Destiny’s Crucible
Book 3
Heavier Than a Mountain
by
Olan Thorensen
Copyrighty 2016
All rights reserved
The is an original work of fiction. Any resemblance to people and places is coincidental.
ISBN 978-0-9972878-2-0
Maps and More
For maps to help orient the reader to the planet Anyar, a web site is under construction at www.olanthorensen.com.
A list of major characters is given in the back of the book.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER 1: WOMEN WHO WAIT
CHAPTER 2: TARGET, PARTHMAL
CHAPTER 3: ESCAPE
CHAPTER 4: LOSS OR DRAW?
CHAPTER 5: LEARNING
CHAPTER 6: PRISONERS
CHAPTER 7: DIGGING IN
CHAPTER 8: THUNDERSTRUCK
CHAPTER 9: OBLIGATIONS
CHAPTER 10: DECISION
CHAPTER 11: CATALYST
CHAPTER 12: MOVE
CHAPTER 13: “YOU POOR BASTARDS”
CHAPTER 14: STRIKE AT THE HEART
CHAPTER 15: OFF TO OROSZ CITY
CHAPTER 16: ALL-CLAN CONCLAVE
CHAPTER 17: RETURNING TO CAERNFORD
CHAPTER 18: WEAPONS REDUX
CHAPTER 19: READINESS
CHAPTER 20: AGENTS
CHAPTER 21: ANARYND
CHAPTER 22: HAIL TO THE HEIR
CHAPTER 23: DISRUPTION
CHAPTER 24: HOME LIFE
CHAPTER 25: DANGERS IN HEALING
CHAPTER 26: PLANNING
CHAPTER 27: IF THEY DO THAT, WE DO THIS
CHAPTER 28: BEWARE THE SERPENT
CHAPTER 29: A DAY IN THE LIFE OF YOZEF KOLSKO
CHAPTER 30: WHAT LURKS IN THE NIGHT
CHAPTER 31: FINAL PREPARATIONS
CHAPTER 32: OUT OF THE DARK
CHAPTER 33: SWAVEBROKE
CHAPTER 34: RETALIATION
CHAPTER 35: THREE DAYS LATER
CHAPTER 36: FOUR DAYS LATER
CHAPTER 37: FIVE DAYS LATER
CHAPTER 38: SKIN OF THEIR TEETH
CHAPTER 39: NO TRUCE
CHAPTER 40: THE CLANS UNITE
CHAPTER 41: THE BEST-LAID PLANS
MAJOR CHARACTERS
“Not for ourselves alone are we born.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
“Duty is what we expect of others, only to find out the other is yourself.”
― Culich Keelan, Caedelliium, Planet Anyar
“Duty doesn't melt away, no matter how much we might wish it to.”
― Claudia J. Edwards, Taming the Forest King
“Duty is a debt you owe to yourself to fulfill obligations you have assumed voluntarily.”
― Robert A. Heinlein
“Our duty is to be useful, not according to our desires but according to our powers.”
― Henri-Frédéric Amiel
“Not once or twice in our fair island-story,
The path of duty was the way to glory.”
― Alfred Tennyson
“Duty is heavier than a mountain, death lighter than a feather.”
― Japanese Proverb
PROLOGUE
The planet was ordinary. The planet was extraordinary. Its orbit lay within the zone that allowed liquid water, but most such planets remained airless or barren or under gasses, such as carbon dioxide blankets, all conditions inimical to life. This planet rated among the exceptional by five criteria. First, it contained water; an ocean covered 80 percent of the surface, with major landmasses concentrated on one hemisphere. Second, single-cell life had emerged from those waters. Third, life had, in its earliest stages, generated organisms whose metabolism gave off oxygen as a by-product. This step opened the door to an explosion of evolution in multi-cellular organisms, a leap not every biosphere achieved, which constituted the fourth criterion and which placed this planet among the rarest of its siblings.
Yet with a hundred billion stars in its galaxy alone, the planet rested as only one of a myriad with complex ecosystems, not unique enough to entice those who watched the planet so closely. The lure was humans, a self-named sentient species. Again, that alone, while interesting and worthy of attention, paled beside the fact that humans did not originate on this planet. Nor did humans have the technology to transplant themselves, along with a selection of animals and plants, to this planet.
The AI and its creators did not know how the transplantation had been done, how long ago, or by whom. Thus, they watched and waited, unobserved by the humans below, in case those who had carried out the transplantation returned.
As with other planets harboring life, the planet glowed like a jewel in the darkness: the blue of the ocean on one hemisphere, blues supplemented with brown and greens of continents on the other half of the planet. Its position relative to its yellow-orange sun kept most of the planet ice-free. Despite two permanent ice caps, the small axial tilt resulted in moderate seasonal changes. The Watchers had observed this planet for two thousand revolutions around its sun. They saw cities grow and sometimes burn, ships sail the waters, and armies fight battles.
The Watchers were not always present, but an artificial intelligence (AI) kept constant surveillance: receiving, collating, and cataloging data coming to it as a constant stream. Rarely did new data require action, such as whether to alert its creators. But rarely was not never. Now, the AI had to decide.
On a large island, west of the major landmasses, the AI observed a battle. The AI didn’t know the combatants’ identities and their reason for fighting; its programming did not account for such details. However, the AI had never observed a battle of this magnitude on the island. Normally, the AI would simply have cataloged the observation, except that it paired with another datum specific to the island. The coincidence of two pieces of data relating to the same island raised an internal flag within the AI’s programming.
Two years earlier, the AI’s creators had cast away a single human on this island. A creator vessel had accidentally destroyed a human aircraft while observing humans on their planet of origin. The creators felt obliged, by their mode of reasoning, to ameliorate the accident. They saved and treated a human who survived the collision. Unable to return the man to his normal life—because he now knew of alien observers—and unable to either keep him aboard their vessel or take him to their own worlds, they gave the human, once recovered, a choice: either be painlessly terminated or be placed on one of the other worlds populated with humans. The man chose exile, the selected destination the same small island where the battle had come to the AI’s attention.
For a long time—at least, several microseconds—the AI considered the probability of a connection between the two events. It deduced no likely scenario where the introduction of the single human could affect a battle involving tens of thousands, but, unable to conclude a negative, it passed the observations on to its creators.
The message sent, the AI allocated a tiny fraction of its attention to watch for other anomalous data points originating from the island, and waited.
The parameters of the AI’s programming did not include interest in what happened to the humans who participated in the battle or the humans who waited for news of the outcome.
If he had known of the AI’s assumption that no one human caused the battle, Yozef Kolsko (aka Joseph Colsco in an earlier life on Earth) would not have argued, though he would have admitted he influenced the outcome. However, the orbiting AI’s conclusion matched what Harlie (the separate AI that Yozef interacted with after the destruction
of his airliner) had told Yozef: that his impact on the planet would be “like a drop of water in an ocean.”
Although angry at his fate and at Harlie’s indifference, Yozef had determined he would transfer as much twenty-first-century Earth knowledge as he could to Anyar, his destination planet, whose technology level approximated Earth, circa 1700 CE. However, Yozef limited his goal to introducing knowledge, not embroiling himself in political and military affairs. His contributions to all three areas were unexpected by both himself and the AI’s creators.
Unknown to the AI, the battle it observed contributed to an ongoing transformation of Yozef Kolsko, from the man he had been to the one he would become.
CHAPTER 1: WOMEN WHO WAIT
The battle of Moreland City took fewer than three hours. The clansmen who participated knew the outcome immediately. The dead were dead and cared no more. The seriously wounded were fortunate if in the care of medicants and mercifully unconscious. Others experienced the agony of waiting for either help or death. Those unharmed or the walking wounded felt the elation of victory or numbness from what they had witnessed or endured.
Beneath the orbiting AI, other humans waited. While the logical, disinterested sentience observed the battle from space, tens of thousands of other beings, emotionally invested, waited for news. For some, word came within hours. For others, days. For some, months—if ever.
Urlwina Moreland
Even from the highest building in Moreland City, the wife of Hetman Gynfor Moreland couldn’t see the battlefield, but she heard the thunder of hooves, the cannon and musket fire, a pause, more firing, then nothing for two hours. Finally, a long trail of horsemen and wagons moved over hillocks and to the city. Her eyes were still good enough to see that the wagons held wounded and dead. She didn’t see the banners of the Moreland leadership.
Maybe they’re still at the battlefield, she told herself. Particularly, the hetman and his sons.
Not that she worried for the safety of her husband or even for her oldest son, Owain. Gynfor had not been the husband of her dreams, with his harshness, overweening self-importance, and stubborn refusal to face his own stupidity, and she had hated every day of her marriage and life in Clan Moreland. Unfortunately, as a daughter of Hetman Pewitt, she’d had no choice in the political marriage. The only lights in her life had been three babies: two sons, Owain and Caedem, and a daughter, Nissa.
Owain she’d loved until, by age seven, he began changing into a copy of his father. Now, only a dim memory reminded her of when she had loved her eldest son. Caedem, the younger son, demonstrated everything his older brother lacked: kindness, inquisitiveness, and strength. He was strong enough to avoid emulating his father and brother. She knew that other clans, particularly Keelan, chose the next hetman among all of the sons and not by primogeniture—and even then, only with the approval of the boyermen. She had never suggested to Gynfor that he choose Caedem as heir, knowing her husband would dismiss copying Keelan.
So far, Owain had three daughters but no sons. Despite her efforts to suppress the thought, which caused her intermittent guilt, Ulwina admitted to herself that if Gynfor died, she wouldn’t mourn if Owain followed suit and Caedem became hetman.
Footsteps on stone announced someone behind her. Slow footsteps, as if made by an old or feeble person or someone hesitant to approach. She turned to see Abbot Kelvan of St. Worlan’s abbey. He was young for an abbot and not feeble, but his pale, grim expression foretold distress.
“Urlwina,” he said softly, confirming bad news by the use of her first name. “News came. The Narthani are withdrawing back to their territories, but Moreland suffered grievous losses, far worse than we first feared.”
“Who is dead?” she asked, her voice emotionless. The abbot needed no further words to know she asked about her husband and two sons.
“God knows, I’m sorry to tell you, Urlwina, but it’s confirmed that the hetman and both of your sons fell in a charge on the Narthani.”
She didn’t speak for a long moment. “And there’s no doubt?”
“None, I’m afraid.”
“Thank you, Abbot. I’d like to be alone now.”
“Of course, but I’ll be in the main hall, if you want to talk or need me for any reason.”
She turned back, looking out to the west, as the abbot’s footsteps receded. She would mourn Caedem later. For now, nothing held her in Moreland. She would take Nissa and within two hours be on her way back home to Pewitt. She could do nothing for Caedem, but Nissa needed to be out of the reach of Moreland factions. Her daughter was a simpleton—a good-natured girl of fifteen with the mind of a five-year-old. If Nissa stayed in Moreland, she would become a pawn in the struggle to define the new clan leadership. With the hetman and both of his sons dead and with no grandsons, Nissa might be forced into a marriage to secure a hetman claim. When Nissa was safe, then Urlwina would mourn her youngest son.
Breda Keelan
Another hetman’s wife also waited, but the news took longer to reach her at Caernford, capital of Keelan Province, 130 miles south southeast of Moreland City. In Breda Keelan’s twenty-seven-year marriage to Culich Keelan, she had seen him off into danger many times, mainly in the early years before his father died and Culich became hetman. But those times were nothing like now. When Culich had left this time, she watched him lead five hundred armed Keelan men on the way to joining hundreds more Keelanders and men from the Gwillamer and Mittack clans—2,200 men going to the aid of the Moreland Clan, invaded by a Narthani army and the allied Eywell and Selfcell clans.
The last report, now two days old, said that men of ten clans faced a Narthani army on the plain west of Moreland City. Since then, no updates had arrived. Whether her husband survived was surely already determined, and so she waited.
After the men headed north to whatever fate lay ahead, Breda insisted that she and her three daughters eat every meal together. She needed her children around her and intuited that they needed to stay near her and not retreat into solitary fears.
The four of them ostensibly went about their daily lives, which fooled no one. Their meals were quiet affairs. Strained conversations interleaved with draining silences, as each groped for words without voicing what consumed everyone’s thoughts. Despite doing their best to maintain the strength expected of the hetman’s family, they had limits. One night Breda woke to find her youngest daughter, twelve-year-old Mared, huddled next to her in bed. The child had part of her nightshirt stuffed in her mouth, stifling sobs so as not to wake her mother.
When Breda enveloped Mared in an embrace, the child spit out the cloth.
“Oh, Mother! I’m so scared! What’s happened to Father?” she sobbed in a strangled voice.
“I know, child, I know. I’m afraid, too. But all we can do is pray and wait for news.”
Breda had no sooner spoken than her two other daughters, Anid and Ceinwyn, stood in the bedroom door, holding onto each other, listening to their mother’s words.
“And Yozef,” said a sobbing Anid, the second youngest daughter.
“And Yozef,” agreed their mother.
Anid and Ceinwyn rushed to their mother and sister, and the four held tight to one another.
After several minutes, Breda cleared her throat. “We all will keep praying for good news soon, but your father would want us to keep faith that everything will be all right.” She comforted the others as best she could and fought not to show the depth of her own fear. An hour passed before mother and daughters, huddled together, fell asleep.
The stars had begun to fade with the approaching daylight when Norlin, the teenage boy who worked at the manor, pounded on the bedroom door. Breda jerked upright, followed by her daughters.
“Sen Breda, there’s a rider with a message from the hetman!”
Breda untangled herself from her daughters and ran to the bedroom door, not thinking to put a robe over her nightdress.
Norlin appeared anxious and held out a sealed envelope. “The rider said he ch
anged horses four times and rode all night. He looks it.”
She tore open the envelope to reveal a single folded sheet.
Dearest,
I am scratching out this short message and sending it by rider instead of semaphore before dark, since the station manager said clouds and rain were stopping transmission between here and Keelan. More news will come later, but I wanted to assure you I’m safe. As are Yozef and Vortig. We are calling it a victory, since the Narthani are withdrawing back to Eywell Province. You will hear more later, but all I’ll say now is that it was terrible. We fought a battle, and although the Narthani turned back, we estimate about 100 Keelan dead and many wounded. I believe I will be here in Moreland City for another day before we start home, so I should see you in 3 to 4 days.
With all my love, Culich
She read the words again and started a third time when Anid called out, “Mother! What is it? Is it about father?”
Breda looked up to see three fearful faces circling her. “Oh, sorry, children. Yes, it’s from your father, and he says he’s all right.”
Shouts and tears ensued, then Mared spoke. “And Yozef? What about Yozef?”
“Your father says Yozef is also safe. They should be back here in three to four days.”
“We have to send word to Maera!” said Mared.
“It’ll be light in another two hours,” said Breda. “The sky is clear here, so a semaphore message can go out as soon as the stations can pass signals. Ceinwyn, run get me quill, ink, and paper so I can write a message to Maera. We’ll have Norlin take it to the semaphore station in Caernford, to go out as soon as possible.”
Two hours later, Breda sat on the manor’s front veranda and gazed at clear skies dotted with scattered clouds. She assumed her semaphore message to Maera had been sent on its way through the intervening stations between Caernford and Abersford.
Heavier Than a Mountain (Destiny's Crucible Book 3) Page 1
