Forged in Fire (Destiny's Crucible Book 4)

by Olan Thorensen

  Stent rubbed his nose. “Uh . . . well . . . that part is already underway. One of the charges being set accidently went off and dropped enough rock to form a partial dam. Water backed up and formed a small lake that is now seeping water. My people think it will hold until we’re ready to drop more rock, so in a way, it’s working out.”

  “I didn’t see any sign of preparations at the wide end,” said Vortig Luwis.

  “You’re not supposed to,” answered Stent. “If the Narthani saw any sign of digging, they might hesitate or even not follow our men into the valley. All the materials we’ll need to throw up fortifications are stored five miles away. When it’s time, we’ll load up wagons and move everything into place. The first few hours will be critical. We hope that by the time the Narthani find out the other end is too difficult to breach, we’ll have dug in enough that, along with the rising water, we’ll be able to stop the Narthani long enough to make that end impregnable.”

  “As Hetman Stent says, the first few hours will be critical,” said Yozef. “We should have twenty thousand men here to close the valley and more on the way. If the defenses can hold even one day, enough help will have arrived to stop the Narthani army from escaping.”

  They had left the Moraine Site, heading to the next stop at the Coast Site, when Reimo Kivalian pulled his horse next to Man o’ War. “Do you really think this site will work as you envision, Ser Kolsko?”

  Yozef snuck a glance at the Fuomi and spoke sotto voce. “Oh, it will work . . . if the two streams are blocked and enough water builds up so that when it’s released, if it refloods enough of the dry lake bed to slow a Narthani attack, if the blockages are breached at the right time, if the Narthani don’t figure out what we intend, if enough of our men are in position soon enough, and if any number of other things don’t go wrong.”

  Yozef’s sarcasm displayed his discomfort. The Moraine Site had been the most encouraging until he saw it again. There were too many “ifs” beyond the clans’ control. In contrast, when they inspected the Coast Site, his opinion improved of that option. Feren Bakalacs had energized his clanspeople. The cascade that the clan and Narthani forces would first cross looked the same, as it was supposed to. Bakalacs described stockpiles of timbers, empty sandbags, ammunition, and tools stored in natural caverns only a mile away and hidden by a forest screen. At the other end of the trap, the forward fortifications were formidable, with alternating concrete and sandbag/timber revetments and pillboxes on the other side of a spot where a stream had cut a ravine twenty feet deep. The fortifications covered the entire half-mile distance from the coast to a granite dome protruding from a sheer ridge that ran parallel to the coast. The stream was fed by a waterfall south of the dome, where the water then ran a hundred yards over a sloped rocky shelf before hitting soil and cutting the ravine.

  “The inland end of the line was the biggest problem,” said Bakalacs. “The water is shallow, even if swift over the rock. However, to supplement the fortifications, we have a position on top of the dome where men can toss Yozef’s grenades and napalm pots down on Narthani infantry trying to cross. If we can hold them there, I don’t see how they can cross the ravine. There was one existing bridge here, and we’ve added two more to help move material across for these fortifications and to stockpile for the southern end. Once the Narthani are in the trap, we’ll burn all the bridges.”

  “What if the Narthani smash through the southern end or find ways through the mountains to the east?” asked Brell. “All the men on this side couldn’t cross to pursue.”

  Bakalacs’s face broke into what Yozef later described to Carnigan as a “shit-eatin’” grin.

  The Farkesh hetman led them across a bridge and a hundred yards north of the fortifications. Sitting in a depression was a forty-foot wooden bridge wide enough for a wagon. It sat on log rollers, and stacked nearby lay fifty-foot logs from six to eighteen inches in diameter. “I’m assured we can get this mobile bridge across the ravine within an hour. Naturally, that assumes the Narthani aren’t shooting at us. It’d be slow getting thousands of men across, and we couldn’t easy move the 30-pounders, but the bridge will hold lighter cannon and wagons.”

  “What about the Narthani finding ways to escape through the mountains?” asked Yozef. “They aren’t steep enough to stop a determined army from crossing.”

  “Feren and I have talked about this,” said Stent. “While it’s true these hills and mountains aren’t the same barrier as at the Moraine Site, the terrain and the lack of roads take away the Narthani advantage to maneuver. You’ve warned us enough times not to get into a close-contact battle with the Narthani. But we believe the clans can fight man to man as equals if we take away the Narthani’s ability to maneuver and we restrict the use of their cannon. While it would be bloody, the Narthani would be forced to fight where we know the terrain better. Feren has also prepared a few surprises, should they try that route.”

  They’re right, thought Yozef. In a way, the Narthani would find themselves in as bad a position as attacking the two ends of the trap here. I’m sure the Caedelli would make them pay for every foot of ground, and getting out through the forested and rocky hills and mountains would weaken them enough that we might be able to reconsider field engagements.

  He looked again at the fortified northern line. Well, this is a reversal. The first time I was here, I liked the Moraine Site better than this one. Now, it’s the opposite. Not that either one would ensure victory. A remaining problem with this site is that it’s the farthest from Preddi. Could we get the Narthani to follow us all the way here?

  The party stayed at the Coast Site overnight, then headed to Adris City to meet up with the Fuomi naval commander, Commodore Vilho Kyllo, to look at the Normot Cut. Kyllo had landed at the Fuomi Mittack encampment and rode via carriage to Adris City, not wanting to risk his ships being trapped inside the gulf if Narthani ships appeared at the wrong time.

  Kyllo, Rintala, Yozef, and the War Council members sailed the fifty miles from Adris City to the Cut. It was Yozef’s first experience on more water than a lake and in a vessel larger than a canoe. He felt queasy by the time they were five miles out of the harbor.

  “Yer lucky, Ser Kolsko,” said the owner of the fishing boat they were using. “It’s a quiet day. Not much wind, and what there is won’t keep us from getting back to Adris City. It ken get exciting when a northwest wind blows down the gulf. Keep your eyes on the horizon. That helps with sickness.”

  Yozef followed the fisherman’s advice, and the nausea subsided, though it didn’t disappear. He had a moment of thanking his fortune that the journey to Anyar had been in a spaceship and not over water.

  Six hours later, a fisherman standing on the bow called out, “There they are, the Twins.”

  Yozef moved to see forward and could just make out a line of jagged rock formations jutting up from the water a mile away. In a direct line to their movement, a gap appeared in the rocks.

  “That’s the Twins,” said Klyngo Adris. “Almost exact copies of each other, and they bracket the Cut.”

  The two rock formations rose twenty feet high, with sheer sides facing the Cut and sloping away to the other side—as if something had sliced through an island whose space was now the Cut.

  “You see more rocks coming out of the water from here to the west side of the Cut,” said Adris. “The other direction you don’t see many rocks, but they’re there—just not many are out of the water. Even shallow-bottomed boats avoid that stretch. The other side is safer, since you can see the rocks, and there aren’t as many lurking below the surface, waiting to tear out the bottom of your boat.”

  Anchored around the Twins floated a score of fishing boats and smaller craft, including two large rafts, fifty feet square, a hundred yards inside the Cut from each of the Twins.

  “Battery barges, we’re calling them,” said Adris. “Commodore Kyllo is worried the Narthani could send enough launches and long boats around behind his frigates to try to swarm them. Ky
llo figures they wouldn’t have more than swivel guns, so we’re building these stationary batteries and putting 6- and 12-pounders in them. They should be able to handle any attempt to bypass the Cut using small craft.”

  “The two you see have three-foot wooden bulwarks,” said Kyllo, his words translated by an escaped Preddi who spoke Narthani, as did the Fuomi commodore. “That should stop anything the Narthani can bring to bear on them. Hetman Adris says they will build at least two more in the next month.” Kyllo accompanied his description with a sour look.

  Yozef figured a little ego massaging wouldn’t hurt. “Thank you for your help, Commodore. I appreciate this isn’t how you would prefer to use your ships.”

  Kyllo only nodded in acknowledgment and glared briefly at Rintala.

  Yozef and several others got off onto one of the two floating forts, while Kyllo, Rintala, and Klyngo Adris spent two hours sailing back and forth through the Cut and taking sounds to see where Kyllo could anchor his frigates.

  When the Fuomi were satisfied, they all reboarded the fishing boat for the return trip to Adris City. Yozef went below and took a nap, at the advice of the same sailor who told him about focusing on the horizon. They spent the night in the city and left the next morning for the Gap Site between Armurth and Rummeln in northern Keelan Province.

  The men and the horses were tired, so they took four short days to reach the site. The narrow water gap now had earth, timber, and sandbag fortifications filling the one-third-mile opening that Yozef believed had been carved by a glacial lake. He visualized it breaking through the ridgeline whose top stood a thousand feet higher. His concern that the Narthani could go up the forested slopes was assuaged by seeing the road built along the length of the ridge tops. Any Narthani movement would be visible, and clan units could move quickly to where the Narthani tried to climb over the ridge.

  Still of concern was the larger gap in the two parallel ridges. Nothing could be done before the Narthani passed through. Otherwise, they would be more cautious.

  “Then we’re back to the problem we talked about on the last trip—having enough time to construct sufficient defenses to close the trap,” said Denes. “We’ve discussed this in detail in Caernford and Orosz City. We’re forced to face the conclusion that we’d have to engage them in the open to give our people enough time to build defenses across the two-mile gap—at least a full day from when they notice we’ve closed in behind them. The graders you designed, Yozef, will help, because they’ll provide a ditch the Narthani would have to cross and lots of dirt to fill sandbags. But even if we gather ten thousand people working as hard as they can, we simply aren’t certain if the defenses can hold long enough to bring in more men and keep improving the fortifications.

  “A lot will depend on how fast the Narthani move and what we have to do to both lure and slow them. If we had more graders here, I’d feel better. Pedr Kennrick says two more are being built. As much as I’d like them both to come here, I suggest they go to Orosz City.”

  “I agree,” said Yozef. “We’ll make that the intention, and we’ll hope, again, that we have time to move all the graders to where they’ll be most useful—either here or at Orosz City.”

  Fuomi

  “Well, we’ve seen all the four candidate battlefields, Reimo. What do you think?” asked Rintala.

  “Do I think their plan will work? My brain says no—although my intuition says not to bet against them. It all comes down to the Narthani obliging them by being lured into one of the proposed traps. There’s simply too much that can go wrong, especially if the Narthani do the unexpected. However, if the Narthani do let themselves be led, and if the ferocity of the clanspeople’s defense is as extreme as their energy and ingenuity in preparing the four sites, then it’s going to be something I won’t want to miss.”

  “Whatever happens, we’re dancing on the edge here,” said Rintala. “I hate it, but what we’re getting from Kolsko is more important than all our lives. He’s given us enough to justify the change in our mission and the risks. The problem is he’s holding back more to keep us engaged. Eina tells me he got excited when she answered his questions about Fuomon. He was probing about how developed we were in the sciences and engineering. She says he was especially interested in trains and tracks. She got the distinct impression he wanted to be dismissive of our horse teams, as if he knew of another way to pull the cars. Once she probed back, he shut down on the topic. He was also interested in our metalworking and mining, although in that case he did mention knowing ways to improve what we’re doing.

  “I’ve already sent a second sloop and one of the transports back to Fuomon with duplicates of what he’s given us so far. That’s to be sure at least one of the ships makes it home. Another set is with Kyllo on his flagship. He has strict orders that should things go badly for us here on the island, his priority is getting back to Fuomon whatever else we can draw out of Kolsko from the time I sent the other ships home. If there’s time and opportunity to reboard as many men as we can who are on the island, he’s to do it, as long as he isn’t caught by a superior Narthani naval force.”

  Kivalian didn’t disagree with his commander’s assessments or orders, although he had one other issue to comment on. “I have a couple of men keeping an eye on Kolsko, so we’re aware of where he is at any one time. Once the Narthani move, I can’t guarantee we can keep that close a watch. However, we’ll do the best we can. One other thought was that instead of eliminating him before capture by the Narthani, we would try to take him back to Fuomon, whether willingly or not. Again, if the situation presents itself.”

  “If you try it, be careful,” said Rintala. “Those men he travels with are a fearsome group. Eina has told us some of the stories about them, especially the big one and the little, wiry one who’s missing two fingers. Frankly, the only way I could see it working is if the clans lost one or more battles so decisively that their defeat was accomplished or inevitable to everyone. Then, Kolsko might be willing to listen to an offer of refuge for as many of his family and as many clan leaders as we could get off the island.”

  Yozef

  Eina Saisannin was right. Yozef had been intensely interested in hearing the Fuomi had horse-drawn trains running on wooden tracks with wrought iron covering the wood. He had been surprised at a development sixty to eighty years in advance of circa 1700, which was where he had estimated Anyar technology. Now, he had to consider that his previous estimate was too early. He also remembered that once James Watt invented the steam engine, steam trains followed within decades and spread throughout Britain, Europe, and then the rest of the world.

  Surely, he thought, what I know should speed that up even more. It wouldn’t be instantaneous, yet within my lifetime I could see steam-engine trains, and why not cars eventually? Tanks? Could they run on steam, or would they be too bulky? And if that’s just a sample, who knows what else the Fuomi might be able to do, given their infrastructure, that’s impossible or beyond my lifetime here on Caedellium? He needed to consider these ideas at some other time when the Narthani didn’t consume his waking thoughts.

  During the next half month, he declared three projects complete—for the moment. The first was the observation hot-air balloon. He hadn’t settled on where to deploy these balloons. Two were operational, after a third one caught fire and crashed, killing one of the two crewmembers. The second man walked away with only bruises.

  They distributed three colors of parachute flares to the four battlefield sites and issued a supply to individual regiments.

  Finally, the foundry workers showed the first functional, hand-made Minie ball cartridges to Yozef. He tore open a cartridge’s paper, poured the powder onto the ground, and rolled the bullet in his palm. The conical-shaped iron plug had a lead skirting that created a hollow base. This filled with powder as someone easily pushed a bullet down the rifle’s barrel with a ramrod. The bullet’s diameter was smaller than the bore, thereby eliminating a major obstacle to rifle use—having to forcibly
jam a round bullet down the rifling grooves. When the powder ignited, the skirt expanded under pressure and engaged the rifling, giving a spiral spin to the bullet that resulted in greater range and accuracy.

  Yozef knew the attributes of increased range and accuracy also contributed to worse wounds. A round ball broke bones and tended to leave exit wounds the same size as the entrance. Minie balls, however, shattered bones and deformed enough tissue to leave bigger exit than entrance wounds.

  When Minie balls were first introduced, it took Earth’s militaries decades and several wars to adjust their tactics. Sending massed formations of infantry against Minie ball–equipped opponents led to appalling casualty rates, such as in the American Civil War. The Minie ball, along with machine-gunning infantry charges in World War I, exemplified cases of technology running ahead of tactics.

  Yozef remembered its history as he examined the Minie ball he held and tried not to think too hard about what he was introducing. He knew it was an inevitable weapon advance and wished someone else were doing the introduction. He tried to console himself that with the few rifle snipers the clan forces would deploy, the Minie ball might go unnoticed.

  He sighed, handed the Minie ball to a worker, wiped powder from his hand, and declared Minie balls operational, to be issued to the forty rifle snipers thus far trained and equipped. The accuracy varied with each sniper. Most of the men could hit a man-sized target at four hundred yards, four times the best they could do with smooth-bore muskets. The main problem with rifles was that fouling barrels was worse than with smooth-bores, so they needed to make judicious use of the sniper rifles.