by J. P. Wagner
“Yes, I suppose so, but if I’d estimated too low, then I’d be in the situation of having to order more cloth, and hoping to be able to get the exact shade and quality again. This way, though I lose a little money, I get just what I wanted. And with luck, I won’t lose all that much, for someone will surely be willing to take the stuff off my hands.”
As they rode back from the store, Yakor spoke up. “Tell me, these goods you ordered from the south and discovered that you had too much of, was this possibly some sort of deeper plan to get the merchants on your side?”
He twisted his head to look at Yakor. “Have I been that obvious?”
“No, not really. I just hope you aren’t counting too heavily on their suddenly becoming your partisans.”
Carrtog grimaced. “I’ll admit that had been my hope at the start. Now, though, I’ll settle for them perhaps disliking me a little less than any other royal general.”
Yakor grinned broadly. “Well, perhaps you have some chance of achieving that.”
#
As winter began to draw to a close, the rebels began to grow more active. Partly in response to this, Carrtog accompanied more patrols and forces sent out to track the rebels to their camps.
They flew the glider several more times, Carrtog at the controls for the first two, but for the third and following flights Gryff volunteered. By the time of the third flight, Carrtog had managed to develop a technique of landing safely and was able to instruct Gryff in the method. The flights were not very long, though on one of his flights Gryff managed to catch an updraft and had flown in an upward spiral until he began to worry about going too high. His concern almost undid him and at first he tried to lose altitude too fast. He was in a dive when he pulled up on the controls in order to cut down on his speed of descent. As he’d relayed to Carrtog, he’d felt and heard the wooden frame of the wings starting to crack, so he eased the controls forward again. He was still coming down fast when the undercarriage touched down, and the glider actually bounced twice. He banged his forehead on the control-bar, as Carrtog had done, but they had put up padding to prevent the kind of damage Carrtog had suffered. Furthermore, in light of Carrtog’s experience, they had developed close-fitting leather caps, padded with wool, to protect the pilots’ heads so he came away with only a nasty-looking bruise. When the glider bounced, the right wing had partially broken away from the fuselage, but the damage was repairable. Gryff was extremely apologetic, but Carrtog said, “In my first flight, I did even more damage to it. The most important thing is whether or not you learned anything useful from this flight.”
Gryff thought a bit. “Yes, I caught an updraft and took it pretty far upward, but I started to worry about whether I’d be able to come down slow enough to land on the field I took off from. But you were wanting to take the thing up high, high enough to fly a fair distance and be able to look down from up there and possibly see where the rebels were camped. If we got a good updraft, we could go quite a way before we came down, but we might have to be ready to come out with a team and wagon and load the glider up somewhere out along the road.”
“If we managed to land on the road itself and not come down in the middle of the trees. But I suppose that would be part of our problem, to make sure we stayed within range of the road so we could come down on it.”
Chapter 22
Carrtog read for a second time the message he’d just received. It was a royal message, brought by courier from Waliauchel, having just arrived this afternoon. He looked up at Yakor. “The king’s going back up to take command of his troops again. He plans to spend a day, perhaps two, here at Kilgarhai, to see how we’ve been managing. How have we been managing, Yakor?”
The older man shrugged. “You’re the general here, you know better than I.”
“Well, we haven’t managed to put an end to rebel activity in the area, but our trains are mostly keeping their schedules, and we’ve fought several successful small actions against the rebels. I’d say we’ve done pretty well.”
“Now all you need to do is to tell that to the king and convince him. You might want to be wary of seeming to be doing too well, though. We suspected he might have given you this task in hopes that it would defeat you, as it did General Hartovan, and that he could then have you retire in disgrace. You might want to ask yourself what action would the king take if he felt you were being too successful.”
Carrtog dropped his hand to his side, still holding the king’s message, and looked thoughtful. “Yes,” he said, “what might he do in that case? Might he simply declare that I hadn’t been successful enough and go on from there?”
“If he thought that through carefully, he’d likely decide it was too big a risk to him. All he has against you is suspicion of passing rumors. There are too many other powerful lords who could see themselves as more of a threat to him and might conceivably wonder what he might do about them.”
“That would be more reassuring if we were certain that His Majesty always thought things through carefully.”
Yakor scowled.
#
Along with the king’s message to Carrtog, the courier had also brought a letter from Princess Ellevar to Addy. After she had read it privately, Addy brought it out to Carrtog and Yakor. “Listen to this, my dear,” she said, “’My father will often not concern himself at all with Lord Carrtog, but when he does, he often notes how well Lord Carrtog has done for him, but on a few occasions, he will seem to put on another face and be determined that Lord Carrtog is against him, and therefore wishes to see Lord Carrtog fail. I do what I can, but there is only so much I can do. Please tell your husband to guard himself, to see that there is no grounds for my father to call him to account. If he ever finds such grounds, I fear it will go badly for both of you.’”
Carrtog scowled an expression to match the one on Yakor’s face. “Now, there’s a difficulty the Gods would be hard put to unravel! I can work hard to please the king, but if I must defeat the phantoms that arise in the king’s mind, then the Gods alone can give me success!”
“So what’s your plan, then? Go hang yourself to save His Majesty the trouble?”
Carrtog turned a glare in Yakor’s direction. “No, I believe I’ll prove to the king that his efforts to turn me into a well-trained magician were not in vain.”
Yakor nodded, smiling. “That sounds better than the whimpering you were aggravating us with just now. Do you have something specific in mind?”
“Not exactly, but I had been thinking of something, I just hadn’t done anything with it, having been too concerned with making a glider that would fly longer distances. Perhaps I should spend some time on something a little less flashy, but perhaps with more immediate use.”
He took out the communicator he had in his pocket, and spoke the words that would cause the communicator in Gryf’s pocket to ring. Shortly he heard Gryff’s voice saying “Yes, Lord?”
“Gryff? Find the notes I made on carrying things by means of hot air and bring them to me. I think I have a notion to make this of use to us in attempting to track the rebels.”
“Yes, Lord. I’ll be there directly.”
“’Directly?’” Yakor smiled. “The young farmer’s son is taking on the ways of speech of an upper-class servant.”
“Please don’t mock him, Yakor. He’s trying to better himself, which is all to the good. I wouldn’t care to have him think all it earned him was a sneer.”
Yakor held up his hands in feigned surrender. “No, he’ll hear nothing from me. I just hope he works at more than just using the right words.”
“I don’t think you need fear on that score, Yakor. Gryff’s work is his first concern, putting the right words to it is only secondary.”
Shortly Gryff was there with a small sheaf of papers in his right hand. “These are all the relevant papers, Lord, but there seems to be very little here, just a note about hot air rising an
d how light things, such as dry leaves or feathers, are lifted in the air over a fire, and a suggestion to yourself to look into this.”
“What do you think about it, Gryff?”
The young man looked at him a little doubtfully. “To tell the truth, Lord, I had noticed the same things that you did, but had not thought beyond that. However, it does seem to me that if we were to gather enough heat, it could lift at least a little weight.”
“Suppose we were to make an arrangement whereby a small weight could be lifted, and that weight given to a magic device that could seek out the rebels? What would you say to that?”
“Lord, I know practically nothing at all about magic, but I do know something about mechanics. We will first have to make some tests to see just how much weight can be lifted, then see just how heavy the magic-bearing device needs to be. I assume you were also thinking of having the whole thing pressed to go in certain directions, also by magic?”
“Yes. I’m going to have to work on several different spells, perhaps even using some magic to help in the lifting. Could you start work on the methods of using heat to lift something? Some kind of very light bag, for instance?”
“Yes, Lord. If you wish, I’ll begin at once.”
“Do so.”
As Gryff left to carry out his instructions, Carrtog turned to Yakor once more. “We’ve still had no luck in discovering how the rebels manage to keep their gliders in flight for so long? None of our spies have even come close?”
“Exactly. They’ve managed to maintain their secrecy, in part because of their determination to release themselves from the king’s rule. The people in charge of their gliders police themselves severely, never letting any one of their number even go off drinking alone where some stranger might join him in drinking and lead him to let his tongue go loose. All we’ve managed to discover is that magic is involved, somehow.”
“Yes, we’ve suspected that, but…” Carrtog’s voice trailed off as he went into deep thought.
Yakor looked at him sharply. “What now? You look as if you have an idea.”
“Yes. It’s one of those ideas that seems so simple that you wonder why it never occurred to you before. In many cases, what magic does is to increase some naturally occurring phenomenon, or cause it to occur in spite of actual conditions, such as those little devices I made to warm our hands. So the glider uses warm air to lift itself higher. Can I make some sort of device that will produce its own warm air in a large enough space to allow a glider to take advantage of it?”
Yakor smiled. “I hope I wasn’t supposed to answer that question. I know a few bits of combat magic, that’s all. You’re the one who’s been given all the magic lessons.”
Carrtog chuckled. “It’s not likely to be a matter where either you or I just say here’s the answer, more likely it’ll take a whole lot of work, trying this and that, adjusting here and adjusting there, and finally saying, ‘That seems to be as close as we’re going to get.’ Now I think I’d better find Gryff; I set him to work on what is likely to be the first step on the way, and I should put myself there as well.”
#
It was a brisk spring day and the king had rested well overnight in Carrtog’s newly-built house. They had breakfasted at a fairly early hour, as befit men on a military assignment, and were now out in the field where Carrtog was about to demonstrate a new weapon in the fight against the local rebels and their constant attempts to cut the railroad line between Gwarasai and Kilgarhai. Though the glider was still expected to play a large part in Carrtog’s strategy, it was presently disassembled and stacked in a locked shed across town. Carrtog had decided, after some thought, that it was best not to admit to the king that he was attempting any work with gliders. It did not seem like the path of wisdom, considering the king’s antipathy to such mechanisms.
“The prime difficulty, Your Majesty, is to find them in the woods. We can and do patrol the woods as best we can, but if their bands break camp and move every two to three weeks, it’s only a matter of luck that we ever come on them. Well, luck and the highly developed skill of my patrol-commanders.
“But patrols can only cover so much territory in any given time, so we need a better way of tracking the rebels through the brush. My first success was when I put a magic circle around certain farms that were strongly suspected of giving food to the rebels.
“When their foraging parties broke the circle, they carried a magical trace all the way back to their camp; even when they broke their trail by riding up a stream or any such tricks. We would follow the magical trace all the way to their camp and attack them.
“This, though, still has us waiting for them to move and only moving in response to them.”
He paused and stretched out a hand, palm up, toward the small wooden table that held the objects on display.
There was a small wooden rack supporting a bag made of sheets of paper pasted together. The bag narrowed at the mouth, and fastened below that mouth was a small tray on a cradle of light straps. On top of the tray was a small package of cloth tied with string and tied to the top of that was a small flat pebble about the size of a curled index finger.
“We have all seen light things lifted into the air over a fire. If we have a bag to capture more of the heat, we can lift a little more.
“The pebble contains a spell which, when put into operation, produces a good deal of heat, though not enough to cause anything to burn. The hot air, concentrated in the bag, will lift the whole thing into the air. The wrapped package contains another spell, or rather, a set of spells. When the bag has reached a certain height, in this case, slightly above treetop level, measured by the trees just outside the town, it will move along the line of the streets. As it moves, whatever is in its view will be shown in the basin of water there on the table. It will continue to spin slowly as it moves, and when we can see the Railroad Station in the basin, it will move straight in that direction. When it reaches a certain distance from the station, another spell will come into effect, and the Railroad Station will begin to shine with a pink glow as we view it in the basin.”
He paused, looking up at the king. “I will now speak the spell that will begin the operation, causing the pebble to heat and the bag to lift.”
He spoke the incantation, and for a moment nothing happened, then the bag began to quiver. The bag continued to quiver, shaking more rapidly, then almost suddenly it leaped into the air.
As Carrtog had predicted, it went almost straight up, though it was blown a little to the south by the weak northern breeze. Having reached its treetop level, it began to move along the streets. A picture of the street-scene appeared in the basin of water, moving as the bag continued to move, spinning slowly.
Gradually, the Railroad Station began to appear in the basin of water, and when it was fully in the center of the basin, the bag ceased to spin, and the picture grew larger as the bag approached the Station.
Then almost suddenly it stopped. There was a long pause, and then the Railroad Station began to glow a deep pink.
The king began to applaud, followed by the rest of his party.
“The balloon was lifted only by hot air,” Carrtog stated, “with no lift at all supplied by direct magic. It was indeed steered by magic, in particular when its target came in sight.”
“A very pretty demonstration, Lord Carrtog. It would have been more effective had you actually used this balloon to hunt down and kill some actual rebels.”
“Of course, Your Majesty. This was merely a demonstration of the balloon’s capability, with proper magical direction. Our next step is to produce enough of the balloons that we can put them in place where we are fairly certain the rebels will come, then track the rebels to their camps. At the very least, we will force them to move their camps more often, leaving them less free to attack the rail lines. Guarding the rail lines is my main task, to ensure that supplies can pass from here o
n up to Your Majesty’s forces.”
“Until such time as rebel magicians begin plucking your balloons out of the sky.”
“Of course, Your Majesty. But I will not be slow in adding magical protections to my balloons, and the rebels will not likely risk magicians of the necessary caliber in the woods with the wandering bands.”
The king nodded. “Keep up the good work, Lord Carrtog.”
#
The king broke his journey at Kilgarhai for only two days, but it was a time of considerable stress for Carrtog and his command. There always seemed a feeling that the king was looking for something with which to find fault, and Carrtog was pressed to explain all his actions in ways that showed them to be more successful than any alternative he could mention.
At last the king went marching on up the road with his regiments of reinforcements for the forces at the front.
When the last of the rear-guard had marched out of sight along the road north, Yakor turned to Carrtog. “Well, that’s done at last. And none too soon, either. I could see you were having more and more difficulty refraining from saying something on the lines of ‘You were the one who had me so well trained in magic, Your Majesty. Don’t consider it my fault that it worked so well.’”
Carrtog smiled. “All I can do is wonder what he will come up with next. I’m afraid he won’t leave me alone forever.”
“Don’t start thinking those despairing thoughts again, or I’ll have to speak sharply to you, most Noble and Successful Lord Carrtog!”
“No, I won’t let myself get into that sort of mood. But now that we’ve got His Majesty off our hands, shall we try to hire local people to make balloons for us?”
“You’d trust the local people for that? Most of them are not particularly on our side, if you’ll remember?”
“Yes, I know. But they’d only be making the balloons, and it’s difficult to damage something like that so subtly that it couldn’t be discovered quickly by the briefest inspection. And we’ll need a lot of the things if they’re to have any success against the rebels.”