“I’ve warned them,” added Fierral, “but it does get lonely.”
“I would make you less lonely …” volunteered Narliat.
Fierral shot a look at Narliat, who immediately glanced at the darkness beyond the fire.
“He’s learning Temple fast,” laughed Ayrlyn. “Even if it’s not that different from Anglorat.”
“Too fast,” said Fierral.
“Supper’s ready,” called Saryn. “Such as it is.”
At the call of supper, even Gerlich and Selitra reappeared, no longer quite hand in hand.
Nylan followed the others, getting his helping of mush and chunk of blackened rodent, as well as a few berries and a chunk of wild onion. The roughly circular wooden platter was the result of a collaboration between some of the marines and Narliat.
He sat farther from the fire, on a boulder overlooking the landers, using his fingers and a crudely carved spoon he had made. The slightly charred rodent was tastier than the mush, but he ate both, and washed them down with water from the plastic cup he had claimed and kept.
Beside him, Ryba ate, equally silent.
After he finished, Nylan stood. “I’m going to rinse this off, and rack it, and wash up. Then I’m going to collapse.”
“Wait for me.” Ryba finished her last mouthful of mush. “I won’t be too long. I have to check with Fierral to make sure the sentries are set.”
“All right.” Nylan walked over to the side branch of the stream, diverted for the purpose of washing, and rinsed off the wooden platter, then used the scattering of fine sand to wash his hands. After that he rinsed them and splashed off his face.
“Next,” said a voice.
He looked up to see Ayrlyn standing there. “Sorry.” He stood and moved away from the stream.
She smiled. “You don’t have to be.”
“You’re doing well with Narliat.”
“He figures he’d better do well. He doesn’t have anywhere else to go. Besides, he likes the ratio of men to women.”
“Has anyone …?”
“Right now, Ryba would have their heads, but that won’t last. She probably knows that, too. She thinks of everything.” Ayrlyn paused. “Just be careful, Nylan. She uses everyone.”
He nodded, hoping the darkness would cover his lack of enthusiasm.
Ayrlyn bent to rinse her platter, and Nylan walked to the lander, passing a pair of marines on the way. One was Huldran, the stocky blond who helped with stone-cutting; the other a solid brunette whose name he had not learned.
“Evening, ser.”
“Good evening, Huldran. Are you on sentry duty?”
“Not tonight. Not tonight.”
Once in the forward area of the lander, Nylan pulled off his boots. Then he sat in the darkness for a time barefooted, before he pulled off the shipsuit that, despite careful washing, was getting both frayed and stained.
When Ryba still did not appear, he finally stretched out, folding the cover back to just above his waist. His shoulders and his forearms ached, and his feet hurt. He also worried about Ryba-their relationship. A lot of the time she was distant, commanding, just like he imagined an antique nomad-liege of Sybra. Of course, that was her heritage, and Candar seemed to reinforce those traits.
In the distance, he could hear laughter, but could not recognize the voices.
As his eyes began to close, he heard footsteps on the hard floor of the lander, and he propped himself up on his elbow.
“I told you I wouldn’t be long.” Slowly, Ryba slipped out of her boots, and then out of the shipsuit, and eased under the thin cover. Her lips were cool, but found his, and her skin was like satin against him.
Later-much, much later-they eased apart, although Ryba’s hand held his for a moment.
“Don’t go away.” Ryba rolled away from Nylan. “I’ll be back in a moment.”
“Where would I go?”
She ruffled his hair slightly and pulled on her shipsuit over her naked body, thrusting her bare feet into her shipboots-boots that were beginning to wear, as were everyone’s.
Nylan wondered absently if traders had boots, or if footwear would become yet another problem. He leaned back on the couch, letting the cool air from the door waft over him. Sometimes … on the one hand, Ryba was a good leader, captain, whatever, and she was receptive, sometimes aggressive in sex … and yet … he sometimes felt more like an object than a person.
His eyes closed. It had been a long day, as were they all, and he was barely aware when Ryba returned, slipping off her suit and lying beside him under the thin blanket that was almost too hot.
XVI
THE SUN HAD barely cleared the trees on the eastern side of the sheer drop-off at the base of the meadow when Nylan laid the endurasteel brace and the crowbarlike local blade beside one of Ryba’s Sybran blades. Beneath the blades was a crude quench trough, half-filled with water and the hydraulic oil for which there was really no other use-not for centuries, probably.
Then the engineer walked around the working space outside the base of the unfinished tower construction. Should he consider a dry moat as well? He shook his head. Half the year or more a moat would be a bug-filled mess, and the other half the high snows would render it useless.
“Stop spacing out. Get on with it,” he muttered, turning to the firin cells. The power bank was down to twenty percent,and the system wouldn’t work at levels below twelve. His eyes went to the windmill, which turned in the lighter morning breeze. The cell being charged was over eighty percent. Another day might find it at ninety percent if the wind picked up, if …
Nylan laughed ruefully. Far less than a day of continuous heavy laser usage would discharge one bank of cells, and it would take nearly half a local season to recharge the individual cells in just one of the four banks they had brought down from the Winterlance. The more he tightened the beam and the shorter the energy pulse, though, the less the effective power drain, and that meant some things were less power-intensive. Darkness knew he’d better find less power-intensive ways to use the laser.
With a little more than half the stone for the tower cut, he’d exhausted two banks and most of the third. The emergency charger had recharged three cells, but each bank held ten. Still … he had gotten more proficient with managing the laser’s power flows, and each row of stones took a shade less power. Also, the cut edges and leftover chunks could be used, perhaps for the less exposed inside walls.
Terwhit … terwhit. The call of one of the birds-a green and brown scavenger-drifted across the high meadow from beyond the field, along with the smoke from the small cook fire.
The engineer studied the curves of the Sybran blade again, with his eyes, senses, and fingers, frowning as his senses touched a slight imperfection in the hilt. Then he grinned. Who was he deceiving? He was no bladesmith, just a dumb engineer trying to figure out how to counterfeit a workable sword while no one was around to second-guess him if his idea didn’t work-using questionable techniques in an even more questionable environment.
Terwhit. With a rustle of feathers, the small greenishbrown bird flitted from a twisted pine in the higher rocks behind the partly built tower toward the firs in the lower southwest corner of the high meadow.
Nylan ran his fingers over the Sybran blade again, thenpicked up the endurasteel brace he had unbolted from one of the landers. Again, he forced himself to feel the metal. It also had several imperfections hidden from sight-Heavenbased quality control or not.
Finally, he powered up the firin cell bank, pulled on the goggles and the gauntlets, and picked up the heavy brace. After readjusting the laser, he pulsed the beam, slowly cutting along what felt like the grain of the metal. He pursed his lips, considering the apparent idiocy of what he did-guiding a laser with a sense of feel he could not even define to create an antique blade out of a brace from a high-tech spaceship lander.