A Company of Heroes Book Three: The Princess

by Ron Miller

  Such are Bronwyn’s recollections when she sees, at dawn the following morning, grey ramparts approaching altogether too rapidly. The gaping entrance to the Strait is marked by a rising banner of mist that bisects the ragged-cliffed shoreline. The enormous pinnacles of wave-eroded rock that barricade the Strait make it look for all the world like a crooked-fanged mouth, the thick, misty froth boiling at its lower lip like the foaming slaver of a mad dog.

  “Magnificent!” says a voice beside her; Wittenoom, as though she cann’t have guessed.

  “Only you would think so.”

  “Oh, no,” he replies, her sarcasm missing him completely and evaporating, unappreciated, among the chilly breezes. “You’re wrong, your Highness; a great many people think that the Strait at full flood is one of the great wonders of our world, that is, among the natural wonders, of course. The only debate I’ve ever encountered has pertained to its actual place in the hierarchy of astonishments. It depends a little upon what sort of criteria one bases one’s judgment, I suppose. Are we talking about a kind of spiritual rapture feels when gazing upon a sight so overwhelming from a human standpoint? or the simple, yet for that reason profound, excitement one feels when confronted with such primal energy and power? or should we be swayed by the convincing arguments put forth by the aestheticists, who make a case on purely Romantic grounds? or, on the other hand, what about those who would rank the various wonders solely according to their scientific interest or importance? or, perhaps even more prosaically, on their physical size? I, for one, think that the Strait at full flood ranks among the top two or three, at the very least; in fact, I, personally, would not limit it in such a way and would consider the Strait to be a natural wonder of the first order at any time of the year. My reasoning for this is based upon just these same various arguments I’ve just been mentioning. There are so many valid reasons for considering the Strait to be a great and grand thing that there’s always sufficient cause available.”

  “Are you finished?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “I’m very happy that the Strait impresses you so much; I never realized what a thrill this is going to be for us.”

  “Yes, indeed. This is a wholly unexpected pleasure. I’m seeing the Strait from an entirely novel perspective. Of course, like many others, I’ve visited the Strait purely as a tourist and found myself immensely moved, naturally, as who can not be? And as a scientist, though geology is a little out of my field, I have the additional pleasure of being able to appreciate what is undoubtedly invisible to the awestruck sightseers around me: the appreciation of the vast and irresistible forces at work within our planet. You’re aware, I’m sure, that the Strait is ever-widening? That fifteen or twenty million years from now, what is now a narrow channel will be a vast gulf . . . virtually a new ocean? Of course, the visual and emotional splendor of the Strait as it is now will no longer exist. There’ll be only a gentle current in a broad, flat sea.”

  “About fifteen million years too late for us, I’m afraid.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Hasn’t it occurred to you yet that we’re going through the Strait?”

  “Of course it has.”

  “Basseliniden, you’ve just been sitting there smirking. Say something.”

  “Like what?”

  “Explain to the professor what’s going to happen!”

  “What is going to happen?”

  “Are both of you trying to make me angry or just drive me mad? Both of you know perfectly well that no one’s ever survived passage of the Strait, certainly not at this time of the year! And certainly not ever in a raft!”

  “Well,” says the captain, “exactly what do you propose to do about it?”

  “I don’t propose to just sit here like you and wait to die!”

  “I’m glad to hear that. I’ll watch you, and whatever it is that you’re going to do, I’ll do it too.”

  “There’s no point in being sarcastic!”

  “Sure there is: there’s hardly anything at all to do that’s interesting except make you angry.”

  She produces her most high-voltage glare. When copper is heated to incandescence and its light allowed to pass through a razor-thin slit before being shattered into its component colors by a prism, the resulting spectrum is distinguished by the metal’s telltale sliver of phthalocyanine green light. Bronwyn’s eyes look like a pair of these slivers.

  “Tell me, princess,” asks the captain equably, “have you ever have a thought pass through your mind that did not have ‘me’ in it?”

  “That’s a stupid question, although I met you a year or two ago I’ve only been actually with you altogether a month or so . . .”

  “No, no . . . not ‘me’I, ‘me’ you.”

  She stares at the man as though he have gone insane. Why is he making these nonsensical sound effects? Just to aggravate her? Well, she’d let him see what aggravation really is.

  “If the princess will forgive me for disagreeing with her,” interjects Wittenoom, several paragraphs behind in the conversation, “I believe that she’s somewhat mistaken about the chances of surviving a transit of the Strait. It has been done.”

  “What?” says the Princess. “When?”

  “Twelve nineteen, twenty-one twenty-one, and I don’t seem to recall the precise date for the third instance.”

  “Three times? That’s all?”

  “I didn’t say that it’d been done often.”

  “You have me all aquiver with hope. Why, I’m practically looking forward to it now.”

  “That’s wonderful. I’m so pleased that you’ve changed your mind and have decided to take a greater interest in the geological sciences.”

  Bronwyn shoots Wittenoom a look that would have killed a small bird at thirty paces, but the scientist is as impervious to it as a jellyfish to a knitting needle, and the murderous rays don’t even warm him.

  “Since we have little choice in the matter,” puts in the captain, “perhaps we ought to assess our chances realistically. I for one think that we stand a better than average chance of getting through. The raft is solid, but nevertheless far more flexible than any boat. Short of overturning or smashing to bits against a rock, there’s little else that can cause us any grief.”

  “What more would we need?” asks the princess.

  By this time the shattered cliffs are looming like a monstrous pile of broken crockery. The current is already as swift as any torrent, and in its hurry to squeeze through the relatively narrow entrance to the Strait is creating a wild and confused surf for miles to either side. Waves dozens of feet high are boiling and churning against the jagged coastline and as the princess watches she can see them tear huge chunks of granite loose, which fall into the wild sea, disappearing almost instantly even though some are as large as small houses. The entrance itself seems almost serene by comparison: a glassy, black, slightly domed expanse of water that belies the fact that it is rushing into the gap between the cliffs with the velocity of an express locomotive. The Strait itself is lost within a heavy mist that rises far into the sky above, finally merging with the grey overcast.

  Bronwyn finds herself accepting her oncoming fate with a surprising equanimity. In the past, she has been in more than one terrifying situation, yet however great her terror had been, it had never been disabling. She remembers when she had faced the great bear in the Toth Molnar mountains; she had been almost congealed by fear, yet had nevertheless fought back, however ineffective the effort might have been Yet here there is almost no fear, no real apprehension or regret. The scale does not allow for it. She has never before confronted a Force of Nature and against that there can be nothing but resignation.

  Guesclin Bay is funnel-shaped, with its apex at the entrance to the Strait. As the southward-draining water is compressed into an ever-narrowing space, its speed increases as its volume remains the same, until at that four-mile gap it is moving with the inexorable speed of a kind of horizontal waterfall. The simile wi
th her life as of late is not lost upon the retrospective princess, nor the irony that all of the threads of her life have conspired to come together in this single, cosmic ropewalk.

  Bronwyn sees that although the cliffs to either side are each two miles away, they are nevertheless so high that the upper half of their ramparts is visible to her. She wonders if any curious tourists might be braving the crumbling brink and, if so, if any one of them might be at that moment catching a glimpse of an odd, rectangular fleck of flotsam and are asking themselves what it might be. Are she and her companions even visible at that distance? Is there, perhaps, some curious sightseer turning a two-poenig telescope toward the sleek, flying current? She thinks not; it is far more entertaining to try to pick out one’s opposite number on the Londeacan shore (or vice versa). What the hell, Bronwyn thinks. What the hell.

  The raft is swept into the gaping mouth like a leaf into a storm drain, or a lone krill or plankton into the baleen of a hungry, indifferent whale.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  A FAREWELL

  Baron Milnikov paces his cell nervously and precisely; it is neither more nor less than ten and a half paces plus a fingerwidth in one direction and eleven paces and two finger-widths in the other. His thoughts are occupied by betrayals, as well they might be. He has been terribly betrayed by Payne Roelt and his gang, which has been accomplished at the cost of his only daughter’s life, or so the villains are trying to convince him; and he in turn has betrayed Princess Bronwyn, whom he has loved openly as a daughter—and secretly and painfully as well. And, so far as he knows, this has cost her her life as well.

  His enemies are obviously taking no chances with him. His cell is in the bottommost dungeons of the palace. Its walls are made of massive blocks of dark grey stone, set without mortar, and so large that only eight or nine compose each wall. The rough surfaces are perpetually moist; thin threads of water dribble down them constantly, forming puddles on the uneven stone floor that never dry. The stones are slimy with an evil-looking grey-green algae, and his clothes are becoming moldy as he wears them. Chunks of blackened cloth come away with his fingers. He has no doubt that he is well below the level of the river.

  The only door to his cell is a solid mass of oak, so old as have become completely petrified. Not that it matters: everything that he can have conceivably used as an instrument has be taken from him, from shoelaces to belt buckle. A clever man can have done a lot with a good aglet.

  The only access through the door is an opening about eight inches square near the floor, normally securely sealed by an iron plug. It is through this that he is passed his water and food (stale bread, from which he usually have to scrape a dank, black mildew; cheese that is either as hard as a brick or soft and furry with mold; and occasionally a chunk of an unspeakable sausage: a tube of undercooked gristle and grease that he have not been able, as yet, to bring himself to eat). He is not allowed any utensils. Through the same opening he has to pass his chamber pot.

  He sees nothing of his jailer, other than an occasional glimpse of five hairy, knotted knuckles.

  There are, of course, no windows. The only light is that which leaks around the door. Lanterns must be kept burning in the corridor twenty-four hours a day, and there is consequently no sense of the passage of time.

  It had taken the baron no more than half an hour to familiarize himself with and to memorize every detail of his prison, such details as it possessed. He is impressed with its historicity: he discovers, laboriously engraved in the adamantine walls, unfamiliar names accompanying dates from more than two hundred and fifty years earlier. He decides that he would, at the last, eventually add his name to the anonymous roster. It might, perhaps, give some future historian or biographer a thrill. He envisions a time long after Roelt and Company have passed, as he still has no doubt they will, and the secret places of the palace are opened to tourists as a kind of cautionary memorial, and that there would be a plaque commemorating the site of his imprisonment. Ah, they would say to themselves or aloud, pushing their children, if they have any, shouldering others aside if they didn’t, toward the roped-off doorway, look there . . . that’s where the great, brave, sad hero Baron Milnikov is held prisoner for so long!

  “Really, dear Father?” some handsome, intelligent lad might reply. “The very same wonderful Baron who’s in my favorite books?”

  “The very same, my son.”

  “Golly whiskers!” would be the breathless reply as the good child presses for a better view.

  “The Baron in my books,” continues that precocious and adorable tot, “can have gotten out of this, I bet!”

  “Ho! ho!” replies the parent. “Yes, I’m certain that the legendary Baron Milnikov can have, but you do know that there is a real Baron, too, and his story is far more tragic and heroic and brave than the book Baron.”

  “Oh, do tell me the story of the real Baron Milnikov, Dear Papa, for he is my greatest Hero!”

  And the father and son would go out into the sunlight and the older would relate to the younger the baron’s true story and his greatest adventure, and both would finish with tears in their eyes and the boy’s sworn resolve to grow into just such a great man as Milnikov have been.

  I’d rather be out of here, the baron decides at last, and let the effeminate little brat grow up to be the thug he deserves to be.

  But even the resourceful baron can think of no way out of this cell and, so far as he knows, there is no Thud, Gyven or Bronwyn to help him. And if there is anyone to blame for their absence, he broods ruefully, if unfairly by two-thirds, it is himself.

  Oddly, the baron does not concern himself overly with the report that his daughter, his real daughter, Tholance is dead, primarily because he does not really believe it. What, he tells himself, can the villains possibly hope to obtain by her death? It is only by being able to threaten her extinction that they have any hold upon him. Nothing would be gained by actually carrying through with the threat, especially so long as he continues to be cooperative. Although he considers the king, Payne and Praxx to be virtually dysfunctional sociopaths, even they, he is convinced, would see the pointlessness of killing the harmless child.

  But why, then, tell him that she is dead? What is the idea behind that? Nothing more than a perverse desire to torture him? How can that possibly encourage him to continue his cooperation? The answer is that they are mad, of course, and therefore irresponsible and incapable of being understood by a rational human being.

  Instead, he sets his mind to work on the problem of escape. The fact that it is on the face of it patently impossible only increases his interest in the puzzle. He’d never yet failed to escape from any situation (he had been working on a foolproof scheme to escape Kaposvar when the princess and her friends mtervened) and he sees no reason why this should be any different. It is also possible, perhaps, that he is beginning to believe that he is in fact interchangeable with the impossible baron in the dime novels that bear his licensed name.

  For several weeks his only contact with the outside world has been a brief glimpse of a hairy forearm twice a day as his keeper passed food to him and collected his chamber pot. After a dozen attempts to cajole and trick whoever was at the other end of the gnarly limb into saying a word or two, he gave up. Eventually it occurred to him that if it was impossible for him to even see his jailer, let alone communicate with him, it was equally impossible for the other to see or communicate with the baron. The person on the far side of the door only knew of the baron’s presence because the food disappeared and the chamber pot was regularly filled. What if his captor was to be denied even those rudimentary reassurances of his existence? How much would it take to inspire curiosity? If, in fact, there actually is an intelligence at the opposite end of that unprepossessing appendage.

  Although the baron’s scheme does not require much intelligence on the part of his keeper, it would be costly: it requires a fast that would last for days, nor is he able to do more than wet his lips with the water he is given,
for fear that even the slightest drop in level might be detected. Eventually he even abandons that and resorts to licking the drooling walls or soaking a piece of cloth torn from his shirt and wringing the green liquid into his mouth. At first it is no sacrifice to ignore the loathsome food he is given, but after the second day it becomse a torture to allow even that miserable allotment to lay for hours no further into his cell than the hairy-knuckled hand had pushed it. The same hand would reappear half a day later and pull the untouched food out. Have the change in routine been too subtle for his jailer to have noticed? Has there been any comment when his chamber pot is no longer passed through? It is as though there is only a mindless machine on the other side of the door. What if, believing him to be dead, the supply of food is stopped altogether? The baron resolves to give the guard’s curiosity another forty-eight hours, which is as much as he thinks he himself can bear.

  In the meantime, Milnikov listens carefully, his ear pressed against the cold, wet iron. He never hears any voices, or at least any sounds that he can be certain are voices, but he does become conscious of something that mystifies him: rumblings like heavy trucks with iron wheels rolling across cobbled floors. The sounds come and go constantly. It is as though he is in the depths of a mine. What can it mean?

  Four more times the hairy hand pushes a bowl of food and a cup of water through the opening and four more times the untouched food is fetched back through it. The baron has never dreamed that the miserable crusts and soft grey sausage can ever possibly look appealing. They still do not, but the possibility is becoming ever more tenable. What is hardest to bear is the ever-increasing stench. The cell is absolutely unventilated and the baron begins to actually fear for his life in reality. What a dreadful and ignominious way to go, asphyxiated by my own excretions.

  The meal delivery after the fourth one is late. The baron begins to worry that perhaps his plan has been oversuccessful. What if the mere assumption that he is dead is sufficient for his enemies? What if they do not even care enough to look inside the cell to see for certain? The last food delivery may very well have been the last one forever.