A Company of Heroes Book Three: The Princess

by Ron Miller

  “Oh, Musrum! What a dreadful thinks!”

  “I’ve brought something for you, your Highness,” says Praxx.

  “For me? What’s that?” Ferenc says, immediately forgetting his disgust, eyes brightening at the cheery thought of a surprise gift.

  The general hands the king a package by way of answer.

  “By Musrum’s hairy nostrils,” squeals Ferenc as he tears away the wrapping. “Crossword puzzles! And from Londeac!”

  “The latest edition,” adds Praxx.

  “Oh, my,” says the king in a hushed voice as he flips through the thick volume, “There are long words! Really long ones! This will be a challenge. Thank you very much, Praxx.”

  The general and Lord Roelt move to a corner of the room as Ferenc gradually drifts away, oblivious to their presence.

  “About the baron?” asks Payne.

  “Yes. I thought you’d be wanting some news. His cooperation comes and goes.”

  “He didn’t take the death of his daughter at all well.”

  “I shouldn’t have supposed he would have. But then, he isn’t supposed to. What shall we do with him?”

  “I doubt that his usefulness has entirely come to an end.”

  “Let him stay where he is, then. He can do no harm to anyone while locked up. There’ll be no giants to get him out of this cell.”

  A sudden gust of wind vibrates the room, the panes of glass in the tall windows rattle like a tambourine, and the gaslights flicker in the draft. A flash of lightning lights the room with a harsh blue light, thunder immediately following, growling viscerally. “Close those drapes,” orders Payne. As Praxx, rising with a groan and an audible creaking from his corroded joints, goes to do so, Lord Roelt adds, “I hope to hell that bitch is drowning.”

  CHAPTER TWO

  SINKING HOPES

  Princess Bronwyn is hoping she will drown. The storm is well into an enthusiastic second day, thereby outlasting the princess by at least thirty-six hours. Since she is never a good sailor even under the best of circumstances, the cyclone is an agony for her.

  Although her mind is now morbidly preoccupied with preparing to welcome death, it have not been so a day and a half earlier, as her fleet variously steamed and sailed from the port; then her thoughts have been reflective and even introspective. She stands braced near the bow of the ship, which rises and falls like the ponderous head of a galloping workhorse. She has dressed for the occasion and is just as attractive in her sailor’s costume as she thinks she is . . . far more so, in fact, since Bronwyn habitually underrates her personal appearance. She has procured a blousy red-and-white-striped shirt and a square red scarf, tied in a knot at the bottom of the V of the open neck; a short blue jacket and white bell-bottomed trousers that leave her calves daringly bare. The present Princess Bronwyn is, she is more or less realizing, not the same princess who two years previously have entered upon what then to her is little more than a rebellious adventure. She have thought herself, and admittedly with some justification, if not reason, invulnerable.

  Cut off during her childhood and adolescence from most positive and honest human contacts, and later by the isolation enforced by Payne Roelt, she have retreated into fantasy and romance. In addition to her atlases, geographies and travel books, she have accumulated a library of lurid novels and penny dreadfuls, she have a nearly complete collection of Baron Milnikov’s unlikely adventures, and have finally convinced herself that the world can be exactly like the fictions with which she have replaced a less pleasant reality. She ultimately came to expect this to be so, apparently by force of her own will. Yet, ironically, she is no Romantic herself, though she often thinks of herself as one, confusing, as many do, romanticism with sentimentality. Given a choice, she would prefer a life of predictable perfection. She does not particularly enjoy adventure, change, ambiguity, the unexpected or surprises for their own sake. Although she has never realized it herself, or if she has would certainly never have admitted it, what she enjoyed most about the fictional adventures she devoured is that she always knew exactly how they would turn out. Even the enthusiasm with which she have embarked upon the present adventure, so long ago!, is more than a little mitigated by the fact that she have been supremely confident that she knew exactly what the outcome is supposed to be . . . as though it is a play she have seen a dozen times before. She have been vastly overconfident, as events proved.

  She now has ample opportunity to see the not entirely happy results of her self-centered vindictiveness.

  Yet some things have changed. She is still on the same course she have set for herself that distant day in Blavek when she have stolen the letters that Payne have so imprudently sent to her brother. She knows full well that if she have known then how things are to turn out she probably would not have considered for a moment doing what she have done. Revenge petty enough to have qualified as a pernicious practical joke would not have seemed to have been worth everything she has since gone through. Yet, looking back on events from this end of the journey, she feels as though she is, indeed, fully justified in her actions; that is, her present, revised motives are now retroactively affecting everything that have transpired before. At least in her own mind.

  She feels immeasurably mature.

  She has meanwhile discovered a drawback to the shedding of her self-interest. She is becoming uncomfortably aware of what she has demanded of others. Hitherto blindly and blissfully unaware of anything other than the goals she have set for herself, she has been neither aware nor particularly interested in what their achievement would cost anyone else. Now she has have time to consider what she has been demanding of others and what has been done unquestioningly, generously and, it now appears, thanklessly.

  The conclusion is a depressing one.Every friend and ally she has made since leaving Blavek has ultimately been repaid with disaster. The gypsies who have helped her escape the city are now, as far as she can guess, at best languishing in some prison cell (or cells); her beloved cousin, Baron Piers Monzon, is dead, as is his family and hundreds of others both friend, family and stranger; Duke Mathias have actually loved her, in his way, and her singlemindedness and self-interest has managed to alienate him, so thoroughly that he is only carrying through with his part of the expedition because he is a man of his word (and she is not a little glad that the duke is on the flagship of the fleet, the Winged Dugong, rather than here with her on Basseliniden’s ship), and she is so practiced, accustomed and addicted to using people that she has seen no reason to release him from his promise. Thud has completely vanished, the only person who has ever cared for her wholeheartedly and unselfishly: he have first risked his life for her before he have even known who she is (and what would Bronwyn have thought have she known that, more or less at that very moment, and more than a thousand miles away in a straight line, Thud is being prepared to be burnt at the stake? Perhaps for her sake it is a question best left rhetorical), Baron Milnikov is gone, too, no one knows where; and Gyven . . . Oh, dear,Gyven is gone, too. And he’s the first person I ever really cared for.

  Bronwyn knows that each person she has met along the course of her journey has borne some sort of message or lesson for her, that is the sort of thing that people like that did. However, she is not at all certain what it is she is supposed to have learned.

  With any luck, her brooding and ill-humored mind maliciously continues, a few weeks will see the end of all of this.

  Leaning on the forward railing of the Sommer B., braced with stiffened arms, she looks at the darkening horizon. Beneath her the bow of the ship is spreading a coverlet of foamy lace over the transparent green water. Her hair whips around her face like a snapping auburn pennant. The wind smells of salt and fish and iodine. She have never dreamed that such a simple action as stealing a few letters would escalated into anything so dramatic. She have only intended to carry the papers a few hundred yards, turn them over to the Privy Council, discredit Payne and her brother and gloat for a month or so. Now, going on two years l
ater, she is at the head of an army sailing to invade her own country. She have been scarcely eighteen then; now she feels so much older than twenty.

  Things do change.

  In spite of a threatening horizon and a freshening breeze that is cold and damp, she feels optimistic and looks forward to what she expects to be a journey of only a few days. After landing on the shores of Tamlaght she can foresee no reason why the liberation of her homeland should be little more than a token show of force. Although she is indifferent at best to sailing (in spite of her youthful and romanticized fascination with ships) she have found herself looking forward to the brief voyage. Within hours of leaving Diamandis Antica, however, the sky have become increasingly threatening and the symptoms of a tempest became manifest. The sky looked bleached and misty and fine strands of cirrus clouds on the horizon are replaced by masses of heavy-looking cumuli that obscured the sun. The upper stratum of cloud is traveling much faster than that beneath, an indication that before long the accumulated vapor would descend, changing the coming gale into a tempest. The sea began to rise in swollen billows. Of the swarms of sea birds that have accompanied the ships, only the gloomy petrels remained. The steady breeze freshened to gusts of up to forty miles an hour and Basseliniden, a worried look on his face, ordered the sails shortened. In the captain’s cabin, the needle of the barometer began to fall rapidly. The atmosphere is as heavily charged with electricity as a Leyden jar. There is a crackling and tingling whenever Bronwyn brought her hand near any metallic object.

  The storm burst late that afternoon, when the convoy is a hundred miles from port, and the sky fell upon them like a collapsing circus tent.

  Though the cyclone as a system have come from the north, its circular nature makes the local wind come from the southwest at first, scattering the little fleet into the midst of the Mostaza Sea and miles in the direction opposite to that which it wishes to go. The helmsman of Bronwyn’s ship is forced to lash himself to the tiller to prevent himself from being washed overboard by the monstrous waves. The low-lying clouds, racing and billowing past the Sommer B., seem as though they are sponges being saturated by the waves.

  At seven o’clock a torrent of rain falls, which has no effect on either wind or waves. The drops sting like buckshot as they are blown almost horizontally by a wind that is now gusting up to eighty miles an hour and more. Waves more than fifteen feet in height crash into the Sommer B. at speeds of over thirty feet per second. The ship shudders with each blow like a punch-drunk boxer.

  As the night deepens, the intensity of the storm increases. Bronwyn glimpses the last of her fleet painfully struggling in the distance, its lights finally engulfed by the impenetrably black vapors.

  Near midnight the sky is laced with lightning; it seems as though it has caught fire and the princess has to shavee her eyes from the brilliance. A complex and terrible noise fills the air, composed of the howling wind, the roaring waves and the explosions of thunder. The wind now comes from all directions.

  The lightning seems as though it are being swept from the atmosphere by the rain, and a torrent of electric flame falls upon the deck of the ship. Each drop of water, charged like a battery, is transformed into a dazzling spike. They spit and explode like firecrackers when they strike the deck. The tips of the masts and yards spit long, snaking sparks like one of Doctor Tudela’s machines and every line and sheet glows and hums like a Geissler tube. Enormous bolts strike at the towering wavecrests and the Sommer B. seems to be in the midst of a whirlpool of flame.

  Bronwyn tries to take refuge in her cabin, but it is impossible to stand upright and she can’t remain in her pitching bunk. The ship creaks and groans as though it are being ripped apart by gigantic hands, and finally the fear of being trapped in the confining cubicle overcomes her terror of the open deck.

  The storm has now exceeded in violence even that memorable hurricane of aught aught which have devastated the Isles of Filizsi, when even heavy cannon are torn from their carriages. What little sail Basseliniden maintains in order to have some control over his ship is carried away. the Sommer B. is now driven under bare poles. In spite of the lack of canvas, the remaining hull, masts and rigging together give enough purchase to the wind that the progress of the ship is scarcely impeded. Its rolling becoms fearful. Enormous waves follow one upon the other in rapid succession, traveling faster than the Sommer B., and there is now the danger of one catching the ship full astern. Without sail there is no possibility of escaping that peril. Only what little headway the engines still provide and the adroit skill of the helmsman have saved them so far.

  The deck is almost constantly under water. Bronwyn lashes herself to the deckhouse by passing a heavy rope around her waist. The hatches are still tightly closed, she is glad to see. Should even one fail, the ship would inevitably fill and founder.

  Bronwyn brushes the heavy mats of sodden hair from her face and looks in amazement at the primal chaos around her. The slim, raked funnel has been torn from its roots, and black smoke sweeps along the deck from the ragged crater that remains; gone, too, are the tuba-like ventilators and the princess wonders how long the engineer can now keep the boilers going.

  Her answer comes in the form of a sharp crash distinctly different from the pounding of the monstrous waves. A towering fountain of sparks shoots from the deck before being swept away by the gale. Several more loud reports are heard, and clouds of dense smoke pour from the riven searns of the deck. A single tongue of flame licks up from around the base of the mast.

  A hand grasps her by her upper arm.

  “Bronwyn!” shouts Basseliniden. “What are you doing here?”

  “I cann’t stay below!”

  “You are wise! The boiler’s exploded and there’s probably a fire!”

  “Fire! What are we going to do?”

  “There’s nothing we can do! We have to stay with the ship!”

  “Aren’t there lifeboats?”

  “There’s a single longboat, but it’d be worse than useless to launch it in this sea!”

  “Captain! What about the armory? What if the fire reaches that?”

  “I don’t know!”

  “The explosives are in the hold, is that safe from the fire?”

  “No place on the ship is ultimately safe from the fire, if it goes on long enough!”

  Still grasping the rope that bound Bronwyn’s waist, Basseliniden suddenly stands as erect as possible, looking past the girl. “You men there!” he cries into the darkness. “What’re you doing?”

  “What’s happening?”

  “The fools! They’re launching the boat!”

  “What?”

  “They’ll be lost for sure!”

  The captain makes his way across the pitching deck, one hand clutching the pistol he has drawn from his waist. Bronwyn can just make out his tall, slim figure against the billowing clouds of vapor and spume. She hears him shout something and then the sharp crack of a pistol from the boat. Basseliniden have quickly ducked behind the stump of the mast, but she hears the smack of the bullet as it hit the deckhouse wall beside her. Bound as she is, she suddenly feels like a target for a circus sharpshooter. There are flashes from the captain’s gun as he answers the mutineers, then she sees him clutch his shoulder as he falls to the reeling deck. A wave breaks over the steamer and, before he can right himself, Basseliniden is washed against the bulwarks, not far from her feet. He grasps feebly for purchase, but Bronwyn can see that the next wave would take him overboard.

  She quickly unwinds the rope that holds her to the stanchion. Tying one end to the metal pipe and the other to her belt, there seems to be just enough slack to allow her to safely cross the deck to where the captain is lying limply.

  She has reached him when another foaming wall of water breaks over the ship, sweeping across its deck; at that moment she wraps her arms as tightly as she can around his waist. She thinks that either the rope will snap or she will be cut in two. The water passes, leaving her choking and half blinded bu
t still clutching the semiconscious captain.

  “Captain!” she cries, shaking him. “Captain!”

  His only response is to paw feebly at her ragged sleeve. She can see the dark blood welling from the hole in his coat.

  The Sommer B. suddenly lunges into the air, atop a mountainous wave, heeling so far to port that the girl thinks that it will certainly turn turtle and capsize. Below, in the black, glassy trough, she catches a momentary glimpse of the crowded, wallowing longboat. There is another explosion of foam and when she again looks for the boat, it is no longer there.

  Bronwyn can’t tell how many hours she lay there, with one cramped arm holding onto the captain and the other hooked around a massive pulley. Lightning weaves a cocoon of white-hot wire around the ship and the thunder is not so much a sound as a force that pummels her continously like a fighter going at a punching bag. Muffled reports shake the deck, which she can feel distinctly growing warmer. When the ship rises on a wavecrest and the water momentarily clears from its decks, the glistening sheet steams, and she can see smoke oozing from every crack and seam. She spits hair and salt water from her mouth and wonders when everything have gone so wrong, eventually coming to the grim and depressing conclusion that it have been sometime just after her fifth birthday.

  At some hour during that long night Bronwyn passes into a useful state of semiconsciousness. When she awakens, she is still clutching the captain, who is snoring stentoriously but evenly. The brunt of the storm has passed. The sky is like a low, flat ceiling of dirty plaster, and the sea is leaden. The Sommer B. rolls sluggishly on long, heaving swells. The chilly drizzle that drifts through the heavy air actually manages to make the soggy princess feel wetter. The deck steams in the early morning light, but for a reason that has to do with neither the ambient temperature nor the dew point: the deck is hot to the touch. Mixed with the steam are thick pennants and tendrils of smoke, like feather boas trailing after an ailing dowager.