"L. E. Modesitt - Recluce 04 - The Chaos Balance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Modesitt L E)

though many were just there as remnants of training exercises for the newer guards.
From the mountains to the south rose Freyja; that impossibly ice-needled peak that dominated
the Roof of the World, glittering through the cold green-blue skies.
Nylan, wearing only a light jacket over his smithing clothes, walked slowly out to the road,
nodding at the barely raised patterns in the snow to his right that marked the walls outlining the
outdoor weapons practice yard.
Beyond the practice yard the stones of the road rose slowly to the west, past the smithy he had
built, to the canyon that held the stables carved out of the stone of the mountainside itself. A
thin plume of white smoke rose from the forge chimney. To his left, the road ran eastward for a
hundred paces or so, then curved northward over the stone bridge that marked the channel for the
tower drains and outfalls. Beyond the bridge, the metaled road began to climb the slope to the top
of the ridge, and the watchtower.
Nylan shivered as his eyes traversed the snow-covered slope to the north, east of the road.
Beneath the melting snow lay the ashes that were all that remained of the armies of Gallos and


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Lornth-and of a third of the guards of Westwind. Once the snow melted, in the eight-days ahead, he
hoped that the spring grasses would cover that desolate grayness quickly.
From the east his eyes turned south, toward the hummocks where dark stones had begun to
protrude from beneath the snow. Three large cairns-and twenty-two individual cairns-bore witness
to the harshness of two years of struggle against the lords of Candar and the Roof of the World
itself.
Yet Tower Black held more than the nine survivors of the thirty-one from the Winterlance who
had made planetfall. More than two score filled the six levels of the black stone tower-most of
them women and refugees who had sought a new life on the Roof of the World. Of the seven ship's
officers, there remained four-Ryba, Nylan, Saryn, and Ayrlyn. Of the twenty-four elite marines,
five remained-Huldran, Llyselle, Istril, Siret, and Weindre.
Outside of Daryn, the blond young standard-bearer from Gallos who had been wounded on the north
side of the ridge and protected by Hryessa-no one wanted to cross the spitfire from Lornth-Nylan
was the only adult male remaining in Westwind, scarcely surprising given Ryba's distrust of most
men.
He began to walk uphill between the heaps of snow and ice that flanked the road toward the
smithy. Until an eight-day earlier, the road itself had been covered with that ice and snow,
packed into a thick crust, but with midday temperatures slightly above freezing, Saryn had had the
guards clear the sections near the tower, extending the cleared areas daily- as much to begin
physically conditioning the upper bodies of refugees as for the need to return the road to the
condition necessary for the timber carts that would begin to roll once the way to the high forests
below Westwind was clear.
The smith frowned as he turned off the road and crossed the packed snow, to the door of the
smithy. This winter there had been enough wood for the furnaces, and for hot water in the
bathhouse, unlike the first winter on the Roof of the World. They'd still had to slaughter some of
the sheep for lack of fodder, but only a few.
Nylan eased open the smithy door, closing it behind him, before he spoke to Huldran. "You were
up here early."
"It was noisy this morning. Dephnay was howling, and neither Siret nor Istril could quiet her.
So," the stocky blond guard beside the forge shrugged, "all three were awake. Yours, thank
darkness, don't howl. They just babble. But I don't sleep that well with babbling."