The Silver Crown

by Joel Rosenberg

  That still would be one hell of a lot of work for the dwarf. Turning a flat bar of iron into a rifle barrel took hundreds of welding heats, and even though Nehera could work on several barrels in rotation, he would have to sleep sometime.

  Well, Karl would send word to Riccetti not to work Nehera too hard.

  *Don't be silly.* Ellegon snorted, sending Aveneer's men reaching reflexively for their swordhilts. *Lou Riccetti is not as old and wise as some people, but he is no fool, either. He will see to Nehera's health.*

  Karl nodded. Good point. "What else do we have?"

  "Three thousand rounds in that sack, Karl—lead ingots, a bullet-running kit. Those two barrels contain gunpowder—and the Engineer sent along a surprise."

  "Yes?" Karl raised an eyebrow.

  "Do you see those two small kegs, Karl?"

  "Yes."

  "One of them contains a gross of the Engineer's new grenades. They're loaded with . . . guncotton." She raised a palm. "The Engineer said to inform you that he has not solved the instability problem—but we have kept it cold." She shrugged. "He won't swear how long it'll go without self-detonating, but he said he would be surprised if any of them go before another six tendays. Now, Karl, the other hogshead contains very carefully packaged detonators—"

  "Detonators?"

  "Fulminate of mercury, Karl. Silver fulminate goes off if you blink at it. This is stable. Relatively."

  He repressed a shudder. Fulminate of mercury was touchy stuff. Almost anything could set it off—heat, friction, a sudden blow. "Any special instructions for the detonators?"

  "No, Karl." She shook her head. "Other than not to insert the detonators into the grenades—or keep them near the grenades—until you're ready to strike them."

  "Strike them?"

  She smiled. "He said that would impress you. He's rigged a sulfur-tipped fuse. You rub the fuse tip against a rough surface until it catches fire, and then throw." She held up a cautionary finger. "There is no guarantee that it won't explode on impact, though."

  Surprise, surprise. Still, that sounded good. "Assuming that things go well down there, I'll requisition some space in Furnael Keep for a magazine—mmm, make that several magazines." It would be best to keep the grenades spread out; if one self-detonated, it would send the others sky-high.

  "You'll take charge of that—talk to Frandred and Aveneer about guards."

  "Understood, Karl."

  Ranella had been giving his first name a thorough workout. He let a chuckle escape, then dismissed her questioning look with a shake of his head. "Very well. Later, I'd like to—"

  The pounding of a horse's hooves sounded from down the path. Erek rode up, then descended from the saddle of his mottled pony in what was more of a barely controlled fall than a voluntary dismount. "Aveneer . . . reports," he said, gasping for breath.

  "Trouble?"

  Erek shook his head. "No. He says . . ." He paused, panting, then tried to start again.

  Karl held up a hand. "Ta havath, Erek," he said. Sometimes, he thought, it feels like I spend half my life telling people to take it easy. "If there's no problem, then take a moment and catch your breath."

  Erek nodded, then waited while his breathing settled down. "Aveneer reports . . . that all is clear. Walter . . . Slovotsky reports that the baron will . . . see you."

  "Andy? Could you get Erek some water?" He clapped a hand to the boy's shoulder. "I want you to rest, Erek. I won't need a runner for a while."

  "Yes . . . Karl."

  Karl beckoned to Thomen. "Let's get you to your father, boy."

  * * *

  Baron Zherr Furnael was waiting for them just inside Furnael Keep's main gate, fifty of his warriors keeping him company while the rest manned the ramparts.

  Karl almost didn't recognize the baron; the years hadn't treated Zherr Furnael well. Before, he had been a solidly built man, sporting a slight potbelly; now, his leather tunic hung on him loosely, as though it had been made for a larger man, a younger one, less skeletal.

  Deep lines matted the baron's face; the whites of his eyes had developed a definite yellow tinge. Worse, Furnael had developed a nervous twitch around his left eye; he constantly seemed to be winking.

  But there was still an echo of his old inner strength. He threw an arm around Thomen's shoulders for only a moment, then stood with his shoulders back, his spine ramrod-straight, his face somber as he faced Karl.

  "Greetings, Karl Cullinane. It has been a long time." Furnael's voice was more fragile than it had been, but a trace of its old power was still there.

  Karl dismounted, handing the reins to one of Furnael's men. He wasn't sure how Furnael would feel about him. Would the baron blame Karl for Rahff?

  Right now, he needed Furnael's cooperation as much as the baron had needed Karl's help in breaking the siege; it took a great deal of effort not to break into an idiot smile when Furnael extended a hand.

  The baron's grip was astonishingly weak. Karl tried to keep an acknowledgment of that from his face, then regretted his success when he saw the implied pity mirrored in Furnael's eyes.

  Releasing Karl's hand, Furnael turned to one of his men and called for his horse. "We have much to discuss, Karl Cullinane. Will you ride with me?"

  "Of course, Baron. I am at your service."

  An echo of a smile pierced through the gloom that hung over Furnael like a shroud. "That, Karl Cullinane, remains to be seen."

  * * *

  Six years before, on the night that Furnael had indentured Rahff to Karl, the two of them had ridden down the road from Furnael Keep to the row of clean shacks that served as Furnael's agricultural slaves' quarters.

  Although the question of whether or not that night was going to end with spilled blood had hovered over them like a crimson specter, it had been a pleasant ride: lush fields of corn and wheat had whispered gently in the night wind; they had talked idly, while Furnael had dismounted from Pirate's back to remove a stray stone from the smooth dirt road.

  There had been changes. Now, ruined fields sprawled on either side of the deeply rutted road, the cornstalks trampled by booted feet and shod hooves. The Holts hadn't wanted head-high cornstalks obscuring their view, possibly hiding an enemy; what they hadn't harvested for their own use they had trampled or burned, like a jackal covering the remnants of a too-large meal with its own vomit.

  Furnael pulled on the reins of the brown gelding, then dismounted, beckoning at Karl to do likewise.

  "Not quite like last time, eh, Karl Cullinane?" The baron stared at him unblinkingly. "You look older."

  "I feel older. About a million years, if not one whit wiser."

  "Yes." Furnael sighed. "Yes, that's a feeling I can sympathize with. Remember when you offered to take on the Aershtyn raiders if I would free all the slaves in my barony?"

  Karl nodded. "Maybe I should have tried harder to persuade you. I've often wondered about that."

  "No." Furnael shook his head. "I wasn't . . . equipped to believe that you were serious. Not then. Not until word of you and your Home raiders trickled back. Many good men have died because I didn't believe you. Rahff, for one. . . ." The baron stood silently for a moment. "Did you know that I had my best friend killed half a year ago?"

  "No, I didn't." Karl shook his head. "Baron . . . Adahan of Holtun?"

  "Yes. Vertum was one of Uldren's better strategists; it was necessary to order him assassinated." Furnael clenched his fists momentarily. "I am grateful that Bren is up north; perhaps at least Vertum's son will survive."

  Karl breathed a sigh of relief. With Bren up north, at least he wouldn't have to kill Rahff's best friend.

  Furnael chuckled hollowly, as though reading Karl's mind. "And what if someone else kills Bren? Will that make him any less dead?" He clapped a hand to Karl's shoulder. "We think alike, Karl Cullinane. Tell me: How did my son die?" the baron asked, his voice infinitely weary.

  "I sent a letter with a trader, years ago," Karl said, toying with Stick's reins.
<
br />   "Your letter only said that he died honorably, protecting another. How did he die, Karl Cullinane? You must tell me. I . . . need to know."

  "Understood." Karl sucked air through his teeth. "Do you remember Aeia, Baron?"

  Again, Furnael's face momentarily became an echo instead of a ghost of what it had been. "Call me Zherr, Karl. And yes, I remember her. The Mel child that you were returning to Melawei."

  "She didn't stay in Melawei; she's my adopted daughter, now. A slaver was trying to kill her. Rahff stopped him. I don't know . . . maybe I hadn't trained him well enough; perhaps he just wasn't fast enough. Before I could intervene, the slaver . . . ran him through."

  "He died quickly?"

  "It must have been almost painless," Karl lied reflexively. Didn't Furnael have the right to know that his son had died in agony, his belly slit open by a slaver's sword?

  Probably. But I'm not going to be the one to tell him.

  "The man who killed him . . ." Furnael's eyes burned with an inner fire. "Did you . . . ?"

  "I broke the bastard's neck." Karl spread his hands. "With these hands, Zherr."

  "Good. Now . . . it seems that what is left of my barony is in your debt. How can we repay it?"

  "For one thing, all my people need food and rest. Aveneer's soldiers have been on a forced march for more days than they care to count. I'd like your people to see that they're fed, and given a chance to rest."

  "Done. You plan is to move on the Holts' slaver allies, I take it."

  "Yes." And then to—somehow—shut this war down, deny the buzzards and the slavers their profits. "Have you heard of a burn-scarred slaver working with the Holts?"

  "That I have." Furnael nodded. "Name of Ahrmin?"

  "Right. He led the slaving raid in Melawei when we were there, and he's backing the Holts, providing them with their slaver gunpowder." Karl reached up and stroked Stick's muzzle. "I'll have one of my people interrogate the prisoners, and we'll see if we can find out exactly where on Mount Aershtyn the raiders are camped, precisely what resources they have there. I'm willing to bet that somewhere on Aershtyn is the guild's headquarters in the Middle Lands."

  "But even so . . ." Furnael shrugged. "What good will that do? No matter where they're camped, there's no way you could approach them without being spotted at least a day in advance. With a chance to prepare for an attack—"

  "You're forgetting Ellegon. While the main force is working its way up and hanging on to their attention, I'll have the dragon drop me and a few others in from behind." Karl hitched at his sword, forcing a smile. "If we can do it, if we can break the back of the Holt–slaver alliance, maybe the Holts will sue for peace."

  That was the best shot, if it all could be done quickly. It would require Prince Pirondael and his barons to accept an unsatisfactory truce, in place of a war they were losing, while Holtish Prince Uldren and his barons would end the war knowing that the tide of battle was about to turn against them.

  Winning a cease-fire instead of losing a war would make both sides feel very clever . . . for a while; within ten years, both sides would probably claim that they would have won if the peace hadn't been forced on them.

  Karl repressed a sigh. He could spot at least three major weaknesses in his plan, but at least it had a chance.

  Furnael held out a hand. "It is good to see you, my friend."

  Karl accepted the baron's hand, and was pleased to find that the grip was stronger now. "Zherr . . ." He closed his eyes and forced himself to say it. "I'm sorry about Rahff. If only . . ."

  "No." The baron shook his head. "We both have to go on." He easily pulled himself to his horse's back. "There's a war to be won." He slapped himself on the leg and laughed as he spurred his horse. "Damn me, but there's a war to be won!"

  Karl smiled. Furnael had been given just the barest taste of possible victory, of possible life for his barony and his people; and the baron had shed about twenty years.

  So Karl kept quiet as he spurred Stick, all the while thinking: No, Zherr. There isn't. There's a war to be stopped.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Ahrmin

  Whom they fear they hate.

  —Quintus Ennius

  "Master Ahrmin?" Fenrius' basso boomed from outside his tent. "It is time to go."

  Painfully, slowly, Ahrmin got to his feet and limped out of his tent, squinting in the early-morning sunlight. His carriage was waiting for him; he let Fenrius help him through the door and onto the padded seat.

  The slaver camp at the base of Aershtyn was different from its cousin halfway up the slopes. Up there were the pens and corrals holding the well-chained cream of the captured Biemish population, guarded only by the few guildsmen necessary to keep them safely confined.

  But this camp was a military operation, a place where Pandathaway-made powder was stored, guns made and repaired. Until today—now, the camp was breaking up, as Ahrmin's guildsmen prepared to move out.

  It would be difficult to move three hundred men silently, and when they joined up with Prince Uldren's Holtish troops it would be impossible. Fortunately, the element of surprise wasn't always necessary.

  The problem with you, Karl Cullinane, isn't that you challenge me. Were that all, I would still have you killed, but you wouldn't haunt my dreams so. If you were only the murderer of my father, I would have you killed slowly.

  But I was wrong about you: You are not only my enemy; you challenge the fabric of what is. I can't allow myself the luxury of killing you slowly; it is vastly more important that I kill you surely.

  "You're sure of the assassins?" he asked Fenrius.

  "Nothing is certain," the big man said, choosing his words carefully, "but they are said to be competent. I am . . . confident that he will be dead, or at least out of action, by the time we get there."

  "Good." No, surprise wasn't necessary. Not when your enemy was trapped like a bug in a well-corked bottle. Then, all that was necessary was to heat the bottle. . . . "Very good. Make sure the barrels are tied down." Ahrmin leaned out the window, his good left hand pointing to the wagon that contained the huge barrels of powder; the massive, well-oiled oaken barrels were sealed so tightly that neither air nor water could penetrate their sides.

  "Yes, Master Ahrmin." Fenrius snapped his fingers and pointed toward the wagon; a dozen journeyman slavers ran to it, giving tie ropes another examination.

  "You have had word from the Holts?"

  "Nothing new." Fenrius shrugged. "Prince Uldren has pulled out most of his army from the battle in Arondael, as promised—although I'm not sure he believed the message—"

  "I believed the message. And that is more than sufficient. As Uldren knows." If Uldren hadn't been willing to cooperate fully, well, the Biemish would have made adequate allies. Perhaps better ones—it was unlikely that Pirondael would stupidly fail to press home a tactical advantage, the way Uldren had in the north. It was clear to Ahrmin that Prince Pirondael was determined to benefit from every possible advantage.

  Still, switching alliances hadn't been necessary; Uldren knew that his own survival depended on slaver powder and slaver guns.

  "There should be more than enough for the task—once we join them." Fenrius gestured toward the tarpaulin-covered cylinder, twice the length of a tall man, that was mounted on the largest of the flatbed wagons.

  Ahrmin nodded. "True. Have you seen the latest shipment from Hivael?"

  "Yes." Fenrius nodded happily. "A hundred slaves came through this morning."

  "I take it they aren't like that last batch?"

  "No, not at all. Baron Drahan seems to have understood your message."

  Ahrmin smiled. "A simple matter of withholding powder until their commitments were met. And with the shipment to Keranahan destroyed, the shortage was acute."

  "Perhaps, Master Ahrmin, but it was effective." Fenrius smiled his approval. "I held back a dozen women. Definitely not culls." He smiled thinly. "Prime stock, although perhaps a bit spiritless."

  "Fine. S
end two of the best to me as a diversion for the trip."

  "Yes, Master Ahrmin. At once."

  That was a pleasant prospect. The trip was likely to be agonizingly long; best to have a distraction. "When they are delivered to me, move us out."

  "Yes, Master Ahrmin."

  Ahrmin leaned back against his cushions. Soon. It would be soon.

  You and I have a score to settle, Karl Cullinane. It is only proper that a . . . version of one of your own devices will kill you.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Betrayal

  If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and a man.

  —Mark Twain

  The aftermath of the siege and the battle was, in more ways than one, a bloody mess.

  Karl happily left the beginnings of reconstruction to Furnael and his people. War could ruin in weeks what had been built up over many years; it would be a long time before the barony was back to anything near its former prosperity. The lack of people to work the fields was compensated for only by the lack of mouths for the keep's siege stores to feed.

  Furnael now had an excess of land in what would have been a buyer's market—if there had been any buyers. Of course, there were none: The populations of the neighboring baronies had been decimated, slaves and freefarmers alike clapped into chains and shipped off to be sold along the Cirric coast, to work in the mines of Port Orduin and Sciforth, plow fields in Lundescarne, or serve in fine houses in Pandathaway and Aeryk.

  There was a chance that some could be freed, up on the slopes of Aershtyn, where a few escapees reported that the slavers had their camp, a staging ground for what the captured Holtish prisoners said was to be a vast human cattle drive to Pandathaway.

  Maybe they could be freed. But there were preparations to be made. The most important ones were the ones that Karl found most pleasant: resting and eating. Aveneer's team was road-weary almost to the point of exhaustion; Valeran's people and the mercenaries who had signed on in Biemestren weren't in much better shape. Even Karl had to admit that regular meals and regular sleeping hours had their attractions.