"Pay him one copper. I only suggest," Narliat added hastily as Berlis glared at him while Ayrlyn continued wrapping a tape dressing around the wounded marine's thigh.

"Local custom?" asked Nylan.

"It is traditional for treachery. He cannot claim he was not paid."

"Fine. Nylan-you and Ayrlyn take care of it," said Ryba. "Just make sure he understands."

"He already understands," said Ayrlyn. "That's why he passed out."

Ryba pointed toward Denalle and Rienadre. "You two, and anyone else you can round up, figure out how to get these animals up over the ridge and into the grass on the west end. We can use the manure to fertilize the crops-or maybe compost it some way for next year. I'm no herder, but they'll provide meat at the least and maybe wool, if we can figure out what to do with it." She gestured up the ridge.

"Yes, ser." The two nodded and looked at the sheep, then slowly circled downhill of the milling animals.

The herder moaned, and Berlis levered her blade out, wincing, but the point was firm as it rested against the herder's neck. The man's eyes bulged.

"Go ahead. Explain it to him, Narliat," Ayrlyn suggested. She rummaged through the prepackaged medical gear.

"I have no copper."

Nylan fished out the purse he had taken from the dead bandit, extracted the single copper, and handed the worn coin to Narliat. "There."

Narliat looked at Nylan, turned to the herder, then to Berlis. Berlis retracted the sword. The herder swallowed, but did not move.

"Sit up," Nylan commanded in his poor Anglorat-good enough because the herder sat up slowly. "Go ahead," the engineer told Narliat.

"This is your payment. It is full payment for your treachery. There is no other payment, save death, should you reject this coin."

The herdsman gulped, looking toward Ryba. "Kind lady . . . they made me. They would have killed me. My ewes, they are half my flock ... my children will suffer .

.. Take the fowl... take them as my gift, but... the flock . . . ?"

Ryba's eyes were as hard as emerald. "Your treachery has killed a dozen men, not that they were worth much, and one of my marines, who was worth much.

Another has lost the use of her arm, and a third took an arrow in the thigh. Don't talk of suffering."

Narliat looked at Nylan, and the engineer realized that the herder had not understood a word. "Our people have suffered from your treachery," Nylan explained in Old Anglorat. "You helped make that treachery. The marshal has been generous. Will you take payment or death?"

Narliat's slight nod confirmed that Nylan's words met the formula.

"And," Nylan added, though he could not have said why, "do not think to take the coin and reject the offer. Do not take the coin and curse us. For then you will live all your days as though you had died, and you will be tortured endlessly." He could feel something flash before-or from-his eyes.

The herder fell forward in another dead faint.

"Friggin' torps," said Berlis. "Man has no guts. Faints twice, and nothing touched him."

"The . . . mage . . . did," stuttered Narliat. "He-the herder-will never think a dangerous thought again."

"Impressive," said Ayrlyn.

The herder groaned and slowly picked himself up. "The coin ... the copper . ..

please ... please .. ."

Narliat handed him the copper.

"Please . . . can I take my cart? Please let me depart."

"Go on," said Ryba.

The herder looked at Nylan.

"Go. Never forget."

- "No, great one. No. No." The herder shivered as he slowly unstacked the four crates, each with a pair of chickens with reddish-brown feathers. Then he took the pony's reins and untied them from the stake in the ground. Leaving the white banner on the ground, he led the cart away, looking back over his shoulder every few paces.

"We need a cart," Nylan said, looking at the departing herder.

"A cart?" asked Ayrlyn.

"For firewood, bricks, you name it. . ."

"Fine," laughed Ayrlyn. "Saryn and I will work on it."

"You?"

"Why not? If you can build towers and forge swords, surely two of us can find a way to build a simple cart."

"Now that you've disposed of those logistics, how did you manage that last bit of terror, Nylan?" asked Ryba.

Ayrlyn frowned, but stepped back from the marshal as Ryba edged the roan closer to the engineer.

"What?"

"Terrifying that poor sot."

"He's not a sot, ser," said Berlis. "He's a worthless hunk of meat." Then she paused. "I have to admit that the engineer scared me for an instant, and I didn't even know what he was saying."

"I'm waiting, Nylan," said Ryba lightly.

The engineer finally shrugged. "A little applied psychology and a menacing tone in a foreign accent." His head throbbed slightly as he said the words, and he frowned.

"Psychology, my left toe," muttered Ayrlyn under her breath. "Wizardry, plain and simple."

Nylan flushed, but Ryba had eased her mount back slightly and missed the byplay. The engineer said more loudly, to catch Ryba's ear, "I still need to go down and check the brickworks. There's nothing I can do here right now, and I want to get the tower ready to live in."

Ryba opened her mouth, closed it, then said, "All right. I trust you'll use your senses to scout the way."

The slight emphasis on "senses" was not lost on the engineer, and he nodded. "I will, Marshal."

"Thank you, Honored Mage." She flushed at the title. "And Istril and Siret can ride with you." She laughed. "The silver angels."

Nylan frowned before he realized that the three of them all had the bright silver hair created by the underjump that had brought them to the Roof of the World.

"Siret can take Llyselle's mount," continued Ryba. "You can try one of the captured ones. They look spiritless enough even for you."

Nylan nodded. "That's fine."

".. . what was all that about?"

Nylan caught the question Siret whispered to Ayrlyn as he climbed into the saddle of the old bay.

"A little formality, that's all," Ayrlyn answered Siret in a dry tone.

After settling himself into the saddle, Nylan gingerly flicked the reins of the bay and followed Berlis and Istril toward the descending ridge road. As he bounced along, he wondered why he'd insisted on going to the brickworks. Was he worried that the brigands had found it and damaged it? Or because he had to do something after looking so stupid?

Belatedly recalling Ryba's admonition, he tried to sense beyond the trail that was still not a road, for all the travel between the clayworks and the tower.

Slowly, he caught up with the marines.

"I'll go first," suggested Istril, "then the engineer."

Nylan started to object, then shut his mouth. If anything went wrong, with only three of them, it didn't really matter where he rode. Besides, given all the dead brigands, why would any who had survived stick around?

"Hate this frigging place," said Siret, now riding behind Nylan. "Everyone out to kill us, just because we're women."

"They seem to want to kill me and Gerlich as well," Nylan answered. "And Merlin might have had something to say about it. They don't seem to like any strangers."

"You're different, ser." Siret's voice held less anger. "The men here . .. they're not human."

"Even Narliat?"

"He's the same as the rest. He's just scared stiff of us, especially the captain, the second, and you, ser. Especially you, ser."

Why him? Ryba was far deadlier than Nylan. Why, Nylan couldn't hit someone with a slug-thrower at nearly point-blank range.

The three rode down from the next rise in the rising and falling trail, and when Nylan glanced back, he saw only the sky, the plateau rocks, and the trees. Istril had opened more distance between them, and her head swung from side to side, her head cocked almost as though she were trying to listen for trouble or even sniff it out.

Nylan tried to follow her example, looking, sensing ...

They continued down the winding trail, nearly silently, when a vague sense of unease drifted, as if on the wind, toward Nylan. He squinted, and looked toward the tall evergreens to the left, but the silence was absolute. That bothered him. All he could smell was the scent of pine, of fir.

But there was something . .. somewhere .. .

"Ser!" cried Siret.

Even before her words, Nylan had seen the flicker of motion to the left of the trail. As he yelled "Istril!" he turned in the saddle and drew and threw his blade toward the man who had stepped clear of the thick underbrush and leveled the bow at the slender marine who led the three angels.

In a fashion similar to working the ship's power net and the laser, Nylan smoothed the air flow around the spinning blade, extending its range, and somehow ensuring that the point struck first.

"Uhhh!" The brigand crumpled.

Nylan rode toward the forest, sending his senses into the trees, but felt no others nearby. Siret had ridden up beside him, her slug-thrower out in one hand.

Istril had wheeled her horse, ducking low against her mount's back as she rode up.

Before the engineer and Siret reached the bandit, the figure convulsed, and a wave of whiteness flared across Nylan. He shivered and barely hung on to the saddle as the power of the death he had created washed over him.

"Ser? Are you all right?" Istril reined her mount up beside Nylan.

"He's fine," affirmed Siret.

"Fine . . . now," said Nylan after drawing a deep breath, trying not to shake as he forced himself out of the reflex step-up that he hadn't even realized that he had triggered. He took another deep breath and glanced down at the dead brigand's young face-another man barely out of youth, looking for all the world almost like the one he had stripped farther up the mountain. Brothers? Or did a lot of dead bearded young men just look alike? He took another slow deep breath, wishing he had something to eat or drink.

Why all the bandits? Surely, the word was out that it was dangerous to take on the angels up in the mountains?

"You stopped him. He was going to shoot me, wasn't he?" asked Istril.

"Yes."

"Frigging right," added Siret, the deep green eyes cold.

"How did you know he was here?" asked Istril, adding belatedly, "Ser?"

"I just sort of felt that someone was here." Nylan dismounted and eased his blade from the bandit's chest, then wiped it clean before replacing it in the scabbard that the blade did not really fit. "And I couldn't reach him. Gerlich was right. We need longer-range weapons."

Istril studied him and pointed. "You have your sidearm."

Nylan swallowed. "I guess I really didn't think. So I threw the blade. I hoped it would distract him, anyway."

His head throbbed with the lie. He'd hoped to kill the bandit, plain and simple, and instinctively he'd known that he couldn't have with the slug-thrower. He'd always been a lousy shot. So he added, "I hoped it would kill him, but I wasn't sure I could do it. Not with a pistol." With his uttering of the truth, the sharp throbbing in his skull faded into a dull ache. The engineer rubbed his forehead.

What was happening to him? Throwing blades on a low-tech planet, getting headaches from lies, forging blades with magic-or the equivalent, knowing that he could kill with a blade and not a sidearm. Was he dreaming? Was he dead?

He shook his head. The pain, the aches, the constant tension-they all seemed too real for death or dreams.

"Are you certain you're all right?" Istril's eyes continued to survey the forest to their left, then the cliffs to the right.

"Yes. Mostly." Nylan bent and went through the brigand's purse. A few coppers, and three shiny silvers. A thin gold ring. A beat-up knife. He checked the clothing and boots. "Boots worn through and stuffed with some old leather." He stood and sniffed. "He had to have a mount somewhere."

The engineer cast out his senses again, searching not for more brigands, but the horse. "I'm not sure, but I think his mount is tethered back there."

"What about more bandits?" asked Istril.

"We thought we had them all," said Siret, "and this one popped up."

The engineer shook his head. "There aren't any. Not alive."

"Narliat says you're a wizard, too-a black one. Do you know what that means?"