“It was after winter came that we heard of your great victory over the Roman legions. I have once before seen what Tamaerthon archers can do in battle, and it came to me that with the forces I hold and can gather, and with the aid of some thousands of your archers, we can drive Sarakos from Drantos and restore the lady Tylara to her dower lands. This I have come to ask.”
Drumold leaned close to Rick. “What think you of this?”
“Lord Camithon,” Rick said, “have you forgotten the starmen and their weapons?”
“No,” Camithon said. “This is the welcome news I bring. The starmen have divided. Many have fled from Sarakos. Fewer than a dozen remain. Surely a dozen men will not frighten you who have bested the Romans.”
“How do you know the starmenhave divided?” Rick demanded.
Camithon smiled grimly. “I have brought a present for Mac Clallan Muir and his daughter.” He turned to an officer. “Bring in the prisoner.”
The officer left and returned moments later with a man dressed in peasant woolen trousers and thick jacket. He had a scraggly beard that hadn’t been shaved or trimmed for weeks, and his hands were shackled together with iron bracelets riveted to a foot-long chain.
He stood sullenly, looking defiantly at the council table, until he saw Rick. He stared a moment, then shouted, “Captain! For God’s sake, Captain, help me!”
It was Private Warner.
* * *
Despite the blazing fire, Rick’s quarters were cold. And not just the chilly air, Rick thought. He could feel the chill radiating from where Tylara sat by the hearth.
“I had thought you would be pleased,” she said. “Are not your enemies my enemies? Sarakos can be killed, and I can rid myself of this burning hatred for him—”
“We don’t know that,” Rick said. “Tylara—Tylara, every time I think of what Sarakos did to you, I get sick. I hate him as much as you do. I love you!”
“You do not seem to.”
“More than you know,” Rick said. “It is my wish to make Tamaerthon strong without endless war. Should we risk all that for revenge?”
Before she could answer, there was a knock at the door. “Come in,” Rick called with relief.
Warner had been shaved and given better clothes. He was almost pathetically grateful when Jamiy brought him in. “Thank God you’re here, Captain. Thank God—”
“Have a seat,” Rick invited. “Jamiy, pour him a cup of wine.”
Warner sat gratefully. He chugged the wine, and Rick poured his cup full again. “Take it easy,” he said. “Before you get drunk, I want to know your story.” He laughed. “You know, it wasn’t a week ago I was wishing I had you around. I was trying to derive some of Newton’s equations. Think you can remember college physics?”
“Yes, sir,” Warner said. “Uh—ballistics?”
“Maybe,” Rick said. “But mostly just general science.” He switched to the local Tran dialect. “Warner, this is the lady Tylara. We’d both like to hear your story.”
“Yes, sir. But could I have some more wine first?” Warner drank eagerly. “Where should I begin?”
“We know Parsons made an alliance with Sarakos,” Rick said. “And that you helped him win the battle against the Drantos army. What happened after that?”
“At first it was pretty good,” Warner said. “Captain, I can tell this better in English.”
“Go ahead. I’ll translate for Tylara.”
“Yes, sir. Well, like I said, at first it was pretty good. We’d won, and we owned the country. Parsons gave each one of us a couple of local girls. It was a little funny owning slaves, but that’s the way things are here. We had women and jewels and lots of good food and pretty good wine, and it was like Parsons said it would be. We lived like kings. Even out in the field we had servants. We took over the best houses for quarters, and we didn’t have to fight much—just when the locals ran into something they couldn’t handle. Then we’d come up with the machine guns and the mortars.
“Everything was fine for a couple of months, but then it all came apart. Guerilla war. Captain, it was like Vietnam, only worse, because we didn’t have any choppers or trucks or anything. We had to ride horses, and by the time we got anywhere, the charlies had gone off into the hills. We weren’t safe anywhere outside castles. Ride through the woods and you never knew but what an arrow or a crossbow bolt would kill you.
“It just never stopped, and it didn’t look like it was ever going to get any better, either. Those people hated us, and we couldn’t kill all of them. And it got kind of hungry, too, even for us—and we had more to eat than the poor bastards with us. And Parsons! He got so mean, you couldn’t get near him. Claimed it was all our fault—we weren’t disciplined enough—but he’d fix that. So one day a bunch of us got fed up and rode off.”
“How many?” Rick asked.
“Twenty-two,” Warner said. “Gengrich and I organized it. We went south, to the city-state territory. We needed some way to make a living, so we arranged to hire out to the city republic of Kleistinos. They fed us and our wives—most of us brought one or both of the girls we’d been living with—and we didn’t have to fight, either. Come spring we were supposed to escort a big caravan south, and that sure sounded like easier work than what Parsons had us doing.”
“So how did you end up here?”
Warner looked sheepish. “I got drunk, passed out in a tavern, and woke up with those handcuff things. The local tavernkeeper sold me to the Drantos rebels.”
“I see. Excuse me, I’d better tell Tylara what’s going on.” Rick summarized Warner’s story.
“They are not rebels,” Tylara said coldly when Rick finished. “They are fighting for their homes against bandits.”
“Yes, Lady,” Warner said. “If you say so—”
“She did say so,” Rick said. He changed to English to say, “I’d be very careful, were I you. She’s got a sharp temper and a sharper dagger.” He poured himself a cup of wine. “What weapons did Gengrich take with him?”
“One of the mortars,” Warner said. “And our rifles and pistols, of course.”
“So André has one mortar and the recoilless. How many mortar bombs?”
“I’d guess a dozen,” Warner said.
“The starmen are greatly weakened,” Tylara said. “And Sarakos has lost much of his army.”
“They’re not as strong as they were,” Warner agreed. “Captain, are you planning on fighting them?”
“I don’t know.”
Tylara looked at him coldly.
“Sweetheart, you don’t understand,” Rick said. “They think because we handled the Romans so easily, Parsons can’t be that tough. They just don’t know. One mortar shell in the right place, and I don’t have a pike regiment, I have a disorganized mob. And Yatar knows what machine-guns would do to my archers—”
Tylara got up and went to the door. “Jamiy,” she said. She pointed to Warner. “Take him to his quarters.”
“He’s to be well treated, but he is not to escape,” Rick said. “Warner, I really am glad to see you. If we all survive, you’re going to be a professor in the only university on Tran.”
“I’d like that,” Warner said. “It’s got to be better than fighting for a living.”
Rick waited until Jamiy and Warner had left, then turned to Tylara with a sigh. “All right, darling. Let’s have it out.”
3
Her cold look changed to one of unhappiness. “I do not like to quarrel with you,” she said.
“God knows I don’t enjoy it much either—”
“Please. Let me finish. All winter my father and I have waited for you to speak formally to him of our future.”
“I was waiting to be sure you wanted me to,” Rick said. “And I wasn’t sure when would be the right time—”
“I had hoped you wanted me.”
“I do. God knows I do. I love you,” Rick said.
“As I love you. More than you know. Our customs are not yours. Never i
n our memory has a woman married before she was avenged, yet—yet I was willing to do so. Rick, your ways are strange. You are not like my husband was. You are a warrior, but you do not wish to fight. I have seen men insult you, and yet you did nothing, though lesser words demand blood—”
“Is that what you want? Should I collect heads?” The Tamaerthon clansmen no longer kept the heads of their enemies as trophies, but there were many legends of heroes who had.
“Hush,” she said. “No. You should not. I have come to understand that although killing gives you no pleasure, you are no weakling. And I have seen you in the great battle, and again when you have spoken of the school you wish to build. I know which pleases you more. I have heard you tell of the things you wish to teach, and how this will help everyone—the clans of Tamaerthon and all the others on this world. There is much about you I do not understand, but there is much I do know, and I have come to love you. Not as I loved Lamil. That was nearly unendurable—no, do not look away, and do not be sad. I was no more eager for my wedding night with Lamil than I am to have you possess me. Between us there is more than Lamil and I ever had. Lamil was handsome, but he was frivolous. He had no daemon driving him as you do. Nor did I, then, but I have since learned what duty is, and no less a daemon rides me now. You and I, we may belong to each other, but we also have ambition. Not for wealth, but for something greater.”
He came to her and put his hands on her shoulders. “Then why are we standing like this—”
She removed his hands gently and stepped away. Her face held concern and sadness. “Please. This must be said. Rick, when I believed Sarakos secure in Drantos, I swallowed my hatred for him though it burned like fire. I had thought you must feel the same, that the man who, who—gods! that a man who had done that to me should live!”
“You can’t know,” Rick said. “God, sweetheart, you can’t know—”
“I dream of flaying him,” Tylara said. “Yet, because of what we believe you will do for Tamaerthon—aye, for all the world—I have lived with the knowledge that Sarakos would never be punished. As did my father and my brother. We agreed—you are important to Tamaerthon, and we have no hold on you. There is no reason for you to stay in Tamaerthon—none save what I hope you feel for me—yet we need you. And so I have not died trying to avenge myself. As much as I hate Sarakos, I have grown to love you more. Once I lived only to kill him. Now I have you.”
“But now you want me to kill Sarakos for you.”
“Now it is possible,” she said.
“No. What’s changed?” Rick asked. “André Parsons has fewer men, but he still has more than enough weapons to destroy us, and without the pikemen, Tamaerthon is doomed. Do you trust Marselius? I do as long as he is afraid of my pike regiments, but not longer. And we may yet have to fight Caesar if Marselius fails.”
“Are you certain nothing has changed, my husband-to-be?” Tylara asked. “The starmen are divided. Sarakos has lost half his army. Is this nothing?”
“Is it enough?”
“I do not know. These are things you know,” Tylara said. “But this I do know. Chelm is mine. Lamil left no other heir. You have heard how it fares with the people there. They die. There is endless war. The Time approaches. Do I not have a duty to them? And do you not have a greater one?”
“Me? I’ve never been there—”
“You brought the starmen here,” Tylara said. “Now they are as wolves in the land. Have you no responsibility for this?” Tears welled in her eyes. “My love. My father feels as I do. If you truly believe that nothing can be done to rid the land of these evil men, then we will send Camithon on his way without aid. But I beg you, think on it.”
She would have to say that. My responsibility. I brought them here. I didn’t want to, and I—what the hell’s the point in quibbling? I brought them. But dammit—“My university will be more important than you know,” Rick said. “We can change this world. Should we risk all that merely to kill Sarakos?”
“My love, I know there is no other like you,” Tylara said. There was no banter in her voice at all. “But can not the lady Gwen and the man Warner teach much of what you could?”
There went my last argument, Rick thought. Oh, dammit. “Yes. They can,” he said. God help me, she’s right. And nobody else can stop Parsons and Sarakos. Can I? Sarakos is no problem. His medium and heavy cavalry don’t sound as effective as the Roman heavy troopers, and my pikemen have a lot more confidence now. But I still need massed formations, and Parsons has the mortar and at least a dozen riflemen—more than enough to scatter the pikes for Sarakos’ heavies—
Skirmishing archers could take Parsons, if we could get him on a decent killing ground. But he’s too damn smart to be caught that way. He’ll always have enough local cavalry with him to keep the archers at a distance. So how to get the Earth troops separated from the rest of the army—
“You have a plan,” she said. “I have seen that look before.”
“Something Warner said. Tylara, even if everything works properly, a lot of people are going to be killed—”
“More than will die if we do nothing?”
“No. Not nearly so many.” He sighed and took her in his arms. “I could have had my pick of a hundred women,” he said. “I could have a hundred women. So of course I have to be in love with you.” He kissed her. They stood close for a long time.
Then she pushed him gently away. “In spring,” she said. “And for now—we must send food for Camithon’s army before he loses more men and beasts to hunger.”
“Yes.” And a thousand other details. Summon the western clansmen and start drilling them in the new tactics. More pikes and arrows. Baggage and grain carts. Politics. Keeping the clans working together was hard enough; now they’d have Protector Camithon and the boy king to worry about as well.
And more details yet. Patrols to seal the passes and keep secret as long as possible the fact that Tamaerthon was arming for war. A second iron curtain so that when spies inevitably found that the clans were mobilizing they still wouldn’t be able to report that they were drilling with pikes. And inside that the greatest secret of all.
“Why do you smile?” Tylara asked.
“It would take long to explain,” Rick said. How could he tell her he’d thought of calling his inner circle “The Manhattan Project”? But of course he couldn’t use that name. It would signal Parsons as clearly as would a report that someone in Tamaerthon was gathering tons of manure and sulfur.
They’d need a secure area to leach saltpeter from manure.
His scholarship wasn’t good enough to make sulfa drugs or penicillin, but something simple like that would be no problem at all. Saltpeter seventy-five percent, charcoal fifteen percent, sulfur ten percent: fifteen to three to two, a formula tested in war’s caldron for centuries. And they’d need a gristmill with no metal parts in which to grind it.
And there’d be a thousand more details. The business of war. They sing ballads about heroes, but the details are what win campaigns.
Or lose them.
PART EIGHT
JANISSARIES
1
Gwen’s delivery had been difficult. The baby was large and she was small. She was many hours in difficult labor, and afterwards was laid up for weeks. She remembered few details. One vividly stayed in her mind: the moment when Yanulf laid her baby on her breast. That couldn’t have been more than a few seconds after the boy was born.
She didn’t remember telling Yanulf that the boy was to be called “Les,” but she didn’t regret that. Someday she’d be able to tell Les of his father and give him the message the pilot had left for his child.
It took a long time to regain strength. For weeks she could only nurse her son once a day. Fortunately two other children had been born a few days before Les, both to robust clanswomen with milk to spare. Later Gwen wondered if this had not been the origin of the ancient custom of godparents; without other women’s aid, Les would have died.
Gradually
she became aware of life outside her lodge. At first she took little interest beyond a feeling of bitterness that Rick and Mason had not returned from Ta-Kartos and had not allowed Caradoc to return either. She had one letter from Rick, telling her that the university could begin the next summer, if the peace with Marselius held. She was delighted. Everything seemed to be going well.
Then she found that many of the young men were gone. All of the officers and noncoms of Rick’s new model army had been summoned to Tar Kartos, as were the smiths. When she tried to find out why, she learned nothing. None of the women knew why their men had been sent to the western mountains. A few thought there would be another raid when the ice had melted in the lochs and passes, but no one was certain. There was no way to find out. For the first time since she’d come to Tran, Gwen was afraid that she’d lost control of the situation.
The suns stood at an angle of thirty degrees and the snows had melted in the lower passes before Yanulf was allowed to visit Ta-Kartos. He returned to tell her in great secrecy that Rick planned war to restore Chelm to Tylara.
“Aye, Lady,” he said. “They tell me I will be able to return to Castle Dravan before Midsummer’s Day. Even as we speak, the fiery axe runs through The Garioch.”
Gwen was horrified. This was the ruin of all her plans. “But—this is madness! He makes war on the starmen?”
“Aye. No one knows what the lord Rick intends, but it is said that he has a plan to destroy both the starmen and Sarakos. I do know that he has every cart in the land carrying manure to a place near Tar Kartos where he has built a water mill.”
Manure. “And he also gathers brimstone?”
Lord of Janissaries Page 19