The Towers of the Sunset - L. E. Modesitt [164]
Creslin wipes the perspiration off his forehead. But the dampness returns almost as quickly as it is removed, despite the dry air around them.
“I think I can feel it,” Megaera offers.
Creslin nods, his senses halfway out to the winds, out toward the dark clouds that roll toward Recluce from the northwest.
Directly beyond the harbor, the ocean is flat, a prairie of sullen green swells that barely move. Farther north, whitecaps are forming under the wind that precedes the storms. The horizon is dark with clouds, low and roiling.
Barely audible, distant thunder whispers southward toward the couple on the hill’s crest.
. . . mighty storm . . . best-beloved . . .
“You were there. Nothing else worked.” He pauses. “If it’s too much, maybe we can work with Klerris to shift some of the winds.”
“Don’t do anything yet. The patterns have to sort themselves out first.”
“How long will it take?”
“Two or three eight-days.”
“Well,” he laughs. “We could probably use that much rain. It’s been dry for too long.”
“You might regret those words.”
“I might. Let’s walk back.”
Turning away, they stride through the heat toward the cooler walls of the Black Holding, past the unfinished walls of the stable, ignoring the sound of steel on stone and waiting for the promised coolness of the storms to come.
CXIII
HE WAVES TO Narran. “Over here!” The rain seeps through Creslin’s hair and down his neck as he levers the heavy stone into place.
While the foundation of the wall has been replaced, doing so has required carrying rougher boulders from the hillside, since some of the original stones have been buried in mud and clay or carried so far downhill that finding them, let alone retrieving them, is an impossibility.
Narran staggers through the mud with another boulder.
“There.” Creslin points.
Into the gap in the wall goes the stone, and the wiry trooper turns back uphill.
Heading toward the rocky hillside from which the water pours, Creslin steps over the diversion ditch that he, Narran, and Perrta have completed to keep the runoff from again undercutting the wall.
Carrying a stone on each hip, the stocky Perrta passes Creslin without speaking. A gust of wind whips the trooper’s oiled-leather parka half open, and he twists as if to keep the jacket from being blown off his back.
Following Narran, Creslin plods toward the rocky outcropping another fifty cubits uphill, his boots squelching through the red mud that had been unyielding clay less than an eight-day earlier.
Creslin retrieves two boulders, squarish but smaller than those lugged earlier by Perrta, and carries them through the mud to the wall, where he wedges them into place, adjusting one of the stones brought by Narran.
Another trip and the last gap in the upper field wall—and the cause of further field erosion—has been repaired.
“That’s it. Let’s head back.”
Narran glances from Creslin to the gray rain clouds and back. Creslin ignores the look and steps eastward toward the path that winds down to the keep. Rain continues to soak his short hair and to dribble inside his jacket and tunic. Too tired to redirect it away from himself, he methodically puts one foot in front of the other until he is within the keep.
“You look like something dragged from a swamp.” Hyel tosses a ragged towel at Creslin. “Did you have to handle the repairs personally?”
“Yes. I caused this mess, remember? If I just sent people out, how would they take it?”
“They’d do it.”
Creslin wipes his face and hands. “I’m heading back to the holding. There’s not much more that has to be done, and besides, I’m not up to stonework in both the rain and the dark.”
“No one asked you to do it in the rain.” Shierra steps into the room that she and Hyel have come to share as joint commanders of the small, would-be army of Recluce.
“You sound like Megaera.”
Shierra