Down to the Sea

by William R. Forstchen

  “It could have sparked a war.”

  “And you have yet to define war to me, Hawthorne. Remember, I am not of this world. I came here from another place, as did you. I was educated on a world where there are things you cannot imagine or dream of.”

  Vincent stiffened slightly. “Such as weapons you might dream of?”

  “Perhaps, yes. And in my education, I studied the writings of Ju ta Vina, who stated, ‘War is the eternal process, and peace is but the preparation for the renewal of conflict.’ ”

  “Do you believe that?”

  “You do, otherwise you would not be here, in uniform, in command of the tens of thousands of troops that ring us in on what you call the Bantag Range and which many of my people define as nothing more than a prison.”

  “What, then, was the alternative?” Vincent asked sharply. “My God, we could have slaughtered you after the Chin rebelled. Remember, it was Hans that offered the compromise and saved your life as well.”

  Jurak lowered his head. “I owe him blood debt,” he acknowledged, “and yes, you could have slaughtered us.”

  “We are drifting onto dangerous ground here,” Vincent interjected. “Refighting the past is meaningless.”

  “Yet history is the foundation of the future.”

  Vincent said nothing, taking a sip of kumiss, then setting the cup down.

  “The reason for this meeting is that we are dying here. The herds of the great hairy giants are all but gone after twenty years of hunting. In a few more years what food we can gather will be gone forever. More and more of our horse herds are being devoured. Riders who once owned a dozen mounts now rarely have more than two or three. We once ranged around the entire world. Now we are confined to but one small corner of it, and the land is used up.”

  “We survive on less land with far more people.”

  “You are farmers, and you have the machines that you have denied us the right to make or to own.” As he spoke he nodded to the flyer, which continued to circle overhead. “Then be farmers.”

  Garva barked a defiant laugh, and Jurak did not look back. “Go suggest that to my warriors up there,” Jurak replied sharply, pointing at the regiment deployed on the ridge behind them. “See how long you or I would live. The Ancestors would scoff at us, would be ashamed and deny any who did thus the right to join them on the Everlasting Ride through eternity.”

  “You are not of this world. Do you honestly believe that?” Jurak stiffened, knowing that his son was standing but half a dozen feet away, hearing everything.

  “Of course,” he said hurriedly, “but what I believe does not matter. It is what my people believe that is important. I convinced them to give up the ride, for it was either that or the war continued. I convinced them to forswear the moon feast, to become hunters of other creatures instead.”

  Vincent’s gaze went icy.

  “I mean no offense, Hawthorne, but remember, that is how you were viewed.”

  “I know, and that is why I wonder what it is you and your warriors are now truly thinking.”

  “You must acknowledge that the way it now is cannot last. Do you honestly expect my people to quietly sit on this empty land and starve to death? The lung sickness of last winter was but the start. They will grow weaker, ask your doctors of it. It is called malnutrition, and as they grow weaker they will become susceptible to a whole host of diseases.

  “You have your medicines, inoculations, a wealth of food. We do not.”

  “Then make them.”

  Jurak laughed. “How? Where in the name of the Gods do I start? Build a school? Who will teach? What will we teach? I am but one from another world. You Yankees had hundreds of minds to start with. To do what you suggest will take a hundred years, which I don’t have. I am worried about what will happen when winter comes again.”

  “So what are you asking for?”

  “To leave this place, to resume the ride.”

  Vincent shook his head. “You can’t ride west. The Chin will never stand for it. You mix your people in with mine, and there will be a slaughter on both sides, and we both know it. If you go east, Congress will never accept that. There are people there. They are not yet part of the Republic, but soon will be. It is their land, and we are sworn to protect it.”

  “So, you are telling me that we are stuck here.” Hawthorne looked down at the ground, absently kicking an anthill with the toe of his boot.

  “The Merki are all but dead. They tried to continue on. Wherever they went, there was rebellion and slaughter, hundreds of thousands of humans, and riders have died far to the west across the last twenty years. The Tugars have settled into the great forest and are surviving.”

  “Surviving?”

  There was a snort of disdain from Garva, and again Jurak let the youth have his way. The humans fully understood that the Tugars were held in contempt for their betrayal of the Merki at the Battle of Hispania. If ever the two Hordes should meet, no matter what the humans threatened, there would be a war of vengeance.

  “We are two aging warriors,” Vincent said, his gaze again fixed on Jurak. “We can speak bluntly. I am ordered by Congress and by the president of the Republic to inform you that the boundaries of your lands are permanently fixed by the treaty that you yourself signed. Any attempt to move beyond them will be construed as an act of war, and we both know what that would mean.”

  “You will slaughter us,” Jurak replied, his voice cold. “If I had a thousand of those things”—he pointed at the flyer circling overhead—“not those primitive machines but the kind I knew on my world, you would not speak so lightly of war. You do so now because you know that with your land ironclads, your trains, and your flyers, it would not be war, it would be extermination.”

  Vincent nodded. “I speak to you now as someone who has come to respect you. I came to this world a stranger. At first I hated your race and everything associated with it. I killed as you did.”

  “Yes, I know. You are a legend, Vincent Hawthorne, when it comes to killing.”

  Vincent was silent for a moment, features gone pale as if a dark dream had seized him. He lowered his head, the slightest of tremors flickering across his face.

  “Yes, I killed on a level that even the oldest of your warriors would admire. I don’t want any more of it. Fighting in the field as we once did, line facing line, there was at least some honor to that butchery. This is different. How long could your warriors stand against our land ironclads, our gatlings, the firebombs dropping from our flyers?”

  “You made sure in the treaty that we could not. Remember, we are denied the ability to make such weapons.”

  “What the hell else were we supposed to do? If the roles were reversed, I daresay you would have not been so generous. It would have been all of us to the slaughter pits.”

  As he spoke his face turned red, anger rising to the surface. “Yes,” Jurak replied quietly. “My people would have demanded such a thing, for both of us realize a fundamental point now. Only one race will survive on this world.”

  “Sir, it does not have to be that way.”

  Both of them looked at Abraham Keane, who throughout the conversation had stood in respectful silence behind Vincent.

  Vincent started to make an angry remark, but Jurak extended his hand. “Indulge him. Besides, he is the son of Keane. Go on, boy, speak.”

  Abraham blushed. “Sir, my father has often said that his hope was that somehow we could finally learn to coexist, side by side.”

  “And you believe this?”

  “I want to.”

  “I know enough of your father to believe him and you, at least as to what you might wish.”

  “It is what many of us wish,” Vincent interjected. “Wishes, always wishes,” Jurak replied sharply. “I must deal this winter with facts.”

  “We could send food to you.”

  “Ahh, so now we are reduced to beggary. Should we come to the depot and bow in thanks? Suggest that to my warriors up on the ridge and see
what they say. They would choose one of two things in reply to that: either cut their own throats or cut yours. The Ancestors would spit upon them for such an infamy.”

  “You are telling me, then, that there will be war?” Vincent asked.

  Jurak leaned back and closed his eyes, then finally shook his head.

  “No. But I am telling you that unless something changes, no matter what we desire, things will become impossible. Either we are allowed to expand our range to new lands, or we starve. No other alternative you suggest can work.”

  “And that is what I am to carry back to Congress?”

  “Tell your Congress to come to our encampments and see the starvation. Then ask them what is to be done.”

  “Jurak, I hope you know enough about me to know that I will honestly tell them the truth regarding your situation.”

  Jurak nodded. “Yes, I believe you will.”

  “But I promise nothing. I will suggest expansion to the north. It is land belonging to the Nippon, which is still open range. They are very testy about such issues, but if we could give you access to the Great Northern Forest, there is game aplenty there. Perhaps that might help.”

  “For the present at least.” Jurak’s voice was cool, distant.

  Vincent shifted uncomfortably, and Jurak could sense that he wanted to talk about something else.

  He nodded to his son, who refilled his goblet with kumiss.

  “We’ve had reports,” Vincent continued.

  “Of what?”

  “The Kazan.”

  Jurak looked straight ahead, wondering how his son was reacting. His gaze focused on Keane’s son, standing behind Hawthorne. The boy was staring straight at him, penetrating pale blue eyes that, if of the Bantag, would mark him as a spirit walker.

  Somehow he sensed that the boy knew, and it was disquieting.

  Hawthorne looked back over his shoulder at Keane. “Abraham, could you fetch that item you’re carrying for me?”

  The boy stirred and turned away.

  Abraham Keane opened the saddlebag on his mount. As he reached inside, he looked back at Jurak, who was still staring at him.

  Something is bothering him, Abraham thought. All of the Qar Qarth’s attention was focused on him.

  Why?

  He pulled out the package, wrapped in an oil-soaked wrap, and brought it up to Vincent, who motioned for him to open it. Untying the binding, Abraham laid the cloth open. He picked up the revolver, the bulk of it so large that he felt he should hold it with two hands.

  The steel was burnished to an almost silver gleam, and the grips were made of ivory. It was not an old cap and ball weapon from the war, but a cartridge-loaded weapon, the cylinder holding eight rounds of a heavy caliber. As he held it forth, he looked again at Jurak.

  Abraham wondered what it would be like to do what his father had done. More than once his father had leveled a revolver into the face of one of the Horde riders and fired, so close, he had heard veterans say, that their manes had burst into flames.

  What was it like to kill? he wondered.

  Jurak stared at him, the flicker of a smile crossing his features. “Ever been in battle, boy?”

  The words were a deep grumble, spoken in the slave dialect, which was taught at the academy to young cadets who would be assigned to the cavalry on the frontier.

  “No, sir.”

  “Your father killed scores of my warriors with his own hands.”

  “I know.”

  “Does that make you proud of him?”

  Abraham hesitated.

  “Speak with truth.”

  Abraham nodded. “It was war. Your race would have destroyed, devoured mine. He’s told me he fought so that I would grow up safe, which I have.”

  Jurak laughed softly. “He did it for more than that. He did it because he loved it.”

  Abraham shifted uncomfortably, gun still in his hands, pointed not quite at Jurak but in his general direction.

  What does this one know of me, of my father? Abraham wondered. Is it true that my father did love it, that he gloried in it? He thought of Pat O’Donald, of William Webster, who was now secretary of the treasury and holder of the Medal of Honor for leading a charge. And he thought of the few others of the old 35 th Maine and 44th New York who were still alive, who would come to the house in the evening and never did a night pass when they did not talk of “the old days.” Always there’d be that gleam in their eye, the sad smiles, the brotherhood that no one else could possibly share. Is that what they love, the memories of it? Or was this leader of a fallen race correct, that they loved it for the killing?

  “Did you love it as well?” Abraham asked. “I heard it said that after you defeated us at Capua, you rode before your warriors carrying one of our battle standards, standing tall in your stirrups, acknowledging the cheers of your warriors. Did you love that moment?”

  Jurak, caught off guard, let his gaze drop for a second. Hawthorne, who had been watching the exchange, reached out and took the heavy revolver from Abraham’s grasp and inverted it, holding the stock toward Jurak.

  “Go ahead, take it.”

  Jurak, smiling, accepted the revolver, hefted it, half cocked the weapon and spun the cylinder. He raised it up, pointing it toward the flyer, which still buzzed overhead. “A gift?” Jurak asked.

  “No, a return.”

  Jurak laughed softly. “You speak in riddles, Hawthorne.”

  “I think you know what I mean, Qar Qarth Jurak.”

  “Then enlighten me.”

  “This weapon was taken from one of your dead after the fight at Tamira. You can see it’s of the finest craftsmanship. Its precision, according to my designer of armaments, exceeds anything we could now make. It is obvious it is not an old weapon left over from our war.”

  “So?”

  “Where did it come from?”

  “You said it was looted from one of my dead.”

  “A commander of ten thousand as near as we could figure out from his uniform and standard.”

  Jurak was silent.

  “It is either one of two things, Jurak. First, if you are now making such things, it is in violation of our treaty.”

  “You, however, can make whatever machines that please you,” Garva interjected, voiced filled with anger. He stepped up to his father’s side. Nearly as tall as his sire, he looked down menacingly at Abraham.

  Abraham struggled for control, not willing to let this one see fear, and yet he suddenly did feel afraid. It had a primal edge, as if he were confronting a terrifying predator in the dark. He suddenly wondered if this one had ever tasted human flesh, and he knew with a frightful certainty that if given the chance, Garva would do such a thing without hesitation.

  He forced himself to stare up at Garva and not back down. Jurak extended his hand. “Go on, Hawthorne.”

  “Did you make this weapon?”

  Jurak shook his head. “The machinery required, the lathes, to cut the cylinder to such perfection, even the refining of the steel—you know we couldn’t do that and keep it hidden for long.”

  “Then if you did not make it, how did one of your warriors come to possess it? It’s not sized to a human. It does, however, fit your hand perfectly.”

  Jurak looked straight at Vincent, but did not answer.

  “The Kazan. Is that it?”

  There was a long silence. Abraham turned his gaze away from Garva, again focusing on Jurak. He wondered how one learned to read them, to understand the nuances of gesture, and found it impossible. Always there was that impenetrability he had heard his father speak of so often.

  “They are fifteen hundred leagues or more from here,” Jurak finally replied, waving vaguely toward the south.

  “And twelve hundred of those leagues are ocean, which they know how to sail. Have you been in contact with them?”

  Jurak actually smiled, but said nothing.

  “Is that from the Kazan?” Vincent pressed, and though Abraham’s command of the Bantag slave d
ialect was far from good, he could clearly catch the tone of anger and even of threat in Vincent’s voice.

  “Given how this conversation is progressing, I’d certainly take pleasure in meeting these Kazan,” Jurak replied, leaning forward menacingly, the revolver in his hand now almost pointed at Vincent.

  Abraham looked up to the riders who, throughout the meeting, had remained motionless on the ridgeline behind them. He could see that they were intently watching the exchange, and more than one was shifting. Several had old rifles from the war out of their saddle sheaths. He could sense their eagerness, their hope that something was about to explode.

  “The possession of that weapon…Vincent continued, ignoring the implied threat in Jurak’s gesture. “If there is contact between you and the Kazan, I must urge you to step back.”

  “Why? Is there something about to happen between you and them?” Jurak replied, the slightest of mocking tones in his voice. “If so, it could prove most interesting for the Bantag.”

  “Don’t get involved in it, Jurak,” Vincent replied. He sounded almost as if pleading, which Abraham found uncomfortable, but then he realized that it was a heartfelt warning.

  “I don’t want another war with you. We fought our fight. We don’t need another such bloodletting, because if there is, we both know the end result.”

  Jurak grunted and shook his head. As if bowed under with weariness, he slowly stood up and stretched, then stepped closer to Vincent.

  Abraham realized that at last he was seeing anger—the flat nostrils dilating, mane bristling slightly along the neck, the brown wrinkled skin shifting in color to a brighter hue. “Human, we are not slaves. We are not cattle.”

  He said the last word in the old tongue, the meaning of it quite clear.

  Vincent stood up as well, though the effect simply made the difference in their size more pronounced. Hawthorne barely came up to the Qar Qarth’s chest.

  “If they are out there,” Vincent said, “stay out of it. If we do find them, and there is a war, stay out of it. I tell you this not just as a representative of my government, but as a soldier who once faced you in battle. We do not want another war with you. You have nothing to gain by it except slaughter.”