by Guy Antibes
“It never does,” Bentwick said. “Good luck. We will be right behind you after we’ve taken care of their archers.”
Sam followed Harrison. Emmy had stopped her barking somewhere along the way. Sam hadn’t even noticed. They slipped in with the king’s soldiers and moved toward the village.
The soldiers separated into ten-man squads and began clearing the village, house-by-house. Sam watched them pound on doors and order the inhabitants out of their homes without weapons. The other groups had to feel the faces of the villagers in the first few houses to detect pollen masks, but Sam could see through any disguises.
To their left, a group of villagers must have been gang members. They instantly crafted pollen weapons, but they were soon cut down. Pollen did not fare well against steel, and Sam could see why with his spectacles on.
Harrison dragged Sam and Emmy through the seemingly empty village and knocked on Healer Humble’s door.
“Harrison, inside quickly. The devils are clustering in villager’s cottages.”
“And General Torrent is clearing the village, house-by-house,” Harrison said. “What can you tell me? Any bit of information may save lives on both sides.”
“Only on the king’s side. The others will fight to the death if they can. They are all on drugs,” Humble said. “The neural pollen? Since you visited, I found out what makes the mendica-podica-alm’s wort combination with the neural pollen worse. Those who take it are highly suggestible. Luckily, they haven’t used it on all of us, but their leaders have their men pumped up with drugs and lies that the king’s army will slaughter them.”
“And if that’s how the gang members think, then they will fight to the death. General Torrent has already fought them in Horner’s Rest and Worrier’s Flat.”
“The soldiers aren’t killing my friends?”
“Some are disguised,” Sam said. “They are touching the villagers’ faces to see if they are wearing pollen masks.”
“That is a little relief. Life hasn’t been pleasant, and some of my friends have died, including Juston, but the deaths could have been worse,” Humble said.
“We captured six leaders who tried to float their way out of the village on the river, but Sam could tell they were wearing disguises.”
“What can I do?” Humble said. “I don’t have any secrets.”
“Keep your doors locked. If the king’s troops ask you to come out, do it. Let them look inside, don’t resist if they want to touch your face and you will be let go.”
After Mount Vannon forces obliterated the enemy archers, the army poured into Shovel Vale and continued to clear house after house. As they approached the river, the enemy forces were stuffed into dwellings of all types, and the fighting was a series of quick clashes. Enemy bodies lined the streets in pockets, along with some unfortunate villagers who were killed by the thugs in their houses.
The sights repelled Sam as they continued behind the soldiers. Harrison worked as quickly as he could as Sam helped him tend to the royal army wounded. Soon Humble, with a full medical bag, worked by his side while Sam and Emmy stood guard. Soldiers ran back and forth, some under orders, and others responded to the pockets of fighting that still occurred during the aftermath of the taking of Shovel Vale.
Sam wasn’t disappointed that he did little fighting. He looked up when a mounted officer stopped along the line of wounded soldiers.
“Sam Smith?”
Sam nodded.
“Get aboard. General Torrent wants you.”
Sam looked at Harrison, not knowing if he needed the healer’s permission to go.
“We can manage, although I don’t know if Emmy will stay.”
Sam looked at his dog. “Stay with Harrison,” he said, scratching the top of Emmy’s head.
The officer put out his hand for Sam, who jumped up behind the man. As they rode ahead, Emmy followed, and there was nothing Sam could do about it. Emmy would join him in General Torrent’s presence.
The general had taken over the village council building. From the number of soldiers cleaning up the place, the fighting must have been heavy.
General Torrent sat in a circle with some of his officers. The man who fetched him took an empty seat and asked Sam to join him. Emmy walked in, causing a bit of a commotion, and sat down next to Sam.
“ Where did you get a Great Sanchian fighting dog?” General Torrent asked.
“I bought her in Mountain View.”
“At a general store?” one of the officers said to the laughter of his fellows.
“From Lennard Lager. He was letting someone abuse the dog,” Sam said. “She is all mine, now. I thought Great Sanchians were hunting dogs.”
“When they aren’t protecting a lord,” Torrent said. “You are a lucky lad, but also a useful one. We are bringing in some more villagers. We touched their faces and couldn’t detect a disguise, but I am still doubtful they are who they say they are.”
Sam put on his spectacles. “Bring them in.”
Three men and three women, all young-looking, walked into the council chamber. Their looks of defiance marked them as the enemy. Sam removed the spectacles and was shocked that each of them wore a disguise. He put his spectacles back on and approached each one.
The other disguises were crude compared to these. Sam couldn’t find any edges with his spectacles. He reached up to touch a woman’s face. He couldn’t sense the difference, but he slid a finger across a man’s beard and could tell the whiskers didn’t feel right.
“These are better disguises than any I have seen,” Sam said. “You can tell the difference between real and pollen whiskers, but the women’s faces are nearly perfect. The pollen-artist who did these might be a woman,” Sam said.
Torrent rose and withstood the glaring faces and nodded. “A good observation, boy. You might be right, although I’m not sure about the artist being a woman or not.”
Sam shrugged. “I’ve been wrong lots of times before,” he said, while he pulled out his gold-tipped wand.
He slid the wand across each face. He could see the disguises peel back much more quickly than the other, more crude masks. The disguises were thinner in places than the veils married women made.
Sam looked at their hands and tried to touch a woman’s skin with his wand.
“Don’t!” she said, moving her bound hand away from Sam.
He looked at the woman’s wrinkled face emerging from the disguise. He removed his spectacles to look at the woman’s real face. She was probably about sixty years old, he thought. A grandma, he thought, a vicious grandma. He was surprised at how many women were leaders in the rebellion.
The gold continued to do its work, as the disguises decomposed. Sam didn’t recognize any of them.
“Paulson!” one of the officers said. “You are hooked up in all this?”
The prisoner, diffident when he walked in, looked to his right and his left, gnashing his teeth. He was caught and identified.
“Rebellion against the king and Toraltia carries a death sentence,” General Torrent said. He paused for effect before continuing. “Unless there are mitigating circumstances, like cooperating with me.”
“Ask them if they are taking the podica-mendica drugs,” Sam said.
One of the men squinted while he pursed his lips, as if he thought the drugs were distasteful. An addict wouldn’t have acted like that, Sam thought.
“Are those the drugs that Harrison told us about?” the general said.
Sam nodded.
“I want each of these people confined to different houses. We will interrogate them separately.”
One of the women broke her pollen bonds. A pollen blade with serrated edges grew in her hand. She glared at Sam, ready to attack. Emmy didn’t growl or bark, but bowled the woman over before she had a chance to strike Sam. The dog bit deep into the woman’s neck, and that was that.
“One less to interrogate,” General Torrent said impassively. “Get the body out of here.” He looked at Sam. �
��You may go, and take your dog with you.”
Sam left the room, overhearing the general expressing his dissatisfaction that someone didn’t think about using steel manacles.
They stopped at a trough. Sam pumped water. While Emmy drank, he rubbed the blood off her muzzle. He looked into Emmy’s eyes. A smile re-emerged on her face.
“So you are a fighting dog. I can believe it.” He scratched behind her ears. “You saved my life today. I would never have reacted as fast as you, Emmy.”
She barked and licked his face. Sam was glad he had let her drink before he thanked her.
Harrison and Humble were working on a line of soldiers that seemed to have grown longer.
“What happened?” Harrison asked.
Sam gave the healer a description of the meeting and its awful ending.
“I thought hunting wasn’t quite right for a Great Sanchian. Are you even more glad you bought her from Lord Lager?”
Sam managed a smile. “I never doubted that I did the right thing.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
~
M OUNT VANNON LOOKED BETTER THAN EVER. Harrison’s wagon carried ten wounded constables who would be taken to the town hall where healers would work on them.
Tom Elbow, who had run the constabulary while they were gone, greeted them.
“The chief constable will return with the rest of the town’s forces in three days. Can you hold out that long?”
Tom grinned. “It’s been fun to play Chief Constable,” he said. “Some of the rowdiest citizens went off to war. I found out some interesting things, and some more information came from Baskin.”
“But we defeated the gang,” Sam said.
“Did we, or did we clear out vermin from Shovel Vale?” Harrison said. “Some of the leaders were caught, but did we catch the real leader?”
“We aren’t finished?” Sam asked.
Harrison snorted. “We might be, but Chief Constable Bentwick isn’t. The leaders that you exposed didn’t give General Torrent the information he sought.”
“Maybe they didn’t talk because the head person still has people out there who could kill them?”
Harrison narrowed his eyes. “Are you sure about that?”
“A guess, an unsubstantiated guess,” Sam said.
“So what will you do with your guess?”
Sam thought for a moment. “See what Tom has come up with?”
“Or go looking for the information on your own. Tom’s information is the best place to start,” the healer said. “Whoever is behind all this will be licking their wounds for a while. The gang lost most of its members and all their sheep.”
“That’s right, the neural pollen.”
Harrison nodded. “There are loose ends that someone is going to have to clear up. It might be us, or it might be someone else. That kind of thing is Bentwick’s decision, not mine. We’ve done our part, except for three more villages to visit.”
“I thought we’d be done with the war. Weren’t we going to visit the gold mine?” Sam asked.
“Yes, we are done with the war, and no, we aren’t visiting the gold mine. General Torrent has taken over that task. The Fealty Mining Company is the king’s business at this point and none of ours. We talk to Tom, and then we can be out of here to finish up our tour tomorrow morning. Are you up to it? Bentwick may still be here when we come back through Mount Vannon, so we can find out what happened while we were gone.”
Sam felt a little deflated that they weren’t going to pursue the owner of the mine, but then Harrison’s tour wasn’t done, and that was the purpose of their summer.
Tom led them upstairs to the conference room. He had papers laid out on the table. “All I could find out was that the leader isn’t in Mount Vannon. The ownership papers supposedly go to Baskin but are picked up by a private courier who leaves the city. The Baskin constabulary monitors transactions, but they had no reason to follow the person who takes the shares away.”
“But the courier could have come here,” Sam said.
Tom gave Sam a disparaging look. “We do monitor couriers arriving in Mount Vannon, and I assure you the documents don’t arrive in this town.”
“Riverville, Oak Basin, or Mountain View?” Sam asked.
“The courier might have gone to Shovel Vale, or a cabin in the woods, or anywhere in Toraltia,” Harrison said.
Sam smiled. “Like outside of Cherryton?”
“Maybe not there,” Harrison said. He looked at Tom. “Do you have anything else?”
“Most of the shares have been recorded as transferred, enough to give whoever collected the mining rights the ability to do what they want with the mine.”
“But they won’t have all the profits,” Harrison said. “We were lucky we didn’t find out about this next summer. The wall would have been built and the mine in operation. Defeating whoever is behind this would have been much harder.”
“I’ll keep looking around,” Tom said.
~
Sam looked at the mountains rising to the north of them as they climbed back into the hills from Mount Varron. Harrison, Sam, and Emmy headed towards Kennel, the village they would have gone to next after Shovel Vale.
“We will have to watch for defeated soldiers fleeing from the battle. They may be roaming in this area. Tom Elbow has not received any reports, but anything can happen. We will have to continue your weapons training, but I told you we would finish up with knife skills.”
“I wondered about that,” Sam said. “I was afraid we’d be cutting our tour short.”
Harrison smiled. “I thought about it, but my commission is to visit the villages. I suspect we will see the effects of the gangs in Kennel, Hapless Corners, and Bowerville. If Bagbox ended up in Shovel Vale, I suspect the villages to the west would have been drained of fighters, too.”
“Will there be more addicted miners?” Sam asked.
Harrison nodded solemnly. “They will be in sad shape if the gang members stopped distributing the mendica-podica potion.”
They stopped for the night in a small valley.
“Take out your knife,” Harrison said. “Don’t try to be fancy with what I teach you. Even experienced knife handlers will get cuts from practicing.”
“We could use pollen knives,” Sam said.
Harrison sniffed. “What kind of balance do you thing a pollen knife provides? Pollen is a light material, even when it is made dense. Your knife is steel and balanced properly. The moves you practice are best learned with the real thing. I want you to survive the training without cutting yourself too badly.”
Sam took out his knife and held it in his hand. After a few swishes in the air, he nodded. “You are right, as usual.”
“I don’t know if I’m right or not, but that is what I think. You will learn that there is more than a single way to do just about anything. Remember that. Did we do everything perfectly on this trip?”
Sam pursed his lips. “Not necessarily. We didn’t have perfect knowledge.”
“And if we did, what would we have done differently?”
“I’m not sure.” Sam shrugged.
“We could have done all sorts of things differently. Would you have gone off with Dantell and his wife in Oak Basin if you knew what kind of a man he really was? What if we had stayed the night in Shovel Vale?”
“Our actions might have changed the outcome, or they might not have. Is that it?” Sam thought for a few moments. “It gets back to our talk about how much you know and how much you don’t.” He furrowed his brow. “Not everything is cut and dried, is it? Are you confusing me on purpose?”
Harrison shook his head. “Not confusing you. I am expanding your mind a bit. You were right to rescue me in Mount Vannon, but my rescue wouldn’t have changed the outcome of the battle at Shovel Vale. You, on the other hand, did change things. I was just another sword in the hand of Bentwick’s forces. You were able to detect disguises, and that did affect the battle and General Torrent’s understa
nding of it. Am I a better swordsman than you?”
Sam snorted. “Of course. We both contributed. You healed many of the fighters. That’s something I can’t do. You gave life back to the men you saved. That’s an accomplishment, and it changed the lives of those you treated.”
Harrison laughed. “Ha! You got me on that one. I was going to convince you that your contribution was important, and I was schooled by you instead. Changing an individual life by whatever we do is an important task. That is why I continue to heal, Sam. Perhaps you can find a way to help people, to change individual lives in your own way, even if it means helping larger groups.”
“So you were trying to teach me ambiguity? I know what that is,” Sam said. “Learning to understand that there are different ways to achieve the same goal is important, right?”
“Right,” Harrison said. “It is a lesson I learned much too late in life. “
“But you learned it.”
Harrison nodded. “I did. As long as you don’t get confused with too many alternatives, it can help you make decisions that you are comfortable with. I’m afraid the mastermind of the Fealty Mining fiasco isn’t practicing the same kind of thinking. I don’t know what he is up to, but he didn’t have to cause the deaths of so many people.” Harrison pulled out his knife. “First of all, let’s talk about balance…”
~
Sam was disappointed that he hadn’t learned any knife tricks by the time they rolled into Kennel, but he had only started a few days ago. Harrison talked about balance and how to care for the knife and how to sharpen it properly. Sam had been doing it incorrectly, according to Harrison, but he wondered if there were different ways to sharpen knives, too.
The innkeeper of Kennel’s only inn walked out to greet them in the nearly-empty stableyard. Sam looked up at the half-timbered two-story inn. River rock was used for the bottom part of the inn, and bricks filled in the gaps between the timbers. There were a few half-timbered buildings in Cherryton. Sam experienced a moment of yearning for home, but Emmy’s barking took him out of the melancholy mood.
“That beast isn’t going to swallow me in one gulp, is he?” the woman said.
