothing, everyone will think they can make trouble."
"Yes, ser," answered Rimmur. "Which are you going to do?"
Sillek slaps his forehead theatrically and glares at the assistant armsman. "If I tell you and the armsmen of Lornth that I'm going after Ildyrom, then everyone will tell everyone else, and in three days all of Candar will know, and the traders and the angels will make trouble. If I say I'm going after the angels, then Ildyrom and his war-women will make trouble. So I can't say. You just have to get them ready. I'll announce where later."
"Yes, ser. They won't like it, ser."
"Rimmur ... do they want to know and be dead, or not know and be alive?"
"Ser?"
"If no one knows where we're going, whether it's after Ildyrom or the black angels, then our enemies can't plan. If they can't plan, then fewer of our men get killed. So just get them ready. Tell them what I told you."
"Yes, ser." Rimmur stands and waits.
As Terek and Sillek head up the narrow steps to the upper levels of the tower, the white wizard clears his throat, finally saying, "You never did indicate . .. ser . .."
"That's right, Terek. I did not. I do not know what sort of screeing or magic the angels have. So my decision remains unspoken until we leave. That way, Ildyrom and the angels have to guess not only which one I intend to attack, but also when."
"As Rimmur said, ser, that makes preparation uncertain."
"Terek . . . before this is all over, we'll end up fighting them both. So prepare for both eventualities." Sillek steps out onto the upper landing and turns. "Your preparations won't be wasted."
"Yes, ser." Terek inclines his head.
"Good." Sillek turns and walks down the corridor to the quarters where Zeldyan waits.
LXI
THE NIGHT WIND whistled outside the tower windows, rattling the shutters on the partitioned - off side so much that small fragments of ice broke off and dropped to the floor inside the sixth level. From the third level below came the faint crying of an infant, Dephnay, but the crying died away, replaced by the faintest of nursing sounds, and gentle words.
On the slightly warmer side of the top level of the tower, protected by the thin door, the recently completed partitions and hangings, Ryba and Nylan lay in the darkness.
Nylan's legs ached from the skiing, the endless attempts to find and track the smaller rodents he knew were in the forests. His arms and shoulders ached from the drubbings he had taken in his last blade-sparring sessions with Saryn and Ryba in the half darkness of the fifth level of the tower. His lungs were heavy from the cold. His guts grumbled from the continual alternation of too much meat and too few carbohydrates with the periods of too little food at all. His upper cheeks burned from near-continual frostbite, and his fingers ached from holding a smoothing blade or a knife too long.
For all his exhaustion, he could not sleep, and his eyes fixed on the patchwork hangings that moved, ever so slightly, to the convection currents between the cold stone walls and the residual warmth of the chimney masonry that ran up the center of the tower.
Ryba lay on her back, nearly motionless, eyes closed, the woolen blanket concealing her swelling abdomen.
In the darkness through which he could see, Nylan studied her profile, chiseled against the darkness like that of a silver coin against black velvet, a profile almost of the Sybran girl-next-door, lacking the regalness that appeared whenever she was awake.
What had made her able to struggle against such odds, going from a steppe nomad child to being one of UFA's top combat commanders and to founding a nation or tradition that seemed almost fated to endure?
Would it endure? How long?
He stifled a sigh. Did it matter? Ryba was going to do what Ryba was going to do, or what her visions told her to do, and for the moment he had no real choices. Nor did any of them, he supposed, not if they wanted to survive. He tried to close his eyes, but they hurt more closed than open, with a gritty burning.
The shutter on the far side of the tower rattled again as the wind forced its way against the tower, and more icicles broke off and shattered across the plank floor. Even the armaglass window creaked and flexed against the storm, although Ayrlyn insisted that, while the storms would be more violent in the eight-days ahead, they represented the warming that was already under way.
Nylan hadn't seen any real warming outside, and the snow was still getting deeper, and the game scarcer, and the livestock thinner, and tempers more frayed.
He tried to close his eyes again, and this time, this time they stayed closed.