The Silver Crown

by Joel Rosenberg

  Coughing in the acrid smoke, he blew down the barrel to clear it, then poured a measure of powder from the horn into the rifle, spat on a patch and slipped it over the hole, then thumbed a ball into place. He drew his ramrod and shoved the ball and patch down the barrel, seating them firmly.

  "Karl Cullinane," Valeran called out. "There are a group of them, moving toward us."

  "On my command," he called back. "You with the rifles will rise, raise your weapon to your shoulder, pick a target, and fire—and then duck back down, quickly." He pulled back the hammer to half-cock, quickly cleared the vent with his vent pick, then took out his vial of priming powder.

  "They're moving, again."

  "Now!"

  Gunshots thundered. Karl charged the pan, then snapped the frizzen securely into place.

  He raised his head above the ditch. All of the Holts had taken cover, except for one wounded man lying on the road, cradling his belly in his hands. One out of four shots reaching a target wasn't too bad, not under the circumstances.

  Another of the Holts rose, only to drop his rifle and scream as a longbow's arrow sprouted from his side.

  Thanks, Peill.

  But this wouldn't do. The Holts would gather themselves for a charge in a few minutes, once they realized that they had their enemy outgunned and outmanned.

  "Bows, covering fire. Valeran, get that lamp to me." He untied the straps from his saddlebags, then pulled out the box of grenades, opened it, and extracted one from its padded compartment.

  Valeran arrived with the lantern. "I don't like this. They have all used rifles before, and we haven't. And my men aren't used to facing these . . . guns."

  "I know." Karl slid the lamp's baffle open just a crack, then stuck the end of the fuse into the flame.

  It caught immediately. He raised his head above the boulder and threw the grenade high and far, directly for the spot in the ditch where he hoped the remaining nine rushing Holtish soldiers were.

  "Down!" he called, following his own advice.

  The grenade dropped behind the road and into the ditch, then exploded with a loud crump! followed by a chorus of screams.

  Karl looked out. The lead wagon was burning nicely; Peill's fire arrow must have gone inside and caught something flammable. Tennetty's slim form was outlined against the fire as she worked her way behind one of the Holtish soldiers, then slipped an improvised garrote around his neck, pulling him back, out of sight.

  Good. She'd worked her way free. The Holts didn't know it, but they had more to worry about than some outsiders attacking; they had a tiger among them.

  More gunshots sounded. One of Valeran's men pitched forward, clutching at his throat; another stooped, uncorking a bottle of healing draughts, then shaking his head and recorking it.

  This just wasn't going to make it. There're too many of them, and Valeran's people aren't used to this kind of fighting.

  Karl didn't like it, but he would have to settle for getting Tennetty out and forget about the slaver powder.

  "Withdraw," he called out. "Everybody—and I mean everybody!" he shouted, hoping that Tennetty could hear him over the crackling of the fire. He sneaked another glance. One of the Holts had spotted her and was bringing his gun to bear.

  Karl raised his rifle to his shoulder and took aim, ignoring the whipcrack of bullets around him, then squeezed the trigger. The bullet caught the Holt on his chestplate; it knocked him down, his own weapon discharging toward the sky. Tennetty dove for cover, disappearing into the ditch.

  "Withdraw," Karl repeated. "Peill and Chak, acknowledge, dammit."

  A distant shout marked Peill's position, but where was Chak? Perhaps it was just as well. If Karl couldn't spot him, likely the Holts couldn't, either.

  Chak sprang up next to the second wagon, fired his shotgun into an intervening soldier, then disappeared into the wagon's interior, a waterbag clutched in his hands.

  What the hell does he think he's doing? Karl had given the order to withdraw. The main objective had been accomplished; they would just have to let the powder go by.

  Three of the Holtish soldiers followed Chak into the wagon. That was probably their mistake. In the close quarters of the wagon, they would probably get in each other's way more than Chak's. But what's he doing with a waterbag—

  "No!"

  The wagon exploded in a cloud of steam and dust, sending pieces of horses and soldiers tumbling into the still air.

  That was enough for the few uninjured Holts. Some mounted their horses and galloped away; others just ran.

  Valeran grabbed at Karl's arm. "What happened?"

  "Chak. He . . . took out their powder. Lord Gyren will be satisfied," he said, his voice sounding curiously flat and emotionless even to his own ears. "We have preserved Enkiar's neutrality."

  "There are still some of them alive."

  Karl tossed his rifle to one side, bringing his sword into his right hand and drawing his remaining pistol with his left. "Not for long. Follow me."

  * * *

  There is nothing quite as ugly as sunrise over a battlefield. In the dark, it is possible to ignore the spilled contents of the bags of skin, the flesh, blood, and bones that once were human beings.

  During a battle, it's necessary to look beyond the carnage, in order to avoid becoming part of it.

  But in the light of day, it's a different matter entirely. This battlefield had once been a wheat field. It would again be just a wheat field, someday.

  But not this day. Now, it was the blood-drenched floor of a slaughtering ground, corpses already attracting scavengers.

  Using his saber like a flail, Karl shooed two crows away from the body of a Holtish soldier and forced himself to look at the man's face.

  No, not a man, a boy, perhaps seventeen, maybe eighteen years old, beardless. Under a shock of brown hair, his ashen face was pale, still; a casual glance would have made Karl think he was only sleeping.

  Valeran cleared his throat. Karl turned to see Tennetty standing next to the captain.

  "Karl—" she started, then caught herself. "We . . . haven't found any sign of Chak. Could he—"

  "No." Karl shook his head. "There was only one door to the wagon. He must have set the waterbag on top of one of the powder barrels, then put his pistol right up against the bag."

  He could almost see it in his mind's eye: the three Holts satisfied that they had Chak cornered; Chak quirking a smile at them as he fired, the bullet crashing through the bag and wood, driving the water into the slaver powder, then . . .

  He looked Tennetty square in the face, at first not trusting himself to speak. If only she had followed orders, none of this would have happened; Karl would have let this shipment get by, rather than attack at such unfavorable odds.

  And Tennetty knew that. Let her live with the guilt.

  Why, dammit, Chak—why?

  What happens when you decide that some objective is more important than your own life is?

  But it wasn't as important as Chak's life, not this. The Holtish had gotten powder before, and would again. Not in Enkiar, though. Enkiar would now be closed to them for the trade in slaver powder, but Enkiar would have been closed to them in any case.

  It wasn't worth Chak's life. But it had been, to Ch'akresarkandyn.

  That wasn't enough. "Tennetty."

  "Yes, Karl." She stood in front of him, her hands well away from the sword at her waist, making no movement to protect herself.

  "We're moving out." He kept his voice low, little more than a whisper. He knew that if he started shouting, he would lose control completely. "I want you to start Valeran and his men on marksmanship tonight, when we camp. By the time we reach Bieme, they are to be as competent as possible. When Slovotsky and his people catch up with us, you turn the training over to him. Bieme is going to be tough; I want us up to strength."

  "Yes, Karl. Although I don't know what you think a few tens of us can do in that sort of—"

  He reached out and gripped her th
roat, the tips of his fingers resting against her trachea. He could bring his fingers together—

  —but that wouldn't bring Chak back. "Shut your mouth," he said, dropping his hand. "If I want your opinion, I'll ask for it."

  She started to turn away.

  "One more thing, Tennetty," he said, grabbing her by the arm, spinning her back to face him. "I don't want you to get yourself killed. You're to live a long, long life—hear me? And every day, you're to remember that it was you who killed Chak, just as surely as if you'd slipped a knife between his ribs. If you hadn't gone independent, if you had just played things out as I told you to, this wouldn't have happened."

  "If you had let me try for Ahrmin—"

  He backhanded her to the ground, then booted her in the shoulder as she started to rise, sending her sprawling on the dirt. "Don't speak to me, not anymore. Not unless I speak to you first. Understood?"

  Her hand slipped to the hilt of her sword.

  "Go ahead, Tennetty, please."

  She shook her head slowly, her hand falling away from her sword. It wasn't fear that saved her life at that moment, it was guilt.

  And what do I do about my own guilt? he thought.

  There wasn't any answer.

  "Just get out of my sight," Karl Cullinane said, as he turned to Valeran. "Have you buried your man?"

  Valeran shook his head. "Not yet."

  There was no real point in hurrying. I should probably wait here for Walter, Beralyn, and the rest, instead of letting them catch up farther down the road.

  That would be the logical thing.

  "Bury him, Valeran. We're getting the hell out of here."

  * * *

  That evening, they made camp beside a brook to wait for Walter Slovotsky and the rest. In the morning, Tennetty and two of the horses were gone.

  Part Four:

  Bieme

  Chapter Sixteen

  Prince Pirondael

  Our fathers and ourselves sowed the dragon's teeth. Our children know and suffer the armed men.

  —Stephen Vincent Benét

  Biemestren, the capital city of Bieme, reeked of a long peace, now shattered.

  The castle itself was surrounded by two zigzagging stone walls, each barely shy of ten meters in height, the inner one with eight guard towers scattered around its circumference. The residence tower rose from inside the inner wall, resting on the flat top of a twenty-yard-high, almost perfectly circular hill.

  But the castle itself was only a handful of buildings that housed the prince, his court, and the House Guard; the vast majority of the population of Biemestren seemed to live in the newer buildings outside the wall, clinging to it as they fanned out like a tree ear on an old oak. Beyond them were the rude encampments housing several thousand refugees from the west.

  A breeze brought a foul reek to Karl's nostrils. If the local clerics weren't on the ball, vermin-spread diseases would likely do as much damage as the war.

  "Nice location for a castle," Walter Slovotsky said. "That hill is the highest spot for twenty miles around."

  "It's too round to be a real hill; it's a motte," Karl said. "This was probably a basic motte-and-bailey castle, originally."

  "I know what a bailey is, but what's a motte?" Slovotsky raised an eyebrow.

  "The hill that the castle's on." Karl searched his memory for an Erendra equivalent, but there wasn't one. "Basically just a pile of dirt. If we dug down, we'd find timbers of the original castle's foundation buried in it.

  "It's an old trick. Goes back to before Charlemagne; it was how the Norman nobles held out, carved out their own fiefs in both France and Britain. Siege engines can break the walls, but the motte itself is practically indestructible. Even if invaders breach the outer wall, they have to fight their way up a steeper hill than nature would probably provide, and then have the inner defenses to contend with."

  "And meanwhile the defenders don't have to sit on their hands. Nice bit of defense." Slovotsky nodded. "Back Home, when we were building the original palisade, why didn't you suggest a motte?"

  "If you'll remember, Riccetti was running that show. Besides, we didn't have the manpower to move a whole lot of earth, not even if you include Ellegon. He's got his limitations, just like the rest of us."

  "Besides, you didn't think of it."

  "True."

  "This is pretty damn near impregnable, though," Walter said. "Even if the Holts get this deep into Bieme, there's no law that says the Biemish have to sit tight and not shoot back, while they're working on breaking the walls. One wizard shooting out a flame spell or two a day—"

  "Wouldn't do it. Not if I was running the siege, and I'm sure that the Holts know a lot more about siege warfare than I do." Karl shrugged. "Bring up ten, twelve onagers at once, and it's watch-the-walls-go-down, even if they have a garden-variety wizard and you don't."

  "But you said that they wouldn't be able to break through."

  "Not immediately, no. Ever hear of a siege? Breach the walls in a few places, keep the defenders too busy to plug the holes, and you can still starve them out if they don't drop their guard enough for you to take the castle any other way. If the defenders are really good, it could take years, but who's going to come to Bieme's rescue? The Nyphs? They're more likely to try to lop off a piece of the country, if they can be sure that Khar or some Katharhd bands won't move on them while they're distracted."

  "Motte, eh?" Slovotsky said, clearly preferring a lighter subject. "I'll remember that. They probably just call it a mound."

  "So we'll teach them the right word."

  Slovotsky laughed. "Your mind is a junkpile, Karl. I know for a fact that you know squat about world history—"

  "Give me a break. I never got around to majoring in any kind of history. Too much work. Always liked the soft sciences; if you had anything on the ball, they'd practically give the school to you."

  "So where did engineering come in? You were going to be an electronics engineer when I first met you."

  "Just that one semester; I was young and ambitious. Too much work. I switched to poli sci right after that; electoral behavior is a hell of a lot easier than electrical behavior."

  The outer wall's portcullis was raised, announced by a squeal of metal on metal that could be heard for miles.

  A troop of fifty armored, mounted soldiers rode through, cantering down the road toward Karl and his people.

  "Pay attention, folks, we've got company," Karl said in English, repeating it in Erendra for Beralyn, Valeran, and his people. "Let's hope that Baron Tyrnael's runners got the message through. I'd rather not get mistaken for an enemy."

  Once again, he found himself pausing, waiting for a cynical bit of bravado from Chak. Chak would have said something, maybe "Too bad for them if they do, kemo sabe."

  Damn you, Chak, he thought. Who said you could up and die on me?

  "Pay attention, Karl. Shall I go back for Beralyn?"

  "No. Stay with her; bring her forward when I call. I want to make sure that these folks are ready to talk, not fight. Her face is our passport; I wouldn't want to get it slashed."

  "Right. One suggestion, though: Your temper gets out of hand every now and then. This might be a good time to keep hold of it. Beralyn says that temper is one thing that Prince Pirondael doesn't put up with."

  "Don't end a sentence with a preposition."

  "Fine," Slovotsky said. He broke into a broad smile. "Temper is one thing that Prince Pirondael doesn't put up with—asshole."

  * * *

  Karl disliked Prince Harffen Pirondael at first sight, although he wasn't quite sure why.

  It wasn't because the prince had kept him waiting for more than an hour for no apparent reason, or that his men-at-arms politely but firmly insisted on relieving Karl and Walter of their swords before they were ushered into the Presence.

  The first was an irrelevant, if petty, perquisite of office; the second was an understandable precaution, under the circumstances. This wasn't the same so
rt of situation as he had faced with Dhara; there was no need to step on Pirondael's toes until he apologized.

  So that wasn't it. Karl wrinkled his brow. Then what was it? He didn't dislike the prince simply because he had chosen to meet with them in a large, bare room in the dwelling tower that had only one chair, now fully occupied by Pirondael's sizable bulk—that was just another princely perk.

  Karl didn't dislike the prince because of the way that his two guards stood just beyond springing distance, their crossbows loaded, eyeing Karl with professional caution. Quite the contrary: Karl had a profound respect for Pirondael's guards. Back home, back on the Other Side, there were people who sneered at the notion of honor. But that was clearly the only thing that kept Pirondael's House Guard faithful. They weren't surrounded, not yet; those who wanted to desert could have escaped to the west.

  Those who remained with Pirondael couldn't have been expecting that Bieme would win the war, not against an army armed with Slavers' Guild guns.

  Why were they waiting for the coming of the Holt army?

  Because they had sworn their loyalty to Prince Pirondael, and they meant it.

  Maybe that was it. Pirondael didn't look like the kind who deserved that kind of loyalty, this fat prince lolling back on his throne, wearing his purple-and-gold finery, his silver crown of office resting on his oily black curls, not a hair out of place.

  And perhaps Karl resented the unnecessary formality of Pirondael's wearing his jewel-inlaid crown instead of a simple cap of maintenance.

  He knew that he resented the way that Beralyn had gravitated to her prince's side, occasionally interrupting him to whisper in his ear. No, that wasn't a betrayal, even if it felt like one. Beralyn didn't owe Karl anything. It wasn't like Tennetty running out on him.

  He shrugged to himself. It didn't matter why he disliked the prince, or even that he disliked the prince. This wasn't about personalities.

  "There's an old saying where I come from, your majesty," Walter said in Erendra, then switched to English. "The first hit's free, kid.'"