Kingdom River

by Mitchell Smith

  "You got too big for your bitches," Elvin said, certainly not the correct Warm-time phrase. The old man took little care with them, rarely got them right.

  "It's a mistake I won't make again." Sam took a sip of chocolate. A smell of spoiling was rising from the valley.

  "We can't win every fight, Elvin." Jaime gave his brother a shut-up look.

  "For sure not campaigning like this!" Elvin coughed a spatter of blood into his kerchief, turned, and marched away into the camp. His brother sighed, and followed him.

  Sam turned on his camp stool to watch them go. Two tough old men. Both wore heavy double-edged broadswords scab-barded aslant down their backs, the swords' long grips wound with silver wire. Elvin stumbled slightly on the uneven ground. Half a year ago, Portia-doctor had reported he was dying. She'd heard bad sounds in his lungs when she'd thumped him.

  It had been a difficult examination. Elvin had thumped her in return, then attempted a kiss.

  "He's just a boy," she'd said to Sam, "in an old man's body."

  "Then he's younger than I am, Doctor."

  "Yes, sir. In many ways younger than you are."

  Portia-doctor had apprenticed in medicine under Catania Olsen, which said everything in North Map-Mexico — and south in the Empire as well. Portia had learned as much as that dear physician, four Warm-time medical copybooks, and seven years of hard experience could teach.

  She'd been pretty those years ago, a sturdy young woman with dark brown hair and eyes to match. Now, the army work and civilian work had worn her. And losing Catania to plague at Los Palominos had worn her more.

  Howell Voss, commanding the Heavy Cavalry, called her "the noble Portia," looked for her in any group or meeting, and was thought by a thoughtful few to have been in love with her for some time.

  "Why doesn't he just tell her so?" Sam had once asked his Second-mother, after an officers' evening asado.

  "Because," Catania Olsen had said, tightening her mare's saddle girth, "because Howell has lost an eye, and fears being blind and a burden. And because he believes that Portia is very fine and good, and that he is not."

  ...Sam sat and watched the Rascob brothers walk away

  down the tent lines. The other, grimmer Sam Monroe inside him began to consider inevitable replacements for the two of them, certainly following Elvin's death. Jaime's replacement, then, would of course destroy him.

  'Fools do top with crowns, and so bid friends farewell.' A copied Warm-time line, and very old.

  The Captain-General of North Map-Mexico pushed his breakfast plate a little farther away, took a deep breath to calm his stomach, and sat at his camp table with his eyes closed, not caring to watch the Sierra's shadows — lying across a wide, meadowed valley lightly salted with flocks of sheep — slowly shorten as the sun rose higher.

  Bootsteps. No one in the army seemed to walk lightly. "You didn't finish your eggs."

  "No. I've had enough, Margaret."

  "Oswald-cook goes to some trouble with your eggs. Herbs."

  "Oh, for Weather's sake." The Captain-General picked up his fork, reached over, and took another bite of eggs.

  "Sir, there's no winning forever. You don't have to be perfect." It was a burden-sharing she often practiced. At first, it had annoyed him.

  Margaret stood in bright, chill morning light, watching him eat two more bites of egg. "They had room to run."

  "Yes — if they'd run, instead of fighting." Sam put his fork down a little more than firmly. Margaret took the plate, and went away.

  It was a great relief; he was tired of people talking to him. He stood to go into his tent… get away from distant murmurs and the troops' eyes, their unspoken concern — concern for him, as if he were the party injured. They were wearing him away like constant running water. Wearing that lucky youngster, Small-Sam, away — and so revealing more and more of the present Sam Monroe. Someday, they might be sorry….

  He pulled the tent flap back — then let it fall, turned, and walked out into the camp, stepping on his morning shadow as he went.

  The mercy-tent was the largest the army raised — but not large enough, now. Wounded lay in a row by the entrance — silent as was the army's pride, though Sam saw some mouths open for cries unvoiced. He went to those first, and knelt by stained raw-wool blankets. He knew many.

  He spoke to them in turn, and most — those in least agony — could listen, even make reassuring faces to comfort him. Two of them tried to make jokes.

  "... Sir, didn't think it was possible for a trooper to outrun her horse. But by Mountain Jesus, I was scared enough and did it."

  "Mavis, you were just charging to the rear." That oldest of cavalry witticisms.

  Trooper Mavis Drew had been cut across the belly. The wound was bandaged tight to keep things in.

  Sam kissed her on the forehead, and went on down the line. Those who could see, seemed glad to see him.

  "Where's Colonel Flores?"

  The mercy-medic, a bearded older man, and tired, pointed to the tent entrance. "Inside, down to the left."

  "He'll live?"

  "Live one-handed," the medic said.

  The tent was filled with sunshine glow through canvas woven of the Empire's southern cotton, filled with that light and a soft, multiple hum of agony, the army's silence-in-suffering fallen away. Portia-doctor was with someone, bent over, doing something that made the person's breath catch and catch again.

  Sam went down the narrow aisle to the left, and saw, at the end of a row, Ned Flores lying slight on a folding cot. His left arm was out on the blanket, the wrist a fat wad of white bandage spotted with red.

  The man in the cot beside his was snoring softly, unconscious.

  "Sorry, Sam. Not quite as planned." Barely Ned's voice, rusty as an old man's, and from what seemed an aged face — no longer a young hawk's, handsome, high-beaked, and cruel. His youth had gone with his wound, and losing.

  Monroe knelt beside the cot. "No, not quite as planned, Ned.

  At least three hundred more dead and wounded than planned." He kept his voice low, "I sent you down here to lose a battle — to lose maybe forty or fifty of our people, then break off and run."

  "Right... right."

  "That was only between us, Ned. I thought you understood why it was necessary to lose at least a skirmish."

  "I know. Necessary…"

  "Our army's always won — never lost — and that's become dangerous. Even more so, now, with the Khan moving on Middle Kingdom. I didn't want him to think us a serious threat, and I didn't want the shock of our first lost battle, my first lost battle, to occur when we couldn't afford it. I thought you understood that."

  "Yes." A long pause, eyes closed. "Like cow-sore vaccination against the pops."

  "Then" — careful to speak softly — "then why the fuck didn't you order the regiment disengaged after the first melee? Behind you was all the room in the world to run!"

  "Well... tell you, Sam. Seemed to me... we had a chance to beat the bastards." Apparently great effort required to get that said.

  "Ned, you did not have a chance to beat them — almost seven hundred imperial cataphracts met in a pass at such close quarters? And you weren't sent down here to beat them!"

  "My fault." Flores seemed to doze, then woke with a start.

  Sam stood. "Yes. And my fault for trusting you to obey orders."

  "I know... I lost all those people."

  "Yes, and deserved to lose more than a hand, Ned. You deserved to lose your head."

  "You... can have it."

  Sam bent over him. "Ned, we've been friends since we were boys on the mountain. But if that order to lose, lose and run, hadn't been only between us — and have to remain only between us — I would have you tried and hanged for disobedience."

  "Don't doubt it, Sam," Ned Flores said. "And what a relief... that would be."

  CHAPTER 2

  To the Great Khan and Lord of Grass:

  Neckless Peter Wilson, elderly and once you
r servant and ambassador, submits and conveys this report of information concerning the history, winning, and holding of North Map-Mexico by the young Captain-General Small-Sam Monroe — by whose order this is forwarded sealed from all eyes but yours, Great Lord.

  Twenty-seven years ago, a band of fugitive Trappers — driven south from the mountains and ice-wall of Map-Colorado by the Cree — stopped to rest at Gardens, the town in forest and of forest.

  Their notable persons were Jack Monroe, that mythic fighting man; Catania Olsen, a physician; Joan Richardson, an Amazon; and Tattooed Newton, to be revealed errant third son to the ruler of Middle Kingdom.

  Within the year, Jack Monroe was dead — in tales, murdered by a bear jealous of his strength. Within this time also, Newton, with Dangerous-Joan Richardson, returned to the Boxcars' Middle Kingdom, where he came in time to his inheritance. On his death, years later — while arranging a reasonable agreement in Map-Kentucky — Dangerous-Joan was left to rule as Dowager Queen, and remains so today, aged, but no less dangerous.

  As these storied ones met their fates, so Catania Olsen, caring for an orphaned Trapper baby, Small-Sam Monroe, traveled down to North Map-Mexico, and into the Sierra Oriental.

  In the Sierra, after killing two men — one having attempted rape, the other having tried to steal her goat — Catania Olsen became physician to the savages and bandits of the mountains, and came to be loved by them.

  Her adopted son, Small-Sam, grew to manhood in those harsh and freezing altitudes — a world largely peopled, as all North Map-Mexico had been, by North Americans driven south centuries before, as the cold came down. So their language was and is book-English, their ways also informed by those surviving copies of Warm-time books.

  The original, the Beautiful Language, now is only spoken in the Empire of Map South-Mexico and Guatemala — and, one assumes, in the continent of wilderness below.

  Twenty-two years passed after Doctor Olsen's arrival. Then, the Empire's Duke Alphonso da Carvahal attempted a reconquest of their lost northern territories. This went badly.

  In a series of attacks along the western flank of the Sierra Oriental, Carvahal lost battle after battle — never, as the Warm-time saying had it, 'getting his ducks in a row.'

  In these battles, the men and women of North Map-Mexico lost two leaders slain. A third, a very young man, was elected for lack of better. This was Small-Sam Monroe, and at the town God-Help-Us, he attacked the imperial forces by night, and defeated them. Then he sent all the common-soldier prisoners south, alive and whole, at the plea of his Second-mother, Catania Olsen, whose name is still praised as a saint's for mercy in South Map-Mexico and Guatemala.

  The duke and his officers were disemboweled.

  So successful as a war leader that no man cared to stand against him in rule, young Small-Sam found himself acclaimed Captain-General of all the provinces of North Map-Mexico — as they still are named in the Beautiful Language, Baja California Norte, Sonora, Chihuahua, Coahuila, and Nuevo Leon, now united.

  He was urged to invade the south as the south had invaded the north, and so destroy the Empire. He refused, on consideration of that ancient stability better left preserved.

  Now twenty-seven years old — though looking older — Sam Monroe rules south from the Bravo down into both Sierras, and east from the Gulf of California and Ocean Pacific to the Great Gulf Entire.

  He enforces lightly in rule and taxes — but holds the towns, villages, mountains and fields of these fractious and turbulent people as with a fine noose, which lies slack unless tugged against.

  He is respected and popular, but treated with caution, since his reasons for violence are often not anticipated by ordinary men.

  Small-Sam Monroe — 'Sam' to his friends and near-equals, 'Sir' to all others — is stocky, sandy-haired, and exceptionally powerful and active. It is said in his army that few can match him with the sword. He carries what is called a 'bastard' — that is, a weapon a little lighter than a two-handed sword, with a grip called a 'hand and a half.' This weapon, I understand, is a rain-pattern blade, forged and folded many times from the empire's rare 'wootz' steel. And — which I think of some interest — though the important fighting men and women of this country follow the barbarian tradition of naming their swords, Monroe hasn't done so. A modesty availing not, since his officers and men christened the weapon 'Nameless.' So the great, in small ways as in large, are denned by those they rule.

  Monroe's face, square and harsh-featured, is marked by weather, war, and cares of state. His eyes are very clear, a dark hazel, his lashes almost long as a girl's. Commanding an army whose men are often mustached and bearded, he shaves his face clean — as do most of his senior officers and administrators, likely in imitation.

  The Captain-General's intelligence, like his vision, is clear, direct, devouring of subjects of interest, and dismissive of others. He is alert, profoundly practical, and unafraid. He works harder than any of his servants, though all, whether soldiers or administrators, are hard and constant workers.

  Finally — and this may be unimportant, may simply reflect the pressures of great power on a young man less than hungry for it — finally, it seems to me that Small-Sam Monroe is not happy.

  Important administrators: Charles Ketch — an exceptionally tall, stooped man in his fifties, once a prosperous valley farmer, then first Chief of Supply… and now Chief Executive, North Map-Mexico. What Monroe commands, Charles Ketch effects — and stands, it seems, somewhat in the role of father to the much younger man.

  Eric Lauder — current Chief of Supply, a man in his thirties, squat, bearded, bald, lively and humorous. Lauder, besides commanding the army's supply train, is also the edge of the secret civil sword… collecting information, dispensing any necessary covert deaths. (He has informed me, in the pleasantest way, that he considers my resignation from your service likely a clumsy ruse, and that I remain under his eye.)

  Margaret Mosten, Secretary. Mosten, an officer's widow — and herself an ex-officer of Light Infantry — administers Monroe's quarters and camps, and commands his personal guard. A sturdy blonde in her thirties, apparently easygoing and amiable, Mosten is both more efficient and more formidable than she appears. (I was told by a muleteer that on one occasion she personally escorted two drunken armed trespassers — found in the camp at night — to the perimeter guard post, where she cut their throats. A warning as well, apparently, to the guards who had not discovered and prevented them.)

  Margaret Mosten decides who sees the Captain-General, but doesn't appear to abuse her position. Her relationship to Monroe seems to have always been that of a friend, not a lover.

  Military Commanders: Almost elderly, and ranked brigadiers in the old Warm-time style, Jaime and Elvin Rascob have functioned as Monroe's senior commanders. These brothers, often in disagreement with each other — and occasionally with Monroe as well — nevertheless have a strikingly successful record in war. Their staff, field officers, and subordinate commanders hold these old men in great esteem. My impression is that the two brothers, together, have made one very formidable general. It may prove important, therefore, that Elvin Rascob is ill of tiny plants in his lungs — certainly the Warm-time TB — and is dying.

  Ned Flores, Colonel, commands the Light Cavalry regiments. A restless young man — violent and charming — Flores is a childhood friend of Monroe's, his closest friend. Though apparently only the image of a perfect dashing commander of light horse, this officer, as many of Monroe's people, reveals more depth on examination. He is responsible, more than any other, for reviving the game of chess in this territory — where checkers had been the board game of choice — and more often than not beats Monroe at it. He more often than not beats me as well, and crows like a child at his triumphs.

  Howell Voss, Colonel, commands the Heavy Cavalry. Colonel Voss, like Eric Lauder, is often amusing. He is also large and handsome — though missing his left eye — and is a favorite with women. (The eye was lost in a duel with an angry h
usband.) Howell Voss is occasionally subdued, 'blue' as Warm-times had it, and then stays alone in his tent. He plays the banjar very well indeed... and is said to be suicidally brave in battle.

  Phillip Butler, Colonel, commands the Heavy Infantry. An older man, gray-bearded, small, silent, and eccentric — he always has tiny dogs about him; he puts them in his jacket pockets — Colonel Butler was the mayor of Tijuana-City before the South invaded. It's said by Monroe's people, certainly an exaggeration, that Butler has never made a tactical mistake on a battlefield. He is regarded as an extraordinary soldier, having become, as it were, a Regular among inspired amateurs. His pikemen and crossbowmen love him, though he can be a harsh commander; they treat him like an irritable old uncle.

  Charmian Loomis, Colonel, commands the light Infantry. A tall, thin, awkward-seeming young woman, with light blue eyes and a bony — and, it seems to me, quite plain — face, she commands the elite of Monroe's army. ('Elite,' lord, may be found in Copy-Webster's. Bottom shelf on the right as you enter the library. I believe the word may have been Warm-time Canadian in origin.) ... This officer, a woman with no family, quite silent, and who appears to offer little in any social situation — I've met her several times — is by reputation a demonic figure in battle, with quite extraordinary skill in controlling a force designed after all to be mobile, occasionally fragmented, and self-directing to a considerable degree. Monroe occasionally calls her 'Joan,' I suspect in reference to some Warm-time figure he has read of. All others call her 'Colonel.'

  In summary, it is my civilian impression that these officers, and those they command, represent considerable military talent — experienced, highly disciplined, confident, and aggressive. I believe you would enjoy their company, if matters were otherwise, and would certainly then find them useful to employ.