The Pen and the Sword (Destiny's Crucible Book 2)

by Olan Thorensen

  “So that’s my summary plan, Okan.” They were on a first-name basis when alone or with the other senior officers.

  “Appears to be a solid plan, Aivacs. You have the men shaping up nicely. The drills we saw this morning may not be as smooth as either of us would like, but considering the quality of men we have and the need to integrate two different sets of men sent to us, all in all, I think they’ll do fine.”

  “It just chaffs me to be drilling them with pike formations. They’ll only have to all be retrained with all muskets when they return to Narthon. I know the High Command didn’t see the need to change for this mission, since the Caedelli pose no serious threat, but why bother with pikes at all? I thought the Battle of Three Rivers against the Fuomi settled that. Their solid musket blocks decimated our pike formations.”

  “While I can’t say I disagree,” Akuyun said, “they had already committed the units to our mission and saw no need to change. Again, we may question the High Command’s wisdom, but it’s our job to work with what they give us.”

  “I know, I know, and we’ll perform as necessary, still . . .”

  “No ‘stills.’ This unit and others will do well, and that’s to your credit. However, I think I have a pleasant piece of news for you. The unit building the bridge we looked at is almost finished, and it’ll be the last such assignment for them or any other unit. From this point on, all focus will be on training for the coming campaign.”

  Zulfa pumped a fist. “Yes! Finally, stop with the digging and hammering.”

  Although their troops’ primary mission was to subdue the Caedelli clans, the massive influx of Narthani settlers required support in developing infrastructure. The mission included larger-than-normal engineering sections, but the engineers needed workers to build bridges, roads, canals, structures, and defenses. Although slaves were useful, some projects needed more disciplined workers. In the previous year, the number of Narthani civilians rose beyond a hundred thousand, and the troops had spent a third or more of their time supporting the engineers, to Zulfa’s annoyance.

  “It’s been too hard getting larger units together for any length of time. Now we can work more on unit cohesion and coordination.”

  The two men and their escorting guards rode through the streets of Preddi City to the Narthani headquarters. As always, Akuyun kept to rigid schedules, and they arrived at the end of the hours slotted to Zulfa and time for a meeting with Admiral Morfred Kalcan, who waved as he walked to greet them.

  “Okan, Aivacs, I assume you’ve been on those horses for hours. How you stand it, I don’t know. Stupid, smelly creatures that look to throw you off at any opportunity.” Kalcan’s aversion to horses was even worse than most sailors’, for good reason. His horsemanship was atrocious, with the admiral falling off even the tamest horse, as witnessed by both Akuyun and Zulfa.

  “Nonsense, Morfred. If you’d practice a little more, you’d stay on longer.”

  “By that logic, you should sail around on my ships more often to cure your seasickness.” Zulfa was the antithesis of a sailor and got queasy crossing a lake.

  Both men laughed. It was a routine exchange.

  “Well, I’ll be off then, General Akuyun,” said Zulfa, switching back to formal mode.

  “Gentleman, unfortunately, we don’t have a general staff meeting for another sixday, but before we part, I, and I’m sure Morfred also, want to offer congratulations to Brigadier Zulfa. I understand from my wife, Rabia, that a child was born in the Zulfa household from your woman, Panira.”

  Admiral Kalcan slapped Zulfa on the back, shouting, “Good going, Aivacs! That’s two from Panira, if I recall.”

  A broad smile broke on the face of the usually impassive Zulfa. “Yes, first a boy, Turmin, who’s now almost two, and yesterday a girl, Nizla. Both baby and mother are doing well.”

  Zulfa could have brought his family with him when he posted to the Caedellium mission, but his wife had been heavy with child, and one of their other three children had a long-term weakness that needed constant attention. He hadn’t realized the posting to Caedellium would last more than two years. He and his wife had agreed he needed a woman, neither expecting him to remain celibate.

  Zulfa’s wife played a central role in choosing a seventeen-year-old girl, Panira, the daughter of one of Zulfa’s retainers back in Narthon. Her family was honored to accept the offer to have one of their daughters join the Zulfa household. Her position would be as a “second wife”—effectively a concubine. There could be many such second wives, but resulting children were formally the children of the first wife. For Panira, her children might not be major inheritors of the father, but would have education, contacts, and more opportunities than otherwise possible. It was an accepted and respectable position in Narthani society, particularly for a lower-caste Narthani family, descendants of a people absorbed into the Narthon Empire eighty years previously. They were of the core of Narthani society, yet had no expectations of rising into higher levels for another generation or more, without associating with the higher levels of society, of which Zulfa’s immediate and extended family was part.

  The daughter, once informed of the arrangement, acquiesced, as expected. Not that she had a choice, but Zulfa wouldn’t have taken her if she were unwilling. It had proved a good decision. The girl managed his Caedellium residence, which included several local slaves and the aides and the guards of Zulfa’s who resided within the villa he had appropriated from a wealthy Preddi family

  Akuyun’s wife, Rabia, was a friend of Panira’s, an uncommon connection between a wife and a concubine in another household, but Rabia and Akuyun both approved of the young woman and the stability she gave Zulfa, allowing him to focus on his duties.

  The two years Zulfa had expected stretched into four. He exchanged letters with his wife, but his children were growing up without him. The separation hit him hard recently when his oldest son, now eight years old, began writing letters to a father he hardly remembered. If he didn’t get back soon, Zulfa wondered whether the children at home would ever form the level of connection he had had with his father.

  Chapter 6: The Pen

  The islanders often reinforced Yozef’s opinion of their acumen and industry. They might be backward in technology compared to Earth, yet once given direction, they ran with it. None of his earlier shops needed his attention. The Caedelli supervisors and staff implemented his initial instructions and developed further products and processes by experimentation. He seldom stopped at the workshops for ether, alcohol, papers, or soaps, while devoting only moderately more time to keeping abreast of progress on the cannon and gunpowder projects. Business details he left to Cadwulf and the staff at the Bank of Abersford.

  It was after a meeting to discuss expanding kerosene production that Cadwulf commented on Yozef’s recent activity.

  “Yozef, I hope you don’t mind my asking, but recently you’re spending most of your time preparing for fighting. Not that I don’t think it important to do whatever we can in case the Buldorians or the Narthani come again, but I’ve seen you more as the scholastic type.”

  “I am, but we can’t always do what we want. My people have a saying: ‘The quill is mightier than the sword,’ though it’s more a philosophical proposition than one rooted in the real world. While I agree that over time, often what a person writes can have more influence than another person’s conquests, time and the effect of the present can’t be ignored. The quill may be mightier long term, but the sword wins short term.

  “To do what I’m best at, I and everyone here have to survive whatever the Narthani plan. I hope my projects can help both Keelan and me to survive.”

  What Yozef didn’t tell Cadwulf was that in this case, the “quill” was his journals. He needed time to write as much as he could remember. Soon after he’d recovered from the shock of being cast away on Anyar, he recognized that his knowledge of Earth science would advance human civilization on Anyar by centuries. The problem was that there was no way to
suddenly incorporate what he knew into the existing civilization. Knowledge didn’t exist in a vacuum. Each piece needed to fit into a society’s existing knowledge base and philosophical principles.

  Added to this problem was fear for his own safety, if he attempted to introduce knowledge violating religious or cultural precepts he didn’t even know existed. As a science student, he knew of the fate of early scientists who contradicted the Catholic Church’s teachings on astronomy around 1600 AD: Giordano Bruno, a Dominican friar, was burned at the stake for heresy, and Galileo, thirty years later, was threatened with the same fate, until he recanted. Yozef had estimated Anyarian technology to be at approximately Earth’s level around 1700, so he treaded lightly at first.

  As time passed and he gained more confidence, he had used elementary chemistry to introduce new products and processes without experiencing serious repercussions. Mathematics had also been safe, because it was seen as more abstract than something that directly impacted beliefs. The Caedelli were not yet aware of how it permeated everything else.

  He had also given St. Sidryn’s medicants, members of the medical order of the Caedelli service society, ether, ethanol as an antiseptic, and knowledge of the body’s organs and physiology, being very careful not to introduce too much too soon and retreating into feigned ignorance at warning signs.

  Still, these were minor advances. He assumed he would transfer only a fraction of what he knew within his life span. To reach beyond that time, he wrote in English two sets of secret journals. One set recounted how he had come to Anyar and everything he could remember about Earth history. He intended that no one read this set while he lived, but he wanted there to be a record of what had happened to him to tell future Anyarians where they came from.

  The second set of journals he also wrote in English, but it was everything he remembered about science and mathematics. The Watchers, aliens who had saved him after colliding with his airliner, had modified his DNA for more efficient energy production and utilization. The AI, Harlie, said it was to compensate for Anyar’s gravity being higher than Earth’s. Whether intended or not, a side effect was enhanced memory for previous experiences. Concentrating brought forth entire pages of text and lessons from his undergraduate and graduate courses. There were annoying gaps, paragraphs, or pages missing from a chapter, but the totality was more advanced than anything likely to exist on Anyar for a century or more, especially in physics, geology, biology, biochemistry, and, most of all, chemistry—his specialty.

  He spent many hours with quill and ink filling blank bound journals with carefully stroked words, equations, and diagrams. Page after page, journal after journal. His latest efforts focused on electromagnetism and Maxwell’s equations and a second journal on the elements of molecular genetics and the structure of DNA. He hadn’t time to translate everything into Caedelli, so he expanded the English/Caedelli dictionary, which he’d begun when first learning the language, to include a Caedelli explanation of English grammar—the dictionary and the grammar to be stored with the science journals. At some future time, whether in his lifetime or not, the science journal set would be available. Initially, he’d thought the time to reveal this set would be after his death, but after the raid on St. Sidryn’s and his own narrow escape, he became impatient. He needed to push knowledge forward faster, but it required more people to understand and extend what he knew. Cadwulf’s enthusiasm for the new mathematics and Brother Wallington’s epiphany on using the first microscopes to study previously unknown realms of animal and plant life encouraged Yozef to bring in more Caedelli scholastics. He envisioned expanding St. Sidryn’s scholastic staff, the Caedellium version of academics, into a university. These were dreams to which he could devote the rest of his life.

  However, the university would succeed only with the abbot’s approval and backing. He had procrastinated, but the time had come. He spent two days thinking, and then one mid-afternoon, after seeing the abbot enter the cathedral, he knocked on Sistian’s door.

  “Enter.” Sistian sat behind his cluttered desk. “Ah, Yozef, what can I do you for today?”

  Yozef jumped right in. “If you have time, I’d like to discuss expanding the scholastic staff here at St. Sidryn’s.”

  “Expand? How do you mean expand?” asked the abbot, waving for Yozef to sit.

  “I’m thinking about the number of scholastics. I understand there are fourteen scholastics here, plus several of the brothers and sisters are medicants and have interests that might be considered scholastic oriented. The experience of my people is that scholastics are more efficient in learning when their number is higher and represented by many different areas of knowledge.”

  We’d call it a “critical mass,” but if he asked where the phrase came from, how would I explain about nuclear chain reactions?

  Sistian nodded. “I understand, Yozef, but how many scholastics can there be in one place?”

  “As many as possible.”

  “Then how are they supported? An abbey like St. Sidryn’s is doing well to provide for its fourteen scholastics. Even so, some of the medicant and theophist brothers and sisters chaff at even the fourteen as being too many.”

  Yozef had learned early on that the Caedelli service society included three orders: medicants to tend the body; theophists, to the spirit; and scholastics to study God’s world. Sistian was St. Sidryn’s abbot and head theophist, while his wife, Diera, was abbess and the head medicant. This was the first Yozef had heard of tension among the orders.

  “Obviously, it takes more coin as the number of scholastics increases,” Yozef said, “which is why I wanted to speak with you. My people strongly believe in the value of scholastics and willingly provide such support, but what about the people here? I assume to expand the number of scholastics on Caedellium would require considerable additional coin.”

  Sistian sat back in his chair and folded hands over a stomach that had been growing the last few years, as Diera had mentioned to him numerous times. “And how would you see such support happening here?”

  “The people are already taxed, the funds going first to the district boyermen and then part to the clan hetman. It would require using part of that tax to increase the scholastic staff.”

  “I hope you understand you would need to convince not only the hetman and the boyermen. The people would also have to believe in the value of supporting more scholastics. As much as I love all Keelanders, most are concerned with the here and now, and getting them to understand the longer-term value of scholastics is always difficult.”

  “I appreciate the problem, but what do you believe? Given all the uses for available coin, how do you value scholastics, compared to all the other needs?”

  The abbot was quiet for a moment, his eyes on Yozef, the fingers of his hands now tapping his stomach as he thought. “Before you arrived, I thought I was allotting as much of St. Sidryn’s resources to our scholasticum as was possible, and possibly more than I should. Now… after the ether, kerosene, the mathematics you’ve shown Cadwulf, the medical knowledge you’ve shared with Diera, I’ve been wondering . . .

  “Tell me, Yozef, how many scholastics are found at one site in your land?”

  Yozef could hardly tell him thousands to tens of thousands—if you counted professors, post-docs, graduate and undergraduate students. It needed to start slowly, here. Too grandiose for Caedelli standards, and he’d lose the abbot.

  “Our scholastics aren’t part of abbeys such as here on Caedellium. They gather in what we call a university, where they can number several score, and at some of the more important universities, hundreds.”

  Sistian jerked in his chair. “That many! And your people support such a number?”

  “Yes. Naturally, people being people, there are always arguments over whether that’s too many or not enough, but certainly many more than on Caedellium.”

  “University,” Sistian repeated. “I suppose I appreciate the value of getting scholastics together in larger numbers, although
I’m dubious about it here on Caedellium. I know there are such centers on some of the mainland realms—the Fuomi, for example, and some Iraquinink states. Diera spent several years in medicant training on Landolin in a large center. Here? I doubt the hetman and the boyermen would even consider such a proposal.”

  “I agree, which is why I came to you. What if we start by increasing the scholastic staff here in St. Sidryn’s? You already have fourteen scholastics. Plus, I suspect Cadwulf would reasonably be considered a scholastic in mathematics. What I propose is that since the abbey has increased coin from its share of the ether and kerosene trades, and since my enterprises are doing so well, that we jointly support establishing a small university.”

  Sistian sat thoughtfully, considering. “And if we did this, how much would the abbey need to provide?”

  “We can discuss it, but I suggest the abbey provide one-fifth of the coin, and I would provide the rest.”

  “Such an uneven share,” said the surprised abbot. “I expected you to propose we share the cost equally.”

  “Realistically, I probably have more available coin than the abbey, plus the abbey would provide not only one fifth of the coin, but also its existing scholastics, the prestige of the abbey, and, let’s be honest, the reputation of, and regard for, the abbot.”

  Sistian smiled at the compliment and waved it off with a hand motion.

  “Over time,” Yozef said, “the boyerman, the hetman, and hopefully the people will come to understand the value of supporting the university here and possibly other ones elsewhere in Keelan and the other clans.”