Forged in Fire (Destiny's Crucible Book 4)

by Olan Thorensen

  “A pleasure to see you again, Hulwyn, although one would wish under less stressful circumstances,” said Maera. “And before I forget, thank you again for the wedding present.” She gestured toward her mount. “Moldin is a wonderful horse, gentle, strong, tireless, and responsive.”

  “I admit I’m a little surprised to see you here, Maera, now that you’re married and have a new child. I would’ve thought Culich wouldn’t be pleased to see you off to this place.”

  “Father is Keelan hetman, but I am a Keelan, too, and do what I can for the clan. I am also married to Yozef Kolsko, and he requested my presence here—so Father had no say in the matter.”

  “Well, knowing you, I imagine he had a say—it just didn’t matter,” Hulwyn said with a grin.

  Yozef laughed. “I say . . . you really do know Maera, don’t you, Hulwyn?”

  Maera swatted him with her reins.

  “And I’m also glad you’re here, Yozef. I’d hoped Culich would send you. Maybe you can help figure out what’s going on.”

  “Thank you, Hulwyn. Now, let’s think about what we want to do here.” Yozef looked down at the Fuomi encampment. “I’d think your reports are right. The way they dug in and the place they chose to do it suggest that while they don’t intend to make hostile moves, they want to have an impregnable position and perhaps impress us.”

  “They certainly succeeded in impressing me,” said Denes. Several others nodded and voiced agreement.

  “Well, if we’re going to have talks,” Yozef offered, “it might be better if they also have respect for us. Discussions between equals are often more productive.”

  “And how are we going to impress them?” asked Luwis.

  “How about if we do the same as they did? Dig in. Or, in our case, create a defensive perimeter that also blocks them from leaving the point.”

  Mittack and Luwis both looked dubious, and the latter voiced his doubt. “Is that worth the effort, just in case they might be impressed?”

  “What’s the harm?” replied Yozef. “If they’re not impressed, all we’ve lost is some sweat, but if they are, who knows what positive results might come of it during the talks?”

  “Still,” said an unconvinced Mittack.

  It was Denes who supported the idea first. “I think I agree with Yozef. One thing he’s been endlessly drumming into me is to prepare even if you think it isn’t necessary.” He gestured out at the point. “The land widens to only about five hundred yards before the foot of the hills we occupy. We could dig in at the crest and have unobstructed fields of plunging fire. We won’t have grazing fields of fire, which we will have if we dig in at the bottom of the hills, where both musket and canister fire will be far more effective. The problem is it puts our trenches in range of their cannon.”

  Yozef squatted on one knee as he looked over the terrain. “I suggest the 6-pounders at the bottom, with the 12-pounders clearly visible at the crest. The added elevation will let them counter-battery fire at the Fuomi cannon. Even if we don’t know the range of their cannon, they’ll have a hell of a time landing round shot on top of the crest. The shot will either hit the slope in front of our cannon or sail on over. Our guns, on the other hand, will be shooting straight down at them.”

  “You sound as if you both expect a battle to take place here,” said the anxious Mittack hetman.

  “No, Hetman,” said Denes. “It’s just planning for anything possible, like we talked about. As Yozef says, ‘Plan for the worst and hope for the best.’”

  “How soon would you want the entrenchments completed?” asked Luwis.

  “As soon as possible and as much of a surprise to the Fuomi as possible,” said Yozef.

  “Hetman, how many fighting men do you have here?” asked Denes.

  “With the ones who came with you, about fourteen hundred. All I could muster on short notice and still leave some men to defend coastal villages and towns. There’s also the five hundred men from Hewell who arrived yesterday.”

  “We brought fifteen hundred from Keelan, and five hundred from Gwillamer are a day behind us,” added Yozef. “What about people within a few hours’ ride from here?”

  “I suppose a thousand men of all ages. Why?”

  “If we want to surprise them, the best way is to complete the entrenchments over a single night. If you bring in all nearby men, we could have more than two thousand men working constantly and trading off with another two thousand who were resting and eating. If they all put their backs into it, that many working on a five-hundred-yard front can do an impressive amount of work in ten hours.”

  “Able women, too,” said Yozef. “All of the clans have to understand that to fight the Narthani means every single person is available to do whatever is necessary. Maybe this is not that serious a situation, but there’s no time to start the tradition like right now. If there are two to three thousand local men available, then there should be another thousand or more strong women who can dig, too, besides carrying water and cooking.”

  They used the next day to bring in surrounding villagers—who also carried every shovel, every pick, and any other potential digging tool, along with loose rails taken from every fence with ten miles. The five hundred men from Gwillamer arrived exhausted from their trip and were allowed to encamp and recover. The Mittack translator was sent to deliver the Fuomi a message that a meeting with leaders would be possible the following day. Everyone not engaged in specific tasks was urged to sleep as much as possible during the day. It would have been a puzzling sight for the Fuomi if they could have seen the other side of the ridge, where thousands of people slept in small makeshift tents and lean-tos or just lay on the grass with coats or cloth over their heads.

  During the day, the clan leaders planned the exact entrenchments, assigned people to each section under the direction of crew chiefs, and then waited for sundown. As the sun first touched the horizon, everyone still asleep was awakened, fed, and crews formed up. Everyone was repeatedly told the importance of minimizing noise. Obviously, the digging would be heard, but it would be partly hidden by the sounds of waves against the shoreline rocks on both sides of the peninsula and by onshore winds.

  They began when the last light faded and had until the first light the next morning. Then the digging would stop, and everyone would take up his or her pre-arranged position—fighting men in trench lines or with their cannon. The noncombatant local villagers also had a role: 2,400 in groups of two hundred would stand in ranked formations on the upper slopes of the more distant surrounding hills, holding tool handles skyward to simulate weapons. The front rank would be fighting men, and unless the Fuomi had much stronger telescopes than Yozef believed, they wouldn’t be able to tell that the arrayed companies were mainly armed with shovels, other tools, or tree limbs when no tool was available.

  Jaako Rintala was deep into a dream involving people he didn’t know doing things he didn’t understand, though he enjoyed watching it all—when he woke to see Reimo Kivalian at his cot-side.

  “What?” he mumbled.

  “Something’s going on,” said Kivalian in his “this is serious” voice.

  The tone instantly jolted Rintala fully awake. “What is it?”

  “The islanders are up to something. Come listen.”

  Rintala threw on the clothing he had shed for sleep, and the two men trotted quickly two hundred yards to their forward trench and climbed onto the top of the earthworks surrounding a 30-pounder. Kivalian hushed the nearby men. Rintala tilted his head to the left—his right ear was better. He heard . . . something. He cupped his ears with his hands, thereby increasing audio input. Yes. A rising and falling background noise came inland from their position.

  “All right. I hear something. It seems like a constant noise with ups and downs. Any ideas?”

  Kivalian shook his head, accompanied by, “Nothing for sure.”

  Rintala grunted a question mark.

  Kivalian volunteered, “So . . . maybe digging. Maybe lots of animal m
ovement some distance away—on the other side of the hills. Maybe thousands of coneys sharpening their teeth on wood.”

  Rintala grunted again. Kivalian, as competent as he was, was also an incurably cheery wise-ass. There was no point in encouraging him.

  “One of our pickets first reported hearing something about an hour ago, as the wind died,” said Kivalian. “Before that, whatever that noise is was hidden by the waves and wind. I considered pushing the pickets farther—they’re only a hundred yards out—but in the dark, there’s more opportunity for accidents. If we’re trying to make a friendly first contact with islander leaders, we wouldn’t want someone in the dark to start firing.”

  “No. You were right to leave the pickets where they are,” agreed Rintala.

  “I roused the next watch, so half of the men are at stations.”

  I think I would have at least gotten everyone at stations and let them sleep there, Rintala thought. However, Reimo is troop commander, so it’s properly his decision. Besides, even half the men should be able to hold off whatever the islanders might throw at us—at least long enough for the rest of the men to get to their positions.

  “Send a lantern message to Admiral Kyllo that we assess something is happening we’re not sure about. Stand-to the closest three frigates. Quietly. Tell him to answer only by an acknowledgment with a single lantern. It will be light in about three hours, and then we will see what we will see.”

  It was closer to two and a half hours when the first faint glow on the horizon heralded the coming sun. They all noticed a sudden cessation of the previous noise, replaced by a general rustling that rose and then died as the light increased. With the east to their backs, the land in front of their position lay in shadow. They could first make out the skyline of the hills against the darkness, then smaller terrain features came into focus.

  It was the gun captain at their position whose eyes first recognized something.

  “By all the gods, they’ve built fortifications in front of us during the night.”

  Within a few more minutes, all of the men could see the night’s work—a continuous line of positions paralleling the Fuomi trenches and covering their entire front at the base of the low hills from one side of the peninsula to the other and about seven hundred yards distant.

  “Well, well,” murmured Rintala in admiration. “They certainly have been busy little workers last night.”

  Another half hour, with the sun not quite above the horizon, and the clear air showed trenches zigzagging with log-reinforced bunkers every thirty yards, nine of which sprouted barrels of light cannon. Another two hundred yards to the crest were six more revetments with what appeared to be larger-bore cannon. Men were visible on the crest and shoulder to shoulder in the trenches. The plant growth covering the farther slopes was splotched with company-sized squares of men. Kivalian made a quick count.

  “Must be a good two thousand men in the blocks alone. What with those in the trenches, maybe four thousand total. Those cannon anchoring the trenches are no major threat—we would outgun them easily. On the other hand, those on the crest would be a problem. To knock them out, we’d have to elevate and hit them directly, while they would fire right down on our cannon. Even with our bigger bores, I’d say it’s even up for both sides.”

  The gun captain had been listening. “That’s not all, sirs. Look to the left. On top of the bluff.”

  Rintala and Kivalian swiveled their heads to the table of land at the end of the islander trenches. The bluff was a solid, flat-topped rock formation about two hundred feet high. Visible were log bunkers from which protruded three longer cannon barrels.

  The gun captain spat juice from the bello bark chew plug in his mouth. “Unless I’m seeing things that ain’t there, those are longer tubes. From that height and angle, we’d have to re-position our 30-pounders—and even then, they’d have the advantage on us.”

  Kivalian cursed, his usual good humor not sufficient to overcome the morning’s surprises.

  “Well, well, indeed,” said Rintala. “Our simple little islanders certainly have some surprises for us.”

  “If we didn’t know better, I’d say it was the Narthani facing us,” said a concerned Kivalian. “While I wouldn’t have placed all the positions exactly where they did—if I was out there, instead of here—the fact that they did it at all, and overnight, is disturbingly impressive. As if by people with the right thinking but inexperienced. Look at the trenches. The zigzags are too long. And putting the line at the base of the slope, instead of up on it. Just another twenty yards and their field of fire wouldn’t be that much affected, and being on the slope would reduce our ability to using grazing fire. Shot and grapeshot would tend to bury in the slope, instead of glancing off the flat ground and continuing toward targets. Still . . . impressive for the time they had and that they thought of any of this, although it cries out as inexperienced.”

  “I think, Reimo, that we’ve had our own cleverness turned against us.”

  “Huh?”

  “We wanted to send a message that we aren’t aggressively seeking to move inland, and we’re strong enough to defend ourselves from anything that might come against us. And what do they do . . . ?”

  Kivalian was silent as he resurveyed the scene. “So you think they’re sending a message back that they weren’t impressed?”

  “That’s what I suspect,” affirmed Rintala.

  Kivalian noticeably relaxed. “So the return message is that while they don’t intend to attack us, they’re strong enough to keep us here?”

  “Something like that.”

  “Movement, sirs,” rasped out the gun captain.

  From the Caedelli trenches climbed four men carrying a table. They walked to halfway between the two trench lines, set the table down, then walked back to their lines. Several trips followed with chairs, poles, rope, and a heavy fabric held up by the poles and forming a tent with closing flaps on all sides. The rectangular table had five chairs at each long side paralleling the trenches. The islander men pushed three narrow poles into the ground on the tent side nearest the Fuomi lines—each pole’s top held a blue-and-white pennant. On the opposite side, nearest the islander lines, matched three poles with green pennants.

  By now, Eina Saisannin had long since joined them. “I don’t think we need to wonder about the purpose of the tent.”

  “No,” said Rintala. “It’s an invitation for five of us to meet with five of them. I’m assuming the green is either for whichever clan we landed on or the island as a whole—like our blue and white.”

  “I suggest you send them an acknowledgment signal,” said Saisannin.

  Kivalian turned to a waiting aide. “Bring one of our flags and pole here, quickly.”

  The young aide ran off, to return shortly with a three-by-four-foot, blue-and-white Fuomon flag. Kivalian took the pole, turned inland, and waved the flag slowly a dozen times—then planted the base at his side as they watched the opposite lines. Almost immediately, a figure appeared on an islander bunker and waved a green flag. Then another man began walking toward the tent.

  “It’s their Narthani translator,” said Saisannin. “I’ve been hoping they come up with someone better. I can hardly understand anything he says to the man you have translating for us, and I’m not optimistic about trying to carry on a complex dialogue using him.”

  “Let’s see what he has to say,” said Kivalian and sent their own translator out. As good as the man’s Narthani was, Saisannin’s was better, but Rintala wanted to hold that off until they knew more about the islanders’ views on women in negotiations.

  The meeting of the two representatives took less than a minute, and their man returned.

  “Sirs. They say they will meet with you at mid-day. No more than five persons to a side. No weapons.”

  As the sun reached its zenith, a green flag waved from the islander line. The Fuomi responded with their blue-and-white colors.

  “Let’s not argue, Jaako,” said Sais
annin. “I’ll be accompanying you. Even if I won’t do the translating for now, I’ll be able to observe.”

  “Good enough,” agreed Rintala. “And the fact that there is a woman in our delegation hopefully conveys that we have no general hostile intentions—for the moment, anyway.”

  “I’m still not comfortable with you exposing yourself, Commander,” complained Kivalian.

  “Quit mothering, Reimo. Some risk is part of a commander’s duty—when called for and when they judge the risk minimal—as I’ve done in this instance. Besides, if Eina is going, what would the men think if I didn’t?”

  “I doubt if that would have any impact on them,” said Kivalian dryly. Most of the men had served with Rintala before, and their level of respect was hardly likely to be altered by his being prudent.

  With the second-in-command’s obligatory safety concern for his commander out of the way, Rintala, Saisannin, their translator, and two aides started toward the tent.

  “Here they come,” said Maera. “And look who’s one of them.”

  “Five of them and one’s a woman whose role we don’t know,” added Yozef. “Maybe it’s a signal of peaceful intentions.”

  “Maybe,” said Luwis, “although there have been enough treacherous and devious women in history not to be certain about peaceful intents. And don’t give me that eye, Maera. You know I’m right.”

  “Even if you are,” she countered, “I think it would be best if we also had a woman at the table.”

  “Dear me,” said Yozef innocently, “do you happen to have anyone in mind?”

  Maera grinned.

  “Absolutely not!” barked Luwis. “Culich would explode if he found out we put you in danger!”