Forged in Fire (Destiny's Crucible Book 4)

by Olan Thorensen

“Not a clue. The big oaf has never been one to talk about himself, although now that you tell me about him and Gwyned, I look back, and he’s been acting different the last sixday—almost jovial, for Carnigan. I’ll naturally be happy for him if this works out. Do you think it will?”

  “None of us can know such things, Yozef. Both of them have had difficult a past, though we don’t know the details of Carnigan’s. If nothing else, it’s a bit of life and happiness to help with whatever happens the next months. Sometimes people grasp at these kinds of moments as a way to deal with fears.”

  Yozef considered his next words. He had noticed things he wasn’t sure he should pass on to Maera. They had enough to occupy their thoughts without adding complications they didn’t need.

  “Maera, speaking of surprising relationships, is there something going on between Ceinwyn and Balwis?”

  Maera tensed, not with surprise, but with confirmation. Yozef had seen signals she had thought she’d imagined. “Merciful God, I think you’re right. I don’t know if I should be worried about my sister. Although we haven’t been close the last few years, things changed after the attack on our house. I attributed her new behavior to the scar she carries. By the time she was eight years old, she was self-conscious of being plain looking. Mother and Father tried to tell her she was pretty, which even at that age she knew wasn’t true. I’ve always suspected that their flattery made things worse—made Ceinwyn think she was more unattractive than she was.

  “Mother told me Ceinwyn had worried that she’d never find a husband, even though she’s a hetman’s daughter. I have to admit that the couple of suitors who came calling before the attack were not men I thought she should marry. I thought both of them were only interested in her family connection and not her.”

  “I didn’t know if I should tell you, Maera, but Wyfor has seen Ceinwyn leave this house after everyone was thought to be asleep. He followed her one night and lost her not far from where Balwis lives in a room near the main gate.”

  Maera quit braiding her hair for sleep and took a deep breath. “I’ve been worried about that. I believe she’s sincere about contributing to the women’s auxiliary units. However, it didn’t pass my attention that her moving to Orosz City kept her near Balwis. I don’t distrust him as much as I used to, but he’s still not a man I’d pair with my sister. What if he’s just using her to advance his own position? Could he have visions of marrying into a hetman’s family, or does he have honest feelings for her? Although I’m ashamed to admit it, despite myself, I don’t see men attracted to her—both because of her plain looks worsened by that terrible scar and because of how I remember her actions in recent years, sullen and bitchy.”

  “Should I talk to Balwis?” Yozef asked. “I could also arrange for him to be stationed away from Orosz City, although that would have to wait until the new battalion he commands is considered operational.”

  “Part of me wants to say yes to both of your suggestions, Yozef. Another part doesn’t know how either of them would react if we interfere. No matter my concerns, Ceinwyn is considered an adult woman and should be allowed to make up her own mind. No, best you don’t do anything—yet, anyway. I’ll try to find more time to talk with her and draw her out. I haven’t voiced my concern for her well-being as much as I probably should have, so maybe if I can do that, it will lead her to confide what is happening between her and Balwis.”

  A half-mile away, on the second floor of a residential building near Orosz City’s main gate, “what is happening” was coming to a conclusion. Balwis’s guttural “uhs” were in sync with Ceinwyn’s higher-pitched “ohs” as his buttocks rose and fell with her bare legs clasped around them and urging him on. His final three thrusts rocked the bed’s frame against the wall—thud, Thud, THUD. They held the final position for half a minute before both sighed and his muscles relaxed, letting more of his weight onto her. When he rose to look at her in the single candle’s light, she reflexively turned her head to hide the scar.

  “Hey! None of that, woman!” he admonished, putting a hand on that side of her head and turning her face back toward him. “I’ve told you before not to try to hide it. Look at me. Do I try to hide my scar?”

  Her fingers traced the puckered line from the corner of his mouth upward to below an eye and continuing to the eyebrow. He had been lucky the Narthani knife hadn’t cut a half-inch deeper and taken his eye.

  “It’s not near as big as mine, and anyway, it’s different for men and women,” she said softly, stroking his check.

  “Well, damn to anyone to whom it’s different. Both of us got them fighting the cursed Narthani, so we should both wear them as badges of honor.”

  “I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to look at things that way, Balwis. When I first saw myself in a mirror, after the attack and the bandages came off, my first thought was that no man would ever find me desirable.”

  Balwis gave a series of gentle thrusts, possible because he remained erect. “I think I’ve answered that doubt.”

  Ceinwyn kept him held tight for another minute before she relaxed and let him roll next to her. She felt reassured, to a degree. That he was eager for their coupling, she had no doubt. Whether he felt more or she was only a convenient outlet, she tried not to obsess over. As with many islanders, she focused on the now, to grasp whatever she could of life for as long as possible.

  Fortifications

  Yozef stood on one of the completed circular bastions protruding from Orosz City’s main wall. Looking outward, he watched hundreds of workers clearing fields by fire by removing the remaining buildings from part of the city not enclosed by walls. Tomis Orosz assured him they would finish within two sixdays, leaving no cover from the base of the wall to the river three miles away. If the Narthani ever chose to assault Orosz City, it would be from totally exposed positions.

  Yozef walked three steps and looked down. The bastions extended thirty feet from the original main wall and were intended to provide flanking fire at efforts to breach the walls. Cannon mounts allowed the guns to be fired outward at an approaching enemy or turned ninety degrees to sweep down the length of the walls. An enemy approaching the city would see only the towers protruding ten feet from a wall. As soon as Yozef saw the original scaffolds, he suggested to Hetman Orosz that a second, less formidable wall be built twenty feet in front of the original wall. Enemy troops might breach the first wall, after suffering under bastion fire, only to find themselves facing a second wall.

  “I don’t know if we can stop a determined Narthani attack,” said Tomis Orosz while giving Yozef a tour of their progress. “If they do get in, they’ll have paid a price in blood to be remembered forever in Narthani history.”

  “It would be a terrible battle for both sides,” agreed Yozef. “I only hope the Narthani give us enough time to finish all the preparations here. I worry it may end up looking great and crumbling under fire, if the concrete hasn’t completely set. Then there’s the other battlefield sites, the redoubts, food storage, ammunition . . . oh, and I don’t know . . . everything else.”

  “We do what we can do,” said Orosz, using the general Caedelli “go-to” phrase. Sometimes Yozef took it to heart. Other times he felt exasperated by it.

  They turned toward the city and walked down the extension of the allure, the walkway along the inner side of the main wall. If I remember my castle terminology from Dungeons and Dragons, thought Yozef, the original wall would be called the curtain wall, with the allure allowing defenders to move along the wall. I don’t know what we’d call the new outer wall. Maybe a rampart. It doesn’t have a real allure, only a narrow ledge for men and swivel guns. All the cannon will be on the bastions.

  When they reached the inner side of the main wall, Orosz pointed to a massive wooden contraption of timbers, thick ropes, and pulleys. It sat on 18-inch-diameter logs. “I know, it’s not elegant. The Fuomi 30-pounders and other cannon can’t be put in place unless we know the Narthani are coming here. We had to build the crane to hol
d the weight of cannon to be lifted to the allure, then rolled on carriages to their positions in the bastions.”

  Yozef had a flash image of a several-ton 30-pounder collapsing the crane and crushing men below as they rushed to get the guns in place before the Narthani arrived. That they couldn’t put the guns in position was due to a general problem. If their plan worked, they wouldn’t know where the Narthani were headed, and the clans didn’t have enough men and cannon for all four battlefield sites. They would have to concentrate everything they had at the one site. Orosz City was the mostly centrally located site and served as the depot for weapons, supplies, tools, empty sandbags, timbers, and everything that would have to be hurriedly transported, which explained why many city streets had cannon carriages and limbers and horseless wagons filled to their load limits, leaving only enough room for citizens on foot or leading horses. They had also converted seldom-used buildings in the city to living space or warehouses for mountains of empty sandbags, tents, blankets, and food. Ammunition and barrels of powder were stored in bunkers built farther into the mountain cleft valley, including where Rhaedri Brison had lived for many years. The revered theophist had moved into Orosz City.

  More wagons were ready throughout Caedellium—empty and waiting for the word to load weapons, food, tools, and people to make their way to the hoped-for battlefield.

  They didn’t intend all resources to go to each of the four sites. The horse-drawn graders Yozef had asked for were being built in Caernford, with the original intention of being used at the Gap Site. He had walked the three miles from the Orosz City defenses to the river and confirmed the graders would also be useful at the Orosz Site. Before Culich left to return to Caernford, Yozef asked him to have a grader taken to the Gap Site and tested. If it worked, then he would have two of the four planned graders sent to Orosz City. If either the Gap Site or the Orosz Site ended up being the battle site, then they would try to transport the other two graders in time to use them.

  Yozef feared making the decision about when to commit to a specific battlefield. Too early, and it might be a false alarm. Too late and they might not get everything in place in time. Once alerted to the clans’ intentions, the Narthani wouldn’t be fooled again.

  In Motion

  Four sixdays after Yozef moved to Orosz City, none of his ongoing projects needed his input. Everything he could contribute to was already motion, with no time left for projects or planning not destined to come to fruition in the next two months. The observation balloons neared operation. Parachute flares launched via rocket functioned about a third of the time, so he declared them operational and ordered enough produced to account for failures. Not that he wasn’t busy. He watched men training in units, though he had no command. And the meetings. Reasons never seemed to be exhausted for someone or some group needing his attendance at a meeting. In the latter case, he assumed the role of leader more and more often, rather than adviser, despite feelings of inadequacy.

  They held another War Council meeting, but Culich couldn’t attend. On his last trip to Caernford, the stump of his leg had become irritated, likely from too much travel. He was delayed in returning to Orosz City and asked that Yozef represent Keelan until he could travel. When the council met, Yozef served as a voting member, in addition to his role as adviser.

  Though Yozef didn’t attempt to make every decision, Denes Vegga later told him that Reimo Kivalian, who had attended the council session as the Fuomi observer, said that whenever Yozef did give an opinion, people invariably followed it.

  One consequence of his status was that he spent more time at home—as defined temporarily by the large house used by the Kolsko household. He again took up writing in his journals at least an hour a day, something that had been cut back to occasional minutes the previous month. For the past year, he had come to regret not taking more theoretical courses, particularly in chemistry, physics, and biology. That regret vied with mourning his lack of practical knowledge every time he knew something could be done but didn’t know how to do it. On many occasions, he laughed to himself that the next time he got marooned on another planet he’d be sure he was better prepared.

  Some days, he ate all three meals at home. Those with whom he ate varied among household members, but he always dined with Maera and Anarynd, except when Maera was too busy at the new MIU facility in Orosz City.

  He attended several musical performances, including an expanded version of the musical session he’d contributed four pieces to after the St. Sidryn’s attack. Originally, it had been a service of thanks to God after deliverance from the Buldorian raiders. Yozef’s four selections, with new lyrics, were Schubert’s “Ave Maria,” “Va Pensiero” by Verdi, “O Holy Night,” and the choral movement from Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. Pernael Horton, a clerk in the original Bank of Abersford, was also the part-time music director for St. Sidryn’s Abbey. Horton had used Yozef’s four pieces and added six traditional Caedelli songs; between the two of them, they had developed the island’s first opera, though no one recognized it as such, and it had no formal title. Horton had corrected those oversights, and the revised version of Abbey’s Deliverance was performed in Orosz City for the first time. The Kolsko household felt obliged to attend and occupied seats in the first row at St. Wyan’s Cathedral. Horton had added dialogue between musical pieces, thereby emphasizing a plot development that started from an idyllic existence, progressed through danger and despair, and ended in triumphal victory and thanks to God. The degree of literary license of the man playing the part of Yozef Kolsko struck him as alternately amusing, embarrassing, and worrisome.

  Well, shit. I seem to have forgotten I killed at least ten Buldorians, Yozef thought. And calling on God to save the people and give me strength? Was that before or after I pissed my pants? If this is going to be a staple of the Caedellium operatic repertoire, I need to tell Horton to tone down my role. I might draw on the Septarsh nonsense when I have to, but enough is enough.

  Chapter 37: Preparations

  Final Visit to Battlefield Sites

  A month and a half after visiting the three potential battlefield sites distant from Orosz City, Yozef repeated the trip, this time with a hundred others, including the War Council (still without Culich but with Vortig Luwis this time representing Keelan), seven other hetmen, Denes, Mulron, scores of clansmen with military ranks down to captains, Owill Brell and four other men from the MIU, Rintala and Kivalian, and the Landoliner Rhanjur Gaya, who, to everyone’s surprise who had interacted with him, was a superb horseman. Balwis joked that their party was big enough that they didn’t need escorts, but considering the percentage of the clans’ leadership making the trip, two hundred dragoons and fifty packhorses completed the party.

  The first site was “Moraine” in Stent Province. They had improved the original trail into the valley and along the top of the medial moraine, which ran through what been a shallow lake. Now it was a decent road. The Narthani wouldn’t realize that it led nowhere, except to the other end of the valley. The clans had reduced the water in the lake ninety percent by blasting a channel through the rock shelf over which the lake drained. Impressed, Yozef noted that a gate stood ready to close the channel to allow the lake to begin refilling. The supervisor of the site’s preparation, an uncle of Hetman Stent, had arranged a demonstration of lowering the gate into chiseled slots in the drainage opening. He had camouflaged the opening enough that a person would have to hand-inspect the ground before realizing it wasn’t a natural formation.

  “We can’t show you the preparation at the gorge to the side of the valley,” said Stent. “Men had to be lowered by ropes down the cliffs to drill and place the charges. We can’t be positive we will drop enough rock to block the stream, but they added enough powder to move a mountain, so it should work. Naturally, we won’t set the charges off until the Narthani seem headed this way, but it should give us time to either try again or eliminate this site as a potential battlefield.”

  They continued to the othe
r end of the valley, where the fifty-foot-high, 500-yard-wide terminal moraine spanned between valley walls. They had supplemented the forty-five-degree slope of the moraine by covering it with branches of the grisselthorn bush that Yosef thought were worse than barbed wire. Not only were the two-inch thorns murderous, but the infection they caused made most men reflexively do anything to avoid contact.

  Yozef’s first surprise was the concrete channel holding the stream flowing through the gap in the moraine.

  “We got concrete production just in time to close this weakness,” said Stent. “We made the sides high enough that along with the downward slope the water should flow swiftly through and shouldn’t affect the integrity of the moraine. I don’t see how the Narthani can attack the gap—the current will be too strong, and we’ll have swivel guns and 6-pounders positioned if they try it.”

  Stent smiled. “Wait until you see the top.”

  A steep road wound up the other end of the moraine. “We needed an easier way to get tools and materials to the top,” said Stent. “Once the Narthani approach, we’ll tear it down.”

  Yozef’s second surprise was a concrete bunker at the midpoint of the moraine. “This is really Hetman Farkesh’s idea. He says he got it from you.”

  Yozef couldn’t remember any such conversation.

  “He’s putting a solid row of similar structures on the narrow end of the Coast Site. While I don’t think we’ll have time to do that here, we’ll put in as many as possible. We hope to put 30-pounders inside, if they can get here in time from Orosz City. If not, we have enough 12-pounders. If the 30-pounders do arrive in time, the 12-pounders will go into stone and sandbag positions.”

  “What about the blockage of the larger stream up beyond the valley? Have you set the charges yet?” asked Yozef, referring to damming the second and larger stream. They planned to release both streams once the Narthani neared the terminal moraine. The flood from two directions would not completely refill the original lake but would create a wetland and mudflat to make assaulting the clan force a daunting proposition while the clan blocked the wider entrance to the valley.