Age of Swords (The Legends of the First Empire #2)

“Why don’t you join us?”

“Sorry, I have a village to save.”

“Moya,” Tekchin said, “you can stay, can’t you? I saved you a place on my lap.”

“There’s always plenty of room there, because there’s precious little else to get in the way,” the young woman replied.

Tekchin’s eyebrows shot up, and Sebek laughed so hard he fell off the broken log he’d been sitting on.

Moya opened her mouth once more, but Persephone latched on to her wrist and dragged her away.

“Why do you always do that?” she asked. “Why do you antagonize them?”

“They’re warriors, Seph.” Moya pulled her arm back. “You think kissing their ass is the way to impress them?”

Persephone was still pondering the question when she spotted Raithe and Malcolm trudging up the recently cleared eastern walkway.

“There you are,” Raithe said. “Hard to find anyone anymore.” Both men were slick with sweat. Raithe had bundled his shirt into a bag made from his leigh mor and hung it from his belt.

“We saved twenty-three sheep,” Malcolm said. “Found most of them nicely clustered in a little valley a few miles to the northeast. They were a pleasant lot, but a handful led us on a merry chase. Habet and Cobb are watching them.”

“That’s wonderful,” Persephone said, and she meant it, though her tone was less than happy. The efforts to round up the scattered flock served to remind her that Gelston, the shepherd, was barely alive, and Delwin was dead. Then she couldn’t resist thinking about Sarah, Brin’s mother and Persephone’s best friend. She bit her lip, sucked in a quick breath, and walked on, struggling to beat down the emotion.

We still have so much to do.

Persephone’s feet led her to the area cleared for packing. Bundles of the spring’s wool harvest were piled, waiting to be carded, spun, and woven into cloth. If Sarah were there…Persephone squeezed her quivering mouth closed. As she fought back tears, she saw the three Dherg sitting on the far side of the wool piles, lounging in the bundles as if they were giant pillows. Emotion boiled up. Tears or rage were her choices, and Persephone didn’t have the luxury of appearing weak.

“What are you still doing here?” she shouted at them.

They jumped, but for a moment none of them said a word.

“We…ah…would like to talk to the one you call Arion, the bald Fhrey. You see we have a problem that—”

“Arion isn’t here right now, and if she were, she wouldn’t have time to be bothered. Neither do I. Can’t you see how busy we are?”

Frost started to say something but Persephone became distracted by what she saw over his shoulder.

“Roan?” she yelled. “What in Mari’s name are you doing?”

Roan’s old roundhouse—the one originally built by Iver the woodcarver—had been reduced to little more than a lean-to by the foot of a giant. One pole remained upright and held a single crossbeam in place, but that was enough to grant her cave-like access to most of the tools and supplies. She and Gifford worked out front. He was hammering on what appeared to be a giant wooden box.

Both Roan and Gifford paused in their fevered labor to look at her, each with a guilty expression.

“Roan,” Persephone said, walking past the wool and the Dherg to confront the two. “I thought I made myself clear. You of all people need to get your things together.” She looked at the chisels, mallets, and ax spread out on the ground. “We need to hurry. You know that! Why are you still—”

“Woan got an idea when she was helping me pack my spinning table,” Gifford said.

“Roan always gets ideas!” Persephone nearly screamed in frustration. “We have no time for her ideas. We need to pack up and get out of here. I have no clue when the next attack is coming, but if we’re still here when it arrives, we’re all going to die. Do you understand that idea? We have no gate anymore, Roan. No protection, and the Fhrey are getting drunk!”

Clutching Gifford’s large, round pottery table to her chest, Roan retreated toward the devastation of her home.

Gifford shoved himself as upright as possible and hobbled toward Persephone. “This idea is impowtant,” he said as firmly as his lisp allowed. Leaning heavily on his crutch, his twisted back and dead leg made him a tragically comic figure, but Persephone saw fire in his eyes, a familiar sight.

We’ll do it together, Aria had said on a day long ago when Persephone’s shortcoming had ended their friendship. She saw the intensity of her childhood friend’s stare again, this time through the eyes of Aria’s son. That stopped Persephone, and she looked past Gifford to Roan, whose lower lip was trembling.

I didn’t mean to upset her. I didn’t mean to yell. I was just so…Persephone felt tears bubbling up again. “Okay, I’m sorry. Tell me. What is this great idea?”

Roan stared at her a moment, then said, “No, I’m the one who should apologize. I didn’t…I didn’t think it would take so long. We’ll stop, and I’ll get packed.” Roan set down the pottery table and began picking up her tools, tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Tell me the idea, Roan,” Persephone said, softer still.

Roan straightened up and wiped her face. She looked at Gifford, who nodded his support. Walking over to where he’d been hammering, she retrieved a long pole.

She wiped her cheeks again. “Gifford was sad because his pottery table is too heavy to move. Well, it’s round, so I thought maybe we could roll it. You know how we move rocks, right?” Roan asked.

Persephone shrugged.

“Well, we put them on a sled with logs underneath and then push. When a log comes out from underneath, we pick it up and put it in front of the others and keep pushing. It’s a lot of work moving those heavy logs, and it’s hard pushing the sled over them, but look…”

Placing the pole into the hole at the center of the table, she tilted the large round stone up on its side. She swung the pole, and the pottery table moved easily along an arc. “Now imagine another pottery table, just like this one, on the other end of the pole. Then, if that big box”—she pointed at the wood Gifford had been hammering when Persephone first came over—“was sitting on top of the pole, we could put stuff in it.”

“So what are you saying? Could we put pots of wheat and barley in the box and move heavy things?”

Roan nodded. “It reduces rubbing. Instead of the entire surface of a sled grinding against a set of logs, all the weight is on just two small points.” Roan indicated where the pole passed through the disk. “I’ll put pins on the ends to keep them on.” Then her face saddened. “But it’ll take time to make the other side. It took nearly a week to chisel Gifford’s first table. But if I work real hard…I don’t sleep much, you know…and I could work on it night and day, then—”

“She’s made a wheel,” Frost said as the three Dherg strode over.

“She’s put a pottery table on the end of a pole,” Moya said.

Frost’s bushy eyebrows knit together and he looked amused, as if she’d made a joke. “Don’t you people know what a wheel is?”