"Recluce - 07 - The Chaos Balance" - читать интересную книгу автора (Modesitt L E)

angel crew of the Winterlance.
аа Another dozen steps before him, the causeway melded into the metaled
road. Beyond the road was the expanse of softening snow that stretched in
every direction-eastward to the kay - plus - deep drop-off that overhung
the high forest, and to the mountains that bordered Westwind on the south
and west. Softening or not, the snow was still well over Nylan's head
just about everywhere and twice that in spots. That depth explained the
ski traces and trails that paralleled the road, though many were just
there as remnants of training exercises for the newer guards.
аа 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.
аа 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.
аа 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.
аа 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 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.
аа 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.
аа 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.
аа 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.
аа 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