by Mick Farren
“Your mother…”
“Before she was married. The prime minister seems to have known a lot of people’s mothers, if the legends are to be believed.”
“Prime Minister Kennedy is quite a hero in our country.”
“He is in ours, but he also has something of a reputation as a ladies’ man.”
“Is that good or bad?”
“I always found it quite endearing.” Cordelia was aware that the refreshment break would all too soon end and the conference return to the business at hand. She did not want to lose the tall blond captain just because his shyness was stopping him from getting to the point. “Do you have a name, or do I have to go on calling you sir?”
He smiled. “It’s Phelan Mallory.”
Cordelia offered her hand. “Cordelia Blakeney.”
“Well, Miss Blakeney…”
“Actually, it’s Lady Blakeney, but don’t let that put you off.”
“Well, Lady Blakeney, this may seem a little forward, but there is a war on, and time is at something of a premium…”
He hesitated, and Cordelia inwardly fumed. Ask the question, goddamn it. “Yes?”
“I was wondering if perhaps you would like to join me for a quieter drink after tonight’s banquet.”
Damn Patton to the most torturous circle of hell. “Unfortunately, I’m in trouble. I’m confined to my quarters.”
Captain Phelan Mallory looked crestfallen. He clearly assumed she was rejecting him. “Oh, dear.”
“Really, I wish I could, but we have this colonel, and this morning I was late, and she decided to make an issue of it.”
Finally Mallory said something intelligent. “Perhaps if I made an official request that you be attached to our delegation as an aide?”
Cordelia looked at him with unbelievably innocent eyes. This one would be putty in her hands. “You could do that?”
“How could it be a problem? We need your help. Right now, no one from the Norse Union is going to be refused anything.”
Delegates were already moving back to their places at the round table. Phelan caught the urgency. “Will you be at the banquet?”
“Of course.”
“Then I’ll be able to find you. I’ll have a pass or whatever official papers you think we might need.”
Cordelia beamed. “I’ll make myself very easy to find.”
The delegates resumed their seats, and a silence fell over the room. Jane Tennyson, the Norse ambassador to the Court of Albany, rose to speak. Her speech promised to be boring but important. It had fallen to Tennyson to outline the terms of what was to be called the Treaty of Military Exchange, the official instrument by which the supply of munitions from the NU to Albany would be increased. Cordelia, however, had no problem with what would be an hour or more of dry diplomatic details. She was already planning her evening and feeling triumphantly elated that she had not only snared her young officer but also outfoxed Colonel damn-her-eyes Grace Patton. With an official request from the NU delegation for her services, there was not a thing the awful woman could do about it. Maybe later she would make Cordelia’s life miserable, but that was later, and later was when Cordelia would deal with it.
RAPHAEL
Raphael had found a niche on the troopship were he could not only draw, but be away from seasick boys and the stench of vomit. This hiding place was on the deck, close to the stern, in a space between what looked like two grey-painted pieces of winding gear that was just large enough for him to squat out of sight. He had no idea of the two objects’ function, but they suited his need for a sheltered spot where he would not be easily seen. His hiding place was less than comfortable. He was sitting on the cold steel plates of the deck and resting his back against an iron cogwheel some two feet in diameter, but he found that if he used his greatcoat as a backrest and sat on the blanket from his bunk, he could be reasonably comfortable. He also discovered that no one seemed to be particularly bothered about how he vanished every day that the troopship was not buffeted by rain and squalls, or what he might be up to. As long as he showed for morning and evening roll call to prove that he had neither been accidentally swept over the side nor deliberately drowned himself, no interest was expressed in what he did the rest of the time. The majority of the officers and the Zhaithan priests on their way to the Americas took passage on more comfortable vessels, positioned nearer to the safer center stations in the flotilla of ships that made up the convoy. The ones of the lesser elite, who had been given berths on the same ship as Raphael, a wallowing steam-driven tub called the MSS Saracen relegated to the comparatively exposed starboard side of the convoy, stayed strictly in their cabins and the officers’ saloon and certainly did not prowl the decks seeking out transgressing conscripts.
The crew of the Saracen, and the ship’s handful of officers, did not appear to have any problem with Raphael being up on deck. Most assumed, if they saw him at all, that he was doing exactly what he was doing: finding himself a very sensible refuge in the brisk, fresh ocean air, away from the overcrowded holds and their largely seasick human cargo. The majority of sailors ignored him, a few nodded, but one, a common seaman from the city of Naples who was not much older than Raphael himself, would stop for a brief conversation and even share his tea with him. His name was Placido, and he had crossed the ocean no less then seven times and seemed to know the ropes both figuratively and literally.
“It might seem bad below decks on this scow, but think yourself lucky we’re not carrying horses.”
“Horses?” The idea had not occurred to Raphael that the Mosul would transport horses across the ocean. “Don’t they already have horses in the Americas?”
“Some, but apparently not enough. The poor bloody horses get killed at the same rate as the men, don’t they? Although they know less about why they’re here and what they’re doing.”
“From what I’ve seen, most of the men don’t have a clue. I hardly know what I’m doing here.”
Placido had responded with a sage nod. “You’ve got a point there, brother. But face it, you know a little more than a poor dumb horse, am I right?”
“I guess so.”
“The horses can’t sneak up on the deck and make themselves scarce.”
Placido then lit a hand-rolled cigarette with a wood match that he struck in his thumbnail with the skill of a veteran. He puffed on it and offered Raphael a drag. “Smoke?”
Raphael took a drag and coughed. He did not really enjoy the new fad of smoking tobacco, but joined Placido to be sociable. He doubted he would live long enough to need to worry about lung disease. “Why is it so bad when the ship’s carrying horses?”
“They scream, my friend. All the time they scream. And if the swell gets bad, they try and kick their way out of the stalls. A lot get injured and have to be butchered on the deck, and then it’s ‘Placido, clean up the blood,’ and horsemeat stew on the menu all the way to Savannah.” He glanced over his shoulder to see that no one was around to overhear. “Of course, the bastard officers’ horses, that’s a different matter. They have grooms with them twenty-four hours a day to make sure nothing happens to them, but ain’t that always the way of it?”
Placido had also shown an interest in Raphael’s drawings and had made complimentary noises as he leafed through his homemade sketchbook. “These are really good, man.”
“Thanks.”
“No, I mean it. You’re a fucking artist. I’m from Italia, don’t forget. We know all about art. You didn’t ought to be in this shit.”
Raphael had laughed bitterly. “You and me seem to be the only ones who think that way.”
Placido had agreed. “Ain’t that the truth, and no mistake? And you want to keep those out of sight of the priests and snitches. They don’t take kindly to grunts who show any kind of talent except maybe for killing and dying.”
Raphael looked rueful. “I already got ten with the formal cane because I got careless.”
“Damn. I bet that hurt.”
�
��You’re not kidding.”
“Here at sea they use the lash. I don’t know which is worse, the cane or the lash, and, believe me, I really don’t want to fucking find out.”
Eventually Placido asked the inevitable question. “You think I could maybe have one of those? Maybe one of the naked girls? It’d look fucking fine over my bunk.”
“I don’t know. That’s how I got into trouble before.”
“You don’t have to worry. The priests don’t bother us here at sea. They stick to their own part of the ship, and the master-at-arms, he don’t care what we stick up over our bunks. If anyone asks, I won’t tell them where I got it, I swear. I’ll say I bought it off a peddler while I was on shore leave, outside a Cadiz whorehouse or something.”
“Your word on that?”
“My word. And I’m not looking for something for nothing. Next time I come by, I’ll bring you a shot of whiskey and a cigar.”
That was the best offer Raphael had ever had for his work. “Yeah?”
“Sure. That’s the only things the fucking Americas are good for, tobacco and whiskey.”
Still with some trepidation despite all of Placido’s assurances, Raphael handed over one of his fantasy nudes, and the deckhand went about his business.
The ocean voyage was the first time that Raphael had been able to draw without constant interruption since he had been pressed into the service. Almost everyone else seemed to be living in constant fear of attack. Indeed, fear and rumors were the twin coins of their floating realm among the ones who were well enough to speak or not so sick they wanted to die anyway. Although the Norse Union was not officially at war, its big battleships had, by all accounts, fired on a number of convoys under the pretext of keeping the sea lanes clear for the Norse clipper ships on course for Cape Horn and the Far East. The Albany navy also made regular hit-and-run attacks on the Mosul convoys, but these usually came when the transports and their escorts were close to sighting the Americas, just a day or so out of Savannah. Grim stories were also circulating of Albany having a number of submarines, and maybe more in the future. The idea of submarines had become the horror of everyone involved in the convoy traffic, from the ranking officer to the lowliest rating and the wretched human cargo of soldiers in the hold. That strange iron boats, like man-made sharks, could cruise invisibly beneath the surface of the waves and fire explosive torpedoes capable of sinking a ship in a single devastating surprise explosion was like some supernatural nightmare against which the Mosul ships had no defense.
Up to that point, the Mosul had, despite some fairly heavy losses, been reasonably successful at moving their convoys across the ocean and back comparatively intact. The key was to keep up and maintain a formation in which the transports were closely grouped, like a herd of cattle or a flock of sheep, and surrounded by a protective screen of well-armed ironclads. For a transport to fall behind, because of engine trouble or some other delaying problem, was almost certainly to court destruction and become the victim of scavenging Caribbean pirates or the privateers who were little better than pirates except that they sailed under a Norse Union flag of convenience. Much of the Saracen’s ability to keep up with the convoy and remain in comparative safety was due to the stokers who, hour after backbreaking hour, fed coal to the furnaces that heated the boilers. At regular intervals, two or three of them would stumble out onto the deck, gasping for air and leaning on the nearest available railing as though almost ready to pass out from their exertions in the heat and smoke. Stripped to the waist, and with their red faces and coal-blackened, sweat-streaked bodies, they looked like the damned on a brief remission from some terrible metal hell deep in the bowels of the ship, and, in many respects, they were exactly that.
Honing his skills, Raphael had sketched a number of these apparitions from the stokehold, along with the ever-present ocean waves and deckhands going about their duties. He sketched some soldiers rolling dice between the bunks in the hold, details of various parts of the ship visible from his hiding place, and, one time, a Mamaluke major leaning on the rail of the upper deck that was forbidden to the rank and file, staring loftily across the water at a setting sun, completely unaware that a humble conscript was observing him from below and recording his image. By far the majority of Raphael’s time, however, was still spent putting the visions that crowded his head down on whatever paper he could beg, find, or steal. Raphael drew more of the naked women that Placido had liked so much, and also mythic beasts, unworldly landscapes, and memories of his home before the Mosul had come and sundered his family, but he kept returning to the likeness of a single face: the girl with caramel skin, huge eyes, and dark hair.
JESAMINE
He laid her down gently, and she held him tightly
On the banks ’neath the dog rose beside the wide river
In the willows, in the wonder, see the clear waters glide
His love buried deeply, her passion surrendered
For the lingering moment, no call or remembrance
No sound on the wind where so many had died
After the third or fourth round of schnapps, these conquering Teuton heroes liked it sentimental to the point of maudlin. In an hour or less they could be nasty or even fighting drunk, ready to call each other out with dueling sabers, but, right at that moment, as Jesamine sang, she had them in the palm of her hand, and a few were actually close to mawkish alcohol tears. Behind her, an Hispanic boy soldier played soft guitar, no doubt grateful that his talent had caused him to be plucked from some conscript suicide squad among the Provincial Levies. This was not to say that later in the night he might not be bent over a cushion, stripped of his britches, and sodomized by some hulking Mamaluke just because he was still there. In the empire of the Mosul, all took their chances, and lived by the whim of the warlord, one hour at a time.
Tender, so tender, so yielding the softness
So willing, so tender, so fragile, so young
For a future remembered in fragments so fleeting
In dreams and memories in tears and in grief
Tomorrows and tomorrows not owned by the lovers
And all that came after the joy of their meeting
Stolen by time in the cloak of a thief
The rhyme pattern was tricky, and shifted from verse to verse, but the kid with guitar, whose name was Garcia, proved more than able to follow the contours of the ballad, and, because he had done so well, Jesamine had whispered to him between songs, “When we’re done, try and slip away while you can, brother. I know you want to see the twins do their thing, but it could turn ugly later. Believe me, boy, it could turn real ugly.”
The boy had nodded his gratitude, and Jesamine wished she, too, could slip away unnoticed, but she was expected to join Phaall to look decorative and be available. Also, Garcia was only an adjunct while Jesamine was just too damned visible. When her performance was concluded, it had been met with a loud burst of applause. She had bowed politely and made her way to where Colonel Phaall lounged with his cronies—a major, a captain, and another colonel. Some sat on Mosul-style floor cushions, and others, like Phaall, on more Teutonic upright folding chairs. Phaall was drinking schnapps, chased by foaming steins of lager. As Jesamine draped herself at his feet, he patted her on the ass and then promptly proceeded to ignore her. A discussion seemed to be in progress regarding some kind of military problem.
“So the bastards are getting cheeky.”
“So it would seem.”
“So what exactly did the report say?”
The major in the group around Phaall was Urman, the cavalryman who owned Kahfla, and he seemed to have most of the pertinent information on the subject under discussion. “We just had confirmation. It’s as we’ve suspected for a while. A small force of Albany Rangers, almost certainly in cahoots with the bandit groups in the Appalachians, is definitely operating here, south of the river, right under our noses, gathering intelligence and performing random acts of sabotage. It would seem that some of the attacks that we�
��ve been attributing to generalized native resistance are in fact their handiwork.”
Usually Jesamine had little or no interest in the war talk of Phaall and his companions, except insomuch as it distracted the colonel’s bleary mess-tent focus away from her, but mention of Albany Rangers in the area piqued her interest. For Jesamine, the idea of making contact with enemy guerrillas and maybe escaping across the river with them seemed like a much more attractive fantasy than the popular concubine’s dream of having her master fall in love with her and grant her freedom. While Jesamine maintained her well-practiced expression of pliable vacancy, she listened and prepared to take mental notes.
Phaall shrugged. “Well, thank the Deities that I’m an engineer, and it’s not my problem. Surely all that’s needed is a search-and-destroy mission: winkle out the swine and kill them. Isn’t that what the Mamalukes are for?”
The other colonel, whose name was Fragg, and who commanded an infantry regiment, looked round to make sure no one was paying undue attention, but like everyone else in the group, he did not think of Jesamine as a potential eavesdropper. “We all know the Mamalukes aren’t exactly precise. They’ll crash around the forest on their chargers, burn a couple of villages, and hang a few dozen of entirely the wrong people. These Rangers know their business. They’ll know all about the Mamalukes while they’re still miles away, and simply vanish.”
Phaall stared at Urman. “So what about your boys? Can’t they do the job? Aren’t they capable of exercising a little precision? We need this nipped in the bud before some rear echelon shithead in Savannah decides this is an issue he can ride to a promotion, and we find ourselves up to our asses in Ministry of Virtue headhunters and Special Forces.”
“We could, but there’s one other problem.”
“What’s that?”
“There’s a story going round that a demon is leading these Rangers and keeping them in telepathic touch with Albany and maybe the aborigines in the mountains.”
Phaall quickly poured himself another schnapps and drank it down in one. “Shit. I hate all that other-side, weird woo-hoo. Wars should be fought man on man without resorting to all this night-crawling, black resources crap. It’s bad enough that we have to have the Dark Things up here slipping out of their pens and eating the occasional private, but fucking demons? We don’t need no fucking demons at this stage of the game. Does Savannah know about this supposed demon?”