Heavier Than a Mountain (Destiny's Crucible Book 3)

by Olan Thorensen

  Yozef didn’t appreciate the scale of food storage being planned by Clan Keelan until he sat in on a meeting of Culich with Vortig Luwis and Pedr Kennrick. Kennrick was in charge of organizing the food reserves, and he summarized a massive program. With Keelan being so well organized, the clan headquarters kept a running estimate of animals and large grain stores, as well as data on the population. According to Kennrick’s numbers, Keelan Province had 190,000 cattle, 270,000 krykors (an Anyar species roughly filling the niches of sheep and goats and about the same size), and 80,000 horses. Also, families commonly kept combinations of ducks, geese, ruktors (Anyarian flightless bird analogs), and coneys (rabbit analogs).

  Currently, people had more cattle and krykors than usual, because the farmers’ inability to ship grain off the island had led many to use excess grain to increase herds, a strategy Bronwyn Merton-Linton had explained to Yozef before their affair. They hoped that if the Narthani ever lifted the embargo, the clans could turn the animals into cured meats for external trade. In other words, food could be stored easier on the hoof.

  Keelan put plans into place for meat to be salted, smoked, or turned into dry sausage.The processing would start up incrementally, with facilities prepared to ramp up production, if the situation with the Narthani worsened.

  Unfortunately, plant products required different strategies, which brought the existing methods and Yozef’s carbon dioxide into play. They had already stored grain in silos, warehouses, and below ground. Although farmers had reduced acreage, the equivalent of two years’ crops still sat idle, even counting spoilage and pests. Similarly, both farms and families widely grew root vegetables (turnips, beets, and several Anyarian species with a similar look and taste to potatoes) but didn’t store them in large quantities. Much of the current practice would soon change.

  Culich intuited, as did Yozef and Maera, that the next year would prove critical. As part of the expanded crop production, Yozef’s fertilizer project went from stasis to full-scale production, using thirty men mining at Birdshit Bay, transporting guano to Abersford and crushing it there, and distributing the fertilizer throughout Keelan. The worst-case scenario with the expansion of crop production would be if they were wrong: then the farmers would have wasted their efforts. Yet if their premonitions about the Narthani came true, the clan would require every pound of food it could generate.

  Ranchers couldn’t increase meat production as fast as crops, but the hetmen asked clan members to reduce beef consumption to half of normal and to allow calves that they would have butchered for veal to mature further. Krykor herders received different orders. Krykors provided wool, and while people considered the meat inferior to beef, it was edible and made respectable sausage, if spiced enough. A krykor ewe could give birth twice a year, with two or three young each time. Herders normally exerted population control by limiting the number of male krykors. The clans now lifted that limitation, which meant the krykor herds could easily double in size within a year. If the need for stored foods didn’t materialize, the clan could severely cull the herds in a year or two.

  Other, less extensive plans included increasing bird flocks and smoking the meat, the clan’s fishermen hauling in everything they could to be dried or smoked, and encouraging farms and families to plant large vegetable gardens and preserve the products and the fruit by drying them. Yozef explained the principles of canning, a method of food preparation that he remembered hadn’t been developed on Earth until after the Napoleonic Wars (early to mid-1800s). However, the lack of infrastructure to produce enough sealable glass or metal containers appeared to make this option impractical for the time being. Nevertheless, in a few places people used multi-gallon glass jugs for canning.

  They developed several bulk storage sites, with a main one in the Dillagon Mountains. Only a single pass crossed over the mountains to the Dornfeld District, and no army could force the pass if the clans even moderately defended it. There, within a series of high valleys to be protected at each end of the pass by impregnable fortifications, the clan’s ultimate redoubt would be built. Every clan member would try to reach this location, should the worst happen. They would turn deep caverns into storage sites, and hundreds of men already worked to make chambers sealable to use Yozef’s idea for carbon dioxide–facilitated preservation and to build windcatchers to cool chambers. Given the altitude, they also planned to use existing deep ice caves and to bring block ice to shallower caves.

  Although housing for potentially tens of thousands of clan members would be primitive when they arrived, the heavily forested mountains would provide shelter and heat. If necessary, they would fell the entire forest to create a safe haven. Forests would grow again; clan members lost would be lost forever.

  The biblical scale of Clan Keelan’s planning awed Yozef. Yet it also made Yozef’s blood run cold, because the scope of the planning clearly revealed the worst fears of the clan leadership.

  Still Time for Home

  Finding time to write in his journals became harder and harder, as did Yozef’s physical workouts. He maintained a once or twice a month session with Wyfor Kales on blade fighting, combining the session with half an hour of target practice.

  No matter how many demands pressed on Yozef, he scrupulously reserved time to eat morning and evening meals with Maera. His other pleasant moments consisted of waking up or just before he fell asleep, with him and Maera in bed together, sometimes holding each other, sometimes not quite touching. Their coupling became less frequent as Maera’s stomach grew, with Yozef expressing concern for her and the baby and Maera assuring her husband everything was fine and that she would tell him if the time came to stop. The time hadn’t come one night, when afterward they lay naked, arms and legs intertwined. A sheen of sweat from both bodies mixed and added to their sense of bonding.

  “Is it still kicking a lot?” He ran a hand over the mound, then exclaimed, “Oh! I guess there’s the answer.” Her abdomen rippled with internal activity.

  “No question,” she laughed. “He’s an active one. I think we’ll have our hands full once he learns to walk.”

  “Still think it’s a boy?”

  “Keelan needs an heir, so, yes, it’s a boy,” asserted Maera.

  Yozef didn’t argue that her assertion wouldn’t likely carry weight with nature. Yet when Maera made up her mind this strongly, he found it best not to contradict her without a good reason.

  He stroked her bulge. “How soon before it . . . he . . . comes?”

  “Another month to a month-and-a-half.”

  Another . . . ? Wait a minute, Yozef thought. That’s not right! That would be eight and a half to nine Anyar months, each of which is thirty-six days!

  Yozef kept quiet while he did quick calculations. That would make the gestation between 310 and 324 days, compared to an average of 270 days on Earth. Then he remembered to factor in that the days here equaled twenty-three hours on Earth. Taking the day-length difference into account, he figured the gestation period on Anyar was equivalent to about a month longer than on Earth.

  The moon cycles? he wondered. I know women’s menstrual cycles are longer here, matching their moons, just as on Earth. Why would that change gestation? Maybe it’s the higher gravity, making the fetus develop slower? One more thing to remind me this isn’t Earth.

  His hand wandered up to a breast, massaging it gently and rolling the nipple with his thumb.

  Maera tensed, as her nipple stood erect. “Don’t tell me you’re ready again so soon.”

  “No,” he said sedately, “it’s just a nice thing to play with.”

  “Play with?” she said with mock indignation. “Is that what I am, a toy?”

  “Do you object?”

  She giggled. “Not really. Though I’ll admit it took time getting used to . . . having a man touch me everywhere. And the other way, too.” One of her hands moved down below his stomach and cupped his genitals. “Yes, I see you’re not recovered yet.”

  “Give it time, although if yo
u keep doing that, the time may be short.”

  “I wondered if you would still be interested in coupling when I got so big.”

  “I think the last half hour answered that question.”

  “I worried that after the baby comes, I wouldn’t look appealing, because some women have stretch marks, and their bodies never look the same. I’m glad you told me how to avoid the marks.”

  * * *

  Yozef knew the marks were due to connective tissue fibers breaking under the stress of rapid growth, leaving scars. Months earlier, after hearing Maera voice that worry, he mentioned that some women in his homeland did things to avoid the marks, such as applying oils or lotions to their bodies as they swelled, exercising regularly, and exfoliating their skin to encourage new skin cell production. He didn’t think to mention that the methods probably didn’t have any effect. At that particular moment, he had been remembering how Julie had read everything she could find on the Internet and planned to follow every suggestion. He had researched it himself and found no evidence that any of the approaches proved effective. Genetics remained the best predictor of stretch marks: if a woman’s mother had gotten them, a new mother-to-be would likely get them, too.

  However, his reservations about the methods such as using oils and lotions subsided into silence when Maera informed him she had spoken with a major Caernford soap maker, who had decided to market a lotion for prospective mothers to prevent stretch marks.

  Well, he told himself, it won’t do any harm and probably feels good.

  * * *

  Yozef and Maera held and stroked each other for several minutes, then Maera unwrapped herself and looked at Yozef’s face, lit by candlelight.

  “Yozef, you’ve been . . . different somehow since you came back from the conclave.”

  “Different? How?”

  “I’m not sure,” said Maera. “Maybe calmer, though that isn’t quite what I sense. More assured? No, that’s not exactly right either. You tell me. Did something happen at the conclave you haven’t told me about?”

  “I told you what happened. I don’t know myself how it affected me. It can be confusing. There I was, standing in front of that room full of hetmen and advisors and thinking to myself how every one of them was more experienced in life and at leading men than I am. Yet there I was, giving advice as if I knew what I was talking about, and somehow seeming believing I did—or acting like it, anyway. I’ve talked in front of rooms of people before, but then I spoke about topics I felt confident about. That experience didn’t match the one with the conclave audience. Still, I spoke and afterward thought I had done well.

  “Then, by the end of the conclave, I could see that I’d convinced very few people of some of the major points I’d tried to make. Your father assured me I was wrong, and it just took a while for many hetmen to mull over things before acting. Even if he’s right, my instincts are that we don’t have time to waste. The trip back gave me time to think, and I have come to understand his point. I just chafe at the slow progress.

  “I also seem to be coming around to accepting that I can’t hide as much as I’d like in my projects, my writings, you, and the baby, when it comes. Like it or not, I’m involved in advising. Although things have worked out so far, I’m still afraid I’ll advise something that turns into a disaster, but I have to stop forgetting that other people are part of all this, and it’s not totally on me, whether the outcome is bad or good.”

  He remained quiet a moment, and Maera could tell he was gathering a thought.

  “It’s just . . . just that I don’t see myself as a leader like the other men at the conclave.”

  Maera took a minute to think about what he’d said. “Yozef, what is a ‘leader’? Aren’t there different kinds? Father is certainly one. He leads the clan. Denes is a leader. He’s led men in battle. Abbot Sistian is a leader. People listen to him and respect him. Maybe you don’t lead a clan or hundreds of men in battle, but aren’t you somewhat like Sistian? People listen to you. People like father, Denes, Luwis, and Kennrick. They don’t just listen, they respect you.

  “Carnigan is your friend, so it may be hard to tell, but I’m sure he has respect for you. If nothing else, I remember him being impressed that you stood and fought at St. Sidryn’s, even when you admitted you were afraid. He respected that. What about Kales and Balwis? Neither of them may be a friend, but I can’t imagine either of them attaching themselves to you as they have unless there’s a high level of respect. Hard men like that don’t hang around other men who are weak or fools. You are a leader, Yozef, whether or not you believe it.”

  He sighed. “I understand what you’re saying, Maera, and part of me knows it’s true. Still, I’m unsure about trying to be a leader. What if I make mistakes?”

  “Everyone makes mistakes, especially leaders. Father readily admits when he makes one, but he forges on, trying not to make the same mistake again. I think you do what is necessary, Yozef, even if sometimes I wish you’d act sooner. I know you are reticent to give advice on serious matters, though I admit I don’t understand why. I tell myself to be patient and let you do what is needed in your own time, not mine.”

  CHAPTER 20: AGENTS

  Esyl Havant rode his horse at a canter from the Caernford semaphore station toward Keelan Manor. He had made this trip hundreds of times in the last eight months. During the two days between the news arriving about the Narthani invasion of Moreland and the Keelan men departing for Moreland City to aid the invaded clan, he had made the eight-minute trip between the Caernford semaphore station and Keelan Manor fourteen times. The other two assistants at the station had carried another eleven messages to the manor.

  Although he delivered messages throughout the Caernford area, he had volunteered so often to deliver the messages to the hetman’s household that the station manager had usually come to send Havant by default. The hetman’s family was friendly, the daughters charming, and the hetman and his wife treated him and all others with respect. He liked them, which was unfortunate and irrelevant.

  Becoming an assistant to the station manager had been far easier than he had anticipated. When he’d arrived in Caernford two years previously, his demonstrated reading ability, facility with numbers, and earnest manner had secured him a position as an apprentice registrar in the Keelan central registrar office. However, he quickly realized the better position was working at the semaphore station. He identified the station manager and found that he was a regular patron of the Staggering Stallion Inn and Pub. It took a month of casual interchanges, then beers, to become friendly enough with the manager to “reveal” his longtime interest in the semaphore and boredom with the registrar office.

  Havant volunteered that he would like to learn more about the semaphore, and the inebriated manager told him to stop by, and he’d be given a lesson. During the next month, Havant became a regular, hanging around the semaphore station whenever he didn’t work at the registrar office. He ran errands for the station’s staff and bought rounds at pubs. When a flurry of messages flew in and out, during and after the raid on St. Sidryn’s, Havant volunteered to help deliver some of the messages. On one of these deliveries, he first visited Keelan Manor and met the hetman and his family.

  From there, it was easy. An arranged fall from a horse and a resulting broken neck eliminated one of the semaphore assistants. The manager offered Havant the unfortunate vacancy. After due consideration, he accepted the position, and for the last eight months Havant had read more than half of the semaphore messages going to and from the Keelan hetman.

  His Narthani name was Istem Sokulu, and he had worked for Sadek Hizer, the Narthani assessor, for ten years. A gifted linguist and a graduate of one of the more prestigious Narthani military schools, Havant had an inability to hide disdain for most superiors, which limited his career options. Hizer recruited him as a confidential agent and over the years had tasked him as both an internal and an external spy. Internally, he spied to assess Narthani command structures that Hizer evalua
ted, and externally he spied against enemies of the empire on the missions where Hizer was assigned intelligence duties. Caedellium fell into the latter category. The work involved spells of boredom, but the possibility of discovery was a heavy dose of spice. If he were found out, it could lead to a most unpleasant end to his life. Still, despite having trouble with authority, Havant remained a fervent Narthani patriot.

  Although most assignments required only observation, on occasion more active roles came up. Once he had served as an infantry company commander in a campaign against the Fuomi. A regiment colonel, an officer with important connections, was siphoning funds meant for supplies. Although the military usually ignored a reasonable amount of graft, the officer’s need to pay gambling debts had led to a dangerous decline in both regiment morale and operational readiness. It took Sokulu two months to gather conclusive evidence against the colonel, during which time Sokulu led his company in several battles, gaining impressive medals along the way—enough so that he was offered to switch to line duty, which he declined. The advantage of working for Hizer was being able to work alone. In the case of the miscreant colonel, Havant moved on to another assignment, after arranging for the colonel to fall by a stray musket ball during a supposed encounter with Fuomi irregulars.

  Havant found the current assignment both exciting and boring: boring, due to playing the role of an innocuous Caedelli semaphore station assistant, and exciting, because of being totally on his own. He also found poking around for information challenging. As a downside, when he did find potentially important information, he had limited means to get the information back to Preddi.