When he finished and racked his hammer in the crude holder, he nodded to Sias. “Add some coal, but don’t use the bellows, and then take a break. Don’t go too far, and watch for me to return.”
The lanky blond nodded. “Ser.”
The angel smith turned, grabbed the floppy hat, no longer soggy, not after the time spent in the dry furnace that was Syskar, pulled it on, and walked quickly past the shed barracks.
In the flat expanse to the north of the corral, well away from where the nearest group of horses-joined on a communal tieline-grazed the sparse and browning grass, Ayrlyn waited beside a spindly contrivance that looked like the wooden framework for a cube with two long poles that joined in a half-basket sticking out behind. In the half-basket rested a roughly cylindrical container that shimmered in the pitiless summer sun.
“Sorry,” Nylan apologized as he hurried up. “You caught me in the middle of a section of tubing.”
“I figured that.” Ayrlyn offered a smile. “So I sent off Jinwer before we were quite ready. We just got the stones set on the frame base.”
“What’s in the…the…”
“Grenade case? Just brackish water. It’s heavier than the alcohol would be, but not that much for something this size. Juusa’s father was a potter. We gave up on glass-blowing. I think it’s probably too thick-walled, but it’s easier to let him see that.” The flame-haired angel gave Nylan a twisted smile.
The smith understood all too well. “Experts” always knew better-even when they weren’t the ones who flew the ships or rode the power fluxes-or built the stills and catapults.
Ayrlyn turned. “Ready?”
“Yes, ser,” answered the two armsmen by the base of the catapult.
“Fire it.”
Sprung! The catapult arm straightened, and the clay container flew perhaps eighty cubits, barely getting as high as Nylan’s head. It dropped onto the dusty ground, then bounced along another twenty cubits before coming to rest against a clump of already-browning grass.
“It’s back to the drawing board,” Ayrlyn said dryly.
Nylan turned. The catapult had flung itself forward.
“I need a better way to anchor the back legs. We can’t carry heavy stones around.”
“The container didn’t break, either, and it has to. Fornal thought I was crazy when I asked about glassblowers. Maybe we are.” The smith shrugged.
So did Ayrlyn.
Then, they both grinned at each other.
LXXIX
As the squads rode southward, following the back trail, the sun poured its heat through the green-blue sky.
Nylan took another long swallow, finishing the water in the second bottle, then recorked it and replaced the bottle in the holder. The heat just baked the moisture out of him, and he was always facing dehydration. He blotted his forehead with his forearm, then half-stood in the saddle, trying to stretch the muscles in his thighs and legs.
He turned in the saddle. With no breeze, the yellow-gray dust raised by the single squad they had brought died away quickly, and he could see no signs of other riders, such as white lancers. In fact, he saw little except hills covered with browning grass, grass that got sparser with each key they rode southward.
Riding to his right, Ayrlyn juggled the crude map, her eyes going from map to trail and back again.
“How are we doing?”
“If the map and the scouts are right, we should be reaching a stream before too long.”
“Hope so.” His eyes dropped to the two empty water bottles. A third-still full-was fastened to his saddlebags.
Ahead, the trail seemed to wind over and around yet another set of brown-grassed hills. With each hill they passed, another set appeared, almost as if they stretched to a horizon they would never reach. The last tree had been kays behind them, not all that far from Syskar.
“Have faith,” Ayrlyn said with a laugh.
“I have faith. Faith that everything will work out in the most difficult manner possible.”
“That’s skepticism, not faith.”
“I have faith in skepticism.”
Tonsar cleared his throat but said nothing.
From the riders behind came a low hum of words barely above a mumble, words their speakers did not wish to reach their leaders. Nylan could guess at the general tone and content.
Nylan had drunk a third of the last water bottle, and the sun hung nearly overhead when the trail suddenly dipped into a depression, not quite a gorge because the slopes remained mostly grass-covered, with some smooth boulders protruding in places where the narrow and winding stream had undercut the ground.
“See?” Ayrlyn grinned at Nylan.
“So Siplor, he was right,” said Tonsar.
“Good.” Nylan glanced south and then west, but nothing moved. There were only the brown-covered hills and the sun-and them.
“Make sure that all the water bottles are filled-upstream from here-and all the mounts fully watered,” ordered Ayrlyn.
“It’s going to take awhile,” noted Nylan, with a glance at the stream, not more than a cubit wide. “And we’d better use whatever you call that water ordering.”
“I’d planned to.”
Tonsar turned his mount and stood in his stirrups. “Watering time! Take turns! Do not foul the water, and fill your bottles upstream. Keep your mounts’ hoofs out of the stream!”
A low murmuring rose and faded. The burly armsman eased his mount back toward the two angels.
“This is the last stream, then?” Nylan dismounted and stood on the dusty bank beside a scrubby gray-leafed bush while the mare drank.
“That’s what the map says,” Ayrlyn said after dismounting. “It vanishes a few kays south of here, and the trail turns west and intersects the main road from Lornth to someplace called Syadtar. The mines are on the road, and I’d guess it was once a trading road before the Cyadorans closed off free trading.”
Nylan looked at Tonsar.
The armsman spread both hands. “I do not know. I am from north of Lornth, closer to Carpa. Siplor, he be from a hamlet east of Clynya, and he says that there are no more streams, but…”
Nylan unstrapped his three water bottles and glanced toward Ayrlyn. “You want to watch the mounts while I refill ours?”
“You can carry six?”
“I’ll manage.”
“Three water bottles each?” Tonsar balanced on a thin strip of gravel beside where his gray slurped up the stream.
“It’s cooler where we come from,” said Nylan. “Remember?”
“But this…this is not even full summer.”
“I can’t wait,” said Ayrlyn dryly.
Nylan carried the bottles southward, upstream, trying to ignore the commotion behind him.
“Stop mucking the water, Ungit…”
“…keep that beast’s ass away from the water…”
“…take the reins…get water for us both…”
Whhheeeeee…eeeee…
Nylan shut out the noise and concentrated on filling each water bottle and using his control of the order fields to ease the residual chaos-bacteria? — from each.
When they resumed riding, heading westward, Tonsar began to study the horizon, then the trail behind, then the trail ahead, then to stand in the stirrups and peer ahead again.
“Settle down, Tonsar,” Ayrlyn suggested mildly.
“South of the mines, that is where we will end up,” predicted Tonsar as the short column continued westward on the trail that might have once been a road. “And there will be white demons everywhere.”
“We’re already south of the copper mines,” Ayrlyn answered, “and we haven’t seen a single white demon. We won’t, either. Not unless we see a huge cloud of dust, and if they have that many riders, they won’t be able to keep up with us.”
Tonsar pointed westward, toward a spiral of dust. “The white demons…at least we will perish with honor.”
Ayrlyn’s eyes semiglazed, and she swayed in the saddle as the mare carried her westward and as Nylan eased closer to her. He always worried when she did that.
After a time, she straightened and turned to the burly armsman. “Tonsar, that’s just a dust devil. Besides, with what we’re working on, if the Cyadorans aren’t afraid of us yet, they will be.”