The Far Side

by Wylie, Gina Marie

  Ezra looked at them in turn. “Yeah, we’ve resisted being separated. I went south twice before, and it wasn’t the end of the world. This won’t be either.”

  “And of course, we’ll get our money back if you get killed?” Andie said with more bitterness than Kris felt.

  “Double, in fact,” Ezra said evenly.

  Kris turned to Andie. “I don’t like it -- but Andie, we have to do one of two things now -- pretend that they will come for us, even though it has been months, or assume that they aren’t coming and we have to make our way as best we can. Ezra needs to go south if we are to hold any hope of rescue. If anyone came now with the Tengri around, they’d just get killed or captured -- that’s not something I want to have on my head!

  “Sure, there is no way the Tengri could get back to Earth, or threaten much if they did, but they could sure make it impossible for us to return!”

  Andie smiled, her face pale. “As near as I can tell, Kris, that is you sitting firmly on the fence.”

  “Pretty much. I’m not going to lie, Andie. I like and admire the people here, and helping them is exciting and interesting, but I’d kill to spend a night sleeping in my own bed. Arvala is a place with people I’d like to help, but I’m not entirely convinced that we can do it, or if it would be appreciated if we did.”

  “You bet! We’ve already had a quick introduction to ingratitude! This is a challenge, and I like overcoming challenges. Still, yeah, to be in my bed again... listening to the fusor running quietly in the closet...”

  The two of them howled with laughter, while Ezra simply sat still, trying to be patient.

  “Sorry, Ezra,” Kris told him. “You had to have been there.”

  “Kris, I liked your father when I met him. He was calm, collected and focused. You are that and ten thousand times more. You get flapped -- who wouldn’t about the things we’ve seen! But you calm down and think logically. You do the right thing, Kris! You say the right things, you ask the right questions, and above all, you’re right!”

  “Nothing wrong with being right,” Kris said, trying to joke.

  Ezra looked at her. “So, am I a go?”

  “Yeah. We need to -- coordinate -- I was going to say clear it -- with Melek, but yeah,” Kris told him.

  Ezra looked at her soberly. “Collum has sent back reports, but I’d like to get a chance to talk to him at length. He’ll be back day after tomorrow. That night?”

  Kris closed her eyes. “Yes,” she said simply, not willing to open them. How do you deal with asking someone to risk their life for you?

  * * *

  Melek clasped Collum around the shoulders, and the two men, one young and one old, grinned at each other. “I understand I could have left my iron ball behind?” Collum told Melek, laughing.

  “Aye, they sent us thirty-seven, although some of them are the worse for wear.”

  “I have no idea what we can do against thunder rods like that,” Collum told Melek.

  Melek smiled thinly. “I didn’t want to put it into a message. But Ezra has told the smiths here how to build the big thunder weapons, and he’s told them what they need to make them shoot.

  “Collum, I fear it will not be enough.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because the thunder weapons are huge, requiring hundreds of pounds of iron for each one. I’ve sent the plans west to the King, and haven’t heard back yet, of course, but even though the smiths here have ordered every ounce of iron ore they could afford, there is no word yet whether or not we’ll get enough to make more than a few of those weapons.”

  “Well, we gave them a sharp lesson -- hopefully it will give them pause.”

  “Or make them come on faster. Collum, Ezra thinks that the attack on Arvala was just to intimidate us. They could have done worse, and will do worse, whenever they wish.”

  “They fired just once, yes?”

  “Aye, Collum. We were as ready as we could be, but they ignored us cowering on the ground and fired into the city. I had men going around fixing walls and setting things right, and it didn’t take long. But if they fire more than once...”

  Collum looked at Melek for a moment and then a broad smile appeared on his face. “You say that the thunder weapons use large quantities of iron and consume some sort of fuel to make them work?”

  “Aye, Sachem.”

  “If one of those ships were to run out of fuel for the thunder weapons, if they were to run out of iron balls for them -- it would take them several months to travel home and load more, and another several months to return. They have a vulnerability there.”

  “Aye, Sachem. But it is a very large ship, and I’m sure they have a lot to shoot at us before they have to worry about running out.”

  “There is nothing in the south for a man to eat, and while there are a few iron deposits, the better ones are further north. That puts them within range of us. And thunder rods or not, we can hit men now using crossbows nearly as far. Moreover, after you fire a crossbow, you can quickly reload and be ready to fire again -- with their thunder rods, they have to wait for the smoke to clear. That was their doom in the two times we’ve faced them.”

  “So, it isn’t hopeless,” Melek said, feeling better.

  “No, it’s not hopeless. We have a lot of people, and we have things right to hand. Some of our people will have to work on farming and the like, but the soldiers will be free to fight, and it won’t take two or three months to fill our quivers.”

  “Sachem, Ezra wants to go south. I am not sure I understand him exactly, but he says that if he travels at night, no one will see him.”

  “The only way to travel at night is to show a light,” Collum told the younger man.

  “He says his people have ways to see even if there isn’t much light. He says he can see quite well and will be able to travel far and fast. They left some of their supplies there in the rookery -- not much, but some. Thus he doesn’t have to carry quite enough to go and return. He wanted to talk to you about what you’ve seen of the Tengri first.”

  “Then, by all means, I shall. Andie should listen as well. We can compare information on that Tengri ship.”

  They spent two hours discussing in depth Collum’s observations in the battle he’d fought, then another hour covering the attack on Arvala.

  It was Kris who asked the question that none of them could answer. “If I’d been cast away, months from home, and another ship arrived to help me, would I send that ship north to scout my enemies -- or would I return home and come back later with more men and ships?”

  “Perhaps the man who commands that ship is the commander of the others?” Melek offered.

  “It would be a cold thing to do,” Andie told them. “Because if anything happened to that ship, those people would be as good as dead.”

  The discussion turned back to what they would need to make copies of the Tengri thunder weapons, both the muskets and the cannon.

  Ezra had been forthright about the thunder rods. “I can tell you how to make those. I can show you how to make the powder and shot. But I think the steel used in making these is better than your smiths know how to make, and I’m pretty sure that the tools to make weapons like this don’t exist either.

  “The barrel -- that’s the tough thing. They are cast solid, then a special drill is used to bore the hole in the barrel. It’s not that complicated to do, but the steel is the critical component.” He held one of the weapons up and looked into the barrel. “I can’t see this very well, but I’m pretty sure it’s a smooth bore.”

  He held up one of the miniature balls that the weapon shot. “See, these are round. If you look at mine, they are longer, with a round front. Fired from my rifle, the bullets spin, making them more accurate.”

  “How can they be more accurate if they are spinning?” Melek asked.

  “Trust me, it works.” He turned to Andie and Kris and said something in his own language. Both shook their heads but Andie spoke up. Andie excused herself and came b
ack in a few moments with an arrow and two pieces of wood, one rough and irregular and one that was a stopper for a pot and was round.

  She quickly cut the arrow into short segments, and then used her knife to drill a hole from one side of each block to the other. She used one of the small pieces of the cloth that Ezra said were used to fire the thunder rods to make the arrow pieces fit snugly in the holes.

  Finally, she twisted the arrow of the irregular block, and it started spinning, but wobbling wildly on a table top and eventually it fell off the edge. “That is a ball in flight,” Ezra told them. “Now watch the other.”

  The second block was about four inches across and was round. As near as Melek could tell, Andie had drilled the hole in the middle, using a straight piece of wood to scratch lines across it.

  When she twisted that arrow, the result was amazing. The block spun very fast, and stayed in one place and not moving very much. She said something apologetic and Ezra explained.

  “The balance is very sensitive -- even a little bit off impacts how it spins.” He smiled. “At home we make these for children to play with. They like to spin them for hours, watching them go around. We paint colorful patterns on these that look pretty when they are spinning.”

  Melek started, realizing he’d been staring at the spinning device, fascinated. So was Collum.

  Ezra went over the use of the thunder rods once more, with Andie paying careful attention, then he talked to Andie quite some time about how to use them. Finally, he bid Melek and Collum goodbye, so he could go prepare for his journey.

  Ezra was hugged by Kris and Andie, and a few minutes before it got dark, he went out the main gate and headed south.

  “Do you think he’ll make it?” Melek asked the Sachem.

  “I think he has about as much of a chance as we do,” Collum replied. “Have we heard anything from the King since that last message?”

  “Not a word, but in fairness, I don’t think that there is any way he could have replied in the time there’s been. I assume that he’s on the way but...”

  “And the city?”

  “We have food for about two hundred days, and that number remains roughly constant. We have five hundred members of the various fighting orders and another three thousand city militia. Considering that they may come by ship, however, reveals a weakness. We have made no provision to defend the docks. A force landed there would have access to the city and wouldn’t have to force the wall. Further, Ezra was positive that even if we had a wall on the seaward side, it would do no good -- the ship’s thunder weapons would have knocked holes in it.”

  Collum remembered the shattered wagon. “And crossbows?”

  “We have a thousand in the city now that you’ve returned, and we’re making a hundred a day from old swords. The smiths have crafted some better steel for the bow staves, and we are making a half dozen of those a day now. We are making about two thousand quarrels a day. Andie’s method of making iron quarrels is very efficient.”

  “Pour molten iron into a mold, then open it and file the excess metal off?”

  “Aye, that’s it. We have about thirty thousand quarrels now. In a month every man in the city will have a crossbow and all the quarrels he’ll need. Of course, about a tenth of the men won’t have swords, but as the new way of making crossbows improves, we’ll need fewer swords, and we should have some new swords as well by then.”

  “And the thunder weapons?”

  “There are several issues. It took a long time to understand what was required. Charcoal, of course, is simple enough. The yellow powder is sulfur, and I have sent men to the Kayenga Mountains to gather it from there. However, the big thunder weapons -- Ezra calls them ‘cannon’ -- consume it very fast and in considerable quantities. Then there is the main component, which comes from either guano beds or dung heaps. Ezra says that rookery guano is superior to dung heap niter, and since we have plenty of that, I have men gathering that as well.”

  He waved at the yellow cliffs. There had been hundreds of dralka rookeries in those rocks, and they had been occupied, some of them, long enough to nearly fill up with dralka guano. “We won’t lack for that. Sulfur is the critical ingredient at first, and when the first convoy returns laden with the yellow stuff, we should be in good shape.

  “The large thunder weapons themselves represent another problem entirely. They weigh hundreds of pounds -- and some of the larger ones, weapons that can hurt ships, weigh tons. Andie suggested that we send runners through the city, asking anyone to donate anything made of iron they don’t absolutely need.

  “We’ll have half-dozen weapons, if we are lucky. And we will be lucky to see the first in three months, and be lucky to make more than one a month after that. They are going to be difficult to make -- and very expensive, at least at first.”

  “But necessary.”

  “Aye. Now that we have samples of the thunder rods, maybe the smiths can do something with them, but Collum, we only have so many men we can put to this.”

  Collum spoke positively. “And that is one thing the King can help us with. If we spread the knowledge west, people can make weapons there and send them to us. Men can be formed up and marched here, and they can escort food and other supplies.”

  Melek sighed. “You remember they asked for maps. A few days after the Tengri shot at the city, Ezra, Andie, and Kris went over the plans for the road, Sachem. We have a great vulnerability there.”

  “What sort of a vulnerability?”

  “Most of the road is within thunder weapon range of the sea. A ship could cruise along the road and wreak havoc on wagons and men along the route.

  “And Ezra warned of another thing. We have favored harbors with wide entrances to facilitate our ships. Those harbors are not as defensible as those with more narrow entrances. In any case, regardless, we are going to need a great many of those ‘cannon’ Ezra speaks of, just to protect harbors.”

  Melek look at Collum. “Sachem, it is true the Dralka tried to make us all oath-breakers, but we haven’t paid our oath very much attention for a very long time. We have spent our time squabbling, building walls and fences.”

  “We’ve had a few catastrophes to deal with as well,” Collum added. “But, you’re right. I don’t know, Melek. I wish I was confident that my brother would see all of this as clearly as we do. Alas, I am not.”

  Collum sighed. “Still, he is the King. He’s not a fool and he’s brave enough. I hope that’s enough.”

  Chapter 21 :: Down for the Count

  Kris and Andie had known for two days when the King would be arriving. Melek had already taken them to a woman who worked up some proper dresses for them, even though neither of them were very happy about it. “We need to do as the Romans do, Andie,” Kris had told her friend.

  “I hate fucking dresses!”

  “I hate dresses, whether or not they are sexually active aside, Andie. This is important to Melek, and I think for Collum. The King has said exactly nothing about what he thinks of what’s happened. That can’t be good. You’d think at least an ‘attaboy’ would have been in order.”

  “You might think that -- I might, Melek and Collum might -- but evidently the King doesn’t. Why the fuck do you think I have this piece of shit on?”

  “Your naturally bright, sunshiny self?” Kris said innocently.

  Andie stuck her tongue out. “At least they didn’t send some of the biddies to help us dress.”

  Kris nodded. “It was a condition for wearing the dresses: Hey, Melek! We can dress ourselves!”

  “Let’s get out there, cross our fingers, and hope this is over quickly.”

  They went outside the small house they were staying in and joined the throngs moving towards the main square, waiting to see the King.

  Kris and Andie were supposed to be honored guests, and people made way for them, bowing to them, smiling, and stomping their right feet. “We gotta teach these people how to applaud,” Andie told Kris sourly.

  “Yeah. I h
ave a piece of news for you. Something Ezra didn’t mention to you.”

  “What?”

  “He translated ‘fuck’ in all of its many varieties to Melek. Odds are the King is going to demand a faithful translation of whatever we say to him, to the best of Melek’s and our abilities. Please don’t use cusswords.”

  “You are such a total wuss!”

  “He could have us executed, right there, on the spot.”

  “That would hurt,” Andie said, wide-eyed. “I suppose. You owe me one, because I’m not real good around authority figures.”

  “Be good this one time, Andie. Please.”

  “I’m just jerking your chain, Kris, you know I am.”

  “And I’m just trying to make sure you don’t accidentally forget.”

  “And jerking my chain,” Andie added.

  “And jerking your chain. That’s also a phrase that doesn’t translate well, here, I might add, although for different reasons.”

  There was a roar of sound from the direction of the West Gate, and everyone craned to look. Melek and Collum appeared. Melek looked much cleaner and neater than Kris had ever seen him before, while Collum looked pretty much like he always did.

  The King was an older man, maybe sixty or so, and moved a little gingerly, like he was already infirm. He was riding a fancy cart. Kris would have called it a chariot, but it wasn’t very warlike at all.

  He stepped down and turned to the crowds and raised his hands. They roared approbation.

  He turned to the dozen people waiting for him on the podium. Kris and Andie, Melek, and Collum and the city councilors.

  The King took a step forward and paused. Another man came up and stood beside the King, letting himself be used as a crutch. Kris saw Melek’s eyes narrow and saw Collum’s nostrils flare.

  “Well, Sergeant or Captain Melek -- I’m not sure which it is -- you have held Arvala.”

  “Yes, my King.”

  “But the Tengri are on the East Finger in force, and you were unable to kill them.”

  “They have weapons unlike ours, my King. If it hadn’t been for the arrival of strangers from even further away, we would have been lost.”