A loud crack! caught his attention. Behind the line, the royal artillery’s light cannon began to fire, deep-throated coughs that spat clouds of smoke and sparks as they threw cold iron at the gatehouse. Stone chips flew, but the gatehouse was, itself, a castle in miniature, and beyond it the drawbridge across the wet moat and the sunken road allowed the defenders to reinforce it at need. The range was almost half a mile: The bombardment wouldn’t do much save to make the defenders keep their heads down. But that was better than nothing, Otto supposed. That, and the king’s plan—if it worked—might get them close enough to the defenses to at least have a chance. And if the king’s plan didn’t work, at least we’ve got an entire army, he told himself. Scant comfort, looking up at those ramparts.
Otto turned back to the clump of men waiting behind him. “Tomorrow the king’s going to reduce the gatehouse,” he announced. “Then it’s right on to the castle. But we’ve got an easy job to do. Once Raeder’s men finish moving the ammunition up, we’re to advance behind the vanguard and keep the witches’ heads down.” He looked his men in their eyes. “There will be no indiscriminate firing.” Not like the day before yesterday, when his undertrained men had burned through crates of priceless ammunition and wrecked a pair of irreplaceable M60 barrels. “There will be no damaged guns. If any man wrecks a witch-gun barrel by firing too fast, I’ll forge it to red-heat and beat him to death with it. And there will be no casualties, if I have any say in the matter.” He assayed a thin smile. His hetmen had been quietly gloomy, a minute ago; now they visibly cheered up. “The other side’s to do the dying today, and for our side, the fresh troops are to be the making of them. We’ll just stay nice and safe in the rear, and rain on the enemy battlements with lead.”
“Aye!” Shutz knew his cue, and put his leathery lungs into it. The sergeants and hetmen, not to mention the sprinkling of hedge-knights who’d joined his banner out of hope of self-enrichment, joined in enthusiastically.
“To your men, then, and let them know,” Otto said, allowing himself to relax slightly. “I will make an inspection round in the next hour, and give you your disposition before we advance, an hour before sunset.”
Night fell heavy on the castle walls, illuminated by the slow lightning of the field cannon and the echoing thunder, and the moans of the victims, growing weaker now. Olga stared from a darkened window casement, following the action around the base of the gatehouse, picked out in the livid green of night vision goggles. “The stupid, stupid bastards,” she hissed.
Behind her, Earl Oliver cleared his throat. The distant sounds of preparations, banging and scraping and swearing, carried through the door from the grand hall. “As long as the Pervert’s troops think we’re heavily invested, and unable to move . . .”
“But the waste! Lightning Child strike him blind.” Olga was not prone to fits of unreasoning rage. Bright, hot, anger was no stranger; but it passed rapidly, and she knew better than to let it rule her. But what the king had done outside the barred gate of the moat house was something else. It’s a deliberate provocation, she told herself. He doesn’t want or expect our surrender, so he thinks to unhinge us. And he was certainly trying hard. No one sane would have used noble prisoners as he had done outside the gatehouse, forgoing all hope of ransom and calling down eternal blood feud from their surviving relatives.
“Carl will deal with him tomorrow, I am sure,” Oliver declared, although whether he was being patronizing towards her age and status, or merely ironically detached, Olga was unsure. “Tonight we have other work.”
“Indeed.” Olga lowered her goggles and switched them off, blinking at the twilight.
“Meanwhile, Earl Riordan sent his compliments, and would like to know what additional resources you need to move the duke, and when you’ll be ready.”
Since when is he employing you as a messenger boy? Olga stepped aside from the window and turned to face him. “I’ve got a corpsman and two soldiers, one to do the portage and one secondary bodyguard; between them they’re a stretcher team. That’s plenty until we get to the crossover point. What I then need is for Grieffen or whoever’s in Central Ops to arrange to have a secure ambulance waiting for us in Concord at zero four hundred hours, and I need their mobile number so I can guide them in when we cross over.” She patted her belt. “I’ve got a GPS unit and a phone. We’ll travel with everyone else as far as the drop zone then continue on a little further before we go back to the United States.” It wasn’t the entire truth—and not just because she didn’t trust the Baron. Oliver was trustworthy after his own fashion; but his loyalty was to his conception of the Clan, not to Olga’s faction. He didn’t have any need to know the details, and Olga wasn’t inclined to take even the remotest of risks with the duke’s personal security.
“Do you want me to arrange the ambulance?” he asked attentively.
That did it: He was questioning her competence. “No!” she snapped. “I’ll do it myself. The sooner I see him in a hospital bed the happier I’ll be.” Moving an acute stroke patient was risky enough without trying to do it in the dark, possibly under fire, and without benefit of any specialized medication more sophisticated than a couple of aspirin; the only reason even to consider it was out there in the dark and the chaos before the gatehouse, broken on the wheel.
“So will we all,” he said piously, turning to leave.
The hours passed quickly, in a frenzy of preparations for the evacuation. Not everyone was to leave; someone had to light the keep, fill the helmets visibly watching over it, and fire the occasional volley to convince the besieging forces that the palace wasn’t an empty prize. But eight in every ten men and women would be world-walking out of the Hjalmar Palace before dawn, stealing away like thieves in the night once the hastily printed and laminated knotwork cards arrived. Almost everyone—Olga, the duke, and the wounded excepted—would return, with the early morning sun at their backs, half a mile behind the pretender’s encampment. Trapped between the machine guns on the battlements and the rifles and recoilless rockets of the mobile force, the royalists would have scant time to regret their misplaced allegiance; their best strategy ought to be to melt back into the trees again. But from the lack of movement in the enemy camp it looked as if they’d swallowed the bait: While they clearly knew of the world-walker’s ability, it seemed that they had not fully understood its tactical significance. That, or their commander was getting greedy.
Olga took a couple of hours to catch a nap, on a cot at the end of Angbard’s bed. She awakened in near-darkness as a hand touched her shoulder. She grasped a wrist almost before she opened her eyes. “What time? . . .”
“Midnight plus four minutes, milady.” The soldier—a stocky woman called Irma, one of Helmut’s lance and the daughter of an earl, if Olga remembered her rightly—straightened up. “Martyn and I are your detail, along with Gerd”—the corpsman—“to take his grace to safety, is that right?”
“Yes,” Olga said tersely. She rubbed her eyes and sat up, shook her head to clear the cobwebs, and yawned. “You have a stretcher, yes? And suitable clothes.”
“A stretcher, aye,” Gerd called softly from the far side of the four-poster bed. “He still sleeps, milady,” he added, forestalling her next question.
Irma grimaced. “I hate stretchers.” She stepped back, to leave Olga some space. “On the subject of suitable clothes—we are going to America, to meet an ambulance, at dead of night, I was told? But this other world, I’ve never been there before. So I don’t know what’s a suitable disguise for sneaking around there. . . .”
“Don’t worry about that aspect of things, we’ve got transport.” I hope. Olga sat up creakily. “Here’s the plan. We’re going to cross over with everyone else. Have the cards arrived yet?” Irma shook her head. “Well. When they arrive—it’s a new world. This site is undeveloped farmland. Our agents have laid on trucks, and they’ll drive Captain Hjorth and his force to the drop-off point for the counterattack. We’ll be taking a car into Irongate, which
is near as makes no difference sitting on the south side of Concord, and where there’s a doppelgangered building in this world. Then we make two more transfers, crossing back at zero five hundred, and I’ll phone for an ambulance. I’ve got GPS, so we should be picked up within half an hour. Our main challenges are: keeping his grace comfortable, avoiding attention from the locals, and not killing ourselves by world-walking too much. Is that clear?”
“Yes, milady. Makes things easier.” Irma shook her head. “Four crossings in four hours—that’s harsh.”
“Yes. That’s why for the first crossing we’ll all be going piggyback on whichever members of your lance draw the short straws. And for the second crossing, Gerd will carry his grace and Martyn will carry you. On the third crossing, you can take the duke. The fourth will be the hardest, but that way, only one of us risks breaking our head.”
“Do you think we should ditch our field gear?”
Olga thought for a moment. “If it’s not too much to carry, I think we should hang onto it until we’re ready to make the final transit. But once we hit Concord”—she paused—“we can’t be wearing armor or carrying long arms. What clothing did you find for us?”
“Nothing for sure, milady, we must see if it fits—but the baron’s family maintained a wardrobe with some American clothing, and it has not been looted yet. I hope,” she added under her breath.
“Let’s go see, shall we,” Olga suggested, stretching as she stood up. Her own state she passed over: She and Angbard had never expected to wind up here, and her neat trouser suit would be fine. “We need clothing that will pass at a distance for Gerd, Martyn, and you.”
“This way, then.” Irma led her from the master bedroom into an adjacent room, its rich paneling splintered and holed by small arms fire. Chests of drawers and a huge wooden chest dominated half a wall. “I think this is what you’re looking for.”
Late afternoon.
Miriam segued into wakefulness to the rattle and jabber of daytime television fuzzed into incoherence through a thin stud wall. Gathering her wits, she rolled over. The bed isn’t moving, she realized. She’d found it difficult to rest, her worries chasing their tails through her mind, but she’d spent the last few nights on a transcontinental express train and the novelty of a bed that didn’t sway side-to-side and periodically bump across railroad points had eventually drawn her down into a deep abyss of dreamless sleep. Yawning, she sat up and rolled off the comforter. What time is it? . . . She glanced at the dressing table. Her notebook PC sat there, its LEDs winking as it charged. Whether it would start up was a moot point—it had spent six months in a hidden compartment in a disused office—but it had a clock; maybe it would still be working. She reached over and pressed the power button, then started gathering her clothes.
The regular startup chord and busy clicking of a hard disk provided welcome background noise as she dressed; but as the computer seemed to want to twiddle its thumbs instead of talking to her, she locked the screen and headed for the bathroom, and then the stairs, rather than waiting. To think that only four days ago she’d risked arrest and imprisonment to retake the thing, seeing it as central to her hopes for survival and prosperity! . . . Her understanding of her circumstances was changing almost from hour to hour, leaving her adrift and unable to rely on plans she’d made only the day before. It gave her an anxious sense of insecurity, rising to the level of nervous dread whenever her thoughts circled back to the pregnancy question.
The television noise was coming from the living room, along with other sounds. As Miriam pushed the door open she caught a burst of conversation: “She’s right, then what are we going to do? We won’t be able to go back! Had you thought of”—A blond head turned—“Oh, hi!”
Miriam paused. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything. . . .”
“Not really.” Huw was slouched in a recliner, propping up a laptop, while the two younger ones, Yul and Elena, had been either watching TV or arguing about something while sharing a large pizza of uncertain parentage. “Feel free to join us.”
“Yah,” agreed Yul, chewing rhythmically.
Elena thumped him. “Don’t talk with your mouth full!”
“Yuh.” He took her punch on one shoulder, looking amused rather than hurt.
Miriam turned to address Huw. “Where’s Brill?”
“Oh, she went out.” He sounded disinterested. “Hmm, that’s interesting.”
Miriam glanced at the window. It was clearly getting late, and the shadows of the trees out front were lengthening. “Is there anything to eat around here?” Her gaze was drawn to Elena and Yul’s pizza, almost against her will.
“Uh?” Huw looked up at her, and visibly did a double take. “Food? Um . . . yeah, food! Just a minute.” A rattle of hastily struck keys later, he closed the laptop’s lid and stood up. “Let’s see what’s in the kitchen?”
The kitchen was as sparsely equipped as it had been earlier in the afternoon. Huw headed straight for the freezer and the microwave, but Miriam stopped him. “Let me.” While she rooted around in the cupboards, she asked, “Any idea where Brill went? Did she ask you to get me a pregnancy test kit?”
“A what?” He walked over to the kitchen door and closed it carefully. “No, that’s women’s stuff. If you asked for such a thing, she wouldn’t trust a man to procure it.”
“Oh.” Miriam froze for a couple of seconds, disappointed. Then she sighed and opened the next cupboard. “So where did she go?”
“If not to attend to your request, I’d guess she has a private call to make. She was getting extremely itchy about being on the wrong coast, and even itchier about how we’re going to get back out east without attracting attention.”
“Attention”—Miriam paused to pull out a can of tomatoes and a bag of pasta—”what kind of attention?”
“She came out here in the company biz-jet, but . . . someone tipped the feds off about where ClanSec were concentrating? Somewhere near Concord, apparently. We’ve had hints”—Miriam rattled past him, rifling a drawer in search of utensils—“they’re getting serious about tracking us down. So I don’t think there’s a biz-jet ride home in our immediate future.” Miriam slammed the cupboard door. “What?”
“This is useless!” She pointed at her haul. “What did they think we were going to do, eat at Mickey D’s every day?”
“Freezer. Microwave.” Huw pulled a face. “If you were stocking a house for a bunch of kids who’re not used to living away from home without servants, what would you do?”
“Leave a cookbook!”
“We-ell, okay.” Huw made for the freezer again. “Memo to Duke Angbard Lofstrom, Office of Clan Security. Re: training program for armed couriers. Classification: Clan Confidential. All couriers must attend mandatory Cooking with Rachael Ray video screening and Culinary Skills 101 course prior to commencing overnight missions. Malnutrition a threat to morale, combat-readiness, and operational security.” He straightened up, a pizza box in each hand. “Meat lover’s feast or four cheese, my lady?”
“Oh hell, I’ll take the cheese.” She forced a smile to take the sting out of her words. “Sorry. It just bugs me.”
“It’d be good to have a staff, or use a hotel or something,” Huw agreed. “But this is less conspicuous, and less conspicuous is good right now.” He pulled a face.
“What do you mean?” She pulled out a chair and sat down.
“Well.” He slid the first pizza onto a plate and put it in the microwave. “I have a nasty suspicion that in the interests of looking inconspicuous we’re going to end up driving back to Massachusetts. Or driving part of the way, to avoid tracking. If we just fly point-to-point and they’re paying attention we’d show up. And then there’s the communication discipline. All Internet traffic is monitored by the NSA. All of it. So we fall back on 1930’s tech—old-fashioned letters written in runic hochsprache, flash memory cards sealed under postage stamps instead of microdots, that kind of thing. It’s probably why my lady Brilliana is taking
so long.”
“Oh.” Miriam stared at the second pizza, feeling a stab of acute déjà vu. It was just like Erasmus’s problems in New Britain, seen through a high tech looking glass. “I think I’m getting a headache.”
The oven pinged for attention. Huw opened it, sniffed, then slid the steaming microwave-limp pizza in front of her. “Sorry—”
“Don’t be, it’s not your fault.” She picked up a knife and began to cut as he put the second pizza in. “What do you want, Huw?”
“Huh?”
“What do you want?” She put down her knife. “Here, help yourself to a slice.”
“Uh, you mean, what do I want, as in, what is my heart’s desire, or what do I want, as in, what am I trying to achieve right now?” He reached over and took a piece, holding it twitchily on his fingertips.
“The former.” Miriam picked up a wedge of hot pizza and nibbled at it. “Because I’d say, right now you’re trying not to burn your fingers.”
“Ouch, yes! Um, life’s little ambitions. I want to finish my masters, and I wanted to do a Ph.D., obviously. Only the duke more or less handed me a doctoral subject a couple of weeks ago! Hell, not a doctorate: a life’s work. The implications are enormous. As for the other stuff . . . I’m a younger son. Clan shareholder, but at least I’m not going to get roped in and tied down into running a backwoods estate. There’s more to life than the Gruinmarkt and if I must do the getting married and raising a family thing I want to do it somewhere civilized, with electricity and running water, and a partner of my own choosing.”
“Got anyone in mind?”
“Oh, I think so.” His expression turned inward for a moment. “Although it’s too early to ask. . . .” He shook his head. The microwave dinged again. “Is that what you wanted to know?”
“It’ll do for a start.” Miriam watched as he stood up and pulled the second pizza out of the oven. “How many—of your generation—do you think see eye-to-eye with you on the last bit? Electricity and running water and marrying for love rather than because your parents say so?”
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