The Zero Equation

by Christopher Nuttall

  -George Phillies

  The Domain of Clan MacDonald is surrounded by enemies. Clan Gunn wants its lands. Mysterious pirates assail its shores. The Courts of the Imperial Presence and the All-Conquering Generalissimo suspect it of treason. Foreign trade is interrupted by invasions of barbarians--or are they blue-skinned demons?

  Angus Valentine Macdonald, seventh child of the One MacDonald, must travel to remote Mercia, where he must defeat the treachery of the Lunarian Empire, the corruption of the Langwadooran invaders, and the rapacious greed of the alien Trell to protect his homeland and win the hand of his lady-love.

  Prologue

  “Ivor, the sheep are just where we expected.” Ludovic Mungo Gunn shifted slightly in his perch, a flat branch ten feet off the ground. He had a good view down into the valley, but he knew it would take a sharp eye indeed to spot him under his mottled bark-brown cloak.

  “And the shepherd?” Ivor Magnus Gunn returned the question.

  “Now that’s being the question.” Ludovic wished his line of sight was a bit better. “The two dogs are keeping the sheep from straying too far, so he’s sitting in the shade someplace close. There go the dogs…I see where his tent is. That big tree in the middle of the field.”

  “Very good. Now we just wait for late twilight.” Ivor turned to the two men behind him. “Lads, another hour and we can start our sneak. The opium-laced bait does for the two dogs. The shepherd we tie, not too tight that he can’t get free and go home. Another shire gets the message that MacDonalds can’t protect your sheep, but we Gunns can. After all, we’ve had no sheep stolen, our side of the border, right?”

  &&&&

  Una Ruth poked at the coals in her hearth. It was dark outside, but the stars of the Lobster were drifting toward setting. It was time to stoke the fire and boil water, first for linden tea and then for wheat porridge. The wheat had been soaking since last night, so a boil and simmer until dawn would have it cooked for when her husband was ready to eat.

  The surf sounded strange, with a murmur between the crash of the breaking waves. If the waves continued odd, perhaps she would urge her beloved Willie Solomon that this would be a good day to spend fixing his nets, which were getting a bit ragged. He could wait to take to the water when the Sun was high in the sky. The grasping selkie-demons of the watery deeps hid from the Goddess’s blinding light. Afternoon was surely the safest time to go fishing. The catch had been good yesterday; their contribution to Oyster Bay’s lord’s share had been more than ample.

  First rice straw and then twigs caught in the ashes. Reddish sparks turned to the flicker of tiny golden flames. The tricky part of lighting a fire from the last evening’s coals was now past. The fire rose up, finally enough to boil the water. She set the water pot down low to catch all the fire demons escaping from the burning wood.

  Outside, there were peculiar clattering sounds. Curious, she stuck her head beyond the door curtain. Across the path, her much younger neighbour Annelise Margaret had done the same. To the west and the east, lines of torches were approaching the village. What was this?

  “Honourable husband!” she whispered. “Get up!”

  “What? Is my tea ready?” Willie Solomon grumbled. He shrugged off his blanket and sat up. “It’s still dark outside. I should be asleep. What is the matter with you?”

  At that moment, the clatter was replaced with screams and shrieks, so loud as to drown out the surf. Banging of metal on metal, sounds like three dozen blacksmiths all beating their iron, made a rising clangour.

  “Out of the way, Una!” Willie Solomon pushed her to the side and stood in front of his doorway. “What is this nonsense. You!” He pointed at the men waving torches, shouting: “You are disturbing our sleep. The Lord of the Castle has forbidden this. Be quiet!” The clamour grew louder.

  Behind him, someone was ringing the Village Big Gong. Fire, Flood, War. Three rings of three was ‘war’; villagers were expected to gather in the town square. Willie Solomon looked across the path, where Annelise Margaret’s husband Brian Tobor had stuck his head out. “What is all this noise?” Brian Tobor shouted. “Were the young men having a secret drinking party?”

  The screaming grew louder. Willie Solomon stepped to the middle of the path. By order of the Shire Magistrates, village paths were straight, so you could see all the way across the village without a house blocking the view. Who was out there, he asked himself? A line of men, some carrying torches, ran toward him. The strange men were all waving swords. At each house, two of them ducked through the doorway, while the others ran down the road.

  As the strange men closed, Willie Solomon’s anger turned to fear. The strange men? Their hair was unnatural, the colour of blood. Their swords glittered cruelly in the flickering light of their torches.

  “Here, here!” Willie Solomon shouted. “No weapons inside Oyster Bay Village! It is forbidden!” He pointed vigorously at the men. Then he realized how strange their dress was. They wore trousers with huge wide belts rather than breech-clouts, long-sleeved shirts rather than capes, shining gold neck-chains and ear-rings, and had wrapped their heads in fancy pieces of cloth and not in proper straw hats. His last words were “Who are you?” The first pirate to reach him chopped down with an axe, cleaving Willie Solomon’s skull. The next pirate stabbed Brian Tobor’s chest, pulled back, found that his sword was stuck in Brian’s spine, and vigorously kicked Brian Tobor in the stomach. Tobor, screaming in pain, was knocked backward to the ground. The pirate stepped on Brian Tobor and heaved upward, yanking the blade from Tobor’s spine.

  Una Ruth, seeing what had happened to her husband, leaped forward and dropped on his body. She was entirely unaware of the axe that descended on the back of her neck.

  &&&&

  Constantine Joseph MacDonald surveyed the ashes of Oyster Bay. The air held the stench of night soil, a distant tang of wood smoke, and a richer odor that was alas not cooked…pork. The village had had a few dozen homes, a shelter for traders, a temple, and a larger house for the Chief Fisherman. All had been burned to the ground. Someone had thought to dig under each hearthstone, not that the poor fisherman who had lived here were likely to have had more than a few copper pence to their names. His four horsemen were quartering the land out from the village, searching without much hope of finding survivors. Ten conscript infantry, their spears and helmets neatly stacked, were working through the village, finding bodies, and stacking them to one side of the ruins. Constantine’s clerk Albert Bertram recorded the count of bodies, adding for each the sex and an estimated age.

  Seaforthton Interlocutor Thomas Mason and a team of young men doing their Shire service had arrived with a horse cart of heavy rakes and shovels. He had surveyed the scene, announced that the attack seemed to have happened at night, probably closing on dawn as many of the wives but few of the husbands were already dressed, and probably two days ago to judge from the state of the bodies and the burned timbers. Two days after the attack, only a few timbers were smoldering. The young men had started a distance down the beach and were neatly raking the sand, looking for traces of the villains. Constantine Joseph had summoned a priestess to the site. The villagers were dead; they needed to be prayed by the Goddess of Mercy to the next world.

  The best that could be done for the bodies, most of whom were people known only to their fellow villagers who were also dead, was to give them a common grave with stones stacked on the sand. Digging the grave into the side of one of the sand dunes would minimize the needed work.

  His men had located where the pirates had landed. Deep grooves in the sand, well above the high tide line, showed where boats had been dragged inland. There were vast numbers of footprints, so many that they could not readily be interpreted. A stack of wax drippings suggested where someone had stood with a candle-lantern, to what end was unclear.

  “Honorable Captain Constantine Joseph?” The Interlocutor wore the traditional long white cotton shift of his profession. Sandals stuck out from under its bottom. “We are cont
inuing to search, but with this many young men we will likely be done by late this afternoon. So far we have found nothing. To the list of other crimes, we may add desecration of the temple, in that the villains pried off the altar stone and removed the offerings from underneath. Realistically speaking, that was more silver than would be found in the rest of Oyster Bay. I am spending my time supervising the Shire service men, but I must say that they are all diligent and conscientious.”

  “It seems to me that this is the fourth time this has happened.” Constantine Joseph waved his arm from left to right, encompassing the ruins of the village. “We have never been lucky enough to find any clues. If this were one of the neighboring domains, exploring how well we are prepared before they attack us, you would think they would do something that would let me arrive on the scene in time to pass steel against steel. Let me guess. Once again, if we look at the bodies being so neatly stacked, we notice that the young women and older girls are all missing. The resident nun or priestess, if there was a resident, has been sacrificed on her own altar.”

  “Indeed,” Interlocutor Thomas Mason said, “you are correct in almost every respect. No priestess was resident. There was a priestess visiting from Carolus’s Harbor. She seems to have vanished. Her disappearance was how we found out about this event. She was expected back at Carolus’s Harbor, did not appear at anything like the expected time, so several people were sent out; they believed that her cart had thrown a wheel. They instead found what is left of Oyster Bay village. I will let you know what I find, if anything.”

  The sun had passed well across the sky. Constantine Joseph sat in conference with Thomas Mason. “So we actually did find something this time,” Thomas Mason announced. He smiled weakly. “We found a place where there seem to have been a struggle, there was even more blood than usual on the ground, and someone had dropped four coins and the sharp end of a knife. On the knife, the haft appears to have broken. I will ask the Seaforthton Smiths if they can identify the work. The metal looks odd. The coins, if that’s what they are, don’t resemble anything I’ve ever seen. They do not have holes in their middles the way real coins do. They bear images of faces, people wearing strange hats. They were not released by the Imperial Presence, the Throne of the Stars, or some petty chieftain from the Land of Mountains. I don’t know where they came from. If there is writing on them, which I’m not sure, I can’t read it. I will include the coins with my report to the Council of Elders, and you will get a copy. These crimes are beyond my understanding. They make no sense.”

  “Thank you for your assistance.” Constantine Joseph bowed politely from the waist. “Albert Bertram?” Constantine Joseph nodded at his aide and secretary, who lost no time setting out his writing table. “We will be a while until the dead people are all buried, so the time needs to be used well. I might as well dictate orders: A message to all cities, towns, and villages of Seaforthton Shire, to be read aloud at the evening bell and posted in accord with law. (We will need this message block cut and printed.) There has been an outbreak of piracy. Places have been attacked and burned, their inhabitants killed. Therefore, as Great Captain of Seaforth Isle, I order: One. All walled places are to close and bar their gates between twilight and dawn. Two. All conscript infantryman with six months or more of service are to be issued their helmet and their spear, sword, bow, or other military equipment as available. This equipment will be stored in their homes. They shall appear with it in the public square at eventide every day. Anyone not appearing without good reason is guilty of desertion. Any person caught stealing such equipment is to be boiled in oil. Three. The town marshal is to establish a rotation so that the walls and gates are under observation by armed conscript infantrymen at all times, day and night. Four. I call upon all horsemen to prepare their arms for battle and train vigorously. Five. All places without walls, especially those directly on the coast, may be attacked. When weather permits, residents should leave their homes and sleep in inland fields and woods. Six. Every stranger is to be questioned politely but vigorously as to who they are and why they are here. Seven. Any person possessing coins like those in the drawing below is to be forcibly detained and brought to Seaforthton for questioning. Albert Bertram, think about what I just said. Tell me what I forgot.”

  “We did this during the last Gunn dispute.” Albert Bertram pointed to the east. “I read one of those messages. Perhaps add: ‘Each city, town, and village is to confirm that its signal fire wood is dry and ready to burn, with oil on hand and a torch nearby.’?”

  “Yes. Add that.” Constantine Joseph wondered what else they had both forgotten.

  “I will reduce this to block statements,” Albert Bertram said. “There are pirates. Great Captain of Seaforthton orders: Close gates dawn to dusk….”

  Thomas Mason looked over Albert Bertram’s shoulder. “What is that writing?” he asked. “Usually you have such a graceful pen hand. You seem to be taking notes very swiftly with it.”

  “Ah,” Albert said, “It is Warren Clan swifthand, for long notes. At the end, I transcribe twice, once into men’s words of wisdom, and once into women’s syllables of sound. In many peasant villages, only the syllables will be understood.”

  “Thomas Mason, a question just occurred to me.” Constantine Joseph looked skyward. “I failed to think of this sooner. I am the Great Captain of the land forces. No one ever talks about warships. Did anyone see the pirate boat arriving or leaving? Boats are big. It might have been seen from a neighbouring town.”

  “I shall inquire.” Thomas Mason made a note on a wax tablet. “You are right. No one seems to have seen the pirates arriving or leaving. Or perhaps they did, and didn’t realize they were pirates.”

  Chapter One

  MacDonald Castle was filled with the distant sounds of work. Angus Valentine MacDonald stepped on slippered feet to the Lord’s Door of the Small Hall of State. The two spearmen guarding the door came to attention, thumping the padded ends of their spearshafts on strategically placed basalt blocks. The two archers between the guards and the door began plucking the strings on their bows, the harmonious twangs serving to expel demons of discord from the doorway and the Hall beyond.

  Angus entered the Hall. The morning was truly beautiful. After days of heavy rain, the skies were brilliantly clear. A soft cool breeze blew off the ocean, passing through opened windows and sliding doors and up into half-opened vents. Between the windows hung bamboo mats painted with the MacDonald sigil, a large red + confined within a white bounding circle. Angus stepped to the head of the Hall’s polished black granite table. He- bowed politely to the counsellors sitting around it. They were the Barony’s Council of Elders, entitled to his deep respect. The Counsellors all rose and returned his bow, their bows being ever-so-slightly less deep than his. As fourth son and seventh child, Angus knew that he was hardly likely to inherit. Nor was he a prize in marriage. He was still entitled to the respect due a son in training in the Lord’s absence. The rest of the day would be tedious, but some things had to be endured.

  Angus took his seat on the Lesser Chair of State, noting when he did that the Minister of the Purse’s lips still tightened. Angus’s father, the One MacDonald, had had to intervene to settle that disagreement. Was his seventh child, his person in his absence, the Incarnation of the Baron, entitled to sit in the One Chair, or was Angus simply the MacDonald High Bailiff, required to sit on a simple if padded stool? The disputants carefully did not note that Susan MacDonald, speaker for the Abbeys and Nunneries of the Barony, was well into her ninth decade and over her protests had been given a padded chair including padded arm-rests.

  Angus looked around the table. At his right, the position of honour, was Sandy Brian MacDonald, newly ascended as Minister of Agriculture. Down the table from him were Minister of the Purse Edmund Finlay MacDonald and Minister for Public Works Magnus Taylor MacNeil. On his left were Minister of Manufactures Torquil Simon MacDonald, Minister of the Sword Arthur Lachlan MacDonald, and Lady High Librarian Margaret Rac
hel MacRae. At the foot of the table, in positions of respect but not honour, sat Susan MacDonald and Representative of the Six Free Towns Ian Patrick Gunn. More than one visitor to this hall, Angus recalled, had been astonished that the place of honour was not given to the Minister of the Sword, not to mention that the High Librarian was a woman. There were reasons that Barony MacDonald prospered, but visitors were oft too opaque to see them.

  “Susan,” Angus began, his voice softly breaking the dead silence in the room, “might we please be having a short prayer to bless this meeting?”

  “Indeed,” she answered. Her age did not show in her voice, which was loud and clear. She raised her hands skyward, her white coat with its black greek-key traceries draping loosely over her tabard. “Great Goddess of the Sun, may your Golden Sword bless this assembly and grant us wisdom. May our granaries be overflowing, our crafts treasured by the Hundred Isles, our purses never be lacking, our swords victoriously smiting our every enemy, our people enjoying our Baron’s munificence, our halls beautiful and thoughtful, our holy places honoured and protected, and our Free Towns ever more prosperous.”

  “Now, what has gone particularly wrong today, before we consider our usual issues?” Angus asked, his voice considerably firmer that it had been. Edmund Finlay frowned again. The One MacDonald always put misfortunes last, but Angus preferred to handle misfortunes, such as they were, while the Council was still fresh. He had little enough independence, Angus thought, and would not be enjoying even that for much longer, so he would enjoy it while he could, even if it was only to set the agenda of his own meetings. Angus looked in turn at each of his ministers.