by John F. Carr
“Galzar be praised,” he responded. “And congratulations on your own elevation. Last time we met you were a count.”
Sestembar made a courtly bow. “Your father’s been most gracious, Your Highness. It has come to our attention that you are now hailed as the greatest military commander in the Five Kingdoms. You not only defeated the Usurper Kalvan but managed to leave the Grand Host of Styphon with your army not only intact but tripled in size. All before the Host imploded before the walls of Thagnor City. Your success has not gone unnoticed by your father and the nobles of Hos-Zygros. Should you wish to return to the land of your birth, your elevation to Captain-General of the Army of Hos-Zygros would be guaranteed.”
“That’s nice. You mean I’d be the commander of three or four thousand soldiers versus the thirty thousand I now have under my banner.”
“It’s warm in here,” Sestembar said, as he wiped his forehead with his sleeve. He didn’t look so confident all of a sudden. “Of course, Your Highness, you could bring as many of your men along with you as you wished.”
Phidestros grinned. “I’m sorry, but I’m not interested in becoming my father’s guard dog. I fear the leash would be too tight.”
“The offer is open-ended. You can reconsider at any time.”
Phidestros saw no reason to further antagonize his father’s lackey. “You can tell him, I will keep it under consideration. I wish you a good afternoon, Duke.”
Duke Sestembar left muttering to himself. Phidestros was pleased that for the first time he hadn’t let his father’s henchman get under his skin. The last time they’d met he’d thrown Sestembar down a flight of stairs. Maybe because he’d had so much success of late and a loving wife at home, he no longer needed the admiration of the man who’d abandoned him and his mother to the streets of Zygros City. But it didn’t mean that he’d forgotten the past indignities; there was still a day of reckoning awaiting his father.
III
Great King Kalvan used his tinderbox to strike sparks, blew the tinder aflame and lit a wood splinter to light his burl pipe. It was nice to be back home with Rylla after a couple of months helping Verkan consolidate his rule over Greffa City. One of King Verkan’s first acts had been to revise the Greffan tax codes and reduce import and export duties. This had made him very popular in Greffa City and made it easier for him to introduce other reforms, such as an end to slavery and debt peonage. Kalvan had no doubt that Verkan would make an excellent ruler as well as give King Theovacar plenty to worry over, other than the new Kingdom of Nos-Hostigos.
Kalvan had left Greffa City when it became apparent that Theovacar was not going to try to retake the Princedom of Greffa, at least not this year—or probably not even the next. King Theovacar, after retreating from Ragyath, had returned to Ult-Greffa and was using that as his temporary capital, or at least that’s what his ministers called it. Verkan had the nucleus of an army that would keep Theovacar at bay, especially with the new guns, fortifications and earthworks he was busy implementing on the city walls.
The journey back home to Thagnor City had been almost relaxing. Now that Kalvan had some time off from anticipating the next attack, he had time to work on inventions that would make his and everyone else’s lives easier. He was growing weary of tinderboxes; maybe it was time to reinvent the match. The problem was obtaining enough sulfur; there was a shortage of it in the Upper Middle Kingdoms. He had a resource team hunting for new sources, but until they discovered more sulfur springs most of the Kingdom’s sulfur would go for fireseed production. He suspected there wouldn’t be much leftover sulfur for a long time, as any excess would go for export fireseed. I’ll have to make-do with my tinderbox, at least until the war is over.
The Grand Host of Styphon’s House had abandoned the siege of Thagnor shortly after Great King Lysandros had departed with his entire army to return to Hos-Harphax where there was a new claimant to the Iron Throne. Before Lysandros left, he’d had his army sack Morthron Town and leave it in ruins. This had caused Prince Eythart, who finally realized he needed nearby allies, to ask Rylla if Morthron could join the Kingdom of Nos-Hostigos, which she’d accepted.
Lysandros’ army was still fighting their way across the former Kingdom of Hos-Rathon, while King Chartiphon used his Sastragathi and Urgothi irregulars to harass the retreating Harphaxi as well as pick off stragglers.
The Grand Host had left behind a quarter of its strength to hold Nythros, then Grand Commander Aristocles and the rest of the Knights had returned to Tarr-Ceros to reorganize and shore up their defensive line of tarrs against the Sea of Grass nomads. Styphon’s House might have withdrawn the Grand Host from its siege of Thagnor City, but Kalvan knew they hadn’t given up their war against Nos-Hostigos, they were just licking their wounds. Wounds inflicted by several years of incessant warfare and the recent attacks upon their line of fortresses that ran along the Mississippi River, or the Great Mother River as it was known here-and-now, by Kalvan’s nomad allies.
Two of the Knights’ great tarrs had been destroyed and three more had been sacked and looted. To repair their Maginot line, the Order of Zarthani Knights, the strongest arm of Styphon’s House’s martial forces, would be too busy rebuilding, fighting and retaking territory to worry about Nos-Hostigos for some time.
Now that the war against Kalvan was in abeyance, the main brunt of Styphon’s House aggression had turned from Hostigos to those Great Kingdoms they did not control by proxy, as evidenced by Grand Master Soton’s siege of Agrys City. Kalvan knew that didn’t mean he was off the hook. It just meant that Styphon’s House, for now, was consolidating its power before the Great Kings realized they no longer needed the Temple for fireseed—or anything else. As soon as the northern Great Kingdoms were rolled up, Styphon’s House would be back with another huge army to besiege Thagnor.
So, while Hostigos had a temporary respite, the war would begin again in earnest in a year or two. What Kalvan needed was a long-term strategy to end the Fireseed Wars once and for all. If that meant he had to tear a page from Alexander the Great’s biography, so be it. He wasn’t going to give Styphon’s House the opportunity to rebuild and attack him on their terms, as he did after the Battle of Phyrax Field. He should have led the Army of Hos-Hostigos straight for Harphax City, while old King Kaiphranos was cowering under his bed. Of course, he would have still had to face the Styphoni the next year, but without one of their key allies. But that was old business and the path not taken….
Right now the treasury of Nos-Hostigos was afloat in gold, from the surrender of Greffa City, but that wouldn’t last forever. Not when he needed to keep a fifteen-thousand man standing army paid, housed and fed. First, he needed to consolidate his lands in the Upper Middle Kingdoms, putting one of his men in charge of the Duchy of Baltor and then dealing with the Nythros City States. Thagnor City was filled to the bursting with not only Hostigi refugees but refugees from Nythros, Baltor and from even as far away as Glarth Town.
There was a knock at the door.
“Yes,” he replied.
“It’s Cleon, sire. I have Dean Ermut and Master Ironmonger Paxtros here to see you.”
“Let them in.”
A moment later the head of the University of Hostigos entered the study, with the younger Master Paxtros trailing behind. Ermut was a big man with a shock of brown hair. He was easy to underestimate until you peered into ice blue eyes that brought to mind pools of glacial waters. He had a full ginger-colored beard, but without a mustache like an Amish man.
“Your Majesty, it’s good to see you. You’ve been away too long. We miss your outlandish ideas at the faculty science meetings.” Ermut turned red and washed his face with one of his baseball glove sized hands. “I don’t mean outlandish in a bad way, sire…it’s just that no one else can match your ideas about unheard of devices and machines from the Cold Lands.”
“You don’t have to apologize, Ermut. This is an informal meeting. In here we’re a couple of engineers trying to invent better ways of doi
ng things.”
He rubbed his hands. “What’s our next project, or should I say projects?”
Kalvan had decided it was time to introduce the steam engine, primarily for paddlewheelers. With some light armor, a small fleet would guarantee him control of the Saltless Seas. The problem was how to build the boilers using here-and-now technology?
The advantage of a steam engine versus an internal combustion engine was that it required tolerances to the tenth-of-an-inch instead of to the thousandths. Certainly doable here-and-now. The first necessity was wrought iron and lots of it, since most of what they made now went into weapons and armor. Steel, of course, would be ideal, but there were no steel mills to roll the steel for boilers. Here-and-now they used the same kind of small furnaces that they’d used in other-when during the Colonial period. They would have to fabricate the boilers like they did breastplates for the armored men-at-arms.
“How are the new crucible steel furnaces coming along?”
Ermut tugged his beard, then turned to the Master Ironmonger, who said. “We’ve had no problem obtaining quality ore and charcoal, sire. We’re still having problems with powering the bellows. To provide the necessary air flow that Your Majesty describes, mule or horsepower is not going to be sufficient.”
Kalvan paused for a moment to collect his thoughts. “Try using water wheels to power the bellows, Paxtros. The key is producing enough air to make the furnaces more fuel efficient than the old bloomeries. This will result in improved iron yield as well.”
Ermut started rubbing the bald patch at the top of his head. “I’ll have to work on that. I have an idea for the bellows; now all I need is a design to hook up the water wheel.”
Kalvan was already in deep waters. His knowledge of furnaces was limited to a few visits to the Allegheny Furnace in Altoona as a child. He wished he’d paid more attention when his sixth grade teacher had compared the old Colonial furnaces to the steam powered cold-blast charcoal iron furnaces of the early Eighteen hundreds.
“Good, Ermut, keep me notified of your progress. I may have some ideas once I see what you and your apprentices have come up with. Now, how about that other project?”
“Your Majesty, we have made some progress on the formula for Greek fire you asked us to explore. Actually, it’s the naphtha that is the real basis for the formula. We need a lot more of it if we’re to complete our experiments.”
Kalvan knocked his pipe bowl against his palm while he tried to remember where he’d seen some petroleum pumps during his visits to Michigan. Here-and-now petroleum products were mostly used for medicinal purposes and the caulking of boats, which meant there was little demand and not much on hand. Oil derricks had been a lot more common in Pennsylvania, but if he remembered correctly there had been a number of wells outside Saginaw, which was part of the Princedom of Ragyath here-and-now. He was sure he’d have no trouble enlisting Prince Sarrask’s aid.
“I’ll have College of Military Sciences send a team into Ragyath to search for a better supply. Will that help?”
“Yes, sire. I’ve been working on the siphon so that we can shoot the ‘fire’ at enemy boats, but one of my assistants, Assistant Artificer Halvus, came up with a musket-sized siphon that uses a push stroke. We need more of the basic formula before we test it, though. He’s had problems providing a steady flame.”
“That’s a very interesting line of development,” Kalvan thought. Here-and-now flame throwers! As a surprise weapon of terror, they could turn the tide of an entire battle.
“Has Halvus tried using a slowmatch?”
“Yes, Your Majesty, but he’s having problems adjusting the flame.”
“How about using a wheellock?” The Zarthani wheellocks were an improvement over the Sixteenth Century ones the German Reiters had used in the Wars of Religion and provided a much steadier stream of sparks.
“Yes, sire, but they’re too difficult to maneuver while operating the siphon device.”
Kalvan nodded; he could see that. “Instead of a slowmatch, how about some kind of a wick and then you can use oil to feed the flame?”
“Like whale oil, sire?”
“Yes, Ermut. Although whale oil is expensive now that war has come to Hos-Agrys. We need something like coal oil which is easier to obtain locally.”
“We can distill all the coal tar we need at the coal mines in Rhyl.”
If Kalvan had his geography right, Rhyl Town was near what they called Bay City on otherwhen and the heart of their new iron works. “Good, have Halvus try a wick and see if it gives him the small flame he requires to feed the Greek fire.”
“I will give him your ideas, Your Majesty, when I see him later.”
“Promote Halvus to Master Artificer and see that he gets his own laboratory and as many students as he needs to work on this fire-siphon. Keep me posted on its development.”
“Yes, sire, but first we need a lot more naphtha. The pitch and sulfur are no problem, but we’ll need as much as a hundred barrels of naphtha just for experimental purposes.”
“I’ll have the Royal College send an expedition to Ragyath immediately. Naphtha is distilled from oil and a very useful substance. We can use it for lighting and lubrication, too.”
THREE
I
Tortha and Vothan Raldor, the Dhergabar Metropolitan Police Chief, took an air-taxi to Dalgroth Sorn’s private residence in Dhergabar City to avoid any premature public notice of the special session of the Paratime Commission. They flew to the Trapezoid Tower and exited the taxi on the airpad on the eightieth floor. They were met at the door by one of Dalgroth’s household robots which took their coats and led them to the Commissioner for Security’s study. Inside, the other eight members of the Paratime Commission were seated at a U-shaped table.
Dalgroth, who had the face of an elderly lion with a toothache, offered drinks and hors d’ oeuvres. Vothan ordered a Manhattan, while Tortha settled for a Scotch and water from the auto-bar. The other eight Paratime Commissioners already had their cigarettes out and drinks in their hands.
“I’ll assume this is important, or we all wouldn’t have been called here to meet in private,” Dalgroth stated. “What’s on your mind, Tortha?”
Tortha stood up and said, “I’m going to let Police Chief Vothan Raldor get you up to speed before I make my recommendations.”
He sat down and Vothan rose to his feet. The Metro Police Chief quickly sketched out the problems he was facing from the prole riots and the difficulties he was running into from influential Home Time Liners trying to protect their prole charges. “It’s gotten so bad that we’ve got over two thousand men on permanent guard duty protecting the shops and townhouses in Old Town. It doesn’t seem to matter to the proles; there’s another riot almost every night. I’m at my wit’s end. I’ve had to stop dealing with non-violent crimes just to keep enough active men on riot duty. I need help and I need it now.”
Vothan Raldor sat down.
Commissioner Armtar Rana, the only woman Commissioner, asked, “What do you expect us to do? Maybe it’s time to call in the Army Strike-Teams to restore peace. This sounds like something you need to bring up before the Executive Council, not the Paratime Commission.”
Tortha rose. “Good point, Commissioner, Armtar. However, there’s a good reason we’re not bringing this before the Executive Council; it’s too explosive. Plus, we need to act quickly and decisively without endless debate and backbiting. The Paratime Commission has the power to act on this issue. Quote: ‘whenever Outtime conditions threaten the stability or safety of Home Time Line, the Paratime Commission has the authority to declare Martial Law.’”
“Commissioner Tortha, how do these riots, surely a matter of internal security, have anything to do with Outtime events or actions?” Commissioner Dalgroth asked.
Tortha took his pipe out of his mouth and pointed the stem at Dalgroth. “They do because this problem is caused by Outtimers. These proles are not Citizens, but workers and drones transposed from Fif
th Level Servsec and Industrial Sector.”
Commissioner Lagrath Sart interjected, “Some of these so-called proles have been living on Home Time Line for four and five generations. You can’t call these people Outtimers, not in the usual sense. Many of them are Citizens in all but name.”
Tortha took his time responding. Commissioner Lagrath Sart, a tall man with a short well-trimmed beard, was one of the few political appointees on the Paratime Commission and the only one who hadn’t served with the Paratime Police. His loyalty, as far as Tortha was concerned, was suspect. Another reason he hadn’t informed the Commission beforehand about why he had called the meeting. He’d have to convince the Commissioner for Security to isolate Lagrath after the meeting until the proposed actions were completed.
“I don’t care if these proles have families going back fifty generations, by law they’re still Outtimers. As I’ve said in the past, we’ve allowed far too many proles to immigrate to Home Time Line. They now outnumber Citizens four or five to one. When you consider that at any one time more than ninety percent of all Citizens are Outtime, this means that the proles could easily take the upper hand on Home Time Line by sheer numbers alone.”
“I’ve been having nightmares about that since the Prole Insurrection some two hundred years ago,” said the Commissioner for Security. “That one made the Industrial Sector Rebellion look like a backyard picnic. Back then the Home Time Line didn’t have a quarter of the proles we have today and there were over a million casualties. Some two billion proles were evacuated to Fifth Level during that fracas.”
“Things are different now. People are attached to their servants,” Commissioner Lagrath Sart rebutted. “The Citizens won’t put up with the Paratime Police taking away their friends, lovers and servants.”
“I believe they’d prefer it to having their throats slit in the middle of the night,” offered Commissioner Valtan Ryk.