IronStar

by Hallman, Grant

  “I know this is terrible news, and I know I have failed to bring you the defense you deserve. I deeply regret the deaths and danger which has come to this Realm. We will now answer your questions as best we can. The duty scribe will pass the Mouth of Talam to whomever wishes to speak. Please indicate which of us you would like to answer your question.”

  Two hours later, a physically exhausted and emotionally drained group met in Lord Tsano’s private office.

  “I commend every person in your Council, Lord Tsano,” Kirrah sighed wearily as she settled into a chair. “That decision process would have taken six days’ debating on the floor of the Regnum’s parliament, and would have produced a great deal more heat and less light. Your citizens are remarkably quick to accept the reality of a situation. Do you still think we are doing the right thing?”

  “We are doing the only thing,” the large man replied. “I was embarrassed at some of the suggestions, especially those questioning your ability, but I think we have convinced them to chose life over dead stone buildings.”

  “They are fully entitled to question my abilities, my Lord,” Kirrah replied. “I thought I could use my knowledge to defend the Realm, but I did not anticipate having to defend against Kruss weapons, and I should have. It is the Kruss’ habit to supply more and more lethal weapons to whichever side they have chosen as their puppet conqueror. The only reason they have held back so long is they thought they could use the O’dai, and through them the Wrth, without helping them.

  “I am only surprised that, instead of their usual gift-weapons, these weapons are so few and have the look of being adapted from whatever supplies they have at hand. Yet poor and few as they are, they seem sufficient to force us from our city.”

  “We will allow them to keep us from our homes in the south neighborhoods,” said Opeth. “It is early in the summer, we will not suffer from weather for some time. But let us not give them any more than we must. And if I may suggest, we should all get a good sleep and meet again tomorrow morning. Sometimes the lost spoon has fallen into one’s own lap, and only clatters to the floor when one gives up the search and rises to get another. And please, Warmaster, allow Issthe to help you sleep. We will need your mind clear and active at that meeting tomorrow. I am not convinced that we cannot bring more grief to the O’dai and to that little boy who leads them.”

  A brief and mostly silent walk brought Kirrah, Irshe and Issthe back to their quarters in the school. To Kirrah’s surprise, Akaray greeted them in the courtyard.

  “Is it true, Kirrah’shu? Are we going to let the O’dai have this city?” Why did I ever think this civilization needs radio communication? Kirrah wondered to herself. Nothing is faster than rumor. At the sound of their voices, a subdued Tash’ta came out into the torchlit courtyard. Slaetra and a few students were sitting at a nearby table, looking tired and more than a little discouraged.

  “Warmaster, I am sorry, he would not sleep until you returned.”

  “I understand, Tash’ta, that is all right. Akaray-aska, we must stay away from the center of the city. The O’dai keep throwing plague-of-screams devices at us. I cannot stop them, and if we do not withdraw to a safe distance, there will be more deaths.” Many more deaths…

  “Then let us throw deaths at them!” Akaray exclaimed. “See, I have been practicing!” With that, the boy reached to the bench beside him and lifted a training bow and a fire-arrow he had somehow got his hands on. Before any of the tired adults could react, he had nocked the bulb-tipped arrow and drawn the short bow.

  “Akaray, no!” several voices exclaimed in near-unison. Irshe was quickest, lunging up just fast enough to startle his intended target. The arrow slipped out of the boy’s draw-grip and flew from the bow, passing between the adults, just over the heads of the small group at the next table, and smashed with the distinctive ‘Whuff!’ of an oil fire somewhere behind them. Ignoring his stricken look, all the adults turned and ran to the source of the flames illuminating the center of the courtyard. Slaetra arrived first, and to Kirrah’s surprise and consternation was laughing aloud by the time she and the others arrived.

  “Young man,” the teacher declared loudly enough to be heard across the courtyard, “of all the places to land a fire arrow in my school, you have chosen the one I would have asked for!” Indeed Kirrah and Irshe could not help but appreciate Slaetra’s point, looking at the burning oil dripping down the stone fountain and the patch of pale yellow and green flames dancing on the water of the small central pool. Even Issthe allowed herself a small chuckle. Tash’ta arrived, bringing the culprit to the scene of his crime, which had by now attracted a small crowd. Akaray twisted away from her grip and ran to Kirrah, hugging her and saying over and over:

  “I’m sorry! Kirrah’shu, I’m sorry! I didn’t mean it! I’ll fix it!” Schooling her expression into seriousness, Kirrah disengaged herself from the boy’s embrace and held him at arms’ length.

  “Akaray, you have just had a very cheap lesson. Look at the fire. This could have been one of our friends. These weapons are not for untrained hands.

  “Aska, I already know you are loyal and brave. And I know you are wise as well. So wise, you will not risk repeating this. You will have plenty of time to learn the proper use of weapons.” I hope. And scant reason to need them, if I can just figure out some way to hold out a few more tendays…

  “Now, off to bed!” Not a bad idea, in fact. Hopefully the Council meeting has tired me sufficiently to actually sleep… And sleep she did, after an hour or more of restless tossing and turning, and then stalked by dark dreams.

  Chapter 35 (Landing plus one hundred thirty-two): Interlude, Dreamscape

  “People stumble over the truth from time to time, but most pick themselves up and continue as if nothing had happened.” - Sir Winston Churchill, op. cit.

  Deep in the dream, something was chasing her. Something small, invisible. She and others, a whole community was fleeing headlong across an endless blackness. Every few moments someone would scream and fall, clutching at belly or leg or face, tumbling and rolling into a pathetic motionless bundle of black rags left behind on the plains. The rest kept running, desperately, endlessly, tattered dark clothing streaming around them like ebon flames. In the strange knowing of dreams, she was sure Irshe, Slaetra, Tash’ta were fleeing with her. So were her ex-crewmates - Sammy, and Doris, and Captain Leitch, and Professor Stanglee from her Academy classes.

  Where was Akaray? There, far ahead on the plains, almost hidden in the darkness, she could see him beckoning. ‘There!’ she shouted, but no one could hear her. Alone she swung to the left, toward the promise of sanctuary… not alone, three figures were diverging from the crowd to follow her. Even as she ran, one of them fell.

  Suddenly she was at the place Akaray was calling them to. The other two figures pulled to a halt beside her… Captain Leitch, and Professor Stanglee, panting, looking anxiously around for whatever-it-was pursuing them. Behind her the sense of dread increased acutely - it was almost on them. She looked around to see Akaray’s face, laughing, looming huge, as he gestured sharply down and flames burst at his feet, instantly spreading into a sea of fire blocking their path. Behind her Captain Leitch turned and snapped somehow at the darkness, and with the gesture, disappeared, his dark cape and clothing falling as two empty pieces of cloth.

  “It’s here!” screamed Professor Stanglee, and disappeared into a black hole he’d been carrying for just that purpose, leaving her alone, trapped between fire and terror. Skin tingling in awful anticipation, she turned and dove headfirst into the lake of fire.

  Tsk, tsk, (said a familiar voice). Too many clues. You always give too many clues… How’s she ever going to learn on her own?

  “…aaaiiiiii!” Kirrah lunged upright in the bed, gasping for air and fighting at the covers and the hands holding her shoulders. The door to their room slammed open, and two of Corporal Mastha'cha’s guards stormed in, swords drawn.

  “Kirrah! Kirrah! Are you attacked?” Irs
he shook her back to full awareness.

  “Ahh! No…” she coughed twice, held up one hand, drew another few panting breaths. “I am not attacked. It was another dream. I apologize for alarming everyone!” Faces all around her relaxed slightly.

  “Guardsman, please fetch Issthe, this has got to stop!” The words barely left her lips when the tall priestess appeared at the doorway, along with the worried faces of Tash’ta and Akaray. Issthe stepped into the room, took in the scene in a glance, and with a sweep of one robed arm cleared everyone to one side and gestured Kirrah to sit opposite her in one of the room’s chairs. Tash’ta lit a small lamp, and in its comforting orange glow one of Issthe’s pale hands touched Kirrah’s, and the trembling and adrenaline seemed to drain from her as from a lanced abscess.

  “I listen,” the priestess said, her calm eyes drawing in Kirrah’s wild gaze, in and down. In moments, the dream’s story tumbled out.

  “Issthe, I cannot keep alarming my guards like this!” Kirrah concluded. “Bad enough out on the plains, but here in the city, where a scream has signaled death for so many people…”

  “Kirrah, they attend their duties. Your duty is your dream. What is its gift?”

  “Gift? You said that before, I know, but it just seemed frightening. I see no gift.”

  “Describe what was chasing you.”

  “It was… nothing. It was small, invisible, deadly.” The priestess’ face turned a little, dark gray eyes looking slightly askance into hers.

  “And what, aska, does that remind you of?”

  “Remind me? It’s the damned smartshots, that’s what it is, and the nanowire. Is that the gift? To know that I’m afraid of the things that are killing us? Killing everyone?”

  “Patience, aska. Be patient with your ito, and it will unfold unto you. What was the second figure, you said it was a teacher?”

  “Master-teacher Stanglee, yes. He just disappeared. Left me alone to face the danger.”

  “When did he do something like that, in waking life?” Kirrah noticed, Issthe did not say ‘real life’, as though the opposite of ‘dream’ was not necessarily ‘real’.

  “I remember once, just before a big test at the Academy, I went to see him in his office for some help. I was having trouble with some problem. I really needed his help, and he wasn’t in.”

  “What happened next?” asked Issthe’s soothing voice.

  “I had to go into the test without his help, and the damned question was on it! Huh… and I managed to figure it out anyway, right there in the…” Issthe shifted somehow, as though some corner had been turned, and indeed Kirrah felt something stirring at the back of her mind. Issthe asked:

  “What then, in this entire dream, was the hardest part? The very center of your fear?” Kirrah reflected a moment, reaching for that intimately detached way Issthe had of just looking at things.

  “Hmmm, I’d have to say it was diving into that lake of fire. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? Akaray lobbed that fire-arrow into the pond, and I was still thinking…” Kirrah broke off as Issthe raised two fingers. “What?”

  “What does fire do?” Issthe asked.

  “Huh? Well, it burns, it, um…” Kirrah paused, stalled by the obvious. The soft voice prompted:

  “In your dream, did the fire burn?”

  A thoughtful pause, “No, it was floating, like on water, like on the pool, where Akaray…”

  “Then, what does fire do on water, Kirrah?”

  The Regnum Survey Service Lieutenant’s eyes flew wide open, her head flew back, her fists pounded her knees, and she exclaimed, “Aaaah! How could I be so stupid!” She looked up to the stunned people surrounding her, stunned except for Issthe, who already knows, I swear somehow she knows.

  “Akaray! Come here!” She swept him up in a fierce joyous bear-hug, dropped him and hugged Issthe, whose arms seemed to gather her in like a child herself.

  “You two have just saved the Realm! Now I know how to defeat the O’dai, Kruss weapons and all!” She bounded to her feet. “Irshe! I need a messenger! We must get that flood control gate on the Upper Geera closed immediately! Tonight! And get me Maka'ra the shipwright! Wake him up if necessary! And find me someone who has watched this river… Captain Og’drai! He fished it as a child! Come on, people, move! We have a war to win!”

  Chapter 36 (Landing plus one hundred thirty-six): Contact

  “If you're going through hell, keep going.” - Sir Winston Churchill, op. cit.

  “Quiet, lads!” Captain Crath’pae whispered loudly. “I think it’s dark enough, let’s do it!” It had been a beautiful, clear, warm evening, and the Talamae captain was standing in the tenth barge they’d floated down the lake that afternoon under the jeers and taunts of the O’dai on the south shore. Like the other nine, it was moored across the current, bow to stern with the next barge. Its downstream gunwale was chained firmly to the heavy anti-shipping chain laid across the Geera at the point where Talameths'cha’s western wall reached the river. The O’dai, seeing a floating bridge forming, had sent extra sentries and a quarter of their cavalry, plus the distinctive pair of three-horse teams that carried the ends of the deadly nanowire.

  I show you a row of barges and you see a bridge, the Captain thought. But you don’t know our Warmaster! This ain’t no bridge, fools, it’s a dam!

  Like the others, this barge’s hold was weighted with rocks and gravel. And like the others, it was sinking quietly in place as the dark Geera flowed greedily in through the hole they had just punched in its bottom. In a few moments, water surged over its low upstream gunwales. The four-by-twelve meter flat-bottomed barge tilted sharply onto its side, the upstream gunwale sinking down into the current while the downstream side remained suspended from the heavy defensive chain crossing the river. With a soft thud, the upstream gunwale came to rest on the river bottom. The ten barges’ plank bottoms now formed a row of wooden gates across the river, sharply constricting the lake’s outflow. The river gurgled and rushed frantically through the narrow spaces between the ends of the sunken barges, and began to back up behind the obstacle.

  “But Cap’n, how we gonna get downriver past all these wrecks, if the O’dai send another fleet up the river?”

  “Don’t you worry your thick nut about that, Ola’mata! Our clever Warmaster already taught them one lesson they’ll never forget. They’ll not be comin’ up our river for a while! B’sides, those barges we sunk over there in the middle of the shipping channel, they got iron chain for ballast. Same’s this big chain. But one end of it’s layin’ on our side the river, by the watchtower there, where we can pull it out if we need to float ‘em out.”

  “Ooooh.”

  “You just make sure our part’s done. There’s more happenin’ t’night, lots more. ‘Block the Geera’s flow as well as you can, Cap’n Crath’pae,’ she said. And block it’s what we done.”

  “Here they come,” whispered Lieutenant Bra'dack into the darkness. “Ready the horses.” Behind him, men and animals moved silently out of the dense trees and brush and onto the north bank of the Geeratha river. This was not war as the Cavalry Lieutenant had learned war, but he had his orders, and by his ancestors and his company’s colors, he would not be the one to disappoint their audacious Warmaster! She had had steamships maneuvering every evening for the last three days, until the O’dai were used to these apparently-pointless excursions up and down the three tributaries. But this time would be different, oh, yes. Behind him, in the heavily wooded wedge of land between the Upper Geera and the Geeratha rivers, the entire Talamae cavalry, plus eighty-some Wrth warriors on their war-ponies, plus the four companies of competent-looking Pavattan medium cavalry, waited in utter silence. Every hoof was muffled in cloth bindings, every bit of gear that could jingle was wrapped with cloth or twine.

  As he waited, the steamship he had heard coming upriver from the lake loomed up in the darkness beside them, trailing a row of barges. Anchors dipped quietly into the water and the ship swung ponderously beam-on
to the current. Within two bhrakka, ramps and planks joined the barges to form a serviceable bridge over the Geeratha. Bra’dack and his men began leading their horses rapidly across, following the pikemen who had arrived on the barges and the four squads of archers debarking from the steamship. Now only the South Geera tributary separated them from the O’dai camp on the peninsula.

  In the darkness a hundred meters downriver from Bra'dack’s position, Do'thablu the master carpenter and four barges loaded with heavy wood barrels arrived at the point of land where the Geeratha and the Upper Geera rivers met. As they grounded gently at the tip of the point, men stepped quietly into the shallows and tied mooring ropes to trees at the water’s edge. Other men on those vessels quietly laid down their barge poles, picked up axes or mallets, and settled themselves comfortably to wait for their signal.

  Looking north across the lake, Do'thablu and his men could see the subdued lights of the half-deserted city of Talameths'cha. Somewhere just about there, the body of his nephew lay freshly buried, felled by the plague-of-screams. O’dai campfires glimmered on the water to the southwest, and occasional snatches of music and voices could be heard from the enemy camp. A nice night to be out under the stars, Do'thablu decided.

  Eight kilometers up the nearly-dry Upper Geera riverbed, Irshe sat on his horse while it grazed contentedly on a small patch of real grass atop the new earthen dam. His experienced eye gauged the darkness of the sky. Any time now… there! Down along the north shore, two torches waving by hand in a simplified version of the signal-tower code. Red waving left to right, green straight up, go! At his sharp whistle, men began working the winches, and five-meter sections of square logs began lifting out of the four iron-bound wood sluiceways in the dam.