The Forge

by S. M. Stirling

  "Ar. Well, yer bastids heard the sumbitch," M'lewis continued.

  "Right yer are, Warrant," the trooper said, holding the rifle muzzle a handspan from the lock. "'Ware bouncer."

  The others led their dogs to the wall. The rifle blasted, with a chung!-ping of parting steel and a diminishing whine as pieces of soft lead and tempered metal bounced off stone. M'lewis dismounted and cradled his weapon in his arm, kicking the tall doors in as the broken lock rattled.

  "Allays wanted to do that," he said, flashing a gold-toothed grin. "Kick in a Messer's door, that is."

  "Tired a' pickin' t' locks?" one of the others asked. They formed up and tramped in his wake, gawking around at the carved-stone and fabric splendors.

  "Hoo, Spirit!" M'lewis whistled. There were lords of ten thousand acres in Descott County who had nothing half so fine. Of course, back home the gentry counted wealth in livestock, dogs, fighting men, weapons and stout walls; all difficult to steal… from Descotters. "Nao, I don't pick locks. T' wives and daughters lets down ropes fer me; pow'rful tirin', befer I gits around to stealin'."

  A stout middle-aged man in expensive nightclothes came stamping down the stairs; the guards following him with lanterns and pistols slowed to a stop as they saw the dozen helmeted soldiers staring about the foyer of the mansion.

  "I am Messer Assed," he said in a tone of furious control. "Who do you think you are, soldier, breaking in here! Your officer will have you flogged, flogged."

  "I doubts it," M'lewis said tranquilly. The broad friendliness of his smile did not alter, even as he flipped the rifle up and poked it into the aristocrat's stomach. "Allays wanted t' do this, too … Now, I thinks I's the man wit' t' gun, an' my officer sent me here. Fer one—" he looked down at the pad tucked into his belt. "El-ect-ri-cal gen-er-ator. Befer," he added genially, "we starts knockin' down yer outbuildin's fer the timber." A wink. "But don't 'cher worry yer heart, Messer, I gots a government receipt, right here."

  * * *

  "Careful with that, yer arseface," da Cruz said.

  The jar that was being manhandled off the wagon was taller than a man and nearly as wide as it was tall; even with six troopers on the stout handles the thick terracotta walls of the storage vessel made it an awkward burden. It had been full of olive oil until recently, and the smell was as disagreeable as the slipperiness.

  "Ye got it?" he asked, looking down into the hole. It had been dug at a steep slant down into the silt, kept from collapsing with wicker basketwork propped on sticks. The man head-down in it was a gunner, you could tell that by the dark-blue trousers with the red piping up the seams, and by his arrogant contempt for anyone not initiated into the mysteries of his art.

  "Mmm-hmm," the artilleryman said, "that's got her." He raised a voice muffled by the dirt. "Murchyzen, get off your useless butt and send the wire down."

  There was an arm-deep trench running downhill from the pit; at the head of it a piece of wooden pipe showed, running up from the base of the hole below. Another gunner had been squatting, smoking his pipe and watching the civilians and cavalry troopers working with the enjoyment any soldier felt when someone else was pulling the detail. Now he rose and carefully lifted a length of cable; it was braided copper, the outside coated with a sap gum that was shiny and flexible, although a bit tacky in this heat. The end for a meter back had been stripped of insulation and unbraided into a fen of bright metallic strands, each one wrapped around a half-dozen big percussion caps, the type used to fire muzzle loading artillery. The gunner shook it slightly, making a clinking sound something like a sistrum.

  "Ya dicking around again, Murchyzen?" the man in the pit asked with dangerous patience.

  Da Cruz looked at the detonators with loathing; he had worked as a quarryman in his youth. Until his father was blown into assorted gobbets by a misfired charge; they had found his boots with the feet and sections of calf still in them. But the commander had asked him to see that the fougasses were done properly, and by the Spirit they would be.

  "Here it comes," the gunner said, wrapping a cloth around the detonators and feeding the cable down the wooden pipe; for all his casual familiarity, he did it with a craftsman's deft gentleness. The Master Sergeant craned his head to watch the gunner in the fougasse pit working. Once the cloth-wrapped tip of the cable showed through the man spread the wires out across the canvas below him like the roots of a tree, pinning them in place with pieces of bent twig. Finished, he grunted satisfaction and called over his shoulder:

  "Now the powder." Ten one-kilo cotton sacks, coarsegrained propellant charges. Whistling tunelessly, the gunner ripped each with a diagonal slash of his knife-bayonet, then turned them over and tapped them gently into place with the pommel. When he had finished he stroked the lumpy surface and wriggled out backward, squatting on his hams and blinking in the bright sunlight.

  "Yer needs that many detonators?" da Cruz said, handing him a canteen.

  The artillery sergeant was a wiry man, about forty; from Chongwe Island, by the accent and the blond hair that stood out against a skin tanned almost as dark as a Descotter's. He rinsed his mouth out and spat, then poured half the contents over his head, to join the sweat-runnels through the dirt on his bare chest.

  "Na," he said. "Two or three ought to do her. But I figure, what they hell, we got 'em, why not use them?"

  Blue eyes met black, and da Cruz nodded in complete agreement. One thing you learned in this business was that it rarely paid to get too subtle, and it never hurt to kick a little harder than you needed to, just in case.

  "Let's slip it," da Cruz said, once the gunner sergeant had had a chance to catch his breath; even if you hated explosives, it was always a pleasure to watch a good professional at work. The civilians attached to the detail were unloading the barrels and smaller jugs that would be poured into the large one to make the load of the flame-fougasse; liquid bitumen, tar, naphtha, sulphur, and the thick green vile-smelling oil rendered down from the greasy flesh of the avocat fish.

  "One of my fav'rite occupations, slipping it in," the sergeant said. The troopers were manhandling the huge jar over to the hole. "Ah, friends?" They looked up. "You know, there's an earth lip around the powder, so even if you dropped that it shouldn't hit hard enough to set off the detonators, but all the same I'd appreciate it if you put her down, you know, a might soft."

  * * *

  "Amazing!"

  Raj looked up from the lip of the bunker; a man was picking his way towards them across the tumbled earth of the trench line. A tall man, as tall as Raj, dressed in expensive cotton-drill khaki and a wrapped headdress; fifty, with sun and wind stamped into his flesh and salt-and-pepper beard. A pistol was strapped high up on his right hip, and Suzette had her arm tucked through the crook of his left. She was wearing elaborate Court riding-dress, complete with a wig of blond braids.

  "Messer Falhasker," Raj said in a neutral tone. Although it was dubious whether he deserved the title; self-made wealth rather than inherited, and mostly in trade at that. "Good day, Messer. My thanks for your assistance." Which had been valuable; the merchant had organized his riverboat crews to help with the construction, donated every scrap of sailcloth in his warehouses for sandbags and even had them sewn up by the hundreds of women textile workers who spun and wove the fine cotton he traded up from the Drangosh Delta.

  The Delta was the heartland of the Colony, and the land from which Falhasker's mother had come; she was the daughter of a prominent merchant house of Al-Kebir… a politically prominent family; the Colonists did not share the Civil Government's prejudice against traders.

  "We're all in this together," the merchant said; Suzette gave his arm a slight squeeze. He nodded to the scene around them. "And in only two nights and a day!" he continued. "I only wish I could get them to work half as hard for me. And I pay them, too."

  Forty thousand pairs of hands had been at work for thirty hours; the five-kilometer stretch of dry valley looked like a garden plot infested with geometric-minded gophe
rs. The basic outlines of the trenches had been dug, the main line for the infantry to hold and the fortlets behind them where the cavalry would support their fire and be ready to block a penetration or launch pursuit. Evenly spaced semicircles marked the gun platforms, and zigzag communications trenches linked them all. The redoubt at the center was a huge pit right now, nearly two stories deep; the fighting deck would have a cellar beneath it. Even as the long timbers went in to support the floor hands were stacking powder and shot on the bottom level.

  Temporary ramps had been left, and two hundred soldiers and civilians were backing a cannon down it, heaving against a spiderweb of ropes. The gun was one of the city's defensive weapons, a three-meter tube of black cast iron on wheels taller than a man, throwing thirty-kilo shot. It trundled the last few yards and set-tied onto the overlapping timbers of the redoubt's floor with a rumbling thunder; there was a ratcheting pig-snarl behind it, as one of the armored cars backed and turned, ready to follow the gun. Raj looked at the turtle shape without affection: there were a dozen of the armored vehicles in Sandoral, shells of wrought-iron boilerplate driven by the only internal-combustion engines in the Civil Government. There was room for a dozen riflemen within, and the armor would turn small-arms fire and shell fragments. It would not turn any sort of artillery projectile, and the things were monsters to maintain, broke down at the slightest excuse, suspensions so fragile they had to be hauled to the scene of battle on ox-drawn timber skids… and potentially decisive, at the crucial moment.

  Unfortunately the Colony had them, too.

  Falhasker cleared his throat, and Raj started slightly. "Oh, yes. Well, they're working for their lives, you know," he said mildly.

  * * *

  "Falhasker's called Reed out," Suzette said, when the merchant had walked a little aside to examine the armored car.

  "Oh?" Raj said, looking up at the ridge opposite instead of the woman at his side. We should have a skirmish line there, he thought: a lot of things in life were easier to do if you focused on your work. With a goal, everything was easy. A skirmish line would probably mean they'd encamp on the crest. Useful. You did whatever you had to do, to get where you were going.

  "Reed called him a damned raghead spy in public.

  "Quite possibly true," Raj said. Kaltin? Yes, I'll want a Companion for that. The 7th, they could handle it.

  "Falhasker said Reed was a damned fool."

  "Certainly true." They stood silent.

  "Suzette," Raj said after a moment. "You know, it might be… advisable to let Falhasker know that we were only able to scare up five generators for the fougasses. So only five on the far right flank are hooked up, the others are quaker cannon."

  Actually, each generator powered a board that would fire six of the flame weapons.

  A light touch on his elbow. "I'll tell him," she said softly. "He's very interested in technical things."

  Anything you had to do. Anything at all.

  Chapter Fifteen

  "Here?" Kaltin said, reining in his dog.

  "Here," Raj confirmed.

  They were a kilometer southwest of the defense line; he turned back briefly, watching the torches flaring along it as the finishing touches were hurriedly completed; some of those were to make the fortifications look rawer and cruder than they were, although the Spirit knew it was rough enough, inexpert hands working in desperate haste. It was chill on the ridge, and the noise was feint, as if echoing from another world. The civilians were back in Sandoral, all except the volunteers in the first-aid stations dug in behind the communications road; after three days of their noise and confusion the position seemed almost empty with only the troops.

  "Hmmm," Kaltin said, staring down the opposite slope. "You know," he continued, pointing, "I think that draw there runs all the way to the river."

  Raj turned and looked. It was a steep declivity in the plain to their left and east, zigzagging away and down toward the Drangosh.

  "I don't think there's much use the enemy can put it to," Raj said. "Pretty thick in there." Tanglewire weed, throttlebush, wild rose, all infested with poisonmouth and stingworms.

  "I don't think the enemy could put it to any use at all," Kaltin continued, striking one fist lightly into a palm. "It's definitely pretty thick. Particularly along the edges. You could hide a whole battalion in there."

  They all turned and looked at the Companion. "And they'd be right behind where the wogs will put their artillery," he continued; his face was shadowed by the brim of his helmet, but the teeth showed. In Maxiluna's light, they had a slightly reddish cast. Colonist shellfire had killed his brother Evrard, on the retreat from El Djem. "Payback time."

  Raj nodded slowly. Worth risking three hundred men, he thought coldly; the 7th Descott Rangers were understrength. Counters on a board, not young men from his homeplace… And Kaltin wants to be here, he reminded himself, as they discussed the technicalities, signals and timing.

  "All right" A nod. "You'd better start getting them in place, then." That would have to be done to the east, through the ravines. Gruder reined his dog around. "And Kaltin?"

  "Yes?"

  "Revenge tastes better as dessert than appetizer. I need you afterwards."

  Trumpets were calling Parade, fall in down at the fortifications. Oh, Spirit, he thought. The speech.

  * * *

  "… so think of what you're fighting for," Raj continued; the words seemed to lose themselves over the sea of upturned faces. Their immediate superiors would repeat the gist of his address, adding the local flavor appropriate, but the men expected to hear the commander, if they could. They were bunched in a huge semicircle in front of the redoubt where he stood, units jammed in cheek-to-cheek to get as many as possible within hearing distance

  "The Settler is coming north, and he's going to keep coming north until somebody stops him—right up to the East Residence, if he can.

  "That's what he thinks," he continued. "And his army thinks so, too." Raj paused; his foot was on an ammunition crate, and he leaned forward in a confidential gesture. "I've seen his army—"

  There was a murmur at that; for a moment his mind blanked, and he realized what the rumor mill had done with the story of the patrol. Well, well, there's one piece of stupidity that's worked out well. Unless they thought he was a glory hound who'd get them all killed, of course.

  "—and it's a big one, a cursed big one. Pretty, too: a lot prettier than us. Smells better, at that." Digging in dry clay for three days did not improve a soldier's turn-out; there was a sound like a stifled chuckle. "They're so fine they think we're dirt beneath their feet; why, it's presumptuous of us to demand an invitation to the same battlefield as those well-dressed gentlemen!"

  Very much the way nobly-born cavalry officers thought about common soldiers: no harm in redirecting some of the enlisted men's anger, particularly the infantry's.

  "I'll tell you what they think; they're certain they can walk right over us tomorrow and be in Sandoral drinking and fucking by lunchtime. Are we going to show them different?"

  The 5th started the cheers, but they spread rapidly; even the Skinners joined in, although Raj doubted they had understood much. Although most of them know enough Sponglish for drink and fuck; they probably think I'm promising them a party. He let the sound build, then spread his arms for silence before they could begin to taper off.

  "This is going to be the biggest battle anyone's seen in our lifetime, or our fathers'. Tonight, there are plenty of people in uniform and out—giving prayers of thanks that they're not here. I tell you, in the years to come, rich Messers who're safe and warm in bed tonight will curse the fact that they weren't here, and each will know that they're not as good a man as you. You'll say: 'I was with the Army of the Upper Drangosh, when we sent Jamal yelping downriver with his tail between his legs,' and they'll hide their faces for shame." If you don't end up in a mass grave, or legless cripples begging your bread on the streets, no money for pensions, curse you, Tzetzas.

  "
And I say I'm proud right now, to call you fellow-soldiers, who I trust to do their duty." And who know I've ordered that any man who withdraws without orders be shot. "I'm not a politician," he continued, "so I'll end the speech with this: the enemy is coming over that hill tomorrow because they want to. When they leave, it'll be because we want them to. Sons of Holy Federation! You are the descendants of the lords of the stars: you fight for your homes, your families, the graves of your ancestors, the temples of the Spirit. To battle! Winner takes all!"

  The cheering was more prolonged this time; some of the Descotter units even started to sing, roaring out,

  "Goin' ta Black Mountain, wit' me saber an me gun

  Cut ye if yer stand—shoot ye if yer run—

  Raj jumped down from the parapet of the redoubt. The sound died away as the Sysup-Suffragen of Sandoral walked slowly up to the parapet, Star-headed staff in hand, robes shining salt-white under the moons. There was a universal rustle as the soldiers knelt, and a whisper of awe as four priests bore out a litter on which rested a cube of something far clearer than crystal, taller than a man. For a long instant nothing happened; then there was a glimmer of light in the depths of the material, blue white and dazzling. It grew, cool and soundless, until it seemed a star was supported on the priests' arms, and the watchers had to bow their heads to hide their eyes from it; it shone through closed eyelids, even through the hands some threw before their faces.

  Then, equally silently, it died away, with a long drawn out breath from the assembled army, a sigh half of wonder and half of regret: this was the most famous relic outside of East Residence, and a lifetime could go by without nonclerics being allowed a sight of it. There was hardly a sound as the priests turned and paced back toward the city, and the men were dismissed to quarters.

  "Barton," Raj said. "A question. Where did you get those phrasings you passed me? You've got a future in literature, if they're your own."

  "Oh, mostly from the Fragmentary Codex, sir; very old, written just after the Fall from bits people remembered." Information stored in optical arrays was very little use to people deprived even of electricity. "Mostly in Old Namerique. The references are pretty obscure; who St. Cryssin is and where the Sons of the Griks fought, nobody knows. Pretty words, though."