After washing, he walked through the twilight toward the landers and the cook fires, his face cool from the water and the wind off the ice of the higher peaks.

The smell of smoke and bread and wild onions told him that, again, he was among the last to eat.

"Here, ser." Kyseen handed him one of the rough wooden platters heaped with dark stew, a slab of the flat, fried bread on the side. The edges were only dark, dark brown this time, not black.

"Thank you." Nylan took it and looked around for one of the sawed-off logs that served as crude stools.

"You can sit here, ser." Selitra slipped off a log seat. "I'm finished."

Nylan offered a grateful smile to the lithe marine and sat. "Thank you." His legs ached; his shoulders ached; his hands were cracked and dry. And he still hadn't finished the fifth level of the tower.

He tried the bread; it wasn't soggy, and it even tasted like bread, but heavy, very heavy. He dipped it into the brown mass that was stew and chewed. Either he was starving or the food was improving. Probably both.

"Do you mind if I join you?" asked Ryba. "I ate a little earlier."

Nylan nodded. "I was trying to finish the outer part of the fifth level. We didn't quite make it." He looked north to the dark shape of the tower.

Ryba's eyes followed his. "It's impressive."

Nylan snorted. "I just want it to be warm and strong."

"Just? I recall words about furnaces, stoves, and water."

"Those all go with being secure and warm." He dipped the corner of the bread into the stew and scooped more into his mouth.

"Those weren't common brigands," Ryba said quietly. "Their blades and bows were better than those of some of Lord Nessil's armsmen."

"Bounty hunters?" Nylan finally asked.

"I think so. The local lord has probably offered some sort of reward to get rid of us. We'll probably see more bandits or brigands, maybe even a large force by the end of the summer."

"The engineer shook his head.

"Your tower looks better and better." Ryba's fingers kneaded the tight muscles in his shoulders.

Nylan swallowed. "I'm not sure I like being right in quite that way."

"It's better than being wrong."

He couldn't argue with that and looked toward the larger fire, where the marines had gathered around Ayrlyn.

"What about a song?" asked Llyselle.

"A song?" questioned the red-haired comm officer, her voice wry.

"About how you angels routed the bandits," suggested Narliat.

"I don't know about routed," muttered Denalle, her eyes dropping to the dressing on her right arm. Her left hand strayed toward the second dressing that covered her forehead, then dropped away. With a wince, she closed her eyes for a moment.

"I don't make up songs that quickly," answered Ayrlyn.

"But you are a minstrel, are you not?" asked Narliat.

"This is a verbal culture," pointed out Saryn.

"Too verbal," growled Gerlich, glaring at Narliat.

Nylan could feel himself tensing at Gerlich's response and forced himself to let his breath out slowly.

"And it has too many wizards," added the hunter. "And I don't understand why the wizards serve the nobles, the lords, whatever they are. Those wizards have real powers."

"The wizards, they cannot stand against cold iron," answered Narliat, "and there are not a great many wizards."

"Still don't see ..."

"Oh, Gerlich . . ." murmured Ryba, barely loud enough for Nylan to hear.

"Think, for darkness' sake."

Nylan thought also, about cold iron, wondering why cold iron would prove a problem for a wizard. He could handle it, and Narliat said he was a wizard.

"Cold iron?" he finally asked.

"Why yes, Mage. The white ones, they cannot handle cold iron. It's said that it burns them terribly." Narliat shrugged. "I have not seen this, but I have never seen a white wizard touch iron. Even their daggers are bronze."

Nylan frowned. Why would that be so? "Thank you."

"Now that we have that cleared up," Ryba said too brightly, "how about that song?"

Ayrlyn picked up the small four-stringed lutar she had brought down from the Winterlance, just as Ryba had brought the Sybran blades.

"How about this one?" Ayrjyn strummed the strings, adjusted one peg, then strummed again, and made another adjustment before clearing her throat.

A captain is a funny thing, a spacer with a net, an angel gambling with her death, who never lost a bet.

The captain, she took us to those demon-towers, then brought us back right through Heaven 's showers...

Nylan winced, knowing that the second verse would be bawdy, and the third even bawdier, then glanced at Ryba, who was grinning.

"I've heard worse versions," she said. "Much worse."

Raucous laughter began to rise around the fire even before Ayrlyn finished the last verse.

".. . and she served him up well trussed, well done!"

The laughter died away.

"An old song? A Sybran song?" asked Denalle.

"I don't know many," admitted Ayrlyn, "but there is one." The redhead readjusted the lutar, then began.

When the snow drops on the stone, When the wind song's all alone, When the ice swords form in twain, Sing of the hearths where we 've lain.

When the green tips break the snow, When the cold streams start to flow, When the snow hares turn to black, Sing out to call our love back.

When the plains grass whispers gold, When the red blooms flower bold, When the year's foals gallop long.

Hold to the fall and our song...

Nylan glanced around the fires, then to the unlit and dark tower looming against the white-streaked peaks, and back to the marines. More than a handful effaces bore eyes bright with unshed tears. Some marines blotted damp cheeks when Ayrlyn lowered the lutar.

Huldran slowly walked out into the darkness, and Selitra laid her head on Gerlich's shoulder, sobbing silently at the old Sybran horse nomads' ballad.

"How about something a bit more cheerful?" suggested Ryba.

"I'll try." Ayrlyn readjusted the lutar and began another song.

When I was single, I looked at the skies. Now I've a consort, I listen to lies, lies about horses that speak in the darks, lies about cats and theories of quarks . . .

"Lies about cats and theories of quarks..." mused Nylan. "They're all lies here, I suppose, at least the quarks."

"You don't think quarks are real here?" asked Ryba. Her hand rested lightly on his forearm, warm in the cool of the mountain evening.

"Who knows what's real, or what reality even is?" he answered.

"Where we are is real."

And that was a definition as good as any, Nylan thought, his eyes taking in the almost luminous ice of Freyja, the needle peak that would dwarf even the most massive tower he would ever be able to raise.

XXII.

"LORD SILLEK LET it be known that he would not be displeased at whoever reduced the squatters' holding on the Roof of the World to rubble and returned the seal ring of his father." Terek pulls at his chin as he walks to the tower window.

"He's not taking another army up there," answers Hissl, leaning back from the glass upon the small table.

"We discussed that earlier. In his position, would you? This approach will encourage every cutthroat in Lornth to attack those women."

"What good will that do?" Hissl stands and walks toward the second open window to let the breeze cool him. "Lord Nessil had score three armsmen. Not even Skiodra has that, and you saw how he backed down when he came face-to- face with those devil women. What could a handful of brigands do?"

"Lord Sillek has to do something. The . . . expedition to the Roof of the World was rather . . . embarrassing for Lord Nessil.. ." Terek turns back toward Hissl.

"For his family, you mean?" asks Hissl. "A corpse is beyond embarrassment."

"Young Lord Sillek wishes to avenge his father."

"And to solidify his position?"

"He's willing to grant lands and some minor title to whoever succeeds.

Something like Lord of the Ironwoods, no doubt." Terek laughs. "There are bound to be some who feel that no women can be that dangerous." The chief wizard shrugs. "Besides, there are not that many of them, and for every one that is killed-that will make things easier for Lord Sillek."

"Let us see," muses Hissl ironically. "Lord Nessil lost forty-three armsmen, and those angels lost three. Say there are two dozen left up on the Roof of the World ... why, that means Lord Sillek, or someone, only needs to sacrifice around four hundred armsmen." Hissl's voice is soft and smooth. "And that would be in a battle on an open field. It might take ten times that once their tower is completed.

Do you suppose we could persuade Lord Ildyrom, Lord Ekleth of Spidlaria, and-"

"Enough of your foolishness," snaps Terek. "The lord's stratagem against those angels cannot hurt him."

"Do you believe they are really angels?" asks Hissl.

"It might be in our interests to claim that they are-or at least that they are fallen angels."

"Some of them died. Angels don't die," points out Hissl.

"I believe that was one of the men."

"There were four graves for their own, and there are still two men walking around. That means three of the women died."

"You are rather tedious, Hissl," says Terek.

"I am attempting to be accurate."

"Then let us call them fallen angels. That makes them seem more vulnerable."

Terek pauses, then adds, "And what other... accuracies... might you add? Helpful accuracies?"

"Those thunder-throwers ... I do not think that they will be able to use them for too much longer."

"Would you stake your life on that?"

"Not at the moment. In a year. . . yes."

Terek waits. "Go on. Explain. Don't make me drag everything out of you."

"Only a handful of them are experienced with blades- the leader, one of the men, and one of the smaller women. But they are teaching the others. The thunder-throwers are more effective than blades. So ..." Hissl shrugs. "Why are they spending time learning a less effective weapon? Also, they have begun to build a tower."

"On the Roof of the World? One winter and they'll be dead or ready to leave."

"I don't know about that." Hissl touches his left cheek with his forefinger, and he frowns. "We were wearing jackets and cloaks. The wind was cold. It was still just beyond spring up there. They were in thin clothes, and they were sweating-all of them."

"We will see." Terek pulls at his chin again. "We will see."

"Yes. That is true." Hissl frowns ever so slightly, then smiles.

XXIII.

THE GREEN THAT had sprouted from the hand-furrowed rows of two of the fields rose knee-high in places, waist-high in others, depending on the plants. The potatoes had been planted in evenly spaced hillocks, but the green-leaved plants nearly covered all the open ground of the third field, except along the diagonal line where the water from the storm eight-days earlier had created a trench, since filled in. Behind the fields, the landers squatted, droplets of dew beading and then streaking the metal. Well beyond them were the large cairn and the seven others, including the latest one for Desinada. Already, dark blue flowers grew from between the cairn stones to mix with the red blood-flowers that were fading as the summer passed.

Nylan turned to the west, where, in the dawn, the fog seemed to rise off the squared structure of black stone that dominated the area above the field. The final upper sill of the wall stones stood more than ten times the height of a woman. Rising out of the middle of the tower was a square construction of mortared stones, and at the central point about half the rafters for the roof were connected. The remaining rafters were lined up in the stone working yard below the tower.