“You are quite welcome, I assure you. But now, I must be getting ashore, and you must get settled in.”
They returned to the main deck and already it seemed less disorderly than it had moments before. The last of the cargo had been put below and the covers put over the openings in the deck. Jarren escorted Weibelan to the gangway, said Goodbye and watched him walk back to his carriage. They exchanged waves and then the old man was gone. Jarren sincerely hoped to see him again.
The man Jarren assumed was the captain was bawling orders at the men and urging them to hurry, for the tide was about to do something and he did not want to miss it. Jarren had only the sketchiest notions about seamanship, but he was determined to learn as much as he could about it.
After a great deal of shouting by several different men, all the amazingly thick ropes that had been holding the ship in place were untied, hauled on board, and neatly coiled. Meanwhile, other men had produced some long wooden poles and were using them to push the ship away from the dock. It was a very slow process to set such a large mass in motion using nothing but muscle power, but the current seemed to be helping them, and in a quarter of an hour they were a hundred yards from the shore and clear of the other immediate ships.
Once away from the dock, the captain ordered the sails set and this was done quickly and efficiently. The breeze hardly seemed enough to move the ship, but the sails quickly filled, and the vessel was soon sliding through the water at the rate of a slow walk on land. Jarren tried to calculate the amount of force being applied to the sails but could not seem to do the figures in his head. He was too excited about being on the way.
The captain skillfully guided his ship out of the harbor and came so close to one of the huge towers guarding the entrance that Jarren could actually see some of the mechanism that raised and lowered the great chain that could bar the entrance. Once past the harbor mouth, the wind freshened considerably and more sails were unfurled. The waves were much bigger, too, and the ship rose and fell in a gentle rhythm. From time to time, a wave would hit the bow in such a manner as to throw spray on the deck. Jarren found it exhilarating. He could see Gez scrambling around the ship like a squirrel, obviously enjoying himself even more than Jarren.
Eventually, there was a call for dinner. Gez went to find the galley and get them their meal while Jarren returned to his cabin. Gez appeared shortly with two bowls of some sort of stew, bread, and mugs of a watery ale. The boy gulped his food down and then went out on deck again. Jarren took a bit more time, but was soon finished, too. He leaned back on his bunk feeling quite content. Then he remembered the gift from Weibelan’s wife and took it out. He scanned over the music and tried to imagine what it would sound like. While he was doing so, the ship took on a slightly different motion. Jarren did not notice immediately, but rather suddenly he found his head spinning and the notes on the paper impossible to read, He looked up and noticed the lamp hanging from the ceiling and how it swayed to and fro, to and fro… He was sweating rivers…
His stomach heaved and he grabbed the empty bowl his stew had been in and quickly refilled it. More than filled it. He was scrambling to find another container when Gez returned.
“Do you need any…oh gods! I’m gonna want another copper to clean that up, Mister!”
* * * * *
The wagon took another nasty bump and Matt was thrown against Sergeant Chenik again. The man was quite a bit larger than Matt, and the impact scarcely moved him. He arched a bushy eyebrow and helped Matt sit upright again. The shackles they all wore made movement difficult. Matt squirmed around to try to find a more comfortable position, but there just weren’t any. A week in the prison wagon had rubbed him raw in several spots. And it stank. They were not let out nearly often enough. Or fed often enough. Nearly all of them had sunk into despondency. Including Matt.
He still could not believe this was happening. No one had listened to their pleas or their warnings about the Kaifeng. The authorities were convinced they were just deserters making up wild tales. It was enough to drive a person mad—and it nearly had.
“Hey! I think I see something!” said one of the troopers, suddenly. The man had his face pressed to the small, barred window on the side of the wagon.
“What?” asked several troopers simultaneously.
“Buildings, a church steeple. A pretty big one. Lots of buildings! A city!”
“Has to be Berssenburg,” said Matt.
“About bloody time,” said Chenik.
“Yes!” said Matt. “Now we can finally get someone to listen to us.”
“Assuming they don’t just hang us first,” said another trooper.
“They won’t,” said Matt. “Don’t worry, men, we’ll get out of this soon enough.” Matt wished he felt as confident as he tried to sound. Surely someone would come and talk to them. And sooner or later, they would find out the truth about Fort Pollentia. He just hoped they did not find out about it the hard way.
The wagon rattled on, and soon everyone could see buildings lining the streets. There was no doubt they were in a sizable town. After a week in the wagon, it seemed as though it took forever to cover the last few miles to their destination. But finally, they turned through a gate in a stone wall and lurched to a halt. After another agonizing delay, the door was unlocked and swung open.
“All right you scum!” snarled the leader of the gendarmes. “Get your asses out here and be quick about it!”
They were not quick about it, but they did get out, glad to breathe some free air. Matt looked around and concluded they were in one of the forts that ringed the capital. A squad of musketeers commanded by a sergeant waited to take charge of the prisoners. The sergeant seemed to be cut from the same cloth as the leader of the gendarmes had been.
“Right this way, gentlemen,” he bellowed. “We have a nice comfy cell waiting for you and a very efficient gallows. We’ll have your heads up on pikes in no time.” He and his men laughed most unpleasantly. Matt and his men shuffled in the direction indicated. As he got close to the sergeant, Matt tried to talk to him.
“Sergeant…”
“Shut your trap and keep moving!”
“Sergeant…”
The man shoved him and that was the last straw. Matt whirled around and put every ounce of strength he had into his best parade ground bellow.
“Sergeant, you will stand at attention when addressed by an officer! You and all of your misbegotten curs! Do you understand me?!”
Years of training and discipline took hold where courtesy and reason could not. The man instinctively snapped to attention for an instant. Only for an instant, however. Then his face began to turn red and he started to draw his sword. “Why, you miserable…”
“Sergeant, it is going to be your head up on a pike if you don’t shut up and listen to me! Now, you are going to go and tell your commander that Lieutenant Krasner of the 18th Dragoons has an urgent message for Colonel Fezdoorf from Major Macador! You tell him that or by all the gods, I’ll see the flesh flogged right off your bones!”
“And he’ll do it too,” added Sergeant Chenik into the ringing silence that followed.
The musketeer sergeant stood frozen for a long, long moment, staring at Matt. Matt held his eyes and refused to blink. The sergeant blinked first. “We’ll see about this,” he snarled. “But for right now, you go in the cell! Move them out!”
“Thank you, Sergeant. I’ll be sure to mention your cooperation in my report.” Matt turned and marched away with all the dignity he could muster. The rest of his dragoons followed, looking proud despite their rags and their chains. Their guards all looked distinctly uneasy.
But they were still put in a cell that was much too small and none too clean, and it was still hours before anyone came to see them. Matt looked up anxiously when he heard the outer door open, and he sprang to his feet when he saw a familiar white coat with gold braid upon it.
It wasn’t Fezdoorf, but it was his adjutant, Lieutenant Lerner. “What in all the hells
is going on?” he snapped. “Why aren’t you men back at the fort? I got some crazy message that Lieutenant Krasner was here, wanting to see the colonel.”
“I am here, sir,” cried Matt. “And you have to let me see the colonel!”
Lerner blinked and looked hard at Matt. They had only met a few times, and Matt prayed that he would recognize him under all the dirt.
“Krasner? Is that really you?”
“Yes, sir! And none of us here are deserters! Can you get us released—and me to the colonel? It’s terribly urgent!”
Lerner looked at him with a little bit of skepticism. Matt supposed he could not blame him: it wasn’t totally unheard of for an officer to desert. “What’s this about a message to the colonel from Macador?”
Matt took a deep breath. “Major Macador is dead, sir. Or maybe a prisoner. The Kaifeng have overrun the fort. These men and I only just managed to escape. We tried to get back here to give a warning, but we were arrested as deserters. No one would believe that the fort had fallen.”
The way Lerner’s eyes kept getting bigger and bigger, it was clear he was having a hard time believing it, either. Matt glanced nervously at the other dragoons. On the long journey in the wagon, they had finally agreed to not say anything more about the fireflies. That had always seemed to be the part of their story the listeners found the hardest to swallow. So their new story was simply that the Kaifeng had attacked in overwhelming numbers, filled the moat with their own dead, and swarmed into the fort despite a valiant resistance. Once they were out from under arrest, then—maybe—they could tell someone about the fireflies.
“Well, w-where’s the rest of the regiment?” squeaked Lerner, finally.
“We’re all that’s left, sir. There might be a few other survivors, but I don’t know where they are.”
“Oh, gods,” hissed Lerner. “The colonel’s going to go mad.”
“Please, sir, can you get us out of here?”
“Uh, yes, yes, the colonel will want to speak with you—once you’ve been cleaned up a little. Wait here and I’ll go speak with the commandant.”
“Wait here?” said Chenik after Lerner had gone. “As if we could do anything else.”
“Patience, Sergeant,” said Matt.
But the delay was severely trying even Matt’s patience before they were finally released. It was nearly two hours before Lerner returned with the order to get them out. Their cell was unlocked, and then more time spent finding keys that would unlock their shackles. At last it was done, and they walked painfully back out into the sunshine.
“I’m not sure how I’m going to get you to the colonel,” said Lerner. “I only have my horse. And as for getting you cleaned up and properly dressed…” Matt was not too concerned about all of that, but he could see that Lerner could not be diverted from proper routine.
As they neared the gate, they saw that the prison wagon they had come in was still there. The door to the guardhouse was open and the gendarmes were drinking and exchanging tales with the musketeers. Apparently they would not be starting back to Havverdor until the next day. One of them caught sight of the liberated prisoners and cried out in surprise. A few moments later, they had all crowded out the door to gawk at them. Fortunately, Lerner’s splendid uniform gave them an aura of authority they had completely lacked on the way in.
“Open the gate, Sergeant,” commanded Lerner.
“Yes…yes, sir!” said the startled man. He snapped a few orders and the gate was quickly swung open. Matt and the others were thinking up witty parting remarks when a clatter of hooves seized everyone’s attention. A man in a gendarme’s uniform whipped a lathered horse into the fort so quickly the sergeant had to leap out of the way in a most undignified manner.
The man on the horse reined his mount to a halt and looked about wildly. He and the commander of the gendarmes recognized each other at the same moment.
“Dars! What in the name of all the gods do you think you’re doing?” snapped the commander. “Why are you here?”
“Thanks the gods I found you, sir!” cried the man on the horse. “Kaifs! Kaifeng have attacked the town!” Shouts of alarm came from gendarmes. A chill went through Matt, but he felt a guilty surge of vindication, too.
“What? Are you mad?” said the gendarme leader.
“No, sir! It’s true! Four days after you left, hundreds and hundreds of the savages attacked without warning. The magistrate sent me for help immediately. The rest of the gendarmes were trying to organize a defense when I left, but there were hundreds of the murderous bastards! The…the town was in flames before I got over the next hill.” The man’s voice was breaking and Matt’s satisfaction fled. Havverdor was a town of at least two thousand people.
“Gods,” hissed the commander.
“I rode as fast as I could to get here…but…but…” the man trailed off. Everyone stood there in stunned silence.
“We told you so,” said Chenik.
* * * * *
Atark glanced at his daughter and smiled. Thelena had her head tilted back, her eyes closed, and was letting the wind of her horse’s speed set her long braids flying. She had always loved to ride, and he doubted she had been on a horse once in the four long years of her captivity. The enemy had taken so much from her. He hoped that he could give at least a little of what had been stolen back to her. Some things, sadly, were beyond his powers to restore, but he was determined to do whatever he could. Bringing her on this expedition was just a start.
Atark and Thelena and two score of scores of warriors were riding south at a hard pace. Four days ago, Ka-Noyen Zarruk had moved all the tribes, including the herds, east into the plains beyond the mountains. The other noyens had been wary and nervous, but Zarruk had insisted and they had obeyed. More clans were coming, but until they arrived, their position was precarious and all knew it. Some had urged huddling as close to the mountains as they could while still finding enough grass for the herds. If the Berssians came on in force, they could always retreat back through the pass.
Initially, Zarruk had gone along with this plan, but the very next day, he gathered the noyens and laughed out loud. He said that in the doubts and dark of the night, he had realized that already they had become too dependent on Atark’s powers to do their fighting for them. They had forgotten what had always been the Kaifeng’s greatest weapon.
Mobility.
A Berssian army, under a demanding general, might march fifteen miles on a good day. A purely cavalry detachment might do thirty or thirty-five. A Kaifeng warrior could ride sixty miles in a day and still be fit to fight at the end of it. The Kaifeng could ride rings around the Berssians. They could baffle and confuse the enemy about their plans or intentions, appearing here on one day and then many miles away on the next. Zarruk had presented his plan and it had been a good one.
Two score of scores would ride northeast, burning any villages they found. Atark with another two score of scores would go south, skirting the mountains, to the next pass and destroy the fort guarding it. Zarruk, himself, would take the rest and ride east toward the Berssian capital. Each force would do as much damage and spread as much terror as possible. They were to make sure that many people were left alive to flee and spread panic. The Berssians would not know how many Kaifeng there were or where they were headed. By the time they had it figured out, the limbs of the army would be reassembled and the new tribes would have arrived. Some of the noyens objected to being sent off without Atark’s magic, but the magic would be needed for the fort, and none could argue with that. The others were going off to raid, not fight battles. They could do without the magic for a few days.
So Atark rode south. He had brought Thelena along, although no other women were with them. No one thought to challenge him on matters concerning his daughter. He was not concerned that someone might try to harm her while he was gone—he simply wanted her company.
“We will reach the fort today, Father?” asked Thelena.
“Yes. Before dark. We wi
ll attack immediately. We have no time to lose.”
“We have but eight hundred warriors,” observed Thelena. “You had far more when you took the other fort. Will that be enough?”
“It is a smaller fort and a less important pass. The garrison is not nearly so large. With the magic, we shall have enough.”
“I look forward to seeing you work the magic. I have seen the results, but not the working of it. Do you really think I might learn some of your magic?”
“I think it is possible. You always seemed to have the talent. I will try to teach you—but be warned: it is not a quick or easy process.”
“Over the years I have learned patience, Father.” A shadow passed over her face and Atark frowned.
“Good. That puts you ahead of most of the other shamans. They refuse to believe that I cannot teach them everything in a day or a month. Fools.”
Thelena was silent for a while, but he could tell she wanted to ask him something. They jogged along for a few miles and finally she asked her question. “Father, you have said nothing of how you survived the Varag’s dagger. Or of how you gained your powers. When I saw you on the fort’s walls, being cheered by the men, I thought it was a miracle.”
“Perhaps it was, daughter.” He paused to marshal his thoughts. “I have told no one else, but you deserve to know. I found…something…in the mound there on the plains. Call it a ghost, if you like. It had once been a mighty shaman. It healed me and then taught me the magic. Not a very good explanation, I’ll admit, but the only one I have.”
Thelena’s expression of surprise became one of deep thought. “Tales usually paint ghosts as frightening or even crule things, but this ghost was very kind to you—to us.”
Atark frowned. He had not spoken with the Ghost since their quarrel. Whatever else the Ghost might be, ‘kind’ was not a word Atark would have applied to it. “The ghost had its own ends in mind, I think. It desires revenge on the east. Perhaps it sees me as the means. I do not know. But I will use the power it has given me.”
Fires of Memory Page 16