The Far Side

by Wylie, Gina Marie

  The supply situation, even so, wasn’t pretty. Feston had only small quantities of gunpowder and that had been kept safe, but about a third of the food had been spoiled. Abna was in much worse shape, but for them it was because their powder locker had been stove in by a freak wave, and about two thirds of the gunpowder had been ruined.

  Glaive had done better preserving both, but there were a lot of mouths to feed. Glaive ordered the surviving slaves to be put to work quarrying rock for a wall, and unloading some of the Glaive’s cannon to protect the camp.

  For Yourel had some news, news of the greatest importance, that had been flashed home within minutes. Men, matching the physical description of the Builders, had been seen, headed north. Not only that, acting-captain Graal had a prisoner that Yourel could talk to in the ancient Builder language.

  The man was demented and made little sense, but if you were patient and repeated your questions enough times you could learn something.

  Graal had sent thirty men to search for the others the prisoner reported, and while they were at it, Glaive’s second in command, Harta Nomer, had gotten lost, probably chasing a runaway slave.

  Hearing that tale, Glaive had wanted to find the man and personally wring his throat. Why would you chase a slave who’d run into this terrible wilderness -- particularly if you were planning on killing her anyway? Pride, he supposed. But still -- common sense and a sense of priorities should have kept the man in the camp.

  Graal’s men had gone as far north as their supplies would permit, but an enterprising lieutenant had offered to push on another day with two men, even faster than the others had been going.

  Whatever -- no one knew what had happened to those three men, they had simply vanished.

  Two weeks later, scouts reported about twenty of the Builders coming south. By then, Glaive was in charge and he had Graal’s best man lead a contingent of fifty men north to fight them.

  The scouts had suffered later for their incompetence. There were more than a hundred of the Builders and they ambushed the party and killed most of them. Glaive had been close enough so that his ship could throw a few cannon balls against those who did it -- but they were well dispersed and promptly hid. He’d had to swallow his anger and sail away.

  He’d gone north, finally finding a substantial town at the top of the peninsula. There wasn’t much he could do, and he was aware that a third of his gunpowder was back in the camp. He fired a broadside to let them know that the Tengri Imperium had come for them, as they had come for their ancestors.

  He snorted. The Builders! Many of the Builders his ancestors had attacked so long ago had run, like cowards, and the remainder surrendered and were taken into captivity. His ancestors had lived well for many years after that in the great cities the Builders had constructed, but hadn’t been able to protect. The Tengri were contemptuous of such men and their works, however amazing.

  No one paid attention to the fact that some Builders had different knowledge than the others -- they were slaves and you treated all slaves the same. A great many of the Builders died in those first years, unable to adjust to a life of servitude.

  Who cared? They’d captured a half million slaves! Then the aqueducts started breaking down, and the cities slowly became untenable. There was a new Emperor, not a conqueror like his forbearers, but one who thought himself refined. He ordered the Builders to start fixing things, ignoring that for fifty years, to display such knowledge would have resulted in death, as teaching that knowledge would have resulted in death.

  The young emperor raged when his first demands were unmet, demanding that the Tengri themselves learn the Builder’s secret lore!

  There were a lot of books and papers left, mostly ill-used. Scholars were set to the task, and when that wasn’t enough, the Emperor of the Tengri conscripted an entire division of his soldiers to become scholars.

  That hadn’t worked out very well either! Still, men faced with the choice of “learn or die,” chose life. Men learned the ancient Builder tongue, they learned the Builder’s secrets and learned to apply them.

  There was no real singular moment when it happened, but it did. One day a man discovered something that the Builders hadn’t known. He commented on it, and after that, more and more scholars learned things that the Builders had never known. Eventually there was far more that the Tengri knew than the Builders had ever known and the Builders had slipped back to being the inferior race everyone knew them to be.

  Here and now, Builder Scholars were considered amusing anachronisms, the Imperial Academy of Scholars was where things were happening.

  It had been Yourel who’d caused all of this. Workmen tearing apart an ancient Builder palace had found a secret chamber with many of the Builders’ books. Yourel had been called in to see if there was anything interesting that might add to the scholarship about the Builders. It was humdrum, routine, and had been done thousands of times over the centuries.

  Those books had turned the Empire on its ear. They told of the Builders outfitting a vast fleet of ships, of men who stood on the docks and swore solemn oaths to return one day and slay the Tengri.

  Had it been one book, it might have just been thought a dreamer’s fantasy, but it meshed well with the Tengri legends that spoke of the Builders fleeing. Legends that had never made sense before and were thought most likely to have been speaking of a flight into death.

  But, there were a dozen books in the one old chest, and workmen were set to looking further and more were found. The old palace had been where the retreat had been planned, and there were many records of the flight.

  Scholars had been consulted. What was in the west? None knew. There was a great desert to the north of Tengri lands, inhabited with barbarians who killed Tengri with pleasure and abandon. To the east was a great sea, and there were a half dozen kingdoms around its periphery, all of them quite strong. To the far south there was ocean and more ocean, as it was in the west.

  Tengri ships trying to sail south and east around the southern fringe of their continent were met with hails of gunfire and either turned back or were sunk. Those kingdoms were unwilling to tell any Tengri about the shape or extent of their lands. They all feared the Tengri; they didn’t trust the Tengri and stayed strong or they would have long before fallen to the Tengri.

  The Emperor had personally commanded that an expedition be outfitted and sent as far west as ships could sail. Irony was that Glaive had been two days from the turn-around point when the storm had struck.

  And now they were here and now here was ruin. The Emperor had commanded too many things, making them imperatives. Explore the shape of the land here; make a secure fort, prepare for reinforcements. Reinforcements that might be six months from coming.

  Glaive had tried to do his best.

  The second time the scouts had reported Builders moving south, he knew it was the end. There were, he was told, thousands of them moving towards him. Glaive had four hundred seamen from the Glaive, two hundred from Abna and eighty survivors of the Feston. Abna was useless for exploration, as it had no transmitter.

  The scouts reported that the Builders were armed with some sort of steel bows that threw iron rods very far, very fast. Worse, they could fire those bows two, three and sometimes four times as fast as a man could fire a musket.

  One of the survivors of the first attack against the Builders had been bitter. “We shot at them, again and again! Our muskets rarely hit them. Those bows rarely missed.

  “The smoke from the muskets obscures our ability to see around us, while they are in clear air. When the smoke blows away, you have to find them before they find you, knowing that they would be able to shoot several times before you could. We died, Viceroy!”

  That had been a simple ambush and had worked well for the Builders -- and cost him fifty men -- roughly one of ten of his soldiers.

  And today -- today had been a catastrophe from the opening shots that had murdered his ship and half its crew. The steel bows were deadlier than
muskets and as bad as that was, these Builders had something that threw small bombs long distances. Once such a bomb had landed in the ready gunpowder for one of his own guns and the explosion had destroyed the gun and twenty men around it -- and breached the wall.

  Yourel sat down next to him. “Cousin, we are in trouble.”

  Glaive snorted. “We are surrounded -- of course we’re in trouble!”

  “Worse -- the storm three weeks ago significantly reduced our food supply. We planted crops, but they aren’t close to being mature yet. Now your ship is gone, along with all of the supplies aboard it, plus the radio. Your men, half of them, made it safely to land, cousin. That is the source of the problem.”

  “That my men survived is a problem?” His cousin was insane! Scholars!

  “Your men survived, Viceroy -- their supplies did not.”

  “And the Togan will be here in a few days. Togan is a supply ship with holds full of food. And there are the crops we’ve planted as well. We might have to tighten our belts a bit, but not much.”

  Glaive was still not certain what to think of the captain of the Togan, another supply ship with his fleet. Unlike everyone else, Togan’s captain had streamed a sea anchor and had moved much slower than the other ships. They had found a sheltered shore behind one of the islands and had stayed safe there while the other ships had fought for their lives.

  Togan had done as the Abna had done, securing their radio, and had escaped with only a cracked mast. They’d spent two weeks installing a new mast that they’d cut on the island, and now they were finally approaching the fort. Glaive had trouble accepting a captain who risked so little.

  The good news though, was that his wife and daughter were aboard Togan, as was her brother and his wife and their two sons. The supplies were now crucial, and he could ignore the fact that he was fond of his wife, even if, so far, she’d only presented him with a daughter.

  Glaive eventually had fallen into an exhausted sleep -- only to be woken up a short time later by Graal. “Viceroy, they have fired the crops!”

  That brought him awake in an instant. “What?”

  “About a half hour ago, one of the guards reported smelling something odd, and I was woken at once. I went to the wall, but I didn’t recognize the smell. There was a flash towards the fields and then a whooshing sound. All of a sudden, the fields were blazing like a fireplace. I ordered the cannon on the east side to fire two shots, but the gun captain told me that only you can order him to fire.”

  “We’re short on powder,” Glaive said absently, as he rubbed sleep from his eyes. He followed Graal to the wall and peeped over. The fire wasn’t as dramatic as Graal had described, but there was no doubt that the fields had been all but destroyed.

  A guard sergeant saluted. “We never saw one of the barbarians, Lord Viceroy!” There had been precious few of them visible earlier in the day as well.

  Glaive turned to Graal, able to vent his anger on a helpless subordinate. “You did see something to fire the cannon at, did you not?”

  Graal met his eyes. “No. Viceroy -- I didn’t want to sit here and let the crops be destroyed and do nothing.”

  Glaive laughed, more bitter than ever. It was humiliating. He’d been thinking about how the Emperor’s orders had hamstrung his ability to fight the barbarians. And now his own orders had hamstrung Graal.

  “Maintain a watch. Fire muskets if you see something to shoot at. Otherwise, don’t fire. And the guns remain under my direct command.”

  Graal bowed his head and Glaive went back to his pallet and laid down on it. This wasn’t good! After a few minutes he rose and sought out Yourel and stood over him. “Have the technicians fixed the radio antennas?”

  “No, Viceroy. The antennas were destroyed by their explosives. It will take a day, perhaps two, to restore them. I have placed the equipment for the time being in the small cave we quarried to shelter the women and children.”

  Glaive finally managed to drowse a few minutes before the sun started to rise into the sky, even if the Big Moon obscured most of the light. The men were alert, but had to keep their heads down.

  Just before the eclipse was to end a man was seen waving a white flag. Graal spoke to Glaive. “Viceroy, I think they wish to parley.”

  Glaive raised an eyebrow. Why would they do that? They had but to close their fists and everyone in the fort would be dead. He sniffed -- they were the Builders, after all! They liked to run! They didn’t like to fight! Maybe they wanted to surrender.

  He shook his head. That was a stupid thought! The Builders knew they had won. Was there a chance, however small, that they might give him time to think about their demands? Was it enough time for the Togan to come up and add more fighting men and more cannon?

  He thought for a moment and then turned to Graal. “I wish you to be rude. I want you to be insulting -- but don’t go so far as to have them walk away. Delay as much as you can and then agree to discuss their requests with me. Okay?”

  “Yes, Viceroy!”

  There were a few shouted exchanges and Graal came right back. “My lord, I don’t understand them, and they don’t understand me. Perhaps Yourel could translate what I have to say?”

  “Yes, that’s fine.”

  He rubbed his chin, only half listening to the negotiations. The smart thing to do was to accept his fate, which would be death, and use the Togan and Abna to evacuate everyone to one of the islands off to the east. Giving the order to evacuate would certainly bring about his execution.

  Would the Emperor be better off with Glaive dead and the survivors safe? Or would it be better for Glaive if he gambled on a victory? That really wasn’t possible, was it? The Builders had brought up thousands of men, and they hadn’t needed more than a few weeks. He knew the one city he’d found was four hundred miles away, and the other part of the mainland they’d found was another hundred beyond that. By all accounts it was populous and with many cities.

  These then were the troops that could be assembled most swiftly and could well be just militia. Certainly he didn’t understand why they used steel bows instead of muskets if they had a choice. He grimaced -- well, except for the fact that steel bows were more accurate and fired faster and didn’t obscure your vision.

  No, if they didn’t evacuate, everyone would die. Even if they held out against this group, more would be coming, and then more and then more still. He would take the opportunity and get as many away as he could and take his chances with the Emperor’s temper.

  Graal sank down next to him. “They say they are sending their war leader to parley, down by the water’s edge.”

  He beckoned to Yourel, who moved to Glaive’s side with alacrity. “Viceroy?”

  “You will negotiate with them. Stall for time -- the Abna signaled earlier that they’d heard from Togan this morning and that they will be soon rounding the peninsula. They should be here within an hour or two. With the Togan’s weapons, we should be able to get better terms. Graal, you will walk out with Yourel and two guards. Yourel, you will be the only one to talk, but translate for Graal.”

  “Yes, Viceroy!” the two men chorused.

  After that, things went from bad to catastrophic. The “war leader” was a female child, or so Glaive thought until she killed a dozen men on the Abna. That was followed by the information that Togan had been destroyed. Glaive called Graal and Yourel back, mostly to give himself time to think.

  “Your impressions of the child?” he demanded from Graal and Yourel.

  “She’s no child, she’s just short,” Yourel told him. “There are Builder records that such things happen. We’ve tried to breed the slaves to be shorter, but it’s a lengthy task.”

  “She’s not a child?”

  “No, Viceroy,” Graal added. “I watched her when she fired her weapon. Viceroy, that weapon -- if the Builders had them in any number, we’d all be dead now. They are as far beyond our muskets as muskets are beyond bows and arrows.

  “I tried to count the shots
she fired. I think they were in groups of three, but they are very fast and it’s hard to tell. You really can’t hear the separate shots -- you have to watch the bullets hit their targets. Those bullets hit their targets more often than not. I didn’t notice it at first, but there is something like a light on the end of the barrel of her weapon. The bullets hit where the light shines.”

  He took a deep breath. “Viceroy, I fear that some of these we face are from the Big Moon and have come to make common cause with the Builders.”

  Yourel nodded in agreement. “She is astute, she is observant, and she is personally brave. She stood cool while the men with her were clearly afraid and sweating as she shot at us. She ignored the return fire, calmly picking off the men who shot at her. Viceroy, if she’s not a war leader, then we are truly doomed. If their war leaders are better than she is...” He spread his hands helplessly.

  “I signaled Abna to pull away from the shore again,” Glaive told them. “They are our only remaining hope.”

  Graal stood stiffly. “Viceroy, if I am to be killed for what I am about to say, so be it. It will sound like defeatism. But we are beaten. Their bomb throwers can shoot at Abna if they try to reach shore to pick us up. Abna can shoot back, but they won’t be able to touch their weapons. One of my sergeants saw one of their men carrying something earlier. It was a long tube, Viceroy. Sir, I think these cannon of theirs are small enough for a few men to carry one.

  “If we try to leave our walls, thousands of the Builders will be shooting their steel bows at us. We would last but a few minutes. If we try to stay behind these walls, we will starve in a month, and those damnable cannons will keep us awake all day and night, firing occasional shots.

  “They have to know these things. I think they are sincerely offering to allow us to leave. They wish to draw Abna’s teeth before they allow it to close with the shore. It is a prudent thing to do. They say they are willing to let us leave if we release the slaves to them.”

  “It would be more prudent for them to crush us,” Glaive told him.