The Merchants’ War

by Stross, Charles

  “What—” Mike upended the bag and boxes fell out. A mobile phone, ammunition, a pistol. “The fuck?”

  “Glock 18, like their own people use. The phone was bought anonymously for cash. Listen.” Smith hunkered down in front of him, still radiating extreme discomfort. “The phone’s preprogrammed with Dr. James’s private number. This is running right from the top. If you have to negotiate with them, James can escalate you all the way to Daddy Warbucks.”

  Mike was impressed, despite himself. They’re briefing the vice president? “What’s the gun for?”

  “In case the other faction come calling for you.”

  Shit. “Hadn’t thought of that,” he admitted. “What do you want me to do?”

  Smith took a deep breath. “Find out if GREENSLEEVES was blowing smoke. If all he had was a couple of slugs of hot metal, that’s still bad—but right now it would be really good if we could call off the NIRT investigation. On the other hand, you might want to point out to the Beckstein faction what would happen if one of our cities goes up.”

  “Huh. What would happen? What could we do, realistically?” Mike stared at him.

  Smith paused for a few seconds. “I’m just guessing here, you understand. I’m not privy to that information. But my guess is that we would be very, very angry—for all of about thirty minutes.” He swallowed. “And then we’d retaliate in kind, Mike. The SSADM backpack nukes have been out of inventory since the early seventies and the W54 cores were retired by eighty-nine, but they don’t have to stay that way. The schematics are still on file and if I were a betting man I’d place a C-note on Pantex being able to run one up in a few weeks, if they haven’t done so already. Daddy Warbucks and the Wolfman are both gung-ho about developing a new generation of nukes. It could get really ugly really fast, Mike. A smuggler’s war, tit for tat. But we’d win, because they’ve got better logistics but we’ve got a choke hold on the weapons supply. And if it comes to it, I don’t think we’d hold back from making it a war of extermination. It’s not hard to stick a cobalt jacket on a bomb when there’s zero risk of the fallout coming home.”

  “Wow, that’s ugly all right.” 9/11 had been bad enough: the nightmare Smith was dangling before him was infinitely worse. “Anything else?”

  “Yep.” The colonel stood up. “From now on, until you’re through with this thing or we call it off, you’re in a box. We don’t want you in day-to-day contact with the organization. The less you know, the less you can give away.”

  “But I—oh. You’re thinking, if they kidnap me—”

  “Yes, that’s what we’re afraid of.”

  “Right.” Mike swallowed. “So. I’m to tell Mrs. Beckstein about Matt’s bomb threat, and we either want it handed over right now, or convincing evidence that he was bluffing. Otherwise, they’re looking at retaliation in kind. What else?”

  “You give her the mobile phone and tell her who it connects to. There’s a deal on the table that she might find interesting.” Smith nodded to himself. “And there’s one other thing you can pass on at the same time.”

  “Yes?”

  “Tell her we’re working on the world-walking mechanism. Her window of opportunity for negotiation is open right now—but if she waits too long, it’s going to slam shut.” He stood up. “Once we aren’t forced to rely on captured couriers, as soon as we can send the 82nd Airborne across, we aren’t going to need the Clan any more. And we want her to know that.”

  In Otto’s opinion one camp was much like another: the only difference was how far the stink stretched. His majesty’s camp was better organized than most, but with three times as many men it paid to pay attention to details like the latrines. King Egon might not like the tinkers, but he was certainly willing to copy their obsession with hygiene if it kept his men from the pest. And so Otto rode with his retinue, tired and dusty from the road, past surprisingly tidy rows of tents and the larger pavilions of their eorls and lords, towards the big pavilion at the heart of the camp—in order to ask the true whereabouts of his majesty.

  The big pavilion wasn’t hard to find—the royal banner flying from the tall mast anchored outside it would have been a giveaway, if nothing else—but Otto’s eyes narrowed at the size of the guard detachment waiting there. Either he mistrusts one of his own, or the bluff is doubled, he thought. Handing his horse’s reins to one of his hand-men he swung himself down from the saddle, wincing slightly as he turned towards the three guards in household surcoats approaching from the side of the pavilion. “Who’s in charge here?” he demanded.

  “I am.” The tallest of them tilted his helmet back.

  Otto stiffened in shock, then immediately knelt, heart in mouth with fear: “My liege, I did not recognize you—”

  “You weren’t meant to.” Egon smiled thinly. “No shame attaches. Rise, Otto, and walk with me. You brought your company?”

  “Yes—all who are fit to ride. And your messenger, Sir Geraunt.”

  “Good.” The king carefully shifted the strap on his exotic and lethal weapon, pointing the muzzle at the ground as he walked around the side of the tent. Otto noticed the two other house hold guards following, barely out of earshot. They, too, carried black, strangely proportioned witch weapons. “I’ve got something to show you.”

  “Sire?” Behind him, Heidlor was keeping his immediate bodyguard together. Good man. The king’s behavior was disturbingly unconventional—

  “The witches can walk through another world,” remarked Egon. “They can ambush you if you keep still and they know where you are. Armies are large, they attract spies. Constant movement is the best defense. That, and not making a target of one’s royal self by wearing gilded armor and sleeping in the largest tent.”

  Ah. Otto nodded. So there was a reason for all this strangeness, after all. “What would you have me do, sire?”

  Behind the royal pavilion there was a hummock of mounded-up earth. Someone—many someones—had labored to build it up from the ground nearby, and then cut a narrow trench into it. “Pay attention.” His majesty marched along the trench, which curved as it cut into the mound. Otto followed him, curious as to what his majesty might find so interesting in a heap of soil. “Ah, here we are.” The trench descended until the edges were almost out of reach above him, then came to an abrupt end in an open, circular space almost as large as the royal pavilion. The muddy floor was lined with rough-cut planks: four crates were spaced around the walls, as far apart as possible. The king placed a proprietorial hand on one of the crates. “What do you make of it?”

  Otto blanked for a moment. He’d been expecting something, but this…“Spoils?” he asked, slowly.

  “Very good!” Egon grinned boyishly. “Yes, I took these from the witches. Hopefully they don’t realize they’re missing, yet. Tonight, another one should arrive.”

  “But they’re—” Otto stared. “Treasure?” His eyes narrowed. “Their demon blasting powder?”

  “Something even better.” A low metal box, drab green in color, lay on the planking next to the crate. Egon bent down and flicked open the latches that held the lid down. “Behold.” He flipped the lid over, to reveal the contents—a gun.

  “One of the tinkers’,” Otto noted, forgetting to hold his tongue. “An arms dump?”

  “Yes.” Egon straightened up. “My sources told me about them, so I had my—helpers—go looking.” He looked at Otto, his face unreadable. “Twenty years ago, thirty years ago, the witch families handed their collective security to the white duke. He standardized them. Their guns, your pistol—” he gestured at Otto’s holster—“when you run out of their cartridges, what will you do?”

  Otto shrugged. “It’s a problem, sire. We can’t make anything like these.”

  Egon nodded. “They have tried hard to conceal a dirty little secret: the truth is, neither can they. So they stockpile cartridges of a common size and type, purchased from the demons in the shadow world. Your pistol uses the same kind as my carbine. But they kept something better for t
hemselves. This is a, an M60, a machine gun.” He pronounced the unfamiliar, alien syllables carefully. “It fires bigger bullets, faster and farther. It outranges my six pounder carronades, in fact. But it is useless without cartridges, big ones that come on a metal belt. And they are profligate with ammunition. So the duke stockpiled cartridges for the M60s, all over the place.”

  Otto looked at the gun. It was bigger than the king’s MP5, almost as long as a musket. Then he looked at the crate. “How much do you have, sire?”

  “Not enough.” Egon frowned. “Four crates, almost eighty thousand rounds, six guns. And some very fine blasting powder.”

  “Only six—” Otto stopped. “They haven’t noticed?”

  The king lowered the lid back on top of the gun. “Ten years ago, the witches began to re-equip with a better weapon.” He patted the MP5: “These are deadly, are they not? But it is a side-arm. They held the M60s to defend their castles and keeps. But they’re heavy and take a lot of ammunition. They have a new gun now, the SAW. And it takes different ammunition, lighter, with a shorter range—still far greater than anything we have, though, near as far as a twelve pounder can throw shot, and why not? A soldier with one of the new demon-guns can carry twice as much ammunition, and war among the witches is always about mobility. So they gradually forgot about the M60s, leaving the crates of ammunition in the cellars of their houses, and they forgot about the guns, too.” The royal smile reappeared. “But their servants remembered.”

  “Sire. How would you have me use these guns?”

  The royal smile broadened.

  “The foe has been informed, by hitherto unimpeachable sources, that I will be attacking Castle Hjorth in the next week. They will concentrate in defense of the castle, which as the gateway to the Eagle hills would indeed be a prize worth capturing. Baron Drakel, who is already on his way there at the head of a battalion of pike and musketry, has the honor of ensuring that the witches have targets to aim their fire at. Meanwhile, the majority of the forces camped here will leave on the morrow for the real target. Your task is to spend a day with your best hand-men, and with my armorers, who will remain behind, instructing you in the use of the machine guns, and the explosives. Then you will follow the main force, who will not be aware of your task.”

  “Sire! This is a great honor, I am sure, but am I to understand that you do not want to bring these guns to bear in the initial battle?”

  “Yes.” Egon stared at the baron, his eyes disturbingly clear. “There are traitors in the midst of my army, Otto. I know for a fact that you are not one of them—” Otto shuddered as if a spider had crawled across his grave “—but this imposes certain difficulties upon my planning.”

  Otto glanced round. The two royal bodyguards stood with their backs to him. “Sire?”

  “The witches cannot be defeated by conventional means, Otto. If we besiege them, they can simply vanish into their shadow world. There they can move faster than we can, obtain weapons of dire power from their demonic masters, and continue their war against us. So to rid my kingdom of their immediate influence, I must render their castles and palaces useless as strong points.”

  Egon paced around the nearest ammunition crate. “At the outset, I determined to pin them down, forcing them to defend their holdings, to prove to my more reluctant sworn men that the witches are vulnerable. Your raids were a great success. For every village you put to the sword, another ten landholders swore to my flag, and for that you will be rewarded most handsomely, Otto.” His eyes gleamed. “But to allow you to live to a ripe old age in your duchy—” he continued, ignoring Otto’s sharp in-take of breath “—we must force the witches to concentrate on ground of our choice, and then massacre them, while denying them the ability to regroup in a strong place. To that end, it occurs to me that a castle can be as difficult to break out of as it is to break in to—especially if it is surrounded by machine guns. This is a difficult trick, Otto, and it would be impossible without the treachery of their servitors and hangers-on, but I am going to take the Hjalmar Palace—and use it as an anvil, and you the hammer, to smash the witches.”

  Traveling across New Britain by train in a first-class suite was a whole lot less painful than anything Amtrak or the airlines had to offer, and Miriam almost found herself enjoying it—except for the constant nagging fear of discovery. Discovery of what, and by whom, wasn’t a question she could answer—it wasn’t an entirely rational fear. I still feel like an impostor everywhere I go, she realized. Erasmus’s attempts to engage in friendly conversation over dinner didn’t help, either: she’d been unable to make small talk comfortably and had lapsed into a strained, embarrassed silence. The tables in the wide-gauge dining car were sufficiently far apart, and the noise of the wheels loud enough, that she wasn’t worried about being overheard: but just being on display in public made her itch as if there was a target pinned to her back. The thing she most wanted to ask Erasmus about was off-limits, anyway—the nature of the errand that was taking a lowly shop keep er haring out to the west coast in the lap of luxury. I’m going to see a man about his book? That must be some book—this journey was costing the local equivalent of a couple of around-the-world airline tickets in first class, at a time when there were soup kitchens on the street corners and muggers in the New London alleyways who were so malnourished they couldn’t tackle a stressed-out woman.

  That was more than enough reason to itch. Things had gone bad in New Britain even faster than they had in her own personal life, on a scale that was frightening to think about. But the real cause of her restlessness was closer to home. Sooner or later I’m going to have to stop drifting and do something, she told herself. Relying on the comfort of near-strangers—or friends with secret agendas of their own—rankled. If only I had that laptop working! Or I could go home and call Mike. Set things moving. And then—her imagination ran into a brick wall.

  After dinner they returned to the private lounge, and Miriam managed to unwind slightly once they were on their own. There was a wet bar beside the window, and Erasmus opened it: “Would you care for a brandy before bed?”

  “That would be good.” She sat down on the chaise. “They really overdid the dessert.”

  “You think so?” He shook his head. “We’re traveling in style. The chef would be offended if we didn’t eat.”

  “Really?” She accepted the glass he offered. “Hmm.” She sniffed. “Interesting.” A sip of brandy and her stomach had something else to worry about: “I’d get fat fast if we ate like that regularly.”

  “Fat?” He looked at her oddly. “You’ve got a long way to go before you’re fat.”

  Oops. It was another of those momentary dislocations that reminded Miriam she wasn’t at home here. New British culture held to a different standard of beauty from Hollywood and the New York catwalks: in a world where agriculture was barely mechanized and shipping was slow, plumpness implied wealth, or at least immunity from starvation. “You think so?” She found herself unable to suppress a lopsided smile of embarrassment, and dealt with it by hiding her face behind the brandy glass.

  “I think you’re just right. You’ve got a lovely face, Miriam, when you’re not hiding it. Your new hairstyle complements it beautifully.”

  He looked at her so seriously that she felt her ears flush. “Hey! Not fair.” A sudden sinking feeling, Is that what this is about? He gets me alone and then—

  “I’m—” He did a double-take. “Oh dear! You—Did I say something wrong?”

  Miriam shook her head. He seemed sincere: Am I misunderstanding? “I think we just ran into an etiquette black hole.” He nodded, politely uncomprehending. “Sorry. Where I come from what you said would be something between flattery and an expression of interest, and I’m just not up to handling subtlety right now.”

  “Expression of…?” It was his turn to look embarrassed. “My mistake.”

  She put the glass down. “Have a seat.” She patted the chaise. Erasmus looked at it, looked back at her, then perched
bird-like on the far end. Better change the subject, she told herself. “You were married, weren’t you?” she asked.

  He stared at her as if she’d slapped him. “Yes. What of it?”

  Whoops. “I, uh, was wondering. That is. What happened?”

  “She died,” he said tersely. He glanced at the floor, then raised his brandy glass.

  Miriam’s vision blurred. “I’m sorry.”

  “Why? It’s not your fault.” After a long moment, he shrugged. “You had your fellow Roland. It’s not so different.”

  “What—” she swallowed “—happened to her?” How long ago was it? she wondered. Sometimes she thought she’d come to terms with Roland’s death, but at other times it still felt like yesterday.

  “Twenty years ago. Back then I had prospects.” He raised an eyebrow as if considering his next words. “Some would say, I threw them away. The movement—well.”

  “The movement?”

  “I was sent to college, by my uncle—my father was dead, you know how it goes—to study for the bar. They’d relaxed the requirements, so dissenters, freethinkers, even atheists, all were allowed to affirm and practice. His majesty’s father was rather less narrow than John Frederick, I don’t know whether that means anything to you. But anyway…I had some free time, as young students with a modest stipend do, and I had some free thoughts, and I became involved with the league. We had handbills to write and print and distribute, and a clear grievance to bring before their lordships in hope of redress, and we were optimistic, I think. We thought we might have a future.”

  “The league? You had some kind of political demands?” Miriam racked her brains. She’d run across mention of the league—league of what had never been clear—in the samizdat history books he’d loaned her, but only briefly, right at the end, as some sort of hopeful coda to the authorial present.