Four strange women stood by the causeway with the healer, three shifting their weight nervously from one foot to the other, while the shorter dark-haired woman on one end gentled her mount.

Ayrlyn was supervising the unloading. "The barrels of flour and meal go down to the big shelves in the corner off the kitchen."

With that, Weindre carted off a large barrel.

"The saw blade is for Nylan, but put it up on the fifth level. We haven't built a sawmill yet."

Murkassa laughed at the comment as Ayrlyn handed the blade to Berlis.

"He says he will-then he will." Ayrlyn turned. "Speak of the demon."

"I see you got the saw blade."

"Just one, and it was nearly a gold itself, and I had to promise that it was going up on the Westhorns. That was an easy promise."

"I see you brought some recruits. We picked up one-with a daughter."

"Word is getting around." Ayrlyn gestured toward the tower. "Selitra went to find Ryba."

"I suppose you took them all." Gerlich stepped up beside Ayrlyn.

"Hardly. I must have been approached by a dozen women. I settled on these four."

"Only four. Imagine that."

"Don't push it, Gerlich," Nylan said quietly. "I haven't seen too much game lately, and you don't offer much besides that."

"Game is scarce." Gerlich eased away to the other side of the cart, frankly appraising the three women. Relyn stood beside Cessya, an ironic smile on his face, his semihook resting on his belt.

Nylan still had to make and deliver the clamp for the one-armed man-another area where he'd fallen short, but he didn't have the smithy working.

With the sound of hoofs on the short stretch of pavement heading up toward the stables, the engineer turned. Ryba sat easily on the roan, though Nylan knew riding was slightly painful, but not so painful as their uneasy peace, a peace held together by separated couches, necessity . . . and Dyliess.

All four women turned to Ryba as well, the tallest shivering enough that her discomfiture was obvious to all the guards gathered round.

Ryba reined up, but did not dismount. "So you wish to join the guard of Westwind?"

"If it pleases you, Angel," answered the dark-haired woman, the shortest of the group.

"That's Ydrall," whispered Ayrlyn. "She even had her family's permission, and brought a few things we could use-needles, a few silvers . . . and some dried fruit from their trees-pearapples, they're called. She rides well and can use a blade."

"I'm no angel. I'm the marshal of Westwind. If you choose to remain here, you will have to fight for it. It appears half the men in Candar would wish to beat you down and to tear down our tower stone by stone. Are you willing to fight them, even if they are cousins?" Ryba's voice was hard. "If one is your sister's consort?"

Ryba straightened in the saddle. "If you are that determined, you may share what we have, and we will teach you the way of the blade and bow."

The four nodded, and several quietly said, "Yes."

Ryba's eyes turned to Gerlich for a moment, then passed to Fierral. "Will you make the arrangements, guard leader?"

"Yes, Marshal." Fierral turned to the four. "Bring your gear, your things, with me, and we'll find you space on the third level . . ."

As Ryba turned her mount back up toward the stables, and as the four left following Fierral, Nylan remarked, "Too many more, and we'll have to start making bunks and mattresses or pallets."

"We'd better start now," answered the healer. "I've avoided any large towns, places where there would be armsmen, but everywhere I've been, there are women ready to leave. There aren't too many in any one place, but. . ."

"I'm glad you avoided the armsmen. It has to be getting more dangerous."

Nylan added quickly, "What do we make mattresses from?"

"I tried not to be too obvious . . . and thank you for saying that you care." Ayrlyn smiled as Nylan swallowed, then said, "Grasses might do for mattress filling, if they're dried well and thoroughly debugged, but we don't have that much cloth to cover them, or sew them."

"I wouldn't sew them all the way," suggested Nylan. "Leave an end open so it could be folded shut. That way-"

"That makes sense. We could tuck dried flowers in there. They might help."

Ayrlyn glanced at Cessya. "We need to finish unloading the cart."

Nylan shifted his weight from one sore foot to the other. "I've got more brickwork to do, and I need to raid a lander lock. Maybe I'll do that first."

"A lander lock?" asked Ayrlyn.

"Something I promised for Relyn."

"That's something I like about you, Nylan, another thing," Ayrlyn said before turning to Cessya. "You keep your promises."

A small face peered out the window from the great room, and Nylan waved to Niera. Was she helping with the infants? Or just keeping their mothers company or running errands?

Niera gave the smallest of waves, then ducked back from the window. Nylan crossed the causeway and headed inside.

After reclaiming a tool kit from the fifth level of the tower, Nylan trudged uphill to the lander used for grass storage. "I promised him eight-days ago, longer." He shook his head.

The lander door was ajar, as always, since the lock mechanism had been disconnected and the lock plates removed, and most of the guards didn't bother using the sliding bolt that had replaced the automated system.

After removing three access plates, and sneezing intermittently the whole time from the hay and grass dust that rose every time he moved his boots, he found something that might work-more like an inside lock-plate shim with large screw holes at each end. If he could bend a control arm. That meant removing another access plate and disconnecting the other end of the rod.

Nylan was sweating, his tattered work shirt soaked through, by the time he had all the miscellaneous parts he needed-or thought he needed. But he smiled as he carried them, and the tools, back to the smithy where Cessya greeted him.

"Now that we stowed the trading goods, the healer said I'm supposed to make myself useful, ser," she announced, "and I've got no interest in pulling weeds or sawing timbers. What, do you need?"

"More mortar." Nylan grinned. "Are you sure you want to make yourself useful here?"

"Grinding that lava rock for mortar is better than grubbing through the mud or having that fir sap fall all over you. The rock dust washes off. Besides, what you do lasts, and I can say that I helped do it."

"Well ... I appreciate that honesty. We'll all learn, you and Huldran and I, how to build and operate a smithy."

"Sounds good. I'll be back in a bit. I need to get those mallets and a bucket of water." Cessya inclined her head and was gone.

Nylan set the tools and parts in the corner. Because he needed some of the cruder and heavier tools in the lower level of the tower, he'd start work on Relyn's knife-holder-grip after the midday meal, hoping he wouldn't need to actually forge it, but just bend metal.

He looked around the unfinished smithy. With Cessya's help, it might not be that long before they had the building and the forge done. The charcoal was another story, and trying to forge metal was going to be a disaster.

"A smith, yet? Probably not..." He shook his head, then began to carry in bricks.

LXXXVI.

NYLAN STUDIED THE completed rear wall of the would-be smithy, and took a deep breath. He was getting tired of the building that seemed endless. His eyes flicked to the high puffy clouds. Would it never end?

His mother had been right, though. No one else cared about his troubles, except Ayrlyn. He smiled, tentatively, then blanked his face at the sound of boots on the road.

"How soon will you have this forge operating?" asked Fierral as she stepped within the uncompleted walls.

Nylan glanced around the area, trying to estimate. "A while," he finally said.

"Only have half the walls done. The forge itself. . ." He shook his head.

The guard leader frowned.

"Why?"

"We don't have that long. We're reaching the limits of the blades you forged.

We've never had enough of those bows. And we're getting more and more women showing up. They don't have the training the best locals do. Most of us don't, but we're getting there." Fierral ran her hand through her short-cropped fire-red hair.

"What gives us a chance is your weapons."

"But you need more?" asked the engineer.

"We need more of everything. Arrowheads first. Frigging Gerlich-he took off hunting this morning with a good fifty shafts. Showed how few we have left."

Nylan pursed his lips. Gerlich, again. Now what was the man up to?

"Ser . . ." Fierral asked quietly. "Do you really need a smithy built like the tower?

We just can't wait for that. The locals won't."

Nylan looked around again. "I can put together a forge of some sort in the next few days-I have to have that-and develop a bellows of some sort. And you'll have to help me make charcoal. You can't smith without coal or charcoal."

"Whatever it takes, ser." Fierral's eyes drifted to the practice yard below the front of the tower. "I'm just a guard leader. I'll never be that much more, not like you or the marshal. But the guards, all of the women, they need the weapons."

Nylan understood that the words were as close to a plea as Fierral would ever offer; that, like him, she kept the doubts and fears and concerns held tightly.

"I'll get working on it," he promised.

"Thank you."

Nylan did not sigh until she was halfway back to the practice yard.

LXXXVII.

THE SCOUTS RIDE vanguard nearly a kay before the column that follows, riders under the purpled banners of Lornth and trailed by a far longer column of foot soldiers, levies leavened with professionals from Carpa, Lornth itself, and even from Spidlar and far Lydiar.

As it takes the road skirting the rapids, the army approaches the ford that prefaces the split in the trading road. Less than a kay below the rapids lies the junction of the greater and lesser rivers. Another kay below that is the ford, and beyond that the river flows smooth and deep on its northward course to Rulyarth.

On the east side of the ford, the road splits, the left-hand highway following the river, the right slowly rising into the hills until it reaches the west branch of the River Arma where it follows Arma all the way to the city of Armat, capital of Suthya.

By straining, Sillek can see the edge of the fields in the flat below and to the northwest of the hills through which the road passes and the river rapids pass.

Those fields are a lighter green than those in Lornth, and half the ground shows brown where the crops have not spread so early in the year.

With the wind out of the east, occasional drops of moisture fly from the rapids to the road, and more than once Sillek looks to the clear sky in surprise, before turning his head toward the dull roaring of the river.

On Sillek's right rides Ser Gethen. Behind them, flanked on each side by hard- faced armsmen, ride Terek and Jissek.

"Fornal was reluctant to remain at the Groves," says Gethen.

"Someone we can trust has to," answered Sillek easily.

"Don't speak of trust loudly, Lord Sillek. Soldiers might presume that such planning implies an expectation of failure." Gethen laughs. "Call that the insight of an old man."

"You're scarcely old, with those few gray hairs," points out the younger man, looking to the low hill beyond, the last hill before the ford. His face tightens as one of the scouts in the van pauses his mount at the hill crest, then turns and gallops back toward the main force.

"I'd say that means a Suthyan force holds the ford," Gethen says.

"Probably."

They continue to ride toward the messenger.

"Suthyans, Lord Sillek," announces the rider in the purple tunic.

"How many?"

"Not more than score twenty, I'd say. Two- to threescore mounted, and none are archers."

Sillek nods. "Stay back on the hill. Don't let them see you. We'll be there presently."

"Yes, ser." The messenger heads back toward the five other scouts.

"What do you plan, Lord?" asks Gethen.

"To destroy them," answers Sillek.

"You have more than enough forces to make them retreat." Gethen turns in the saddle to survey the more than two thousand troops following.

"If I let them escape, then I'll have to fight them later."

"They are outnumbered, and will fight desperately, and that will cost you disproportionately," advises Gethen.

"In a head-to-head battle, yes."