Alexis Carew: Books 1, 2, and 3

by J. A. Sutherland

  He’d suspected that’s what he’d wind up with — anything from the hodgepodge of weapons collected from the other colonists was too variable for him and he didn’t trust the pair of antique pistols Coalson had provided not to have some trick to them.

  Likely these do too, he thought, eyeing the thin swords in the case Doakes held.

  “It’s a bit off protocol,” Mylin said as the three arrived near Denholm, “but we’re agreed you’re to choose first.”

  Coalson snorted.

  “Mister Coalson, it’s only fair,” Doakes said. “What with you supplying the weapons and having a principal upon the field. We’d not want our colony’s first days marred with whispers of impropriety, would we?”

  “Shouldn’t have accepted a challenge if he couldn’t supply the weapons of his choice,” Coalson said.

  “Saw blades at twenty paces, Rashae?” Denholm asked. “Plows to first blood? You’re the only one of us who spent shipping credits on what can only be used to kill your neighbors.”

  “Gentlemen!” Doakes stepped between them. “A principal and the other’s second may not speak! It is unseemly.” He turned his back to Coalson and held out the box to Denholm, speaking formally. “As challenged party, sir, the letter of the code does dictate that you should bring a set of weapons or agree that each of you will supply his own, but with so few available, and with these having been supplied by your opponent’s second, I have agreed it’s only proper you should pick from them first.”

  Denholm nodded. The blades were identical, long and thin with basket hilts. He’d prefer them, despite their having come from Coalson, as being least damaging.

  Unless Thawley insists his honor won’t be satisfied by a simple pinking.

  Denholm chose one of the swords, tested its balance, and swished it through the air a couple times. It was a bit heavier in the hilt than he’d prefer, but he nodded to Doakes. The three men turned without a word and went over to Thawley.

  “Gentlemen, I will ask once more,” Doakes called once Thawley was armed. “Can honor not be satisfied in some other way this morning?”

  “It cannot,” Thawley called out.

  “Mister Thawley, as the offended party the conditions are yours to name.” Doakes nodded toward the watching crowd. “I will simply say that we are a very young colony and that tones are set by events like these. One should consider the —”

  “Enough, Doakes!” Coalson yelled. “Do your bloody job and no more, will you? The man knows what his honor demands, it’s not your place to lecture him!”

  Denholm watched Thawley throughout. The other man seemed to be growing more nervous and hesitant, and kept glancing from Coalson to the crowd of watchers and back again.

  For himself, Denholm felt oddly calm. He might be dead in another few minutes, but worrying at it wouldn’t help. He was confident in his own abilities, even with an unfamiliar weapon. Though he’d never fought a serious duel, there’d been mocks and minor passes to first blood at school. Even with those, though, there was a risk of serious injury and the better man didn’t always win. Once blades were crossed, any number of things could happen.

  Thawley looked from Coalson to the crowd again and firmed his shoulders.

  “First blood,” he said. “The insult was not so grave.”

  Denholm glanced at Coalson, who reddened visibly.

  So you told your cat’s paw to go for more, did you? But can’t very well dress him down for it after speaking so to Doakes?

  Doakes nodded. He moved to the center of the space between them.

  “Crossed or as you stand, Mister Carew?” Doakes asked.

  “As we stand,” Denholm said. He wanted the space between them at the start, wanted to see Thawley coming and how he moved and held his blade.

  “Very well.” Doakes gestured for Coalson and Mylin to step back with him. When they were a few meters removed from the combatants, he took a deep breath. “Begin.”

  Denholm watched Thawley approach warily.

  He was more than a bit surprised at the man, as he’d expected Thawley to rush right at him. Instead he was circling and moving slowly, drawing nearer, but taking his time about it.

  Denholm took the time to size him up as best he could.

  He moved lightly on his feet, something else that surprised Denholm, and his sword was held loosely, wrist flexing, tip dancing about to draw the eye.

  Denholm frowned.

  Perhaps Thawley wasn’t as inexperienced or nervous as he’d first assumed. The man seemed to have some skill.

  Thawley came closer, not within range where their blades could touch, but close enough that Denholm didn’t want to stand still and let him come. He turned and edged away slightly, Thawley following his movements closely, and the two began circling, just out of reach.

  Thawley lunged, blade tip leaping forward, body turned to offer the least target possible.

  Denholm reacted just as quickly, his counter determined not so much by conscious thought as a natural reaction to Thawley’s technique. Thawley’s school seemed to have taught him a bit of finesse — Denholm’s alma mater had taught that as well, but they’d also taught their students to stay alive. As one of Denholm’s more cynical peers at school had put it, “We can’t very well respond to their donation requests from a box underground, now can we?”

  Denholm deflected Thawley’s blade to his left, wrist high, blade pointed down. Thawley began to recover, pulling back, but Denholm moved into him, keeping his blade in contact, spinning counterclockwise and raising his left elbow for a strike at Thawley’s head.

  Thawley moved away from the blow, but it had been a feint on Denholm’s part. Instead he flung his right elbow up. It meant his blade blocked Thawley’s closer to the tip, where he had less leverage, and risked a slicing cut as Thawley withdrew, but Thawley wasn’t expecting that. The force of Denholm’s arm drove his elbow into Thawley’s face, which was moving in the opposite direction to avoid the feint and added to the impact.

  Thawley staggered back, blood spurting from his nose.

  Denholm stepped back and lowered his blade.

  “First blood,” he said.

  “From a blade, damn your eyes!” Coalson yelled.

  Thawley was still staggering backward, hunched over, hands to his face and blade barely in his grasp.

  “First blood,” Denholm repeated, then turned his attention back to Thawley. “If it satisfies, Mister Thawley?”

  Thawley looked up at him, eyes watery and blinking. Blood covered the lower half of his face and his mouth was full of it, he had to spit twice before he could speak.

  “Aye,” he said. “It satisfies.” He straightened, spat again, then glared first at Denholm and finally at Coalson. He flung his sword to the ground. “It’s enough.” He turned and strode away.

  Nine

  “Damn me, but this won’t …”

  Denholm pulled the bolt from its place and looked from it to the nut in his other hand. It was difficult to tell in the shadowy, cramped space underneath the wagon, so he set the two together and tried to turn the nut. Clearly the wrong size.

  “Well, then …”

  He reached the hand with the bolt out from beneath the wagon where he lay and called out, “Lynelle! Is there a nut left in the pack that will fit this?” He waved it back and forth. “Lynelle?”

  “Well and will wagging it to and fro at me do a thing for you, do you think, love?”

  Denholm felt her take the bolt.

  “I’m sorry — this bloody thing has my temper short.” He studied the underside of the wagon where there was just the single bolt left to install, if the thing’s instructions were to be believed. “And there’s a bit or two I’d rather be wagging at you, truth be told.”

  “Hmph.” Lynelle handed him the bolt with a new nut already threaded on it to show that it fit. “The shelter’s packed and I’ll want more than a tent with this crowd around, afore there’s any wagging to be done.”

  Denholm ins
talled the bolt and started tightening it.

  “Only for the one night; then we’ll be on our way.”

  “And not a bit too soon for me, afore there’s more trouble frae that bawjaws, Coalson, an’ his crowd.”

  Denholm grunted agreement as he slid the bolt home and began tightening it in place.

  “Denholm! Love! The shuttles’re leavin’, I think!”

  He gave one last tug at the wrench to be certain the nut was well-tightened and slid out from beneath the wagon. Lynelle was staring past the lines of tents toward the vast open plain they’d chosen for their landing site on Dalthus. The commotion he’d grown used to in the three days since they’d first made planetfall had quieted and the crowds of people were all still and staring in the same direction.

  As the next silver shape lifted silently above the tents, turned to orient itself with whichever ship it had come from, and then accelerated out of sight, Denholm wrapped his arms around Lynelle from behind and rested his chin on her head.

  “Well and truly on our own,” he whispered. Another of the shuttles lifted, then another, and soon the rest, leaving the plain empty, with only the impressions on the grass to show that there was a universe at all outside of those settlers on the plain. “Six or more months before they return with the rest of the supplies and the first of the indentures.”

  Lynelle shivered and turned to face him. “I’m glad we’re to be so close to Landing, love. Not like some.”

  Many of the colonists had chosen to land together and build their first homesteads near Landing, but some, the Coalsons included, much to Denholm’s delight, had decided to make their first, and main, steadings farther away — the colony’s antigrav hauler and the ships’ boats had been busy ferrying them about the planet this whole time.

  Denholm and Lynelle had chosen a river plain a bit over forty kilometers from the landing site and to not have their goods delivered there directly.

  Their selected plain backed up to the varrenwood-covered hills they shared with the Mylin family. The Mylins had chosen to build their home on the other side of those hills and the surveys of the land suggested it would be less than a day’s ride through the hills between the two farmsteads. Both families had chosen to have their goods unloaded at Landing and to make the trek to their new homes themselves. Denholm felt it would be best to get the lay of the land on that journey from the landing site, so that they’d have at least seen what they’d have to travel over to return. Though the colony had detailed aerial surveys from the colonial survey ships and had brought a small constellation of communication and positioning satellites, the map was not the land itself.

  “Closer if Mylin had got that bit of marshland to drive a causeway through, instead of Coalson snapping it up for spite and denying us rights to build.”

  “Hush,” Lynelle said. “Nae more aboot that man — he’s put his home on the coast, far from us and ours. At least fer …” She stopped speaking and Denholm felt her shiver.

  “I’ve a feeling it’s not over between us, even now.” He shrugged. “Nothing for it, though.” He bent to kiss her. “The rest of the day loading, the celebration tonight, and on our way in the morning.”

  Lynelle nodded, face pressed tightly to him.

  “Denholm?”

  “Aye?”

  She patted his chest. “You load the pigs, love.”

  “Well this is it, then.”

  Denholm grasped Mylin’s hand firmly and nodded. “Until one of us is bored enough to blaze a trail over the hills.”

  They were some ten kilometers outside of Landing, just short of the marsh the hills between their steadings drained into, and they’d have to part ways here to each have the easiest route to their destinations. Even if the marsh hadn’t been taken by Coalson, and both of them had a distaste for the land itself just by association with the man, it wasn’t terrain they were comfortable taking the horses and cattle over without a road. Even the wagons, weight offset to a degree by their tiny antigrav generators, would risk being bogged down.

  Mylin looked over to where Lynelle and his wife, Elora, were hugging in a tearful goodbye of their own.

  “I’ve a thought one of us’ll be sent to blaze that trail soon,” he said.

  Denholm laughed. “Likely, yes.” He clapped Mylin on the arm and stepped back. “At least that’s the excuse we’ll have, aye?”

  “Come on then, El!” Mylin called, walking toward his wagons. “It’s you set the schedule!”

  Elora hugged Lynelle again and stepped toward her own wagons. “I’ll wait no longer than I must for walls and a bed, Sewell!” she called out. “And you’ll wait for other things so long as I must!”

  Mylin flushed and shrugged to Denholm who covered his mouth with his hand.

  Lynelle came to his side and they watched the wagon with the other couple and their children move away.

  “Just the two of us now, love.”

  Denholm nodded. Perhaps he’d been too busy with assembling and loading the wagons, but he hadn’t felt the sense of isolation others had described at the celebration the night before. Someone had built a bonfire on the landing plain and sparks floated up into the night sky mimicking the flight of the shuttles earlier in the day. The sight had driven many of the colonists to melancholy speeches about being alone on a new world. Others had breached whatever limited supplies of beer or spirits they’d stocked in their supplies and become either quiet or boisterous as their natures dictated.

  Denholm and Lynelle had retired to their tent early and were off with the Mylins well before dawn. Chickens, ducks, and pigs, distressed by the predawn movement of their cages hanging from the wagons drew sleepy complaints from the occupants of the tents they passed. The wagons might resemble in basic design those Denholm had read ancient, planetbound holders had used to travel to their claims, but were quite different in several important ways.

  The materials, for one, were more advanced, with these made out of strong, lightweight plastics. Each of Denholm’s two wagons had a small electric motor to help the rear wheels along, powered by the solar collectors that made up the canopies. Once they arrived at their homestead, the wagons would be partially disassembled, becoming two much smaller wagons for use around the farm, along with more he could assemble with local woods and modern fittings they’d brought along. The solar collecting canopies would become a part of their home’s dome, along with one of the motors to drive a water pump. The motors, along with the small antigrav generators, allowed the pair of horses attached to each wagon to pull the eight tons of supplies each carried.

  “Aye, just the two of us.”

  Ten

  Denholm slid the door to the domed shelter open and eased inside. He wasn’t quite ready to call it a homestead, but work was progressing. Slowly, as there was so much other work to do, not least of which was enough fields planted so they’d be able to harvest a crop before the planet’s winter set in. He’d brought enough supplies to last them a full year, though they’d be heartily tired of bread, rice, and beans by the end of it if this first harvest failed. Everything ached and he was quite certain that his muscles had spawned yet new muscles to pain and punish him more for what he’d just put them through.

  The horses pull the bloody plow — how can it hurt so much?

  “Boots!” Lynelle called from the kitchen area. “And wash up afore y’go an’ sit yerself.”

  Denholm groaned. He wanted nothing more than to slip into a chair and have a plate full of whatever Lynelle was cooking. It smelled wonderful, and his stomach clenched with need to be filled.

  “Boots and bath!” Lynelle called.

  He slipped his boots off near the door and made his way to the bath compartment, the only enclosed space in the dome. Other than that it had a living area which converted to a bedroom, and a small kitchen area. He had to admit, though, that the hot water felt wonderful.

  He made a mental note to check the supply of flexible piping to ensure he had enough to irrigate the field h
e’d just plowed. He’d thought four rolls of the thin, flat hose would be sufficient, but, as with virtually everything in their supplies, he’d quickly found himself wishing for more. They’d placed the shelter far enough from the river to avoid what appeared to be the most common flooding, so there was the piping run from river to shelter, then from the shelter to the second, larger dome that made up the barn. More for the small garden near the domes and finally to the fields, the first of which he’d just plowed.

  Soon he’d have a waterwheel built upstream to deliver water via aqueduct to cisterns near the homestead and fields, freeing up the pump and motor for other uses.

  Soon, aye. And one day replace that wheel with a pump built here on Dalthus.

  It was a cycle he knew he’d see throughout the farm. Use the expensive, unsupportable technology they’d brought with them for the most critical tasks, until a primitive solution could be formed, then replace that again and again as what could be fabricated on-planet improved.

  We’ll watch the whole history of more than one device play out before our eyes here.

  No matter the warnings they’d received before leaving New London, the amount of work and how long it took still came as a surprise. He let the hot water ease yet another ache he hadn’t been aware of and thought about the tasks he’d just completed. Part of the reason for doing that was to ensure he’d done everything, though he had a checklist on his tablet to help him. Just caring for the plow team and equipment, then seeing that the rest of the stock, including the chickens and pigs, was safely in the barn took so much time. Seeing to it that they had feed and water to last the night. Double-checking the chickens’ roost was doubly important, for there was a smallish native predator that had developed a taste for terrestrial fowl, despite it being indigestible to them.

  Thought of the native species made him wince and ease his leg. Three days before he’d learned to walk the field he planned to plow beforehand, striking the ground ahead with a long stick. The lesson had come from plowing over a nest of some sort of insect that resembled a wasp. The stings from those were painful, but not dangerous he’d been glad to find, once he’d hurriedly taken a sample with his tablet and waited for the doctor in Landing to analyze the data.