The Merchants' War: Book Four of the Merchant Princes

by Charles Stross

  “Sir, do I have the honor of addressing Otto, Baron Neuhalle?”

  Second impressions were an improvement: the fellow was young, perhaps only twenty, and easily impressed—or maybe just stupid. “That would be me.” Otto inclined his head. “And who are you?” He kept his right hand away from his sword. A glance behind the fellow took in Jorg, ready to draw at a moment’s notice, and he nodded slightly.

  “I have the honor to be Eorl Geraunt voh Marlburg, second son of Baron voh Marlburg, my lord. I am here at the word of my liege his majesty—” He broke off, nonplussed, at a particularly loud outbreak of wailing and prayers from the corral. “—I’m sorry, my lord, I bear dispatches.”

  Otto relaxed slightly. “I would be happy to receive them.” He snapped his fingers. “Jorg, fetch a tankard of ale for Eorl Geraunt, if you please.” Jorg nodded and headed for the ale cart, his hand leaving his sword hilt as he turned, and the other hand-man, Hein, took a step back. “Have you had a difficult time finding us?”

  “Not too difficult, sir.” Geraunt bobbed his head: “I had but to follow the trail of wise trees.” Behind Otto, the crying and praying was choked off abruptly as his men raised further tribute to Sky Father. “His majesty is less than a day’s hard ride away.”

  Otto glanced at Geraunt’s horse. He could take a hint. “Henryk, if you could find someone to see to the eorl’s horse…” He turned back to Geraunt as his other hand-man strode off. “How fares his majesty?”

  Sir Geraunt grinned excitedly. “He does great deeds!” A nod at the tree: “Not to belittle your own, my lord, but he sweeps through the countryside like the scythe of his grandsire, reaping the fields of disorder and uprooting weeds!” He reached into the leather purse dangling from his belt and pulled out a parchment envelope, sealed with wax along its edges. “His word, as I stand before you, my lord.”

  “Thank you.” Otto accepted the letter, glanced at the seal, then slit it open with his small knife. Within, he found the crabbed handwriting of one of Egon’s scribes. “Hmm.” The message was short and to the point. He glanced round, as Jorg returned with Geraunt’s beer and Heidlor walked over.

  “Sergeant. How long until you are finished with the prisoners?”

  Heidlor shrugged. “Before sundown, I would say, sir. Perhaps in as little as one bell.”

  Otto frowned. This was taking too long. “We have orders to march. Much as it pains me to deprive Sky Father of his own, I think we’d better speed things up. So once the men have finished decorating that branch—” he pointed: there was barely room for another three bodies “—hmm, how many are we left with? Two score?” This particular house had been full of refugees, and the village with collaborators. “Strip them naked, whip them into the woods, and fire the buildings with their clothes and chattels inside. We’ll have to rely on winter to do the rest of our work here.”

  Sir Geraunt blanched. “Isn’t that a bit harsh?” he asked.

  “His majesty was most specific.” Otto tapped his finger on the letter. “I don’t have time to gently send them to their one-eyed father—you say his Majesty is a day’s ride away? We have to meet with him by this time tomorrow. With my men.”

  “Oh, I see. If I may be permitted to ask, did he issue orders for my disposition, my lord? I am anxious to return—”

  “You may ride with us.” He turned and walked away, towards his tent. “I’m sure there’ll be enough wise trees for everyone if he’s right about this,” he muttered to himself, for the summons was unequivocal: It is time to seek a concentration of fluxes, his majesty had ordained. To draw the tinker-witches into a real battle, by threatening a target they couldn’t afford to lose with force they couldn’t ignore. It would mean attacking a real target, not just another of these tedious manor estates. It would probably be either Fort Lofstrom or Castle Hjorth, and Otto would be willing to bet good money on the latter.

  Begin Transcript:

  “Good evening, your grace!”

  “Indeed it is, indeed it is, Eorl Riordan. A lovely evening. And how are you?”

  “I am well, sir. As well as can be expected.”

  “For a fellow who is well, your face is uncommonly glum. Here, sit down. A glass of the Cabernet, perhaps?”

  “Thank you, sir. What can I do for you?”

  “Hmm, direct and to the point. Let me ask you a leading question, then. You may answer as indiscreetly as you care—it will go no farther than this room. How do you rate our performance?”

  “Tactical or strategic? Or logistic and economic?”

  “Whichever you deem most important. I want to know, in confidence, what you think we’re doing wrong and what you think we’re doing right.”

  “Doing right?” (Brief laughter.) “Nothing.”

  “That’s—” (Pause.) “—a provocative statement. Would you elaborate?”

  “Yes, your grace. May I start with a summary?”

  “Be my guest.”

  “We are engaged in a war on two fronts. I shall ignore the first hostility for now, and concentrate on the second, because that’s the one you assigned me to deal with. Hostilities started when the former crown prince usurped the throne. It is evident from the speed and nature of his actions that he had been planning to do so for some time, and that he had already assured himself of the support of a sufficiently broad base of the nobility, before he moved, to have some hope of success. However, his move may well have been reactive—a response to the imminent marriage of his younger brother. So to start with, we are fighting an opponent who has studied his enemies and who has prepared extensively for this conflict, but whose execution was rushed.”

  “Hmm. How do you evaluate his preparations?”

  “They were confoundedly good, your grace. His control over the royal Life Guards, for one thing—that was a nasty surprise. His ability to install explosives in the palace—his possession of them—speaks of a level of planning that has given me sleepless nights. The Pervert may be many things but he isn’t stupid. Despite his well-known antipathy for our number, he has studied us closely. It is impossible to now ask his grand-dame how much lore she may have passed on to him, but we should take it as read that when he refers to us as ‘witches’ he knows exactly what we are capable of. For example, rather than holding Niejwein and the castles surrounding it, he immediately departed for the field, where I am told he sleeps among his troops, never in the same tent twice. Sir, he clearly knows how the civil war was fought: he knows exactly what tactics we would first think to use against an enemy noble, and his defenses are as good as anything we could muster for one of our own.”

  “You’ve considered the usual routes, I take it? An assassination team from the other side?”

  “Yes, your grace. It would be suicidal. For one thing, as I said, he sleeps among his men, in the field, always moving—for another, he has body doubles. We have identified at least two of them on different occasions, and they’re good actors: there is a good chance we would be striking at a puppet rather than their master. Finally, he has bodyguards. And I fear we have been too liberal with our gifts over the past decades: either that, or they’ve captured some hedge-lord’s private cabinet of arms, because I have confirmation that his Majesty’s hand-men carry MP-5s.”

  (Pause.) “All right, so the Pervert’s a hard target. Now. The strategic picture?”

  “Certainly, your grace. The enemy has divided his forces into battalion strength raiding units. They’re in the field and they’re hurting us. It’s a—this is embarrassing—a classic insurgency. The royal battalions fall on our outlying villages, hit them hard, massacre and destroy everything they can get their hands on, then disappear into the forest again. It’s absolutely not how you’d expect an eastern monarch to fight, it’s downright dishonorable—but it’s how the Pervert is fighting. He’s serious, sir, he’s trying to force us to divide our strength. And he’s succeeded. We’ve had to move as many dependents as possible over to the other side, and keep couriers on standby everywhere. An
d even that’s not enough. We’ve used helicopters to rush armed detachments into position on the other side a couple of times, and it worked on that bastard Lemke—he won’t be burning any more villages—but the more we do it, the greater the risk that the Americans will notice. He’s got us on the defensive, and each time he hits us we either lose a village or we lose men we can’t afford to—and he gains honor. This week I’ve lost eleven dead and fourteen injured badly enough they won’t be fighting again for months. That’s not including the outer family members, dependents, servants, peasants and the like. I think we’ve accounted for a good couple of hundred of the foe, but they’re not stupid: usually the first warning of an attack we have is when a cannon ball comes through a manor house door. There’s a limit to what a lance with M-16s and a SAW can do against a battalion of dragoons and a cavalry squadron—some of whom have Glocks.”

  “Ah, yes. I thought you’d bring that up. Be glad you don’t have to explain it to the council, Eorl Riordan. They know it’s wrong, but they still can’t help but petition for protection, which is why three quarters of our number are guarding strategic hamlets or sitting in helicopter hangars on the other side. It’s what we exist for, and we’re being nibbled to death by mice. What would you do, were you in charge?”

  “I’d set out a mouse trap, your grace. We can’t afford to suffer the death of a thousand cuts—Clan Security has, what? Two hundred inner family? Nearly a thousand armed and trained retainers? And up to six hundred world-walkers to call in for the corvee, if we need logistic support. The usurper outnumbers us five to one, but we’ve got SAWs and two-way radio while they’re limited to roundshot, grapeshot, and horseback couriers. We should be able to massacre those raiding parties, if we can just once anticipate not only their next target, but their path of advance.”

  “Hmm. Suppose I were to tell you exactly where the enemy is planning to mass for a major strike, next Tuesday. Not just one of their battalions, but three of them, a goodly chunk of the royal army. Would that enable you to prepare a suitable reception for him?”

  “Would—your grace! Please say it’s true!”

  (Pause.) “The source is…troubling. I would not completely discount all risk of it being a deliberate leak, intended to lure us into a trap. Still. Be that as it may, I am informed—by one who stands to profit from that information—that there is a high probability of an attack on Castle Hjorth within the next two weeks. Which strikes me as suicidal, given the location and defenses of the castle, so I advise you to bear in mind the possibility that even if my source is telling the truth, they are not telling us everything. But, having said that, I want you to work out what we’re going to do about it. Because if it is true, my informer tells me that the Pervert himself will lead the attack. And this might be our best opportunity to kill him and end the war.”

  END TRANSCRIPT

  10

  Interaction

  As it happened, Mike didn’t get to go home that day—or the next. “You live on your own in a second-floor apartment, and you’ve got a lovely spiral fracture plus soft tissue injuries and a damaged Achilles tendon, Mr. Fleming. Listen, I’ll happily sign you out—if you fill in a criminal negligence waiver for me, first. But I really think it’s a bad idea right now. Maybe tomorrow, when we’ve got you a nice fiberglass box and a set of crutches, after we set you up with an appointment with physio. But if you check out today, you’ll wish you hadn’t.”

  The time passed slowly, with the inane babble of daytime TV as a laugh track, interrupted occasionally by nursing orderlies and interns checking up on him. Smith hadn’t left him any reading matter, classified or otherwise, and he was close to climbing the walls by the morning of the second day after Smith’s visit, when he had a surprise visitor: Judith Herz, the FBI agent who’d been sucked into Family Trade at the same time at Mike.

  “Smith sent me. You’re checking out,” she said crisply, and dropped an overnight bag on the chair. “Here’s your stuff, I’ll be back in ten.”

  She shut the door briskly, leaving Mike shaking his head. What got her so pissed? He opened the bag and pulled out the clothing. It was the stuff he’d been wearing over a week ago, before the CLEANSWEEP mission ran off the rails. He shook it out and managed to get the trouser leg over his cast without too much trouble. By the time Herz opened the door again, he was buttoning his jacket. “Yes?” he asked.

  “I’m your lift.” She waved a key fob at him. “You going to be okay walking, or do you need a wheelchair?”

  Mike frowned. “I’ll walk. Give me time, I’m not used to these things.” He eased his weight onto the crutches and took an experimental step forward. “Let’s go.”

  She said nothing more all the way to the parking lot. As they neared a black sedan Mike’s impatience got the better of him. “You’re not in the taxi business. What’s the big problem?”

  “I wanted to talk to you without eavesdroppers.” She squeezed the key fob: lights flashed and doors unlocked.

  “Okay, talk.” Mike’s stomach twisted. Last time someone said that to me, he ended up dead.

  She opened the passenger door. “Here, give me those, I’ll put them in the trunk.” A minute later she slid behind the wheel and moved off. “Your house is under surveillance.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  She gave him a look. “Like that, is it? Care to explain why?”

  “Because—” he stopped in mid-sentence “—what business of yours is it?”

  She braked to a stop, near the end of the exit ramp, looking for a gap in the traffic. “It’d be kind of nice to know that I’ve been taken off hunting for a ticking bomb and told to stake out a colleague’s house for a good reason.” Her voice crackled with quiet anger.

  Mike swallowed. Good cop, he realized. What to say…? “It’s not me you’re staking out. I’m expecting a visitor.”

  “Okay.” She hit the gas hard, pushing out into a too-small gap in the traffic: a horn blared behind them for a moment, then they were clear. “But they’d better be worth it.”

  Mike swallowed again. “Listen. You know the spooks are calling the shots. I got dragged off into fairyland, but you don’t have to follow me down the rabbit hole.”

  “Too late. I’m in charge of the team that’s watching you. I just found out about it yesterday. If it’s not you, who am I meant to be keeping an eye open for?”

  “Someone who may be able to tell us whether he was bluffing or if there really is a bomb—and if so, where he might have planted it.”

  Herz swung left into the passing lane. “Good answer.” Her fingers tightened on the wheel. “That’s what I wanted to hear. Is it true?”

  Mike took a deep breath. “The NIRT guys are still working their butts off, right?”

  “Yes…”

  “Then in the absence of a forensics lead or an in formant you’re not delivering much value-added, are you? They’re the guys with the neutron scattering spectrometers and the Geiger counters. You’re the detective. What did the colonel tell you to do?”

  Herz took an on-ramp, then accelerated onto the interstate: “Stake you out like a goat. Watch and wait, twenty-four by seven. You’re supposed to tell me what to do, when to wrap up the case.”

  “Hmm.” What have I gotten myself into here? “I really ought to get the colonel to tell me whether I can fill you in on a couple of codewords.”

  Herz set the cruise control and glanced at him, sidelong. “He told me you’d been on something called CLEANSWEEP, and this is the follow-up.”

  Mike felt the tension ease out of his shoulders. “I hate the fucking spook bullshit,” he complained. “Okay, let me fill you in on CLEANSWEEP and how I got my leg busted up. Then maybe I can help you figure out a surveillance plan…”

  Miriam watched from the back room while Erasmus systematically looted his own shop. “Go through the clothing and take anything you think you’ll need,” he told her. “There’s a traveling case downstairs that you can use. We’re going to be away for two we
eks, and we’ll not be able to purchase any necessities until we reach Fort Kinnaird.”

  “But I can’t just—” Miriam shook her head. “Are you sure?”

  “Whose shop is it?” He flashed her a cadaverous grin. “I’ll be upstairs. Got to fetch a book.”

  The traveling case in the cellar turned out to be a battered leather suitcase. Miriam hauled it up into the back room and opened it, wrinkling her nose. It looked clean enough, although the stained silk lining, bunched at one side, made her wonder at its previous owner’s habits. She stuffed the contents of her valise into it, then scoured the rails in the back for anything else appropriate. There wasn’t much there: Erasmus had run down the stock of clothes since she’d last seen the inside of his shop. A search of the pigeonholes behind the counter yielded a fine leather manicure case and a good pen. She was tucking them into the case when Erasmus reappeared, carrying a couple of books and a leather jewelry case.

  “What’s that?” she asked.

  “Stock I’m not leaving in an empty shop for two weeks.” He pulled another suitcase out from a cubby behind his desk and opened it: “I’m also taking the books to prove I’m their rightful owner, just in case.” It all went in. Then he opened the partition at the back of the counter and rummaged around inside. “You might want to take this…” He held a small leather box out to Miriam.

  “What—” She flicked the catch open. The pistol was tiny, machined with the precision of a watch or a camera or a very expensive piece of jewelry. “Hey, I can’t take—”

  “You must,” Burgeson said calmly. “Whether you ever need to use it is another matter, but I believe I can trust you not to shoot me by mistake, yes?”