Arcanum

by Simon Morden

  She refixed the candle inside the lantern and rose to search through the debris left by the workmen from the day before. Picking out a metal canteen and an off-cut of wood, she came back and sat cross-legged.

  She opened the box, and tipped out a third of the remaining powder into the lunch-pail. She noticed Thaler’s pained expression.

  “We can make more of this,” she said.

  “Can you?”

  “Yes. We have the recipe. It’s not hard to make, just difficult to control.” She tapped the side of the tin and peered inside. “We’re told what it is so that we don’t create it by mistake. It’s not just a pretty flame. And you might want to stand at the doorway.”

  Thaler, unnerved already, backed away and lurked. He could see her clearly, though, and what she was doing. She went back for the candle, and, holding the pail almost sideways, slid the lighted tallow inside. Then, in one quick motion, she held the wood to the open end and turned the pail upright again, placing it down firmly on the stone roof.

  She ran, crouching low, until she was by Thaler’s knees.

  “Down,” she said, pulling at his robe.

  As he dropped, the square of wood flung itself on a pillar of smoke high into the air. The canteen bounced up and fell clattering on its side, steaming as if it were a cookpot.

  Ah, but the noise. Not the sharp crack of a whip, nor a pop of a beer bottle. It boomed, and its echo would be heard all over Juvavum.

  The smoking wood hit the roof near the open oculus, spinning as it landed and running like a wheel down the slope. It ended up more or less in front of Thaler, and he stooped to pick it up. It was scorched on one side, blackened and still smouldering.

  After a long while, well after the first workmen had scaled the scaffolding on the outside and were standing mute on the far side of the pantheon roof, Thaler turned to Tuomanen.

  “The prince will need to know about this.”

  She looked up at the White Fortress, its walls and its towers dominating the town below.

  “He has ears. He already knows.”

  PART 4

  Ignite

  76

  Büber crawled on his belly along the rock slab and looked down. Ennsbruck was a long way below him, caught in the curve of the river just as he’d remembered it: black walls and black roofs, the Enn a black ribbon on the valley floor.

  He knew that fog could sometimes collect in the valleys, where the uplands were bathed in bright sun and the lowlands wreathed in cold mist. With midsummer past but winter still months away, it was smoke from the chimneys that obscured some of the detail; although it had many sources, it coalesced as a single hazy cloud that spread between the steep Alps.

  Never mind, he had something to help deal with that. He pulled his satchel up to near his head and worked the straps open. Delving inside, he pulled out a leather cylinder.

  It came in two parts, one tube fitting snugly inside the other. At one end, a circle of glass fatter in the middle – like Thaler – than the edges, and at the other, another smaller piece of glass, just bigger than a full dewdrop. Büber eased the halves apart so that the apparatus grew longer, and rested it on the stone ledge in front of him.

  He had no idea how it worked, just that it did. Thaler had drawn all sorts of pictures for him, but hadn’t quite managed to explain how things that were distant were apparently brought close enough for him to see them.

  Büber put his eye to the narrower end and suddenly he was floating over the town below. The image was sharp enough that he could count individual chimney pots and windows. Chimney pots which were inexplicably upside down.

  He moved the distance-pipe, as Thaler called it, so that it pointed into the fields beyond the walls where a camp had grown up, canvas sprouting like mushrooms on the green grass.

  Were there more of them than before? It appeared so. The temptation to move the pipe in the exact opposite direction to that needed was almost overwhelming: in the image, up was down, left was right. Ignorant on the finer points of optics, he struggled to use the apparatus.

  He carefully tracked up the road. There was dust in the distance, so far off that when he looked with the naked eye to get a truer perspective, he couldn’t even tell it was there. He resighted down the valley, in the direction of Rosenheim. He could see evidence of clear-cutting, a swathe of forest having been hacked down and stacked in log piles, ready to feed the growing dwarvish army.

  Army? An army implied that some would be left behind, whereas here it was an entire people on the move, like in the days of the Hun. They were a horde, looking for new land to settle.

  “Wulf?”

  The northman crept up beside Büber and lay down next to him. “Gods. Look at them all.”

  “That forest has stood since we were trees ourselves. Now look at it.” Büber tried to pass the distance-pipe to his companion, but he refused it.

  “You’re telling me it’s not magic?”

  “It’s not magic.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Wulf Thorlander was young. Not a child, but barely old enough to grow a moustache. Yet he acted as if he were an old man, full of lore and superstitions. He lacked a certain wildness. Torsten Nadel hadn’t. He’d been cunning, raucous and foul-mouthed.

  Thorlander still had all his fingers and toes, too. Büber was running out of them.

  “But you can count,” said Büber. “Felix needs to know, to the nearest century, how many dwarves are camped out here.”

  “I can see well enough for that, Master.” He pushed his blond hair out of his eyes and grew still. His lips moved, adding up as he went.

  Büber put his eye back to the brass viewing piece and scanned the river. He could see no evidence that they were boat-building. Dwarves didn’t build boats, though they appeared to need a prodigious amount of wood for something. They had constructed a crude palisade from some of the timber at the pinch-point just short of where the Ziller flowed into the Enn; a place where the valley was just a mile across.

  What else were they making? He couldn’t see it, no matter where he looked. They might be carrying out construction in the town, but they still needed to stockpile the completed articles somewhere.

  He rubbed at his right eye, and switched to his left, twisting the tubes slightly so that the image was as sharp as he could make it. Everything had a little rainbow fringe to it, which was distracting, but more so was the fact that he still couldn’t find what he was searching for. He could see almost all of the valley, except the part which lay directly below him, the north-facing side.

  Ah. There was something he’d missed. A wide, flat bridge, apparently balanced on stone piers and topped with whole trunks. It wouldn’t stand up to the spring meltwater, but if it only had to last a season, it wouldn’t have to. And there was traffic across it: a cut and trimmed log was being carried across and out of sight as he watched.

  He waited for Thorlander to finish counting before he broke the news. “I’m going to have to go down.”

  “You’re not joking because you never joke. No good will come of this.” Thorlander rolled on his back and looked up at the sky. “There are, allowing for four to six dwarves to a tent – if you can call them tents – between two and three thousand of them down there in the temporary camps alone.”

  “There are more coming from Farduzes. You can just about see them in the distance.” Büber rolled over, too, letting the sun warm his face. “They’ve got some sort of construction yard below us, and I need to find out what they’re building.”

  “Add the thousand that are in Ennsbruck, and the two thousand who’re down by the wall: if it were easy to kill them all, the prince would have attacked by now.”

  “Felix needs a full report.” Büber closed his eyes. “Go back to the others. Get a runner to pass on a message about numbers, and that they’re felling the forest. I’ll meet you where the Gerlos flows into the Ziller. By nightfall if I can make it, by dawn otherwise. If I don’t come back, go back t
o Kufstein, and for gods’ sakes don’t send out search parties.”

  “I’m sure my lord Felix would never do such a thing.”

  “Good.”

  “Or the Princess Sophia.”

  Büber lazily reached out and grabbed the man’s hair tight in his finger-stubs. “Don’t cry out. You’ll attract the thousands of dwarves you say are down below. Let me explain. Kingdoms fall with such gossip. Felix is a boy of thirteen, so we’re already finely balanced. If you push too hard, in the wrong way, lots of people will die. I’d rather you died than them. I’ll forgive you this once, but I won’t forget it. Tell me you understand.”

  “Master,” gasped Thorlander, and when Büber released him, he scrambled away, clutching his scalp.

  “I won’t have such talk from my men. If you can’t control your tongue, find someone else to serve under.” Büber seemed to be having this talk with wearying regularity. “I have to trust you completely, because there might be – more likely will be – a moment when my life’s going to depend on you. Now fuck off and go and do what I said.”

  At least the man didn’t argue, or worse, apologise. Thin-lipped, he looked away, before slithering back down the rock slab. When he was in no danger of presenting a silhouette to the skyline, he stood up and carried on, angling his descent down the sharp frost-shattered ridge that Büber was still perched on top of.

  Büber had no idea if he’d made the situation better or worse. And he ought to have sent the distance-pipe back with Thorlander for safe-keeping. Thaler and Sophia’s father had presented the first one they’d made to Felix, the second to him.

  He turned the two ends to shorten the tube again and pressed the lens covers back in place, before slipping the instrument back inside his satchel. Back on his stomach again, he wondered at the best way to approach the hidden part of the valley.

  What unsighted him was a wooded spur that dropped from the ridgeline down to just above the town. He could try to traverse the ridge, but then he’d lose too much height, and there’d be no guarantee he’d have a clear view.

  Simpler to just go to the spur and take a look. Would the dwarves have pickets that far up? He hadn’t been spotted so far, despite his group spending a week in the next valley along. The dwarves might be so new to being above ground that it hadn’t occurred to them they might need to stop people from spying on what they were doing.

  There was a stadia or two of clear ground from the summit of the ridge to the first scrubby bushes, and the slope of the ground was such that this was in full sun. His moving shadow would be obvious, but he certainly didn’t want to wait until dusk.

  Nothing for it but to make for the tree line on the south side of the ridge and go around it. A cross-cutting valley was just to his left, and then he’d be in cover all the way down.

  He checked his position one last time, then slipped back the way he’d come, scrabbling down the steep scree – which had taken him hours to climb – running even as the ground under him slipped and slid under his feet. His scabbard rattled against the stones and his satchel banged against his hip, but he was in control, all the way to where the scree stopped and the ground flattened out.

  After that, things took longer. He would walk, stop, listen, and only then move again. Sometimes he dropped lower, just to check whether any patrols had passed that way and might be likely to do so again. There were no signs, and it appeared that the dwarves genuinely believed they’d driven all the humans out, and that this was now their land.

  Büber was going to take advantage of that.

  There was a dip before the next rise. The trees – proper trees, not stunted, cold-damaged specimens – hid his approach, and he was able to walk on rock, soil and needle-strewn ground as silently as he could in the depths of the forest where everything was green and cool and still.

  He topped the ridge, and made his way down the other side. The next time he stopped and listened, he could hear the sounds of sawing and hammering. Lots of hands were at work, not just a few. Their noise would cover his approach.

  Slower and slower. The trees were obscuring his sight-lines even as the downhill gradient steepened for the last part of the drop to the valley floor. He held himself up against one trunk, then crouched and slithered to the next. His rough fingers smelt of moss and pine where he’d pressed them into the bark.

  Gods, they made a racket with all their industry. It was as if all the metal-workers on Coin Alley had taken their forges and set them up next to the saw pits and lathes of the carpenters. The noise, previously useful, was now a hazard. He might stumble into an individual dwarf, or a whole group of them, and not have any warning at all.

  The light between the tree-trunks grew brighter, and he could start to see shapes through the gaps. He twisted his head to try and make sense of what he saw: a wheel here, a wall of planks there – such things were outside his experience. He risked going forward another few feet to get a clearer view.

  Now he could see better. There were lines of wagons, too many to count. Some had four wheels like carts; some longer ones had six. Each was completely covered – sides, front, roof – with a gently pitched roof and a pointed front. There were doors at the back.

  Büber wondered what they might be for, and what might pull them. Dwarves didn’t use horses. They couldn’t be mobile barracks, surely, because tents were easier to carry and more versatile.

  They were big, too. What were they meant to carry?

  Perhaps Thaler would be able to make more sense of them. Whatever their intended use, the dwarves’ unstinting labour and resources were being poured into making as many of them as they could. They were clearly important, so it was vital to Carinthia to understand what they were.

  Closer still, then. He ducked down and crept to the last tree. Beyond that was clear ground, then a stone-and-turf wall. There seemed to be no gate or gap in this for him to slip through, and the grass in front of the wall showed evident signs of wear. Booted feet had passed that way, and often.

  He might have got past it at night, but not by day. It was time to go. He edged backwards, keeping a wary eye on the wall. A group of dwarves ambled past, speaking casually, making no attempt to look for intruders. They seemed to be craftsmen; one carried a bucket, and they all had hammers.

  They passed without so much as glancing in Büber’s direction, though, had they done so, what would they have seen? Just another shadow in the trees, green and brown, perfectly still, perfectly silent.

  He watched their backs recede, then started up again.

  77

  Felix’s forebears had faced down the might of the Roman legions with nothing more than their courage, a stout spear, and sufficient drilling to make them stand in line and face the enemy. That and their priest-kings’ wild magic.

  A thousand years of peace, and Felix knew nothing of magic, while his subjects seemed to have lost the ability to even stand in line.

  Sophia pretended not to look, keeping her face down at the pages of the book in her lap, but she could see the problems. The sergeant had them ten abreast, eight deep, with their spears resting upright on their shoulders, except that they were ragged and disorderly. When they lowered their weapons, they hit each other rather than forming a wall of spear-points.

  “Again,” Felix said wearily to the sergeant, who was newly promoted to his post after Reinhardt had gone to command the troops at Rosenheim. As the man shouted and swore his way back to the start line, Felix walked over to where Sophia sat. She wedged her tongue between her teeth and pretended to concentrate on the words in front of her.

  “It’s hopeless. They all have two left feet and two left thumbs.” He sat on the chair beside her. “If we have to take the field now, we’ll be slaughtered.”

  She looked up absently, “They’re good men. Remember that.”

  “They’ll be dead men soon enough if we can’t get them to keep a formation.” Felix snatched up his mug of small beer, only to find it empty. “We lost what martial strength we
had at Obernberg. No one knows how to do this any more.”

  “Hire soldiers. We’ve got the coin.”

  “I refuse to hire mercenaries. They’ll be on us like wolves.”

  She turned the page. The vellum was old and crisp, and the binding creaked. “Just enough to train our militias, Felix. Send to Milano, or Lutetia. Your cousins will help.”

  “We don’t have time.”

  She made that noise, with her tongue behind her teeth, that he didn’t like.

  “Don’t tut me.”

  She couldn’t deny it. “Have none of the stories you’ve heard ended with, ‘So the brave prince, having previously gone with a sack of gold to his neighbours to beg for veterans, was able to defeat his foe’s army so thoroughly that they all lived happily ever after’?”

  Sophia could tell by the look he gave her that they hadn’t. She closed her copy of Tacitus’s Germania, and passed it to Felix.

  “Neither have I. My stories depend on the faithfulness of the people of Israel to HaShem. That doesn’t always end well, either.” She got up, adjusted her clothing and strode out into the courtyard. She walked along the line of men, and they grew silent under her gaze.

  “My lady,” said the sergeant. “Do you wish to address the troops?”

  “Troops?” She pursed her lips. “Yes.”

  “At ease, lads. M’lady wants a word.”

  “A word?” she said under her breath. “I’ll give them more than a word.” She unsheathed the sword on her belt and held it point-down on the flags. Now she had their attention. “Tacitus tells me that in the days when the Romans fought your grandfathers’ grandfathers, the wives and mothers of the tribe used to go into battle with their menfolk. Perhaps we should revive this tradition. Perhaps we should put them in the vanguard of the Wild Boar’s Head instead of you, because, despite your sergeant’s clear instruction, you’re all determined to be worm-food come battle.”