Forged in Fire (Destiny's Crucible Book 4)

by Olan Thorensen

“People! Please!” Yozef urged the other Caedelli. “Remember that we are far better off at this moment than we were five minutes ago. If it weren’t for the Fuomi, we would only have found out about this new army when they landed at Preddi or maybe even crossed the border again into Moreland. They could also have caught us besieging Preddi City, and we might have found ourselves trapped. Now, however, we know what we face and have time to consider and plan. Also, two months is the earliest they might arrive. It could be much later, and even when they land it will take time for the men to recover from the voyage and for them to get organized to move against us.”

  Mittack took several deep breaths. “Yes. Yes. Yozef is right. As bad as this sounds, at least we know what we will face. Yozef, do you think we have any chance against such a force?”

  “We always have a chance,” said Yozef. “How good a chance will depend on many factors, including how well the clans work together and how committed the people of Caedellium are to what will come. One thing we’ll need is any and all help the Fuomi can give us. At a minimum, information on the Narthani, the tactics their larger forces are likely to use, how they think about military campaigns, advice on how to improve our preparations, and who knows what else.

  “Maera, ask them if they are willing to give military advice.”

  “Thank you for that information,” said Maera in Narthani. “As you can imagine and saw from our reaction, this isn’t good news. However, we are determined to resist the Narthani to our upmost. We know the fate of the one clan they have completely destroyed, and my husband believes the Narthani will find Caedellium a difficult prey to swallow.

  “We also understand that you are not here to fight the Narthani, but while you are here, can you give us as much information as possible about Narthani tactics and advice on how to improve our resistance?”

  The Fuomi talked among themselves again for a couple of minutes.

  “We, of course, will provide anything we can,” said Saisannin. “But again, being blunt about what is coming, do you have any conception of what it will be like to face a Narthani army in the field? If Caedellium has never had conflicts involving more than a few hundred or thousand men at a time, this will be a professional Narthani army experienced at fighting other armies like themselves.”

  Maera translated. This time, only Yozef spoke to her—so that when she translated, the Fuomi knew the response came from him alone.

  “The Narthani here on Caedellium sent ten thousand men to conquer provinces that would have split the remaining clans from one another. Some of the clans united and faced them with twelve thousand men. We killed almost three thousand of them, captured half their artillery, and the remaining withdrew back to their territory.”

  Saisannin turned excitedly to Rintala and translated. He blinked and leaned forward. “Another surprise,” he said to the other Fuomi. “These islanders are getting more interesting all the time. And I think we now know the main figure among these islanders. This Kolsko was not given any title, except as the husband of a hetman’s daughter, but he’s obviously much more.” He urged several more questions on Eina.

  “The artillery you have here—are these cannon ones you captured from the Narthani?”

  “No. All these were made on the island. Many more are being made.”

  “Do you think you can defeat a Narthani army in the field?”

  “No. We would have no intention of fighting a major maneuver battle with them. Besides being wasteful of men’s lives, that would allow the Narthani to fight to their advantage. We will fight to our advantages.”

  “And what advantages do you think you have?”

  “This is our land. We know every tree, every rock. We will fight only when, where, and how that knowledge will work for us, and we will also have more mobility than the Narthani if most of their men are infantry. All our men will be mounted and will either fight that way or dismounted. Our cavalry will be accompanied by large mobile artillery units that we think will be a bitter surprise to the Narthani.”

  “You already said you pushed the Narthani back into their enclaves. Does that mean you don’t consider the battle a victory?”

  “There are different ways to define victory,” said Maera. “In that first battle, our goal was to drive the Narthani out of clan territory. We accomplished that goal, so therefore we considered it a victory.”

  “What would be your goal when facing a much larger Narthani army?”

  Yozef had been the only islander speaking to Maera for the last questions. When only he answered again, all of the Keelanders at the table and several standing aside from serving barked out a forceful cheer.

  “We intend to kill every single Narthani who does not leave Caedellium on their own,” translated a snarling Maera.

  The Fuomi had no response to that statement, and the evening broke up with polite statements and plans for the next day.

  Maera Elated

  When Yozef and Maera entered their tent and closed the flap, she turned and hugged him fiercely.

  “Oh, Yozef! We just heard that our worst fears of more Narthani will happen. I should be scared. For Aeneas, for us, for all of Caedellium. I’m frightened . . . though . . . at the same time . . . yes, somehow, I feel excited. How can that be? I’m so confused,” she gasped, laughing and crying at the same time.

  Yozef hugged her in return, stroking her back. “It’s probably just so much happening today—the meeting with the Fuomi, the news of more Narthani, and maybe . . . uh . . . you said your time of the month had passed?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Two sixdays ago.”

  “Well, I can see why you could be frightened. But why do you think you’re also excited?”

  She was quiet for a moment.

  “I think . . . maybe . . . it’s because I was somebody today.”

  “Somebody?”

  “Someone who mattered and others knew I mattered.”

  “Maera, you always matter.”

  “I know, I know. I matter as a hetman’s daughter, as a mother, as the wife of Yozef Kolsko . . . and yes, I know you care for me. And yes, I know I’m smart, smarter than most, but for some reason today, I felt like I was an equal of all the men—even you and Hetman Mittack. I was part of the sessions today. Translating Narthani and participating, having valued ideas, secretly knowing enough Fuomi to listen in on what they thought we couldn’t understand, and . . . oh . . . I don’t know. It’s so confusing.”

  “Whatever is going on inside that brown-haired head of yours, I’m glad you feel better about yourself, but I hope you always know how much I love and depend on you.”

  “I know. And I want you to know I am grateful to Merciful God to have a husband like you.” She pulled away from his arm and looked at him in a way he had never experienced before. She appeared flushed in the lantern light turned low and put her hands on his shoulders.

  “I should be tired from today, but that’s not how I feel.”

  She jerked his coat open and off his shoulders, then jumped to her feet and pulled one sleeve off and then the other. Standing in front of him, she started to frantically undo his shirt. Yozef stood frozen.

  “Well—help me, you idiot!” she hissed.

  When he began pulling off the shirt, she let go of his clothing and tore at her own. In moments, they were naked. She pushed him back onto the bed, climbed on top of him, using a hand to help his growing erection, then straddled and guided him into her—gasping as she moved back and forth. In hardly more than a minute, she cried out and collapsed on his chest, her breath coming in deep gulps, her knees clasped to him, her hands gripping his shoulders.

  Yozef was processing the last few minutes. Maera had always been dutiful as a wife. He knew she enjoyed their sex life, more so since her first orgasm prompted him to encourage her to tell him when manual help was needed—to his self-castigation he hadn’t offered before—but she had never been assertive in bed and never had a climax like this one.

  “Who are you and wh
at have you done with my wife?” he asked through her hair covering his face.

  She laughed throatily, her face still pressed to his chest. Then she rose, still straddling him.

  “I am Maera Kolsko-Keelan. Daughter of the greatest hetman of the greatest clan on Caedellium, mother of the next Keelan hetman, confidante and adviser to Caedellium leaders, plotter and holder of secrets, and wanton wife of Yozef the Magnificent!”

  Yozef roared with laughter.

  “Then, you wanton wife, experience Yozef the whatever!”

  He rolled her onto her back and proceeded to eagerly perform his marriage duties. Later, as they lay entwined on the bed, a blanket pulled up over them, Maera . . . giggled?

  “I think we made enough noise that everyone in hearing wondered what was going on.”

  “Oh, I think they full well knew what was going on,” said Yozef dryly.

  CHAPTER 8: FUOMI IN CAERNFORD

  Fuomi Encampment

  “I don’t like it,” said Kivalian. “You’re the commander of this mission and shouldn’t put yourself in such an exposed position. That’s my job.”

  “Time may be short, what with the islanders’ evident plan to take their time in allowing us to meet with more hetmen. I consider it a reasonable risk, and Eina agrees with me. The fifty men with us will provide security from minor threats and give us messengers to get back here, if necessary.”

  “I still say you should be here in case something goes wrong and the encampment has to be abandoned.”

  “Commodore Kyllo is perfectly capable of pulling our men back aboard ship, should it be necessary,” said Rintala. “Neither you nor I would add anything to such a withdrawal.”

  Kivalian stomped off, muttering to himself something about “stubborn idiot.”

  Rintala smiled to Saisannin. “He’ll get over it. We’ve had this conversation many times in many places. Reimo will be his usual irritating self the next time we see him.”

  The Fuomi had not brought horses with them, and nothing had been said the previous night about how they would travel. The answer came the next morning at first light when clansmen led fifty-three riding horses, twenty packhorses, and three wagons with four-horse teams to the Fuomi encampment. All three of the Fuomi leaders were adequate horsemen, and Kivalian had chosen the fifty men for both their martial abilities and their horsemanship.

  The Fuomi were mounted and three of the wagons loaded with gear by sunup. The Fuomi followed a Mittack clansman sent to gather them. The Keelan delegation, escorted by four hundred mounted men, three hundred from Keelan and one hundred of Mittack, met the Fuomi at a hill’s crest. The other islanders—from Keelan, Gwillamer, Hewell, and Mittack, plus the cannon—had started out earlier and were returning to their homes, except for two hundred Mittackians, who would remain to keep an eye on the Fuomi base.

  Rintala voiced the Fuomi’s surprise at how quickly the islanders had disbursed the force.

  “I must admit, I didn’t expect you to trust us and remove most of your men so soon.”

  All three Fuomi leaders noted that the other islanders automatically glanced toward Kolsko, who smiled at the Fuomi.

  “Oh, it’s not so much trust,” Maera translated, “as it is knowing who you are and how many of you there are. If necessary, we could have twenty thousand men back here in a sixday.”

  Kivalian was suitably impressed. “That’s a good mobilization time, assuming some would be coming from at least as far away as your Keelan Province. If you don’t mind my asking, how many total men could you gather at one time to fight the Narthani?”

  “I think we can hold off on such details for now,” replied Yozef, thereby shutting down that question and alerting the Fuomi that there was still a level of trust to be earned.

  Caernford

  It took them two days to reach Kilporth, the capital of Mittack Province. There, Hulwyn Mittack left to attend clan business, while his son, Aelard, continued to Caernford as the Mittack representative in his father’s stead. Another three days and they reached Caernford, where the Fuomi would stay for a sixday for meetings and tours.

  Culich had received daily encoded semaphore summaries about the Fuomi and several long written reports from Maera. The latter were too long to send by semaphore and were delivered by a relay rider network paralleling the semaphore lines and, in some provinces, also linking district headquarters not accessible via semaphore. No one knew why Yozef tried to call the new system the “Pony Express,” although he settled on the name the “Rider Express.” Its original intent was to allow sending inter-hetmen encoded messages and reports too long for the semaphore. Once the system was operational, tradesmen and common citizens took advantage of it to write letters and exchange commercial communications. Mail traffic increased enough that Pedr Kennrick was merging the Rider Express system with the previous mail packet method of delivery. However, sensitive mail among hetmen was delivered separately from mail of the general populace. Those riders—only especially trusted men—rode heavily armed with orders to maintain security at all costs. Their delivery was locked in flat metal containers whose key only hetmen possessed. The system wasn’t totally secure, only the best available.

  Yozef had made the mistake of once, without thinking, telling Culich about ways to send messages instantly, either over wires or even without wires. On their return from Mittack with the Fuomi, Culich groused that the reports took too long to get to him, and when would Yozef produce these “telegraph” and “wireless” techniques? Each time the hetman asked, Yozef told him they were still working on it. He didn’t say he had given up the ideas for the time being. An attempt at a telegraph sat in a side room of one of his workshops. The apparatus looked crude, which it was. It should work, but it didn’t. As a ten year old, he and a friend next door had constructed a working telegraph with a wire strung between their second-story bedrooms. The only difference he could see in the basics of that apparatus and this one was D batteries versus Leyden jars. The rest, mainly a homemade electromagnet and the key to make and break circuits, should be the same. Then again, maybe the new device was working, because the one he and his friend made only had to transmit over twenty-two yards. The apparatus in the storage room had yet to send a message farther than a hundred yards. Yozef knew it should be a simple matter of more power or some other adjustment, if he only had enough time and people qualified to keep working on the project—for now.

  Yozef found the problem of getting a working telegraph especially frustrating after talking with the Fuomi. He had the impression that although their basic level of technology was not much advanced over Caedellium, they possessed a more extensive infrastructure. Even small advances in technology would enable him to introduce more innovations. He ached to complete a land-line telegraph, wireless telegraph on the way to radio, steam engines, and chemistry projects that he couldn’t accomplish on Caedellium but that might be feasible with more resources.

  “You should never have mentioned those other methods of sending messages,” said Maera when they returned from Mittack and after hearing her father gripe once more about slow communication. “He and the others have gotten used to you pulling miracles out the air, so when it doesn’t happen, they wonder if you’re holding back on them.”

  “Tough shit,” Yozef remarked in English. Although the phrase hadn’t been taken up by the Caedelli, he was tired, sore from the trip, and hungry, and he didn’t want to hear about something he hadn’t done. They took their leave from Keelan Manor and returned to their new home. They held Aeneas for a few minutes, said hello to everyone with promises of giving more details of the trip the next day, ate a meal readied for them by Serys, their cook, and barely undressed and pulled covers over themselves before both fell asleep, bodies touching, despite their travel odors.

  The next morning, Yozef and Maera woke within minutes of each other. One whiff and Maera’s disgust at the odor transfer to bedding required that they strip the bed and then bathe themselves. It took only a little tea
sing by Yozef to convince his wife they should bathe together. One thing led to another, and they were delayed another hour. They finally went down to the kitchen, hoping that food was cooked and ready. Serys took one look at them, smiled, and shook her head.

  “Sit,” she said. “I’ll get you some kava.”

  Anarynd was less circumspect. “My God, you two, at least pull the covers over yourselves. We could hear you from the other side of the house.”

  Maera blushed, then stuck her tongue out at her friend, and they both laughed. A bemused Yozef was used to the degree of ribaldry of the Caedelli, compared to the United States on Earth. He felt pleased Anarynd had relaxed enough to act like a normal islander, instead of staying within her shell, as she had done at first.

  “Oh,” said Anarynd, “your father sent a message he wants to meet with you two at ‘your earliest convenience.’ I suspect he meant before mid-day.”

  Yozef looked at the clock on the kitchen wall. It was mid-day. They finished their cups of kava and walked the half-mile to Keelan Manor.

  Culich and Breda Keelan sat with Yozef and Maera in the smaller dining room of the manor. The hetman waited until his famished daughter and her husband finished eating before getting to business.

  “Well, I can’t say the last sixday or so hasn’t been interesting. First, the Fuomi show up and then the news about a massive Narthani army headed our way.”

  His tone transmitted his opinion of the news, and Maera had whispered to Yozef earlier that the wrinkles in his face seemed deeper.

  “I’ll meet with our new visitors this afternoon, and I want to hear the impressions you both have of them. I’m still having trouble grappling with the news. My God! Sixty to seventy thousand more soldiers! I confess I succumbed to despair when I first heard.”

  Breda leaned toward her husband and laid a hand on his forearm. Both women had made game attempts at keeping the conversation light, though drawn and pale faces betrayed both Culich and Breda.