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

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. 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.
аа 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.
аа 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.
аа A wry smile crossed the smith's lips. And a year ago he'd worried
about metal stocks?
аа "Ready, ser?" asked Huldran.
аа "Ready as ever." He laid the alloy on the coals. From bitter
experience he'd learned that, in the initial stages of forging blades,
the softer local iron had to be forge-welded into the alloy, not the
other way around.
аа By the time the midday chimes rang from the tower, they had managed to
flatten the iron of the local blade into the strip of alloy, flatten the
mixed metals, fold them and flatten them once, twice, and three times,
then yet again. A dozen or more such fold-weld-flattenings, and Nylan
would have metal ready to forge into a blade itself. He knew that even
more of the pattern-welding would have been better, but time was short,
and Ryba less than perfectly patient. In any case, the later forge steps
would go more quickly.
аа All winter long he and Huldran had forged blades, spurred on by Ryba's
insistence that every guard-every recruit- should have at least two of
the shortswords that were equally deadly as blades or missiles. All of
the blades were essentially modified copies of the pair that Ryba had
brought down from the Winterlance-the Sybran nomad blades the Marshal and
former captain of the angel ship had carried and practiced with
throughout her service career.
аа "I'll bank the coals, ser, not that we've much to bank."
аа "You up to starting one of your own this afternoon?"
аа "Why not?"
а а "Then dump some logs on the fire."
аа Huldran grinned. "You going to practice after you eat? That's
dangerous."
аа "I'll be careful." Either Saryn or Istril or Siret would single him
out. He and Ryba avoided practicing skills against each other-there was