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

"I'm sorry, Huldran."
"It isn't your fault. Istril keeps telling me that, as if every guard doesn't know it."
"She didn't have-"
"Ser . . . you're not perfect and neither is the Marshal, but between the two of you, you've
saved us, and a lot of women on this forsaken planet. No one else could have designed and built
Tower Black."
Nylan reached for the leather apron.
"Not much left in the way of charcoal." The stocky Huldran fed another set of short logs to the
forge fire. "We're back to starting with wood coals."
"Saryn said the wood crews could do a charcoal burn early this spring. She's got enough
bodies."
"Warm bodies we've got," Huldran snorted. "Trained guards we don't, and two of the best are
Siret and Istril." She broke off.
"I know. I know." And Nylan did. Both the silver-haired guards had children less than a year
old, and both children were his-through Ryba's manipulation of the last residue of angel high-
technology. He tightened his lips. While he loved both Kyalynn and Weryl-and Dyliess, his daughter
by Ryba-having been an involuntary and ignorant stud still grated on his nerves.
Yet what could he do? He had to admit Ryba had been right about the cultures that surrounded
them, and angels weren't exactly welcomed anywhere. Nor did he feel right even thinking about
leaving his children, whether he'd been an involuntary stud or not.
Yet Ryba was getting harder and harder to take, and each day felt like a balancing act. Ryba,
former captain of the U.F.F. Winterlance, was now Marshal of Westwind, and undisputed ruler of
that chunk of the Westhorns known as the Roof of the World-a land so high and cold that very few
of the locals could survive more than short stretches outside in full winter. Then, Ryba and all
of the surviving ship's marines-now the guards of Westwind-were full-blooded Sybran, born to an
even colder heritage than the Roof of the World, unlike Nylan and Ayrlyn.
Nylan shook his head and removed his jacket, hanging it on one of the wooden pegs beside the
front double doors. Reminiscing and mentally complaining wouldn't forge blades-and Ryba wanted
more of the deadly weapons he had developed. For her all-too-accurate visions indicated that, in
the seasons and years ahead, scores of women would seek out the refuge that Westwind had become.


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Was that his destiny-armorer of the angels, forger of weapons of death and destruction? And
involuntary stud? So far he'd avoided repeating that-since the great battle-but he could feel the
pressure building.
The smith took the flat and crude shovel formed from lander alloys and eased the scarce
charcoal from the basket across the forge coals. He nodded to Huldran, and the blond guard pumped
the great bellows while Nylan took out his hammers and a strip of lander alloy-not that there was
much left, but he would use it while he could. Then he'd have to figure out another way to make
high-quality blades-if he could.
On the forge shelf rested a local blade-broken and melted around the edges from the devastation
Nylan had created by merging one dying weapons laser with the "order fields" of this unknown
world, so like and yet so unlike the powernets he had ridden as the engineer of the Winterlance.
More than a thousand such local blades were stacked, like cords of wood, behind the smithy. Some
were whole, some partly melted, and some broken.
A wry smile crossed the smith's lips. And a year ago he'd worried about metal stocks?
"Ready, ser?" asked Huldran.