Grand Vizier of Krar

  The constituent material of the Actio had often occupied Blan’s thoughts. It was heavier than brick or granite. Had she not been a very strong lass she would have found it tiring to carry. She had tested it with diamonds and discovered that its hardness was about the same. As soon as she got her new lenses from Nantport, she intended to study the crystal structure more closely. She suspected that she would find some system of tiny fibres and plates. She had briefly seen a design along those lines in one of the record plates she had studied via Control. Blan thought it strange that she should be contemplating these technical details even as she was swinging her bag at a man who was trying to kill her. She supposed that she was not a natural warrior. Such a warrior would no doubt focus entirely on the immediate danger.

  Blan was not a natural warrior, yet neither was she a careless one. Her mind had been balancing risks. Her momentary thought about the constitution of the Actio allowed her to continue her instinctive action without pulling back. In short, she understood that she could use the Actio as a primitive weapon with little risk of harming it.

  Her ears nearly burst with the ringing sound as Actio B, still inside the swinging bag, glanced off the man’s sabre. Then she heard the sickening thud as her bag veered up from the man’s sword and struck him on the temple. It caved in his helmet and did the same to his skull. The bag left her hands and fell into the water. It occurred to her that this would not be a problem because it was already soaking wet. Again she wondered why such a banal thought had come to her at such a desperate time. She opened her eyes to see Arnapa pick up the bag.

  “He won’t be bothering us again,” Arnapa said as she handed the heavy bag to Blan. “What on earth do you carry in your bag? A catapult?” she joked.

  “We must go now,” Carl shouted as he ran up. “I’ll do rearguard duty while you draw the cable with us as we go, Arnapa. No need to leave the enemy a line to where we are going. You lead the way, Blan.”

  Blan waded out into the water, still shocked at having killed a man, even in self-defence. There was no time to dwell on it. A flotilla of enemy craft was approaching from the north and another from across the lake, and many more enemy horsemen had appeared on the hill behind. The two men who had attacked Blan and Arnapa were already drifting away, and five horses milled around near the shore where the bodies of the other three attackers lay. Carl was backing his way into the water, a large bow strung with an arrow. Blood was running freely from wounds on both his arms.

  When she reached the place where the cable submerged to the tunnel below, Blan stopped to tread water while she waited for the others to catch up. They had been lucky to get out of accurate bow shot before the enemy had reached the shore. Blan hoped that the horsemen had not seen where they swam. It was possible they had not. The water was choppy and the sky was now overcast.

  Carl tied his bow to his back when it became obvious that Arnapa could not manage the cable by herself. They had brought the cable end with them and set all the buoys loose as they came. The buoys were now drifting away southward and would not help the enemy find the entrance to the underground river. With one final look around to see if anyone was watching them, they all dived under and followed the rest of the cable into the tunnel. After two minutes they emerged into the strange light of the cavern and the hearty cheering of the other evacuees waiting there for them.

  “So, what happens next?” Carl asked half joking as he bound his arms with bandages. The wounds were not serious; caused by sharp stones on the shore as he threw himself around while fighting the enemy horsemen. “The citadel is more than thirteen leagues away in a straight line and this river must wind hither and thither along the way.”

  “Now we must hope that Pel can help us before we all freeze,” Blan muttered. It was not cold, but the water was no longer as warm as it had been a month ago, and she was well aware of the risks of being immersed in water for too long.

  Blan had instructed that all evacuees bring as much rope, string and buoyant material as they could carry under the water. There had been no lack of material available from the ships and camps and from those evacuating by ship. Only the fittest and most able soldiers had been selected to come via the underwater tunnel and, of course, only those who could swim well.

  Already several thousand makeshift buoys had been made out of skins, clothes, boxes, containers and similar items to support a huge floating web of rope, a kind of raft for the evacuees to cling to. Some industrious soldiers had even managed to bring a canoe into the cavern and that became the chief means of getting messages up and down the length of the raft and of managing repairs wherever the raft started to come apart. Nellinar was pleased to be chosen as the canoe’s permanent caretaker. He was very useful for all sorts of tasks, but could hardly be expected to have the endurance of the battle-hardened soldiers when it came to clinging for many hours to a raft which was little more than a floating net.

  Those floating with the raft were divided into ten groups, each a column of a hundred. The column on the left, the side next to the narrow rocky shore, was the group on ‘shore duty’, meaning that it was their job to control the passage of the raft, usually by mooring it to the rocks to stop it from drifting uncontrollably down the river. At each change of ‘shore duty’ everyone would move one position to the left except those who were finishing their duty who would take up their positions in the column on the right side of the raft. Everyone welcomed his opportunity of ‘shore duty’ for six minutes in every hour, during which he could get warm again. The water was warmer than the lake (which led Blan to some interesting speculation about the currents in the lake), yet too cool for even a fit person to safely remain in it for more than an hour. Shore duty, however, was hard work. Sometimes it involved swimming, as when the shore on the left disappeared for a while, or on the infrequent occasions when the only shore was on the right side of the raft.

  At first, the raft was allowed forward in a controlled, caterpillar walk. Mooring ropes were released at the front and secured a little further down. The mooring ropes further back would then also be moved forward a little, and so on until the mooring ropes at the end of the raft had also been brought forward. Then the process would start from the front again. Although it was a slow process, it was put into effect with military efficiency. The raft had been completed not long before Blan returned to the cavern with Carl and Arnapa and it had already moved along one stadium (or two hundred paces). Zeep was at the front. She was Blan’s deputy in matters concerning the escape plan. Nellinar was nearby in the canoe with the officer who owned it.

  Ten soldiers remained behind as rearguard in case the enemy found the tunnel. They had a small rope raft of their own and were very pleased to receive Carl’s new orders.

  “If the enemy find their way in here, use your raft to retreat and report to me,” he ordered. “There is no point trying to fight them here. If you can hold them off for a while, do so, but do not risk being overwhelmed. Otherwise, follow us downstream after eight hours. We should be out of the enemy’s reach by then.”

  After the rearguard had retrieved the rest of the escape cable, Carl took the lead weighted end of it, the very same part that Blan had so recently used as a weapon, and swam with it to the rear of the main raft where Arnapa and Blan soon joined him.

  125

  Glorz Underground River – 4th January

  As dawn crept across the land above, the evacuees were still shuffling their raft downstream. There had been no night-time in the river cavern. The eerie light of the organisms covering the rocks remained constant and unclouded. The light helped keep up morale, and to keep everyone awake, but the evacuees were now almost drained of energy and starting to shiver.

  Blan was very tired and ravenously hungry. She had tried to keep track of how far they had come, taking careful note of features which she had barely noticed last time, now just dim memories. Much smaller streams occasionally joined the main river and others occasionally left it. On her last trip her boat had wa
shed straight past these entrances and exits, at least as long as the light lasted. What happened in the dark toward the end of the voyage was another matter. She was now depending on Pel to help the evacuees get past that obstacle.

  She tried to estimate the raft’s average speed and compare it with her previous voyage in the cavern. That had been much faster; she had been swept along with the current and the relative safety and comfort of the boat had made frequent stops unnecessary. Now, with a thousand people clinging to a raft made of rope and makeshift buoys, great care and discipline was needed to prevent chaos and injury.

  At first they had made good progress fuelled by high hopes and the desire to keep warm. That effort was unsustainable, so they started to take more risks to reduce the effort and improve their speed. Their caterpillar steps forward became bigger as less attention was given to mooring the raft. Then the raft was allowed to drift freely on the current for long stretches. Each time the raft was brought to a stop, those on shore duty would swim forward with the long cable and bend it around rocks two or three stadia ahead. In this way the raft would drift another four to six stadia before the cable acted as an anchor, slowing the raft long enough for the next shore duty column to clamber ashore and secure it with additional mooring lines. With this stop-start method they had been able to travel at perhaps half the speed of the current without serious injury or their raft disintegrating.

  The river followed several broad curves as well as a few sharper turns, but Blan felt confident that these cancelled each other out and there was no significant detour on the way to Port Fandabbin. When she estimated that they had travelled twelve leagues, roughly the straight line distance from Lake Glorz to Outer Wall, she reckoned that they still had some way yet to go before they passed under the city. The most difficult part would come when the light faded and they had to contend with a choice of exits in darkness. The few torches and flints that they had time to wrap and bring with them would be of limited use in such a broad tunnel.

  Through the day and night Blan, Arnapa and Carl had gradually moved their position until they were at the front of the raft. They had each performed their fair share of shore duty. It was Carl’s policy to muck in with his troops anyway, but it was also vital for the three of them to keep active in order to keep warm. Anyone staying in the water too long would lose consciousness. Those who fared least well in the water were urged to speak up so they could be given extra shore duties. There was no other way of dealing with the problem.

  Blan thought about the water around her village where, at this time of year, it was a shock to enter and only tolerable for a minute or so. At least one could stay in this underground river for up to an hour at a time. Things could be worse, she thought.

  *

  Later that morning they came to a pronounced bend in the river and Blan had a sense that something had changed. As they swept around the bend she could see a long, straight, stretch of the tunnel, but the light faded in the distance to a dark void; a mile or so ahead.

  “We should bring the raft to a halt where we still have some light,” she suggested. “I think we are now very close to the dock at Silver Caves, but we can’t risk getting caught in the dark in the wrong tunnel.”

  After a mile, they found a stretch of rocky shore just wide enough to moor the raft and allow all the evacuees to take turns out of the water. The light was now barely sufficient to see the other side of the river. Blan noted that much of the rock was of a different type, one which the glowing growths did not colonise.

  The rearguard had caught up with the raft some hours before. They had let their raft drift with the current, making very few stops along the way. After tying their raft to the back of the main raft, they called for the canoe so they could take their report to Carl. They were the best swimmers, so Carl appointed them as scouts to go into the dark ahead.

  “Bring your raft to the front and use the long cable to moor it to the rocks,” he instructed them. “The cable is three stadia in length, so it will let you drift that far downstream. Then send someone back along the cable to report to me. Take some of the wrapped torches and flints in case the light is too remote.”

  Then, turning to Blan and Arnapa, he said, “There seems to be nothing else we can do but wait for news, rest, and keep everyone out of the water for as long as we can.”

  “Where are you, Pel?” Blan asked under her breath.

  126

  Port Fandabbin – 2nd January

  Pel woke from deep sleep to the sound of urgent banging on his door and distant voices. No, it was a single, high-pitched voice calling his name. He was not as quick as he used to be and it took a moment for him to realise that the noises were not part of his dream (which involved a picnic on the beach with his wife and daughter and Blan and Telko, illuminated by a beautiful sunset over the calm waters of a bay not far from Akrinisca). He reluctantly scrambled out of the most comfortable bed he had slept in for a year and staggered sleepily to the door. Opening it, he saw little Memwin, red-faced and running on the spot. She was holding a boot. It was much too big for her, but it explained why the knocking on the door had sounded like armed guards come to arrest someone.

  Memwin blurted out everything Blan had told her. Pel wondered how she could remember it all. Then he reminded himself that this was Memwin and of course she would remember it just as Blan told it to her. In fact, the plan that Memwin referred to was similar to those he had already discussed with Blan about using the underground river to advantage. It had now become so urgent that he would be hard pressed to deliver what she asked. However, he was not entirely unprepared.

  Over the last month Pel had been working harder than he could remember, except perhaps when he had been preparing the escape from Belspire. He had been advising Serunipa’s shipwrights on construction and repair; he had been working with Carl’s engineers on the opening of the river barrier; and he had been working on finding the best way into the underground river upstream from Silver Caves. All three projects were linked by his design and construction of various types of submarine vehicle. He rejoiced at how much more he had achieved as a result of Blan’s inspiration; she could look at a technically perfect design and suggest simple changes which would greatly enhance the efficiency of the vehicle and reduce the time and cost of making it. Of course, she was not a trained engineer or shipwright and her ideas were frequently impractical, but the workable ones had been marvellous.

  With all the resources of Port Fandabbin made available to him, thanks to Serunipa, Pel’s team had already built three types of submersible: the Beehive type to facilitate work on the river barrier; the flatter and sleeker Stealth type designed to assist divers making covert attacks on enemy ships; and the Wedge type for pushing upstream against the powerful current of the underground river. The first two types were mostly for holding air, so divers could work underwater longer. The third type also featured spiked wheels and kedging anchors to enable divers to push the vehicle along the bottom of the river without letting the current force it back downstream.

  “Have you told Serunipa yet, Memwin?” Pel asked as he shook himself to full alertness. “I’ll need her to round up my team and send them to the dock.”

  “I’m going to her now,” Memwin called over her shoulder as she ran off without any further ado.

  During wartime Pel always slept in his clothes; one never knew what emergency might arise in the night, so he was soon running to the citadel’s great subterranean stairwell which started beneath Silver Castle and descended deep below Silver Island.

  Before Pel reached the dock, Aransette and Norsnette caught up with him. One by one the members of his team joined them as they ran down the stairs.

  “Bonmar and Pretsan would have liked to help, but Serunipa is hard-pressed tonight with this emergency, so they’ve stayed to help her,” Norsnette reported breathlessly as she ran with her sister just behind Pel.

  “I appreciate it. However, Serunipa’s job is every bit as urgent as this. She wi
ll need the help. Happily, we already have three Wedge vessels at the dock. It will take us the rest of the night and most of tomorrow to get them ready to move upstream. We just need Blan to get the survivors safely into the river tunnel. Then it will be a race against time to get to them before they all lose their vital heat to the water.”

  127

  Port Fandabbin – 3rd January

  Pel’s team worked through the night and all the next day. They worked in shifts, each taking minimal rests, and were ready several hours after sunset, yet Pel was reluctant to start out.

  “Why delay?” Aransette asked. Like them all, she was ruinously tired but anxious to push on with the task, especially to see Blan safely back in the citadel. Nobody had time at the moment to consider the problems that Serunipa faced above ground coordinating the retreat and the defence of the city as the enemy relentlessly drove the defenders across the hinterland.

  “I don’t want to delay, Aransette. However, we must choose which of many exits to take. We have only three Wedge vessels but a dozen river exits to choose from. I am hoping that Blan will send me a signal. If we don’t receive one within the hour we will set out anyway. We’ll have to use the exit by which I arrived with Blan and Serunipa a month ago. Any other choice is too risky until we know where they lead. They might even lead to different rivers.”

  “What signal could Blan send from so far away?” Norsnette asked.