Fall of Angels

LVII

A low fire, for once, burned in the hearth of the great room.

Ryba sat in the chair at the end of the table, with Saryn on her right and Nylan on the left. Ayrlyn sat beside Saryn, while Fierral sat next to Nylan with Kyseen beside her. Relyn was seated beside Ayrlyn. Gathered around the foot of the first table on the side below Saryn were Gerlich, Narliat, and Selitra. On the side below Nylan were Huldran, Istril, Murkassa, and Hryessa.

“I’d guess you’d call this a status or planning meeting.” Ryba’s breath created a flicker in the candle at her end of the table. “I wanted to hear from each of you about how your efforts are going, and any suggestions you might have.” The marshal looked at Gerlich. “Hunting?”

“It’s getting harder,” Gerlich said. “The deer we do get are thinner. We haven’t seen a snow leopard since the engineer killed his. The big cats have gone to lower grounds-or hibernated. The same for the bears.”

“The old ones say the leopards talk to each other,” added Murkassa.

Her breath nearly guttered out the other candle, and Huldranreached out and moved it more toward the center of the table.

“What about smaller animals?” asked Ayrlyn.

“It takes a lot of effort to catch them, and what good is a hare when we have to forage for more than a score of people?” Gerlich shrugged, looking toward Kyseen.

“You get me three hares, and I can make a meal,” affirmed the cook.

“How are your supplies coming?”

“Not as well as I’d like,” admitted Kyseen. “We’ve been grinding and powdering some of those roots into the flour, and that stretches it. Some of the guards say it’s bitter. What can I do? The potatoes are good, but we’ll finish those off in another eight-day, maybe two, if we only have them every third day.”

“The potatoes are all that stick,” said Huldran. “There’s not enough meat, and the loaves are getting smaller.”

The low moan of the wind outside the great room punctuated her words, and, for a moment, no one spoke.

“Birds?” asked the marshal.

“We’ve got owls and gray-hawks up here. That’s all we’ve seen, anyway,” answered Gerlich. “Neither has much meat, and they’re so quick I don’t see how you could shoot them.”

Ryba nodded and turned to Saryn. “What about the livestock?”

“There isn’t enough grass and hay for the horses and the sheep,” Saryn said. “We’ve cut back on the corn for the chickens, and they’ve cut back on laying. There’s not enough grain for the rest of the winter for them, either.”

“The chickens, they lay little in the winter,” said Hryessa. “I would start killing the older ones and let the young ones live for the year ahead.”

“Can you work that out?” asked Ryba.

Saryn glanced at Hryessa, then at Ryba, and nodded. “That still doesn’t solve the fodder problem.”

“The lander we used for storage is more than a third full,” said Selitra.

“I helped fill that full, I did,” interjected Narliat.

“We’re only about halfway through the winter,” pointed out Saryn. “There’s no forage out there, and there won’t be even after the snow melts.”

“There are the fir branches …” suggested Murkassa. “Goats sometimes eat them.”

“It doesn’t do the goats much good,” pointed out Relyn, “and sheep can’t eat as many things as goats.”

“We’re getting short of food,” Ryba pointed out, “and we don’t have enough food for both sheep and mounts.” Her eyes narrowed. “We can get more sheep, one way or another, if we have to. Without mounts we’re dead.”

“We need twenty mounts,” said Fierral. “And they can’t be skin and bones.”

The marshal turned back to Saryn. “Figure out a slaughter schedule for the sheep-and horses, if need be-that will leave us with twenty mounts, if you can, by the time there’s something for the sheep and horses to forage on. It would be good to have some sheep left, but … we’ll need the mounts more to get through the summer.”

“That’s going to take a day or so.”

“A day or so won’t make any difference. Also, work it out with Kyseen. That’s so she can plan the food schedule to keep everyone as healthy as she can, given this mess.”

Saryn nodded.

“What about timber? Firewood?” asked Ryba.

“We’re almost out of the green timber for making things,” said Saryn flatly. “We’ve got skis for everyone, and you’ve seen the chairs and room panels-and the cradles. That’s about all we can do this winter. We’re running through the stove wood and firewood. We can’t even drag enough wood up from the forest to replace what we’re burning. If we drag up more than we are now, the horses will need to eat more, and some will get lung burn.”

“Should we turn the furniture into heat?” asked Gerlich idly.

“No,” answered Ayrlyn. “That wouldn’t add two days’ heat, and it would be a waste of all that effort. Besides, the impact on people’s morale …”

“Just asking.”

“Try thinking,” muttered Huldran under her breath.

Nylan barely kept from nodding at that.

“Anything else?” The marshal looked around the table.

Gerlich nudged the woman beside him.

“The roof in the showers leaks,” ventured Selitra.

“We can’t do much about that until spring,” Nylan admitted.

“Sometimes the water freezes on the stones. That’s dangerous,” said the lithe guard.

“Getting up on that roof now would be more dangerous,” pointed out Nylan. “And it’s too cold for the mortar to set. We don’t have roofing tar … maybe by summer.”

“I hope no one falls.”

“Is there anything else we can do something about?” asked Ryba. “If not, that’s all. Saryn … you stay. I’d like your estimates on what livestock should be slaughtered and how that might stretch out the feed and fodder.”

As Nylan stood by the window while Saryn provided rough fodder estimates to Ryba, he listened to Hryessa and Murkassa, talking in low voices by the shelves under the stone staircase.

“ … a third of a place filled with hay and grass, and they would start slaughtering now?”

“Would you wait until there was no food, and then kill them all, or have them starve?” asked Murkassa. “These women, they are smart, and the Angel thinks ahead, far ahead.”

Perhaps too far, thought Nylan, turning back to the pair at the table. He hadn’t liked Gerlich’s using Selitra to bring up problems with the bathhouse, either. The engineer forced himself to take several deep slow breaths, then turned his thoughts back to the table, though he remained beside the frosted and snow-covered window.

“I’d say a sheep now, and another one in an eight-day … two chickens … lay in three days … that leaves eight hens and four half-grown chicks.”

“Mounts?” asked Ryba.

“There’s one nag, gelded, barely gets around.”

“See if Kyseen can make something there. Start with the nag, not the sheep. A sheep can give wool and food. A male that can’t work and can’t stand stud-that’s useless.”

Nylan half wondered if someday he’d be just like the poor nag. He pursed his lips and waited until Saryn strode out. Then he stepped up as Ryba rose from the chair. “In short,” he said, “things are bad and getting worse, and it’s going to be a long time before the snow melts.”

“That’s not a problem,” said the marshal. “It’s going to warm up within probably three eight-days. But it’s likely to be almost eight eight-days before there’s any spring growth, even in the woods, that the animals can forage through, or before Ayrlyn can get out and trade for food.”

“Eight eight-days? That’s going to be hard. Really hard.”

“Harder than that. Much harder.” Ryba walked toward the steps down to the kitchen area.