by Garon Whited
Now I could keep it open long enough to learn something. So I did.
Dropping a void-proofed rock through the gate—or, rather, pitching it like a record-breaking fastball—got the rock, firmament spell and all, from the ring gate to the lunar barrier. The rock didn’t stop at the barrier, but it did slow down markedly. This was a distinct change from what I knew of the world’s firmament. The moon has a much better shield. Maybe it’s the upgraded, latest version of a firmament before Rendu locked the tower of the gods.
The rock, meanwhile, although slowed by the shield, gained speed again as gravity took over and sucked it down to the lunar surface. It took quite a while, which told me some things about the atmosphere.
Okay, so, that’s settled. Getting through the barrier shouldn’t be a problem. With a gate opening just above the shield, we might even bypass the whole void-sailing ship idea. Oxygen gear and parachutes, maybe? It wouldn’t be easy to send elves through one by one, but it’s not like they were reproducing faster than I could send them.
I did like the idea of a void-sailing ship. The gate and parachutes method struck me as a more Wile E. Coyote method. Strangely, it was probably more practical of the two. Assuming, of course, the atmosphere, temperature, pressure, and other factors allowed for it. I’ll need to talk to Diogenes about environment probes. Weather balloons, maybe, with the appropriate sensors and telemetry systems. It’s not keeping my word if I send the elves back only to go splat. Technically, I guess, but I don’t like keeping a promise technically.
Anyway, I want sever gadgets, so it’ll take some time for Diogenes to build them.
In the meantime, I headed off toward the potential slave-camp of colonists to check on them. Last time I was here, I told them to get out and stay out, but I get the impression they were religious nuts looking for a place to settle. Never argue with religious fanatics. They’ll pull you down to their level.
True to form, they were still parked where I last saw them. There didn’t seem to be anyone new, but they renovated and rebuilt, turning broken-down old ruins into a thriving little village. They were placed in a good spot from a farming standpoint. A stream ran nearby and there were two large parks they already cleared and plowed and planted. More ground was being reclaimed as they pulled up paving stones and hauled away rubble. Not at that exact moment, of course—it was nearly midnight. But the signs of their labors were clear.
At least no one came by to kidnap or kill them. Yet.
Bronze thought it might be a good idea to steal them, drag them off to Apocalyptica and make them rescued refugees. I leaned forward and patted the side of her neck.
“You can’t rescue stupid, sweetheart. Hopefully, not all of them are stupid. The survivors—if there are any—will find somewhere else to go. Besides, I don’t like the idea of adding religious nuts to the Apocalyptica garden. There are enough blooming idiots there already.”
Bronze was dubious about there being survivors, but didn’t make an issue of it.
Just to be certain of their current safety, Bronze took me through a wide arc around their village. Nobody lurked in the woods, nobody came down the road, nobody yelped in terror and ran. I would say I was disappointed in nobody, but that’s not exactly true.
We went back to the Great Arch. Since I had my Diogephone on me, we could leave through the Arch. It doesn’t dial out to anywhere but Tamaril, but it makes a perfect locus for incoming gates. A transfer of the micro-gate connection works perfectly. Once it settled down, Bronze and I went back to Apocalyptica.
Apocalyptica, Friday, November 7th, Year 11
Seldar is quite pleased with the peace and contentment of the nobility. It’s almost as though they’ve all decided to stand together, shoulder to shoulder, backing the Bright Queen in this time of our nation’s crisis. Solidarity, that’s the word I want. They love her. Just ask them and ignore any forehead sweat.
It’s likely the word from Socara and Peleseyn got around. Most of the current nobles were witnesses when the Demon King announced a ruling Queen. There’s an old adage about not attracting the attention of anything immortal and every one of them knows it.
Torvil and Kammen are enjoying the miniatures and the wargame. Liam isn’t too good at it, but he’s learning. I should look into publishing the thing. The rules aren’t too intuitive and the mechanics fairly complex, but the accuracy is quite high. One drawback is the paperwork involved. It’s more complicated than Warhammer. Tracking the elements of every unit is tedious. It would go better as a computer-based game, not a board game.
Torvil is pleased with the game. It takes his mind off being seasick. Kammen finds this amusing. When I spoke to them on the mirror, Kammen kept chuckling and chomping away at a strip of dried meat while Torvil turned green. There’s nothing quite like your best friend mocking you in your misery.
Everything was going well, so I did my best not to screw it up.
Still, when the fleet started to navigate the Straits of the Fang Rocks, I called Mary. We got into our fighting gear, loaded up on weapons, and moved our base of operations to the Niagara site. If necessary, we could target a variable gate to land either or both of us on a fortress.
We watched the hologram Diogenes provided of the sand table. We watched intently as the first ship started through the passage. Activity on the spires and pillars was higher than usual, but a fleet was going by, single-file. That’s to be expected.
The lead vessel rounded a slight turn and passed by the first of the island fortresses. Then the second ship passed it by. Then the third.
And nothing happened. Four, five, six… fifteen, sixteen… thirty-nine… forty-two… a hundred and nineteen…
Maybe the second fortress?
Nope.
Third fortress?
Also nope.
The fleet spent a couple of days winding their way through the Straits of the Fang Rocks. Nobody launched so much as a thrown rock. Not an arrow, not a single flask of oil, nothing. The pirate king either kept his word or Lissette’s secret assassin squads—the ones even I don’t know about—took care of things. I doubt that last part. We didn’t see corpses, just people watching the ships go by. A few of them waved. The fleet didn’t even get attacked by any magical forces from the kingdoms of light. The worst the fleet encountered was some tough sailing due to the way the wind whistled between the island-pillars.
The passage was uneventful.
When the last of the ships headed for the final island-fortress and open water, Mary turned to me and raised an eyebrow.
“Well. That was certainly… anticlimactic,” she observed. She sheathed both knives.
“What?” I asked. “They kept their word and didn’t attack anybody. It’s not my fault.”
“We’ve been sitting here for the last day and a half, armed and ready to go, and it’s all a false alarm?”
“It’s not my fault,” I repeated. “I had no idea.”
“I think I’m going to blame you anyway,” she decided.
Me, too! Firebrand added. I was looking forward to a melee!
“Lord of the Fangs, indeed! If you weren’t so terrifying, he would have tried something.”
Yeah!
“Hold it, both of you. First, I’m not terrifying.”
Mary snorted derisively and folded her arms. Firebrand emitted the psychic equivalent of a snort.
“Second, I didn’t do anything to intimidate him.”
“Not directly,” she countered. “Do you think he might be worried the fact the wife of the Demon King contacted him about passage? Maybe he considered who he was supposedly dealing with? And maybe Lissette mentioned something about his title vis-à-vis the Demon King?”
“Oh, yes. Now you mention it, I do seem to recall she mentioned mentioning it.”
Ha! Firebrand laughed. There you go!
“All right, all right. Fine. Mea culpa. Mea maxima culpa. I apologize for being a horrifying creature of darkness and accidentally scaring the pirate king of t
he Dragon’s Teeth into keeping his word.”
“That’s better. Now, they’ve got two more days before landfall?”
“Something like that, depending on the weather.”
“Good. Then we can go out to dinner.”
“But—”
“Day and a half,” she interrupted, “sitting here. Being bored. Waiting. Waiting patiently,” she emphasized.
“Paris?” I suggested.
“Paris will do.”
What about me? I don’t care for your civilized dinner and night on the town.
“Elephants?”
I could kill some elephants.
“After dinner,” Mary suggested.
Deal.
Apocalyptica, Sunday, November 9th, Year 11
Mary was right about her patience. She did spend a day and half watching boats sail with nothing exciting to show for it. I appreciated her support and her willingness to simply wait with me. Taking the trouble to go on a mundane trip—“Let’s fly to Paris!”—was a romantic gesture, and one she appreciated.
We went to Harper Valley for our trip to Paris. It’s quite a nice world. The local year is 1981 and seems pretty much identical to the world I grew up in. It has the usual problems, of course, but from my perspective, they seem pretty much under control.
Since it would still be days until the fleet made landfall, there was time to pop through a shift-booth, charter a flight, and make the round trip before watching the invasion.
Flying isn’t my favorite way to travel, but at least we were in a commercial jet instead of an unlicensed supersonic rattletrap with more loose rivets than the pilot. I managed to ignore most of the flight by getting Mary to talk about some of her favorite thefts.
It wasn’t easy to ignore how we were getting awfully far away from this world’s shift-booth. I don’t like to be so far from being able to suddenly depart for Karvalen, so I brought a portable wire gate and some power crystals in our luggage.
Paris was lovely, though. Even in Harper Valley’s 1981, it’s a city of lights and it caters to tourists. The miniskirt and minidress were in fashion, which I thought Mary wore exceptionally well. Judging by the appreciation from everyone we encountered, my thinking was correct.
I did finally notice a peculiarity about Mary and myself. Language, at least for Mary and I, changed somewhere along the line. “Dinner,” to most people, usually means the main meal of the day. For me, it always meant the evening meal, after work and/or school. It does still mean that, sort of, but can also include the after-food, after-sunset hunting. We have a few terms to differentiate between “real” food and bloody meals. Late breakfast. Late lunch. Midnight snack. After-dinner drinks. That sort of thing. But I’ll never hear the word “dinner” in the same way again.
Sometimes I notice how strange things are now compared to how things used to be. The dissonance between who I was and who I am can be disturbing.
After a lovely meal in a formal restaurant—Mary does love the finer things—we retired to our hotel, changed for the sunset, and went out again for another course. It wasn’t too hard to find someone who insisted on relieving us of our money and was willing to use violence to do it. Mary got most of the blood and I sucked up anything she spilled. I also drained the living essence out of him, realizing as I did so that it really hit the spot. I spend too much time living on cloned blood from Diogenes’ medical facilities. I need to make it a point to hunt down more people.
Is that a reflection of how much energy-based work I’ve been doing? Or am I getting hungrier as I get older? I don’t know, but I hope it’s the former. The second option could be disastrous. Either way, though, finding people to eat isn’t usually a problem.
One advantage of a high-tech, computerized society is the ability to find someone worthy of being food—for example, sexual predators. Find me a child molester and I’ll look into his soul to see if he’s been falsely accused or if he needs to be put down. Hell, turn me loose down death row and I’ll see who the unrepentant, murderous evildoers are. It’ll save the State a fortune in electricity costs.
On the other hand, one disadvantage of a high-tech, computerized society is I can’t stay in it for too long. Data builds up over time—murders, blood bank heists, unexplained plagues of fatigue, all that stuff. It’s not too bad in a lower-tech environment, but once they start putting everything into computers, it simply becomes a matter of asking the questions. Questions vampire hunters would ask.
Given a choice, I’ll stick to worlds echoing a period before 1990. Preferably well before.
After our dinners, we returned to our hotel, spent the night, and took the plane back across the Atlantic. No sense in leaving customs officials confused about how long we remained in their country. We might want to visit that Paris again. Mary certainly had a good time, and that’s the important thing.
Back in Apocalyptica, I checked the holographic display of the sand table. Diogenes would have updated me on any significant changes, but I like to see.
The fleet deployed well to the east of Salacia, almost on the eastern border between Praeteyn and Kamshasa. I wondered if the Kamshasans were going to be a problem. They might think a major military force deploying on a beach a mile or so from the border might be cause for concern. Maybe Lissette called ahead and reassured them. They were more likely to listen to her.
I sat, I watched, and I waited.
What I know about amphibious assaults—that is, attacks from the sea—is admittedly limited. I can’t swim, despise boats, and I’m allergic to drowning. Even while I’m dead, I dislike going into the water about as much as I dislike the way I smell in the morning. Nevertheless, I do go into the water when necessary, and I have learned a little bit about attacking from sea to land.
The main points of an amphibious assault consist of getting the ships to the landing area, getting the troops off the ships and onto the beach—whether it’s a beach or a cliff or whatever; getting them on the ground instead of the water—and holding that position against any opposition.
The Karvalen forces managed all that without the slightest trouble.
The fleet sailed into the shallows, dropped longboats, rowed troops ashore, and sent the boats back for more. They shuttled men and materiel from the ships to the shore for most of the day, spreading out slowly, establishing a picket line around their base, putting out scouts, and, if the wizards’ tent was any indication, scrying everywhere for the opposition forces.
Personally, I’d have brought along some pre-made pontoons for a floating dock. The first wave of troops could hit the shore, mount the thing so it doesn’t float away, and everyone else simply marches off the boats. Maybe I should mention the idea to Seldar. It would also be a boon to a retreat, if the enemy showed up in force while trying to disembark.
Thing is, the opposition declined to oppose.
I’m no expert, but it seems to me the easiest and most obvious place to oppose an invading force is at the shoreline. It’s hard to mount a cavalry charge unless your horses are amazing swimmers. Infantry has a similar problem when it comes to marching ashore. Even a few dozen men on the ground, firing arrows, suitably supported by wizards, can take a dreadful toll. The people in the boats don’t have much choice. They’re nothing but targets until they either hit dirt or they’re dead.
Yet, the Kingdoms of Light—in this case, Praeteyn—did zip, zilch, zero, nada, swabo, nothing. I’m not sure Praeteyn even had anybody close enough to look at the landing zone with naked eyeballs.
There were two things I thought about this. Three, if you count the whole “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
Mostly, I thought Praeteyn and the Church of Light were doing one of two things. They might not care at all that they were being invaded and about to be conquered—unlikely, but possible if this whole Church setup was viewed as disposable. The other idea was they might have a Secret Weapon, something to defeat everyone and everything.
I didn’t fully believe the Boojum
regarded this place as disposable. Well, not yet. No doubt he would toss it aside in due course, but not until he sucked everything he could out of it. As a result, I gave some thought to what sort of secret weapon it might be. I hadn’t seen anything like machine guns or artillery, so a simple military superiority was out. They might try to weaponize the blessing of bliss spell, but the number of wizards per capita in the Karvalen army is ridiculously high. Magical defenses run all over the place. The blessing spell might work here and there, like splashes of oil against a shield wall, but it wasn’t going to break them. If there was some super-secret hole card waiting to be played, I couldn’t imagine what it would be.
Which meant a siege. Probably several.
To conquer a kingdom, you have to conquer the cities. That’s where you find the temples, the palace, the nobles. Cities have all the specialized craftsmen and all the money. Kingdoms are ruled from the cities. The roads and canals are the veins and arteries, but the cities are the beating hearts that make it all live.
But what if you can’t take a city? If you camp around it, seal it in, and sit there? The other cities keep on beating, sure, and your forces sit there like a big target. The locals abandon the region, leaving you with no one to steal food from. And, if your forces are extended—say, across an ocean with a perilous region in the middle—you have a hard time resupplying them. If you don’t take the city, you eventually have to pack up and go home.
Could that be their strategy? Sit there behind city walls and outwait the army? It did have some merits. They could continue to carry out their human sacrifices while they waited. The people wouldn’t have much of a morale problem, not with the blessing of bliss keeping them artificially happy. And this was a preemptive war, not a retaliatory one. Lissette had troops out in the field because she ordered them out there, not because they were responding to an attack. And how long would things be calm and quiet in Karvalen when most of Her Majesty’s soldiers—and a goodly number of men from their farms and freeholds—were off in some distant land? Even if they lay siege to a city, how long will they be at it before they take it? Then how long will it be at the next city? How many cities can they take before things fall apart? Two? Three?