Onward, Drake!

by Mark L. Van Name

  • Two new SF adventure novels with Ryk Spoor, set in the universe they created in the Bemmie trilogy (Boundary, Threshold, and Portal).

  • Two SF adventure volumes with K.D. Wentworth, The Course of Empire and The Crucible of Empire. He is now working on the third volume in the series, The Span of Empire, with David Carrico.

  In addition to his own writing, Flint is the editor of several series reissuing the works of past SF authors. These include James H. Schmitz, Keith Laumer, Christopher Anvil, Murray Leinster, Randall Garrett, Tom Godwin, and Howard L. Myers. He was also the editor of the online science fiction and fantasy magazine, Jim Baen’s Universe.

  Flint graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of California at Los Angeles in 1968, and later received a Master’s degree in history from the same university. Despite his academic credentials, Flint spent the next quarter of a century as an activist in the American trade union movement, working as a longshoreman, truck driver, autoworker, steel worker, oil worker, meatpacker, glassblower, and machinist. He has lived at various times in California, Michigan, West Virginia, Alabama, Ohio, and Illinois. He currently lives in northwest Indiana with his wife Lucille.

  At my request, he supplied the following afterword:

  Writing this little story brought back to mind the years I spent working on the Belisarius series with David. I began writing the first novel, An Oblique Approach, sometime in either late 1996 or early 1997; I forget which. David had produced the outline a year earlier, thereabouts. I finished the sixth and last novel in the series, The Dance of Time, in July of 2005. It was published in February of the following year.

  Eight or nine years to write six novels—a total of about 850,000 words. Of course, the Belisarius series wasn’t the only thing I was working on during that period. I wrote the first four novels one right after the other: An Oblique Approach was published in March of 1998; In the Heart of Darkness, in August of 1998; Destiny’s Shield, in July of 1999; and Fortune’s Stroke in June of 2000.

  Four novels in a little over two years. That was a very fast pace, when you consider that I was still working a full-time job as a machinist. I didn’t start writing as my exclusive occupation until September of 1999, by which time the first four books in the series were finished.

  Thereafter the pace slowed, mostly because I was starting to work on other projects. My novel, 1632, was published in February of 2000, followed shortly thereafter by the first of the many novels I would co-author with Dave Freer—Rats, Bats & Vats, which came out in September of the same year.

  The fifth book in the Belisarius series, The Tide of Victory, came out in July of 2001—about the same roughly once-a-year pace the other four books had maintained. And then . . .

  The series languished for several years. The final novel, The Dance of Time, wasn’t published until February of 2006, almost five years later. During that same stretch, I wrote and published eleven other novels. Those were: Pyramid Scheme, The Shadow of the Lion, Forward the Mage, The Tyrant, 1633, Crown of Slaves, The Course of Empire, This Rough Magic, 1634: The Galileo Affair, The Wizard of Karres, and The Rats, the Bats & the Ugly. Except for The Tyrant, none of these novels have any connection to the Belisarius series.

  To put it another way, it took about twice as long to produce the last novel in the series than it had to produce the first five.

  There were two reasons for this odd situation. The first was that my career as an author really began taking off with the publication of 1632, and I had lots of other work at hand. The second and more important reason, however, was that by then Jim Baen had lost his interest in the Belisarius series and kept urging me to work on other projects.

  Why did he lose interest? It’s hard to say for sure. I think what happened was that Jim got soured by the lousy sell-through of the hardcover edition of the third book in the series, Destiny’s Shield. And, truth be told, the sell-through was a bit dismal—not much better than forty percent. If you’re unclear on the term, “sell-through” refers to the percentage of books shipped which are actually sold. The average for fiction publishing is somewhere around fifty percent, but Baen Books generally does better than that—probably close to sixty percent or so—and it was something that Jim took a great deal of pride in.

  On the other hand . . .

  Destiny’s Shield was the first volume in the series that Baen published in hardcover. The first two novels only came out in a mass-market paperback edition, until the reissue of the entire series in a trilogy omnibus many years later. Readers tend to get disgruntled when a publisher switches from paperback to hardcover editions in the middle of a series, and it was my opinion—and David Drake’s—that that explained the problem.

  Our assessment seemed to be substantiated by the sales and sell-through of the later volumes. In terms of sell-through, Destiny’s Shield marked the nadir of the series. By now, as the years have passed, the sell-through has slowly crept up to the industry average of fifty percent. But the fourth book, Fortune’s Stroke, had a sixty-three percent sell-through in hardcover—considerably above the average. The fifth book, The Tide of Victory, did still better, with a seventy-one percent sell-through in hardcover. The last novel, The Dance of Time, saw a drop in sell-through down to fifty-seven percent. But that’s still respectable and not too surprising given the long hiatus before it finally appeared.

  But Jim didn’t seem to be paying attention any longer. For whatever reason, he’d lost his interest in the series. The final novel might never have been published at all, except than David and I finally insisted that it had to be written and Jim acquiesced.

  For me, though, what I think of as “the Belisarius period” in my writing career will always be the two-and-a-half years when I wrote the first four novels. First, because that was all I worked on. To this day, despite now having forty-six novels in print, I have never again worked exclusively on one project for that long a stretch.

  The other reason, however, is more important. That was the time when I went through what I think of as my apprenticeship as an author, and the man who was central to my development was David Drake. For all the many and obvious differences between us as writers, if you know where to look you can see the similar craftsmanship in the way we construct a story—the narrative architecture, if you will.

  That’s hardly surprising, since I learned that architecture from David. Those people who’ve seen David’s original outlines for the Belisarius series generally think that the final outcome was radically different. That assessment is both right and wrong.

  It’s right, inasmuch as David’s voice and mine are very different. But it’s quite wrong, if you focus on the logic of the narrative rather than what you might call the colorations and embellishments.

  Yes, my final product was at least twice as long as anything David would have written himself. He is generally a terse writer; I am not. He generally favors a flat affect; I do not.

  But while those things are not trivial, they have little to do with a story’s basic structure. That is to say, what is this story about? What is the central conflict; who are the key players and what are their motivations; and how does that conflict work itself out in the end according to the logic of those motivations. To put it more tersely, what is the narrative arch?

  All that I learned from David. I added much to the Belisarius series in the way of colorations and embellishments—call them curlicues if you want, but show some respect; they’re damn good ones—but the fundamental logic of the story didn’t change a bit.

  Trust me. I tried to change it, from time to time. And what I always found was that if I was embellishing the narrative logic, I had no trouble at all. But whenever I wandered away from the story arch, I ran into trouble. David was always very pleasant about it and never did more than advance mildly worded suggestions. As time passed, however, I learned to take those suggestions dead seriously.

  That’s how I learned to write. If you’re wondering, yes, at one point I did plan to have Belisari
us march his army across the Sahara, before the ridiculous notion collapsed under its own weight. Always a courteous fellow—to me, at any rate; I suspect there are a fair number of fools out there who’ve found themselves not suffered gladly—David never once said, “I told you so.”

  Even though he had, of course. Many, many times.

  SUM

  Cecelia Holland

  “You think too much,” Bardo said.

  “No,” I said, “I’m serious. How do you know you aren’t dead?”

  We were marching smartly in line along the canal street, Bardo and I in the lead, the four pikemen behind us in a single rank. Ahead the Daalseweg Bridge humped up the street. Beyond that was the tangle of lanes and alleys where we were going. Once we got into those narrow ways we would have to go in file. I smothered a little apprehension. I looked back over the four men behind Bardo, their pikes on their shoulders. Mauritz would be pleased; he loved straight lines.

  “I’m moving,” Bardo said. “I’m talking. So I’m alive. See?”

  “You believe you are. But it could all be a delusion—a madness.” We tramped up and over the bridge, and filed into the narrow alley. Although it was still afternoon the whole way was in shadow, cold, smelling of wet stone and rot. The crooked old buildings tilted anxiously over the cobbles. Bardo was a step behind me, and I said, “Maybe you’re just shackled to a wall somewhere, raving.”

  “I would still be alive,” Bardo said.

  Midway down the street, on the right, as the informant had said, was a house painted blue and green. As we came up to it I held up my hand, and my command stopped with a stamp of their feet. At another gesture they turned in unison to face the house. I swallowed. I was an officer, I could handle this. I went to the door and knocked.

  Nothing happened. I hammered my fist on the door, and when that brought no one I nodded to Bardo, who came straight at the door, shoulder first, and drove it in off its hinges. He had his uses.

  I called in through the gap, “Stadtholder’s orders! Come out at once!”

  Silence. I took a step inside, into a ground-floor room, walls covered with painted plaster, a fine big fireplace, a cabinet full of blue and white pots, a Turkey carpet on the floor. I called out again, “Stadtholder’s orders!”

  The house felt empty. The air seemed dense, still, absorbing the sound: no ear out there to listen. With a wash of relief, I was suddenly sure there was nobody here.

  I called to the others, and they came in after me; we would have to search the place. If there had been indeed Spanish spies here Mauritz would want to know and his busy mind would find everything interesting. I went on into the middle of the fine Turkey carpet, and then under me the floor gave way and there was a thunderous boom and I was falling.

  I woke in utter darkness, and could not move. I opened my eyes into nothing. Still dazed, I thought, I am dead.

  But now, in the cold, under this terrific weight, I thought, If I am thinking this I am probably alive.

  I was breathing, also; another good sign. Over my face, empty air. But my eyes didn’t work.

  I tried to move my head. Something massive above pressed it down, but on the other side the cheek lay on something rough and yielding. Dirt, maybe. Yes. A house had fallen on me. I remembered leading the squad in, pikes at the ready, expecting to find a cell of Spanish spies, and then the whole thing crashed down. An explosion. The house had been undermined, an ambush, and I had walked right into it. I wondered how long I had been unconscious.

  Or dead.

  A bomb of some kind. Mauritz would figure it all out, piece it together like a map. For an instant I was seeing this from outside: a problem of order.

  Then the truth swept over me. I was trapped under the house.

  I began to laugh, hopeless, and not happy. It was just funny, because I had come out here to study war with Prince Mauritz so I could taste some true experience of the world, away from my books and philosophy. Now here in my first important experience I was about to die.

  This was so twisted. I could not let this happen. I clenched my fist, and my fingers scraped on the dirt. I had no strength. This was hopeless. I gave up and lay still, waiting to die.

  I realized I was holding my breath, no reason of course to breathe anymore, if I were about to die. I let go, gulped in the cold air. My mind settled, but it would not be still. I had been working out a bit of Ovid, the day before, and now as the panic eased a little, the line from nowhere delivered itself to me.

  Perfer et obdura, dolor hic tibi proderit olim. Be patient, stay strong, and someday this suffering will be useful.

  That implied a someday, up ahead, when I would have uses. I gathered myself again to move. Called on the power of numbers: one—two—three—I strained my whole body, and a sharp pain tore up my left side. Gasping, I lay still, my heart pounding its double beat.

  The pain faded. The heartbeat slowed. One-two. One-two. Perhaps I had gone on the wrong number. I loved Two. One was adrift, Three was dangerously rigid, but Two could move. I wiggled my two arms. The left was pinned tight but the right elbow bent, slid through loose dirt, and I could draw my hand along my side and across my chest and free.

  Then to my amazement I could twist and lift the upper half of my body. My left arm slipped out from under the enormous weight that had held it, and I was halfway sitting up in the dark, propped on one arm, my head bent down against something solid, but empty space around me from the waist up.

  I put up my hand to my head, and my fingers grazed a slanting wooden beam, thick as my thigh. A floor joist. Reaching around past my left shoulder I touched a blank wall of stone. Out in front of me was a jumble of broken wood and something slick and jagged that scratched me. Overhead, I drew my fingertips along wooden planks, side by side. On my right, the planks sloped down over my legs. That was what held my legs down, the far edge of that slab of wooden planks.

  I was in the basement. I had dropped through a hole in the floor, and the house had fallen down over me. The beams of the floor above me had come down at a tilt against the stone foundation, one end on the basement wall and one on the ground. Under this hypotenuse I was sheltered. I groped around me in the dark, hoping to find some opening out of this tiny room.

  Nothing. The tiny room was a death trap. My gorge rose, a numb rabbit-like mindlessness, and I slumped down again against the ground. A long, slow, horrible death in the dark. I thought, I will kill myself first.

  I thought again of death, that margin, what would it be like, the shock of the event. Or perhaps not a shock? I had been reading something of Oresme’s about impetus, and perhaps there was a spiritual impetus, so that after death the unwitting soul, existing only in its own memory, seemed to itself to go on as before. Perhaps that was what the afterlife would be, that last, fading, eternal moment.

  So I could be already dead. In spite of that I was pushing myself up again, twisting, unwilling to lie still. There was something wrong with my leg, which was reassuring. If I were imagining myself, I would find myself perfect.

  My good leg began to throb, and I pushed my foot down to escape the pain and my shoe came off. My foot, now smaller, could move sideways, and I pushed and twisted until it slipped under the edge of the planks and I could slide it free. Lying flat again, I pushed my whole body down under the sloping planks, and my left leg came loose also.

  Carefully, using my hands, trying not to move the bad leg much, I eased myself up into the little space under the fallen floor.

  Doing even that much wearied me, and it was cold and I was shivering. Around me the place stank of damp stone and mold. I huddled still, waiting for the stabbing pain in my leg to subside. But now again the black terror overcame me. It didn’t matter what I had done, I would still die. Only twenty-two and already dead, having accomplished nothing. All my great plans, now foolish, stupid schoolboy dreams.

  Obdura, I thought. Listen to the master. Do not give up.

  I passed my hands over my little prison again. My body fil
led it from side to side, I could not raise my head all the way. The only way that seemed promising was in front of me, that rough wall of broken wood wedged in with something coarse, chunks of rock, and sharp edges. I felt along one of these protruding bits, felt a smooth curve. A piece of pottery. That broken wood was more of the floor I had fallen through. The rocks were the bricks of the fireplace. The coarse matter was the Turkey carpet.

  I tore and clawed at the stuff in front of me. I got a brick loose, and then another, and then loose stuff began to cascade down around me. I huddled back, afraid of bringing down the rest of the house. But the triangle of my shelter was reassuring. Slowly the rattling faded. I groped over the wall of debris again. My fingertips hurt. I got my hands around part of the carpet, and pulled, and that shifted and more bits of stuff pattered down, and then I could not budge the carpet any more.

  Some bits of stuff clung to my face, my beard. Little flecks of stone. There had been a china cupboard next to the fireplace.

  I dug upward with both hands, above the carpet. I worked out another brick, a piece of wood with metal attached to it: the front of the cabinet. More pottery rained down around me. The air smelled of dirt and mold. I had more room now, and could stretch my legs out. I was moving forward, upward, through the pitch dark, crawling over rubble. I groped ahead of me, pulling loose bricks, wood. My fingertips slid along the edge of a metal pot and I wiggled that loose and threw it out behind me, where it clanged through the dark like a bell.

  Another beam slanted down across my path, carrying another floor of planks laid edge to edge. The ends of the nails stuck through the beam like hooks. Carefully I felt along it. The expanse of wood stretched unbroken as far as I could reach.

  This was the ceiling of the room, which had crashed down into the center of the house. Ahead of me, it seemed to be tilting steeply up, under it a clear space, as if everything had slid down when it fell. I began to crawl into this space, feeling my way with one hand, and dragging myself along on my belly.