Kren of the Mitchegai

by Leo Frankowski

  "One did, a few gross years ago, so we killed her. But you don't often see that sort of loyalty, not once they know that their leader is dead."

  "And what do you do with the enemy dead?"

  "The same thing that everybody else does. We burn their brains and eat their bodies," the duke said.

  "Well, wouldn't it make more sense to rejuvenate them? I mean, why waste good troops? Once you conquer Duke Tendi's duchy, you will have to enlarge your army to guard it properly. Why not feed each of them to a young carnivore? Once those dead soldiers wake up in new bodies, you can give them the same choice that you gave the ones who weren't killed."

  "Well, normally, there aren't that many young carnivores handy, and we need the food, anyway."

  "But now there are, and I can provide all the food that your troops need," Kren said.

  "Very well, once my own men are taken care of, we will try out your idea."

  "Could I have half of the resurrected enemy soldiers? I could use some guards for my own lands."

  "If you wish," Dennon said. "But I still think that you have too many carnivores out there. This battle will be mostly a matter of sneaking up inside of Tendi's castle, killing a few guards, and then killing the duke. It's not as though we will be fighting a full field battle. There just won't be all that many dead soldiers in need of ressurection."

  "Perhaps. I imagine that you don't kill enemy civilians."

  "Not normally. They are part of the wealth of the land, and after I reduce the taxes a bit at first, few if any of them will feel the least bit of loyalty to their old nobility. The noble leaders are all killed, of course."

  "That makes sense," Kren said. "They have every reason to hate you, and it would be dangerous to have them around. Still, it seems such a waste, all those years of education, experience, and training, just dumped into the fire."

  "I feel certain that another one of your wild ideas is coming up."

  "One is, Your Grace. I would like to try feeding most of each of them to a young carnivore. Everything but the central portion of the brain, which contains the basic personality and personal memories. I think that what we would end up with would be a very well-educated idiot."

  "The world does not need any more well-educated idiots, Kren," Dennon said. "The universities are full of them!"

  Ignoring the duke's joke, Kren said, "But I also think that in time, a new personality will grow in there. It would be a personality that we would have a hand in molding, and I think that we could make it into a very loyal personality! I think that this might happen much quicker—and much more cheaply!—than it would if we had to start from scratch with a young carnivore. Anyway, I'd like to try it. I'll keep them all safely caged until we know for sure what happens."

  "It smacks of vampirism, Kren, but actually, it is really the exact opposite of that, isn't it? Well, I won't stop you. Run your experiment if you wish. But not on Duke Tendi! He must die, or my rights to his lands will always be in doubt. Furthermore, I have a spot on the wall of my Trophy Room all picked out on which to hang his mummified head!"

  Due to the complete lack of microbes, any Mitchegai body part naturally mummified and was preserved indefinitely provided that grubs and juvenals were kept away from it. For trophy heads, this was accomplished by smearing them with a bad tasting poison.

  Adults, on the other hand, found mummified body parts to be particularly foul tasting, so bad that some Mitchegai would consider death by starvation to be preferable to eating them.

  Some time later, the duke said, "But how are you going to get all of those young carnivores to Duke Tendi's castle?"

  "I have a thousand large juvenals in the last three cars there to pull them along in the tunnel. We've come up with a harness that keeps three dozen juvenals facing in the same direction. With some encouragement, and confined in a narrow tunnel, well, it worked when we tried it out. They'll have to be rested each day, so they won't be as fast as your army will be moving, but we'll get them there by the time the rest of you dig your way up into Tendi's castle. And of course, those same children will act as a mobile food source for your army."

  "And you are doing all of this at your own expense?"

  "Yes, although the loan of four dozen of your soldiers to act as drivers would be greatly appreciated," Kren said. "I could bring in some of my own men, but most of them are newly hired, to replace the soldiers who used to do the work, before you recalled them. I worry about their dependability and loyalty."

  "Oh, very well, I'll tell the staff to assign the necessary warriors to your command. We'll let them ride to battle instead of walk. They'll still be there for the attack, after all."

  * * *

  The duke's staff officers got no sleep that night, reorganizing their army on the eve of embarkation so that they could work with the carts. They swore at Kren for pulling this surprise on them, but only after he had finished briefing them, had handed out three gross sets of written instructions on how the resurrection process would be arranged down in the narrow tunnel, and had left. Kren wasn't someone whom any of them would want to have for a personal enemy.

  And they had to admit that at least now, once they started to roll, they could catch up on their sleep, while their troops pulled them into battle.

  Duke Dennon's soldiers were delighted with the carts. The original plan had them walking the entire distance, and in armor! This way they only had to walk half the distance, they could do it naked, and they could sleep for the rest of the time. Pulling the pneumatic-tired carts on a smooth, level, metal floor, wasn't all that hard.

  Four gross of engineers led the column, their twelve carts filled with cutting tools, tunnel liners, shovels, buckets, and surveying equipment. These carts were to their own design, and were not part of Kren's gift. However, in order to keep marching twenty-four hours a day, they were augmented by four gross of standard troops, whose armor and weapons were spread out throught the column.

  Four divisions of the duke's best troops followed them, pulling carts with several dozen children chained to the back of each to feed the soldiers on the way. The chains were needed because the kids could generally chew their way through a rope, given time.

  Kren's four dozen carts filled with young carnivores brought up the rear. These were boxed in large juvenal shipping crates and drugged with illegal substances to keep them lethargic, although they still grumbled and snarled a bit.

  * * *

  When the other dukes learned that Duke Dennon was attacking Duke Tendi, there was a strong possibility that one or many of them would attack Dennon, or Tendi, or both. The fact that it was winter might dissuade many of them, which is why Dennon chose this time of year for his attack.

  Throughout Mitchegai history, many invading armies had won through to their objectives, only to find that they had lost their own lands behind them.

  Thus, even though it was winter, and not the usual season for fighting, most of Dennon's army was prepared to go on alert in his palace and in his outlying fortifications, as soon as the attack started.

  At that point, all civilian communications would be stopped. All railroad terminals would be guarded to stop word of the attack from getting out. Travelers would be allowed in, but not out. Everything of value that the duke owned had already been safely hidden away.

  Whole towns would be evacuated and the citizens would be permitted to enter into the huge dungeons below the fortifications. The food supplies available to them were meager, but they would soon discover that they could order packaged juvenals from the Superior Food Corporation, at expensive wartime rates, of course.

  * * *

  Bronki was not happy.

  "So here I am! I'm underground in a dark, stuffy, claustrophobic tunnel, I don't know how many miles from the nearest fresh air! I'm lying above a cage full of snarling, mindless young carnivores, with the roof inches above my nose! And I'm doing this so that I can perform a tediously large number of probably illegal operations on the nobility of a duchy tha
t is about to be conquered in a highly illegal manner, so illegal that we will all likely be nuked to shit for participating in it! Why do I let myself be talked into doing such stupid things?"

  "Because Kren wanted us here," Dol said. "And we have both made a lot of money off of Kren."

  "I think that all of this is madness!"

  "You should look at the brighter side of things."

  "This insane mess has a bright side?" Bronki said.

  "Well, they could have made us walk the whole way."

  CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN

  FROM CAPTURED HISTORY TAPES,

  FILE 1846583A ca. 1832 a.d.

  BUT CONCERNING EVENTS OF UP TO

  2000 YEARS EARLIER

  Into the Breach!

  Keeping four dozen carloads of young carnivores moving was more work than Kren had expected. Most of the problems centered around the large juvenals that were doing the towing.

  When they had tested this idea out, they quickly found that they couldn't use whips to keep the kids moving. The tunnel was simply too small to swing a whip long enough to reach the lead pair. Eventually, it had been found that electrical wires fastened to the buttocks of the children, and connected to the same capacitors that ran the headlights, and would one day power the wheels of the carts, seemed to do the trick. The operator was equipped with a control panel that let him encourage individual children, or to give all of them a poke when the whole group was moving too slowly.

  A more serious problem occurred when Kren found that he had underestimated the amount of food that the juvenals required. The difference in food requirements between a cold-blooded juvenal who was simply staying alive, and one who was being energetically exercised was huge, a factor of eight or more.

  After a week on the road, they ran out of the compressed grass blocks they'd brought along to feed the draft teams. Two days later, the first child died. Kren chopped the kid up and fed her to the rest of the team. This seemed to make them all a bit more energetic. When another died a few hours later, on one of the other carts, he had all of his drivers slaughter the weakest member of each team, hack it up, and feed it to the others.

  The smaller juvenals that were brought along to feed the drivers were slaughtered next, and the adults went hungry for a few days.

  On the eleventh day, when they finally caught up to the tail end of Duke Dennon's column, they were down to only a dozen children pulling each cart, with the drivers, Kren, Bronki and Dol pulling as well.

  Bronki was particularly unhappy about this situation. "Look at the bright side!" she complained to Dol, "They might have made us walk! Dammit! They might have made us haul cargo, too! And they did!"

  Dol didn't respond.

  "I'm five thousand years old, I have two dozen and four doctorates, and they have me hauling mindless carnivores down an illegal tunnel to an illegal war for immoral purposes!"

  Dol still didn't respond.

  No one had ever suggested trying to use the mindless young carnivores for the task. The brainless but basically docile juvenals were hard enough to control. Trying to use the brainless but ferocious carnivores was unthinkable.

  Kren resisted the suggestion that they use some of the young carnivores for food. He had a use for those bodies, and the juvenals were just food, anyway.

  On arrival, Kren trotted forward and reported to Duke Dennon.

  "You are late, Kren. Did you have difficulties?"

  "Yes, Your Grace, but we still managed to get here. I was worried that the attack would be over before I could take part in it."

  "No such luck. I still don't know how it happened, but when my engineers finally tunneled up to the surface, they found that they were not in Tendi's basement. They were in the middle of a snowy field! They had missed Tendi's castle by over two gross yards! Either your tunnel was out of position or my engineer's measurements were way off! And when I find out who was at fault, I will not be lenient!"

  "Yes, Your Grace. Although a third possibility could be that the castle isn't where it's shown to be on the maps. It wasn't as though we could go out to Tendi's castle and survey it, the way we did with your palace. Once we'd done that, we were spot on with the tunnel there. I'll solve the riddle for you eventually, but there's nothing that I can do about it right now. I assume that a new tunnel is being dug?"

  "Yes, of course. With any luck, no one in the castle was looking out over that snow-covered field when my engineer's head stuck up out of it. Just maybe, we still have the element of surprise on our side. We expect to be through to the proper position in a few hours, so you'd better get your armor on. I've saved you a place right behind me, leading the second company into the breach."

  "We won't be in the front of the line? I'd had visions of being the first one up and out of the hole!"

  "No, I've got some specially trained shock troops ready for that job. A leader must be visible, Kren, but that doesn't mean that he should be stupid."

  Kren's trip to the rear of the column was slow. The carts had been pulled fairly close together, and many thousands of soldiers were trying to get their armor on in very cramped quarters.

  Young, boxed carnivores were being handed overhead, and each was placed in a cart as soon as the armor was emptied out of it. Soon, the carts would become resurrection cages.

  Eventually, Kren stood in his armor at Dennon's side. Dennon had made him a temporary colonel for the battle, and without that insignia on his shoulders, Kren might not have made his way through the crowd in time.

  Combat engineers were still passing buckets of dirt out from the tunnel, and metal hoops into it that would hold up the roof. Soon, the sound of pickaxes attacking concrete could be heard. The duke went down the line of the first assault company and personally handed each soldier a small white pill.

  Kren kept his thoughts on that one to himself.

  In practice sessions, it had been proved that the spear was not an effective weapon for fighting indoors. It was too cumbersome. All of Duke Dennon's men were armed only with a sword, although one in six also carried an axe, and one in twelve a pickaxe, for chopping through doors and other barriers.

  There was a shout, and the engineers slid down out of the tunnel and got out of the way, their part of this operation completed.

  The first company ran gleefully up the steep incline, with the duke and then Kren right behind them. Dennon had stressed to his men, dozens of times over, that success in this operation depended on moving fast, hitting hard, and not stopping for any reason.

  The tunnel came up, not through the floor, but through a wall in a disused lower basement that wasn't shown on the maps. This hadn't bothered the drugged troops of the first company. They had found a light switch, a stairway up, and had charged!

  Kren and Dennon ran after the soldier in front of them, having trouble keeping up with the drug-crazed idiot. On the floor above they found six bodies, five of them apparently unarmed, but in the livery of Duke Tendi. Dennon's single casualty seemed not to have been wounded by a weapon, but to have run into a wall and injured her silly head.

  Kren glanced at the dead or unconscious soldier and thought, I knew it, I knew it! Drugs in combat are a stupid stunt!

  They left her where she was and ran on.

  The job of the first two companies was to go up, and the third was to guard the landings. Later arrivals would worry about making sure that each floor was secure, but the way up had to be taken first.

  They went up through five basements, and were on what had to be the ground floor before Kren saw his first living enemy soldier. Small, high, heavily barred windows showed that it was dark outside, the troop seemed to have just awakened from a stupor, and she was holding her sword in a languid manner. Kren took her head off with a single swing and ran on without bothering to watch her body fall.

  Alarm gongs were sounding throughout the castle, Mitchegai were shouting to each other in a dozen languages, and pouring out into the hallways. Some of them were armed, but most were not. But anyone
who got in the way of the silent, panting invaders was cut down without a thought. They had no time for talking, and very little breath left for it, either.

  Someone in a very expensive robe stepped in front of Kren, and died for her foolishness. Most of her would soon be revived, and it was all grist for Kren's mill.

  The first assault companies were working their way to Duke Tendi's private chambers. Once Tendi was killed, preferably by Dennon himself, the rest of the castle's defenses could be depended upon to collapse. Loyalty among the Mitchegai was always on a personal basis, and never on a territorial one.

  Kren and Dennon, who was having a hard time keeping up with his temporary colonel, found a pitched battle going on in a very large room between their armored troops and four times as many enemies who were pouring out of a guard room at the base of Duke Tendi's private tower.

  Kren never slowed down, and when he got to the battle line, he went right over it!

  He vaulted off the hip of one of Dennon's soldiers in front of him, propelling the warrior right through the enemy's ranks. This startled warrior could have easily been killed, but much to her surprise, she lived. At the time, Kren himself didn't much care. He wanted to be behind the enemy line, and he got there!

  He stepped on another soldier's shoulder, and then on the head of an enemy troop, knocking her unconscious, after which another of Dennon's soldiers took her head off.

  He killed two enemy soldiers on the way down with his sword, crushed a third beneath his armored feet, then bounced off a wall and took five more of them out from behind with three fast swipes of his sword before most of them even knew that he was there.

  "I love this war!" Kren shouted, as the warrior that he had kicked through the lines started fighting at his side.

  Then he started fighting in earnest.

  During all of this mayhem, Kren was very careful to kill his opponents with clean neck cuts, and leaving their brains undamaged. One day soon, half of them would be his own troops, after all, and waste not, want not.