Heavier Than a Mountain (Destiny's Crucible Book 3)

by Olan Thorensen

  Yozef laughed. “Wondering if I’m crazy or something for wanting to feed the prisoners and treat their injuries?”

  “From what I hear, one would be wise to listen carefully to any ideas coming from Yozef Kolsko, even if they seem crazy.”

  Yozef laughed again, relaxing. I think I might like this guy.

  “Our goal is to get information, however possible,” Yozef explained. “Trying it your way sometimes works if time is short, but the experience of my people is that if time is not a factor, there are other ways. Based on their previous treatment, I think the prisoners expect only the worst, so why should they cooperate? What I intend doing is to convince them that I mean them no harm and will protect them from people like you and the guards, though only if they cooperate with me.”

  “And this works?” asked Balwis skeptically.

  “Sometimes yes and sometimes no. At this point, with these prisoners, it’s a matter of what’s to lose?”

  Balwis nodded in understanding, if not belief.

  “I’m going to need your help,” said Yozef. “Since I don’t speak Narthani, you’ll have to continue interpreting. I’ll send back the worker who I sent for to translate and let you do it. It’s important that you understand what we’ll be trying to do and get the meanings accurately across to the Narthani. Since they already have experience with you, you’ll be the ‘Bad Man’ who disapproves of my new methods but has to obey and do translating at my order. Call it the ‘Good Man, Bad Man’ method of questioning.”

  Balwis nodded understanding with a bemused expression. “What if they don’t cooperate?”

  “Then we’re no worse off, but I think at least some of them will. Of course, we can also mix up the method. Since you’re the ‘Bad Man,’ we can always include some of the previous methods, but only if I order it. We want them to think I’m sympathetic to them and the only positive part of their existence.”

  “This should be interesting,” said a now fully amused Balwis. “Either I will learn some of the tricks of the great Yozef Kolsko or I’ll have incredible stories to tell at pubs for the rest of my life.”

  Yozef smiled. “It’s a winning situation for you, no matter what happens. I have other matters I need to attend to, so I’ll leave you in charge here to see that the Narthani are treated, fed, and given some blankets to keep warm tonight. One of my workers will return with medicants. See that he gets whatever assistance he needs. We’ll start questioning tomorrow.”

  Yozef arrived at the warehouse at mid-morning the next day. Balwis Preddi sat against the outside wall and rose when he saw Yozef.

  “As you ordered, our Narthani friends are waiting for you,” Balwis said sardonically.

  “Let’s see them,” replied Yozef, entering the building and expecting to see the prisoners lying on the floor. Instead, to his surprise, men in plain but clean clothes sat or slept on rows of cots.

  “What the—?”

  “Since we’re being nice to them now, didn’t seem right to leave them on the floor, so your man, Fuller, found enough cots.”

  The guard leader was huddled with the other guards and strode quickly to the entrance when he saw Yozef.

  “I hope everything is to your satisfaction, Ser Kolsko,” gushed the almost obsequious man. “All the prisoners were given clothes, soap and water to wash, and fed as much as they could eat last night and this morning.”

  Yozef eyed the man and wondered about the change in demeanor.

  “Yes, everything seems in good shape. Thank you for your effort.”

  With that, the guard half-bowed and hurried back to his companions.

  “What’s gotten into him?” Yozef mumbled into the air.

  “We’ve gotten an earful from several of the locals on exactly who Yozef Kolsko is. My companions got somewhat vocal last night at a pub, and one particular fellow took exception to some of the comments about your parentage.”

  “The pub wouldn’t happen to be the Snarling Graeko, would it? And the ‘particular fellow’ large and red-haired?”

  “Right both times,” said Balwis. “You can sure grow them big around here. I thought Grawan was going to shit his pants when he got picked up by the front of his shirt.”

  “Grawan?”

  “Our brave guard leader.”

  Yozef envisioned the scene and felt grateful Carnigan had only warned the idiot.

  It was time to begin with the prisoners. He addressed the guards. “We’ll use one of the warehouse front rooms. You’ll see some odd pieces of furniture scattered around the warehouse. Set up a table with two chairs. We’ll work with the prisoners one at a time and see which ones are willing to talk and if they have anything to say of interest.

  “Balwis, you’ll stand behind me and a step back. The reason you’ll stand is not because I don’t want you to sit down, but so we make the prisoners see me as more of an authority figure they might want to please and you as the subordinate. Some of them might be more likely to talk with the threat of you visible if I’m not pleased. Translate everything as accurately as you can.”

  “Oh, I’ll translate for you. I just don’t see this working.”

  “Maybe not.”

  One by one, the guards brought in the prisoners. Still bruised, wary, and fearful, they looked better than the previous day. Yozef had writing materials and started off with name, rank, age, origin, and a few other items of information.

  More than half of the men were too incoherent, too defiant, too frightened, or too ill-informed to give much in the way of answers. Yet he could mine the rest of them. Those men were open books, either eager to curry better treatment and protection from Yozef or relieved to no longer be under Narthani authority. After midday meal, Yozef and Balwis, this time both sitting, brought back the men individually and started in-depth questioning. Although much of the information was redundant, by that evening they had the names and ranks of the Narthani command structure down to at least some of the lower command levels, depending on the experience of the prisoner; consistent estimates of the numbers of Narthani troops of each type; numbers of cannon; a rough outline of the conditions in Preddi Province; and knowledge of the almost complete supplanting of the original islanders in Preddi Province.

  Most immediately interesting, Yozef got an estimate of how many Narthani military and civilians resided on Caedellium: 10,000 to 12,000 of the former and 70,000 to 110,000 of the latter. That evening, he summarized the first interrogations and sent a copy to Culich Keelan in Caernford.

  The Eywell prisoners provided details that complemented those from previous prisoners’ interrogations: they had knowledge of conditions within Eywell Province, but little, if any, information about the Narthani or Preddi Province. Unfortunately, even their familiarity with their own province was scanty, because they originated from a sparsely populated part of Eywell. One of the men felt so relieved when Yozef said they wouldn’t be killed if they cooperated that he broke down crying. When he recovered, he relayed to Yozef that most Eywell captives had been killed outright even more eagerly than were the Narthani.

  Yozef decided that had to change. He needed information on conditions within Eywell and Selfcell.

  By the time they quit for the evening, Balwis was a convert.

  “I admit I thought you were pretty stupid to think playing your ‘Good Man’ to the Narthani would get us anything. I was wrong. We can always kill them later. Now I see how cleverly you got them to give us information, even if I’m not sure how much of it will be useful.”

  “Do we have to kill them in the end?” asked Yozef.

  “What else would we do with them?” questioned Balwis, confused. “They’re Narthani.” He uttered the last words with deep bitterness and ignored the Eywellese.

  “What about the last Narthani we questioned today?” asked Yozef. “He can’t be more than seventeen years old. From what he tells us, he lived with his family working at the estate of a Narthani lord of some kind back in Narthon. Almost slaves themselves. At age
fifteen, he was sent to a troop training camp, where for the next six months senior troops brutalized him into becoming a disciplined soldier who would obey any orders given. What choice did he have? If he had refused, he thinks he would have been executed and his family punished for not raising him to be a proper Narthani.”

  Balwis remained quiet, conflicting thoughts vying in his mind. “I don’t know,” he said finally, remembering how the youth had cried when Yozef suggested he might be allowed not only to live, but not to be sent back to the Narthani.

  “Everything they say about you is true,” said Balwis thoughtfully.

  “Everything they say? Like what?”

  “That you do things and know things like no one else has ever seen, and that everywhere you go, things change. Most think for the better, even if many are uneasy at the speed of change. Something tells me we have only seen the beginning and that you’re probably important for us against the Narthani.”

  Balwis stomped back and forth in the room, mumbling to himself, as if arguing or trying to make a decision. Yozef waited.

  Finally, he said, “Yes. I want to kill every living Narthani. Yet as much as I want that, I know driving them off Caedellium is more important. You will need more interpreting, not just with these prisoners, but more times in the future. You’ll need someone you can trust to translate. I’ll be your regular interpreter. I can also do whatever more unpleasant tasks are needed that you cannot or will not do. There. That decides it. I’m now in your service.”

  “Do I have any say in this decision?” countered an amused Yozef.

  “No.”

  Thus, did Balwis Preddi become an aide to Yozef.

  As useful as the background information was on the first day of conducting in-depth interrogations, on the second day they hit paydirt. The next to last of the Narthani prisoners was a scruffy older man with weathered skin and graying hair. He had been the crew leader of one of the 12-pounder cannon captured during the battle and was a twenty-year veteran in the Narthani army. Despite those years of service, the older man felt no loyalty to the Narthon Empire. It simply existed, and he could do nothing about it, so he did what was necessary to survive. While he never clarified exactly where he came from, he transferred whatever loyalty he had to Yozef, as the most expedient action at the moment. Yozef had no illusions that his allegiance wouldn’t transfer back to Narthon with changing circumstances, yet that was irrelevant.

  What was relevant was that the man had served the last twelve years as an artilleryman and had collected tidbits of knowledge along the way, such as how to cast cannon whose barrels didn’t inconveniently tend to burst when fired. Bingo!

  Yozef’s elation at possibly solving the cannon foundry problem was quickly replaced by embarrassed chagrin after hearing the old Narthani’s advice translated by Balwis.

  “I’m surprised all the barrels didn’t burst with no reinforcing bands,” was all he had to say for Yozef to recognize one obvious and trivial solution. Not only the thickness of the breaches presented a problem, but Yozef could improve the general strength along the tubes’ length by adding reinforcing metal bands at several sites along the barrel. The Narthani didn’t need to use such bands, because they had cast the original barrels with even cooling of the metal after pouring. Yozef’s foundry workers had poured the barrels as a solid cast, with a clay mold holding the position of the bore. After cooling, they had bored out the clay and smoothed the inside of the barrel. As the metal cooled from the outside inward, the solid outer layers pulled away from the still molten interior, creating small cavities. These created weak spots in the finished barrels. With the smaller swivel guns, the cooling proceeded fast enough to minimize imperfections, but not so with the larger bores. The solution was to use a hollow casting core in the center of the mold. They would pump water in and out of the core, while keeping the exterior hot, thus cooling from the inside out and pulling molten metal toward the interior, instead of the reverse.

  After hearing the old man, Yozef sat quietly, as his memory dredged up references to these exact suggestions. It wasn’t that his memory didn’t have the information; he simply hadn’t asked himself the right questions to bring it forward. It was a chastising lesson for him. Even with enhanced memory, he had to conduct proper searches, as with the Internet back on Earth. Everything was there, but he just had to implement a specific search to find specific answers. Even so, he didn’t understand how he had missed the information.

  I know I can excuse myself by saying I simply have too much to do, but I just can’t make these kinds of mistakes too often.

  They finished with the last prisoner on the evening of the second day. Yozef was surprised that Balwis or the guards didn’t object when he ordered the prisoners who had cooperated to be transferred to another building with actual beds, bedding, and better food. The old Narthani artilleryman, Razil Gurbuz, would work at the foundry, where Yawnfol would translate and Balwis would check regularly. With the ideas about reinforcing bands and the different method of cooling the cast barrels, Yozef felt certain they could successfully cast larger cannon.

  Cooperative Narthani prisoners found jobs in trades or shops, also under close observation. The young Narthani whom Yozef had used to ask Balwis what he would have done in the boy’s situation was sent to work on a ranch in eastern Keelan, along with the Eywellese prisoners.

  He tried to think of a future for the other Narthani prisoners. When he failed, they disappeared the morning after he informed Denes.

  CHAPTER 7: DIGGING IN

  Narthani Headquarters, Preddi City

  General Okan Akuyun held a cup, as he stared at the map on the wall, the bitter taste of kava matching his mood. Instead of the Caedellium map showing Narthani expansion from Preddi, the province they controlled, and the two neighboring and allied provinces, Eywell and Selfcell, a line meandered parallel to the eastern border of Eywell and separated almost a fifth of the province no longer inhabited by the Eywell Clan. Incursions and raids by the other clans had been frequent and severe enough for the Eywellese to abandon farms, ranches, and villages, even to within ten miles of the clan capital at Hanslow.

  He could hear the rustling of papers, the shifting of chairs, and low murmurs of men behind him, waiting for him to start the meeting. His mind went back to another map, one that had hung on this wall before being taken down and stored: a map with arrows indicating their invasion route into Moreland Province, then on to Orosz Province, and eventually to the sea, splitting the island in half. They had been confident that most of the other clans would capitulate to Narthani control, to avoid the fate of the Preddi Clan during the early phases of the Narthani mission to subjugate Caedellium and bring it into the Narthon Empire.

  For the month since Moreland City and more times than he had counted, Akuyun had gone over written plans, meeting summaries, and reports, trying to find where he had erred. He was in command. Therefore, the failure of the Moreland invasion fell to him. Yet no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t find fault with himself or any of his subordinates. He was honest enough with himself to recognize that not finding fault didn’t mean fault was lacking, only that he couldn’t see it. In the end, he came down to two possibilities. One was that, indeed, his shortcomings were at the root of their problem. The alternative was that they had done everything possible, given what they knew, but some unknown new element had come into play. In the latter case, they had no way to factor an unknown into their plans, and thus they were caught unawares. Either way, they had to accept their situation, and he had a duty to deal with what lay before them.

  He took a deep breath and turned to face the room full of men. A senior staff meeting usually involved Akuyun, his three most senior subordinates, and the assessor. Those four men sat at the table before him: Brigadier Aivacs Zulfa, commander of all Narthani ground forces; Admiral Morfred Kalcan, naval commander; Nizam Tuzere, civilian population administrator; and Sadek Hizer, the mission assessor assigned to give the High Command independe
nt evaluations of mission progress and evaluations of senior leaders.

  An infrequent participant in staff meetings was Mamduk Balcan, the senior prelate with the role of overseeing conversion of the island’s people to worship the only true God, Narth. While Akuyun preferred not to have the man in meetings, today was different. The focus of the mission would formally change as of today and would remain changed until new instructions came from Narthon. Akuyun had already briefed Balcan, and the prelate had reacted irrationally, just as predicted. The fact that the military situation made it temporarily impossible to expand conversion efforts made no impression on him. It had taken Akuyun over an hour to placate the prelate enough so that he would keep silent in today’s meeting. Fortunately, Balcan had changed his tone, because Akuyun had come close to deciding an unfortunate accident needed to befall the prelate.

  Those five faces were turned to him, as were thirty others, of men sitting in chairs to the back and sides of the table: colonels, senior majors, commodores, a dozen select civilian administrators, and two of Hizer’s assistants. The expanded staff meeting signaled to all attendees that the mission was about to undergo a major reorientation.

  Akuyun didn’t take his seat. He would stand for the meeting, as was appropriate for what he had to say.

  “Gentlemen, let us begin.”

  Those heads not already turned to Akuyun did so, backs straightened in chairs, pupils dilated in their focus to the head of the room, and for a moment, the only sound was breathing.

  “I need not explain that Phase Four of the subjugation of the Island of Caedellium did not go as planned.”

  It was an understatement; no one laughed.

  “We predicated our move on Moreland Province based on the assumption the clans would not unite in numbers enough to be a threat and on their inexperience in field tactics. We expected to inflict one or more decisive defeats on the battlefield, followed by individual clans accepting Narthani suzerainty. However, the enemy our men fought outside of Moreland City was not the foe we anticipated. Although we faced ten clans, more than expected, it should not have affected the outcome. The critical factor was that the clans showed a tactical sense far beyond what we believed they had any right to have, and they possessed light artillery, something else unexpected.