by Scott McKay
“What’s in this?” she asked.
“It is marwai, a liquor made of the gibor berry,” Charlotte answered, “which grows in the Ur’akeen Valley near the capital. Similar to belladonna, which you had in Ardenia, but less toxic. It is infused with the extract of the aniwa’di cactus. You will find it allows you to see things with a clearer mind.”
Sarah didn’t think her mind was clearer at all.
What was closer to the truth is that she was getting drunk from having this stuff poured down her throat all day. But it wasn’t really like getting drunk. She’d had enough wine or whisky on a couple of occasions to catch a buzz, and this was very different. She felt as though little lights were dancing all around her and she felt a warm sensation bubbling up from her insides. And Sarah knew her elbows and her head ought to be absolutely throbbing, but at the moment she was barely feeling any pain at all.
And she felt a weird impulse to listen and accept what Charlotte was telling her about her future–an impulse she was determined to reject completely.
“So a javeen’s job is to do what? Get pregnant?” She pointed feebly at Rapan’na. “Be his whore?”
“It’s far more than that. As javeen, you are wife and mother to the entire Anur. It’s a position of leadership, to an extent. You serve the Anur as others cannot.”
“They need Ardenians for this? What about all these other women?”
“They are not javeen. They are members of the Anur. They keep the camp running, and they couple with the warriors to make children. But only javeen may couple with a Var’asha – a leader of the Anur. And her daughters will also be javeen. Only those from outside Uris Udar may do this. It is the will of Ur’akeen. You must choose such an honored life. It cannot be forced upon you.”
Sarah knew some of what Charlotte was saying from the quick education his father had given her in the past few weeks, but it was beginning to make sense why the Udar kept mounting raids when reason dictated they should have stopped a long time ago. They need a steady supply of sex slaves for this javeen thing, she thought. I really don’t want to be here.
“And what happens when we say no to all this?” Sarah asked, her brain going numb from fatigue and the marwai.
“You must not say no.” And Charlotte gave her another swallow of the liquid.
“Or what?” Sarah asked, her eyelids getting heavy.
“Or they kill you, and sacrifice you in the sanctified fire.”
“I think I’d prefer that,” she said, reeling. “I’m not letting that man have his way with me.”
“You don’t have to decide tonight,” Charlotte said, smiling sweetly. “But you will sleep in the tent with us where it is warm, and you may consider your options in the morning.”
Sarah no longer had the power to resist. Charlotte embraced her and slowly led her to lay down on a cushion near where Rapan’na was lying. She kissed Sarah lovingly on the lips, which produced a short purr from the captive girl, and then a look of alarm as Sarah recognized the unusual attention she was getting in a last burst of lucidity. Charlotte gave her another sip of marwai, and then drew a blanket over Sarah. Then Charlotte downed the rest of the liquid in the goblet before turning to Rapan’na.
Charlotte then climbed onto the commander’s bedding, and got on her knees. He rose, and pulled the blanket covering himself away, and Sarah saw that he was naked save for the new bandage on the thigh where she’d shot him that morning.
Rapan’na came behind Charlotte, and she spread her knees. He massaged her private area from behind, and then he mounted and entered her. With a gasp, she began pushing back against him. As the two began a vigorous sexual encounter, Sarah passed out.
…
SEVENTEEN
Principia – Morning (Second Day)
Cross arrived early to the Airbound Corporation’s offices on the morning of the seventh of the tenth, exhausted from a lack of sleep and a very late night of discussions with the assemblage at the Oleander Club the previous evening.
But for the first day in three months, he came to the office with real hope that things were actually going to turn out all right. Maybe even better than that.
It had certainly not been a pleasant meeting, and Cross had been terrified throughout that his partner’s mouth would leave them destitute with the lawsuits from the victims of the Justice’s crash still hanging over their heads. But after a protest or two Gresham, upon having been told by the Chief of Staff of the entire Ardenian government that nobody in the room gave a pile of turds about whether he cooperated or not, had piped down and kept quiet.
Gregg did most of the talking for his clients, and the contours of a deal Cross found acceptable–to say the least–began to take shape. The long and short of it was that the Army, or more specifically the Army-Navy Office of Special Warfare, wanted the Clyde and the Ann Marie as weapons platforms, and they wanted the two airships refitted with chain guns mounted on all four corners of the cabins, and they wanted them today.
And the full resources of the Ardenian government were available to make that happen.
Of course, the military wasn’t willing to deposit a pot of gold on their doorstep just for a couple of airships. Not by a long shot.
In fact, the deal on the table was that Cross and Gresham would sell the two airships to the Office of Special Warfare for a grand total of…one deciran.
But the next afternoon, the Peace Party would push a bill through Parliament appropriating 14 million decirans to a special relief fund for victims of the Justice disaster left unpaid following the bankruptcy of Yellowvine Indemnity Company, with a statutory declaration that the crash was an act of the Lord of All and no blame could be assigned to the Airbound Corporation for negligence or malfeasance on the part of its officers or employees.
In the meantime, Airbound would be sold to Foreman Technologies of Belgarden, a maker of train and riverboat engines, for 10.2 million decirans – enough to make the company’s outside investors whole and give Gresham and Cross 100,000d each for their trouble–and an assumption of its current operating liabilities. Foreman had a job standing by for Gresham as its Chief Aeronautic Engineer, and he was moving to Belgarden. That city, owing to its outsized political stroke as the site of the Peace Party’s founding, the likelihood of its provincial governor being the nation’s president in a year’s time, and its delegation’s influence in the Societam, would become the new center of the Ardenian aviation industry. A pair of Foreman engineers had perfected something they were calling the internal combustion engine, which was a significant improvement over the steam engines that powered virtually everything in Ardenia and ran on fuels other than coal, and that engine was going to replace the burners and propellers on the Clyde and Ann Marie.
As for Cross, he was getting drafted into the Army, something he would never have expected in a million years. He was going in as a major, though, and the executive officer of the brand new Special Air Force to be set up under the Office of Special Warfare, which was going to be headquartered outside a little town on the Tweade called Barley Point, in that area close to the frontier called Dunnan’s Claim. There was no sense in having an air force if it wasn’t going to do business with the Udar, Dees, who was going to be his boss, told him. So he’d better get used to the idea of sharing space with the enemy.
In the final tally Cross had lost 1.6 million decirans, all but 400,000d of his initial investment, in Airbound. The last eight years was thus a thorough waste of his time from a financial standpoint. And he was moving from a sumptuous bachelor pad in the Elkstrand to some dusty craphole in Dunnan’s Claim, where he could easily expect to catch a Ba’kalo in the chest as he slept. He’d be giving up his lifestyle, sharing Vinland red and the cannabis pipe with theater and dance-line starlets each night, and replacing that with, what? Tilts at cards in a barracks with a collection of farmboys? And yet they had told him this was a good deal for him.
Even stranger, he agreed.
Earlier in the day Cross w
as the corporate executive who’d killed sixty-four souls with an irresponsible contraption built for disaster and the sad clown who’d set not just his own fortune ablaze but ten million decirans from some of the most prominent citizens in Ardenia, all of whom were friends of his mortified father, who was barely speaking to him.
At the end of the night, though, he was all set to be the hero who’d circumnavigated the world and then turned his budding, cutting-edge civilian enterprise into a weapon against the hated Udar with a patriotic commitment to bring his technology to bear in subduing that intractable enemy once and for all.
Call him shallow, sure, but from a pure public relations standpoint this was the kind of comeback all the money his family would ever have couldn’t buy.
None of it was his idea, of course. Gregg and Gregory and those big shots in that room last night had more or less dictated it to him. But against what he expected he’d be getting? Cross wasn’t about to look this gift horse in the mouth.
And thankfully, neither was Gresham. Most of the deal he didn’t like, and some he could tolerate. But what made him go along with it was the engineering. He was fascinated with those engines Foreman was working on, and he couldn’t wait to have a look at them. Gresham was having breakfast with Pleasance, who it turned out was that company’s vice president of operations, ostensibly to chisel out a few choice perks for himself while negotiating on behalf of Airbound’s remaining employees. Cross planned to bring some aboard the Special Air Force as civilian contractors; others were going with Foreman.
Which meant today, Cross was in the office to sign over his company and wrap up its affairs. Tomorrow, he was catching the first locomotive out of Belgrave Station to make the all-day trip to Dunnansport, and from there he was catching a steamboat to Barley Point to make preparations for the Special Air Force’s new headquarters with a refitted and armored-up Clyde and Ann Marie to follow three days later.
One hell of a last 24 hours, that was for sure.
Cross wasn’t sure he was cut out to be a military man, and he definitely had misgivings about that aspect of the plan. But as Dees had explained, the Udar didn’t have anything they expected would be a counter to the Ardenian air power the Clyde and Ann Marie were bringing to the battlefield, so he’d be relatively safe in the air. And on the ground, he was assured that shooting the enemy was easier on the nerves than he’d expect.
“It’s like hunting,” the general said, patronizingly. “You’ve been hunting, certainly.”
“Of course I have,” Sebastian had said, determined not to become flustered. “Hasn’t everybody?”
He’d hunted elk several times before back in the Morgan Valley. Never, ever had hit a single one.
Nevertheless, there was something about the general that Cross found reassuring – a certain cavalier confidence and general badassery that made Sebastian want to follow him. And Cross really, really liked the idea of becoming a war hero.
Theresa poked her head through the door of his office to find him hard at work on a stack of papers. “Come on in,” he said cheerfully. “I’ve got a whole lot of news, and I don’t know how much of it you’re going to like.”
“Don’t worry about me,” she said, even more sunnily. “Last night I got hired to work for the President’s Chief of Staff. I’m just here to help you close down the company.”
…
EIGHTEEN
The Rendezvous – Morning (Second Day)
At eight of the clock, the Dunnansport contingent was mounted and spreading out along a line stretching from the small rise at the south end of the settled farms to within sight of the coast. With only 110 men in twenty-two platoons of five riders apiece, they were far too dispersed for combat effectiveness, but as Uncle David said this was far more about reconnaissance than battle. Their theory was that the enemy had set up one camp, and it was to the west somewhere. So rather than engage the Udar, the aim was to mark the enemy position and get the hell out of there without getting killed.
They would then join up with the larger Barley Point contingent, without which David was loath to press an attack in any event. He’d figured the Udar had to have well in excess of one hundred men out here somewhere, virtually each one a battle-hardened killer. David’s militia were certainly well-equipped and provisioned, but other than a handful of their older members and the dozen Marines from Adelaide who were included in their number, they had precious little combat experience.
It had struck David on the way south that they were grossly, criminally unprepared for what lay ahead. Taking risks without having linked up with the larger and more experienced Barley Point force, made up as it was of regular Army cavalrymen and Marines, was simply not in his plan.
The riders worked quickly, processing the area and noting that clearly there had been Udar through this ground recently, as there were reasonably fresh horse tracks through the muddy grasslands. But the action was west. By noon, a bugle call on the north end of the Dunnansport line, relayed team to team along the loose formation, summoned the riders together, where they found the Barley Point group.
“Colonel Terhune,” David greeted the leader as he rode up. “I bring you the 110 men of the Dunnansport contingent. Ninety-eight militia, including these two cadets from Aldingham, Lieutenant William Forling and my nephew, Lieutenant Junior Grade Robert Stuart. We have with us also twelve Marines from the Adelaide commanded by Lieutenant Charles Wells here.”
“Good to have you, Mr. Stuart,” said Terhune, who then turned to Robert and Will. “And Mr. Stuart and Mr. Forling, I am truly sorry for those you’ve lost. Last night we passed through your homesteads, and I’m afraid the news is not as you’d hope.”
“Colonel, do I have any parents left?” Rob pleaded.
Terhune gave him a pained look. “We found your mother and father, son. They’ve passed. And we also found your sister Tabitha. She’s gone as well. I’m so sorry.”
Robert shut his eyes as they welled up with tears, the finality of what he’d suspected coming home to him. He sagged in his saddle and leaned to one side, expecting to vomit. Uncle David, who’d rode next to him, reached out and put his good hand on his nephew’s shoulder.
“Son, I’m very sorry,” Latham interjected, “but I do want you to know you haven’t lost all of your family. I’m the architect who had the plans for the expansion of your home. It turns out yesterday I was to review them with your father. I got there too late for the fight, but I did manage to get Ethan and Hannah out.”
“I thank you for that, sir,” Robert answered, eyes still shut. “You’re Mr. Latham then.”
Latham nodded. “You are welcome, Robert. Your brother and sister are in Barley Point, staying at the home of Mistress Helen Irving. She’s an excellent hostess, as best I can tell. We managed to salvage some important valuables and commercial papers as well, which are also safe there. And Mistress Irving will by now be making arrangements to deliver Ethan and Hannah to your aunt in Dunnansport, so we’re doing what we can to facilitate that reunion.”
Robert nodded. His eyes, now open, carried a glassy, far-off look. “Did you find any dead Udar at Hilltop Farm?”
“We did,” Latham said. “Twelve of the bastards, in fact.”
The cadet was motionless. Latham thought he almost detected a faint smile of satisfaction amid his tears.
“I’m sorry about your mother and father, Forling,” Terhune said, turning to Will. “If it’s any consolation, we found a dead Udar there as well.”
“They lived a good life,” Will replied in a monotone. “They raised seven of us. I was the youngest. Mom was so damned proud when I left for the Academy.”
Then he went quiet, staring ahead blankly.
“All right, men,” Terhune spoke up. “I know this has been the worst you’ve all seen. Many of you have suffered great losses. Inconceivable losses. It’s war, and war is loss.
“But war is also vengeance. And while we suffer, and while our hearts are broken over what these savag
es have done to our families, our friends, our communities, our country, it’s our responsibility now. We are the hand of that vengeance. Are we going to go gently at the bastards?”
“NO!” came the loud retort from over 300 men.
“Will we let them get away with what they’ve done?”
“NO!” again.
“We going to get justice for those they took from us? We going to bring hell on ‘em?”
“YEAH!” they roared.
“Good. Let’s ride.”
…
NINETEEN
Cotter’s Point – Morning (Second Day)
Adelaide steamed as close to the shore as she dared, with Patrick’s crew taking soundings almost continuously to match their nautical charts. Running aground was not an option on this mission.
But the ship was not running at its full speed of twenty-two knots. Patrick knew he had to wait on Yarmouth, which had gotten underway a little earlier than planned yesterday and was steaming its way at a fourteen-knot clip. Patrick had Adelaide moving at twelve knots, which was a happy medium enabling him to lend sea cover to the expedition, should it find battle close to shore, in a reasonable time while also having Yarmouth soon on hand.
What he didn’t like about this mission, although he commanded the bridge of the meanest, nastiest gunboat in Watkins Gulf, was the uncertainty. What was needed–though it wasn’t worth risking the lives of the cavalrymen combing Dunnan’s Claim for the Udar and their captives–was for someone to run down to Strongstead and find out what had happened there.
I wish we had that airship for this mission, Patrick thought. The Clyde. That thing would be the perfect reconnaissance craft and you’d get a whole lot better signaling range using it as a relay up in the sky. Hell, you’d be able to relay signal communications for 50 miles with that thing on station. Can’t help but wonder how useful it could be if we mounted a half-dozen chain guns on it and made it a weapons platform, too.