Princeps: A Novel in the Imager Portfolio

by L. E. Modesitt Jr.

  “That’s most likely,” admitted Deucalon. “They’ve got small boats. We’ve seen some of them.”

  “I take it that you have some other indications that a barge attack is likely,” Quaeryt offered politely.

  “Our spies have reported that there are more than a score of heavy barges upstream. They are moderately laden, and their cargo is covered with oilcloth waterproofs. Also, brimstone has become extremely dear in recent months.” Bhayar smiled. “Last night there was a fire, and then an explosion on the Vyl, just upstream of where it joins the Aluse.”

  “There are also reports of more than two regiments crossing the Vyl well to the south,” added Deucalon sourly. “There are four regiments on the west side of the Vyl.” He looked to Skarpa. “Once we determine what attack is most imminent, Third Regiment will be sent to block or delay the advance of the southernmost Bovarian forces. We’ll be leaving other regiments closer to the city until we know the disposition of the Bovarian troops.”

  Skarpa merely acknowledged the situation. “Yes, sir. We’ll stand by.”

  Deucalon half turned away, then turned back. “What do you plan, Subcommander?”

  “I’ll bring the imagers here, and we’ll walk to the best position, depending on what the major tells me.”

  “You can stable your mounts below,” Bhayar said quietly. “That way, they’ll be close at hand if you need to move.”

  “Thank you, sir.”

  Quaeryt waited until Deucalon was farther away. “I take it you don’t have much faith in the cannon.”

  “I have great faith in the cannon. I have little faith in the cannoneers. There was no time to send word to Solis to obtain a truly experienced officer or squad leader. The cannon have been fired often enough, but not against moving targets.”

  Quaeryt nodded. Bhayar had never built a navy, and there were only two Telaryn warships worthy of the name. “That’s why the cannon aren’t on the bridge itself?”

  “Would you put powder and shell on the bridge?” asked Bhayar dryly.

  Quaeryt didn’t need to reply to that question.

  “I need to meet with the other commanders now,” Bhayar went on. “I’ll check with you later.” He turned and walked toward the steps down to the courtyard, accompanied by Deucalon, and followed by two undercaptains and a major, none of whom had said a word.

  Quaeryt looked to Skarpa, then shrugged.

  Skarpa grinned, and then the two headed for the steps.

  At the bottom, the commander looked to Quaeryt. “Do you think what you plan will really work?”

  “It will work,” predicted Quaeryt. “The question is whether it will work well enough.”

  Skarpa laughed. “You’ve been with Meinyt too much. You sound more and more like a grizzled old major every day.”

  “Better that than a young scholar.”

  “You were never young. Inexperienced, maybe, but not young.”

  Quaeryt wasn’t sure he agreed with Skarpa about that, especially after what he’d learned that he didn’t know in Extela, but he didn’t dispute the commander. Instead, he took the mare’s reins from the waiting ranker, and the two of them rode back to the regiment.

  Less than a quint later, Quaeryt and the undercaptains were back in the same courtyard, turning their mounts over to the duty ostlers. After he dismounted, Quaeryt removed the cloth bag from his saddlebags and took it with him as he led them back up to the north parapet.

  As Deucalon had promised, an officer was waiting.

  “Subcommander, I’m Major Ghesal. Marshal Deucalon left word that you had some questions about the channel.”

  “I do. If you’d tell me what you can and where it gets closest to either bank…”

  “I’ll do what I can, sir. The rivers change some every day…”

  Quaeryt listened as Ghesal explained, especially when he began to describe the flow closer to the bridge.

  “… the Ferrean’s bigger and got a stronger flow, and so the channel’s more to the south after they meet, but all that water pushes off the stone there”—the major pointed—“and it swings back more toward the middle so that, just about opposite the west end of the parapet, it’s almost straight west of the isle pylon. There used to be more of an upstream point to the isle, but two years ago … think it was two, we had a hard winter, and the river froze there. When it thawed, a whole lot of rock crumbled into the Aluse. The west part of the isle ends no more than five, six yards west of the base of the pylon. It’s mostly underwater. It used to be ten, twelve…”

  “So a barge could run up on the stone and hit the pylon?” asked Quaeryt.

  “It’s possible. But the isle’s not much wider than the base of the pylon. Sharp enough to rip the bottom out of a boat. I saw that happen years back.”

  Ripping the bottom out of a barge wasn’t going to do much to help the imagers, Quaeryt thought. That would just ground the barge right below the pylon.

  Three rankers appeared with an array of poles and a roll of canvas. While the major continued with his explanations and answers to Quaeryt’s questions, the men assembled a framework at the back of the parapet and then tied the cloth to the top of the framework, creating an awning of sorts, similar to the one over the raised platform from which Bhayar had earlier observed the river.

  The squad leader in charge eased his way over to Quaeryt. “That’s to give your officers shade, sir, while they wait.”

  “Thank you.”

  When the major finished, Quaeryt thanked him, waited until he departed, then turned to the imagers. “You may be wondering why I was asking about the river flows and the channels. It appears as though the Bovarians will mount at attack on the Narrows Bridge here. They’re bringing up troops from the south, and they will likely send barges filled with powder and iron or metal fragments downriver against the bridge itself. There are cannon positioned on the approach ways to the bridge. They will attempt to sink those barges at greater range.” As Quaeryt thought about it, he realized another reason why the imagers were necessary. Given the height of the approaches and the bridge itself, the cannon couldn’t be trained on the river close to the bridge itself. “Our task will be to stop as many of the barges that get past the cannon as possible.”

  “Sir…” began Threkhyl.

  Quaeryt looked hard at the undercaptain. “I’m not asking you to stop a barge. And putting holes in the barge likely won’t help much, because by the time a barge is close enough for you to do that, it will reach the bridge before it sinks. But … there is an imaging way of dealing with the barges.” He extracted one of the small pieces of iron from the bag he held, the larger needle-like fragment. “Most of you have seen a smith at work, have you not?”

  “Yes, sir,” came the reply. Only Baelthm did not answer.

  “Your task will be to image small pieces of iron into the kegs and bags of powder on the barges. But … you are to image them as red-hot, the way they would be if a smith had forged them.”

  “Why not image a lit candle?” asked Akoryt.

  “Because the powder would smother it before the flame could heat it. Haven’t you ever put out a candle with your fingertips? You do it quickly, and your fingers don’t even get warm. That’s what would happen to your lit candle. The powder will smother it. Red-hot iron will set off powder.”

  “How do you know this?” asked Threkhyl.

  “Because I tossed red-hot iron into powder,” replied Quaeryt. “I don’t advise standing close and doing that.”

  There were no other questions.

  A glass passed, and another, and Quaeryt and all the undercaptains were sweating, despite standing under the canvas awning. Finally, a ranker appeared with rations and water. Nearly another glass passed before Quaeryt saw a dark blotch on the water to the west, and then another one, and then more.

  Bhayar and Deucalon knew more than they bothered to tell me. But then, he knew more than he’d chosen to tell them.

  In less than two quints, more than a score of
barges filled the river, each towed roughly to midriver by boats powered by rowers. During that same time period, the crews manning the bridge winches had raised the nets so that they were a good six or seven yards above the water.

  As the current carried the barges downriver, Quaeryt could see that in the stern of each barge was a raised platform with a man standing on it and a tiller to a long rudder. Both platforms and tillers had to have been added.

  “Undercaptains! To the parapet!” Quaeryt ordered.

  Once they had lined up, Quaeryt stood at the eastern end of the line they formed.

  Bhayar appeared at Quaeryt’s shoulder. “What do you think?”

  “I wonder how reliable those steersmen will be.”

  Bhayar shrugged. “I imagine the men steering the barges have been paid extra golds, most likely at least partly in advance. I’d also judge that they will have to light a fuse and fasten the tiller in place and then jump overboard. I’d also wager that those who are successful, if they survive, will get more golds. Bovaria is a large land, and finding twenty men who will take great risks for golds is not impossible.”

  “And paying large amounts to a few men is far cheaper than losing hundreds or thousands of men in an assault on fortifications,” added Quaeryt.

  Bhayar nodded without speaking. After a moment he moved away, back to the raised stone platform in the middle of the parapet, where Deucalon remained, a sour expression on his face, with several undercaptains, captains, and majors flanking them.

  Just as Major Ghesal had predicted, once the leading barge reached the point where the waters of the Ferrean joined the Aluse, the barge swung toward the southern side of the river, and after traveling more than a hundred yards, eased back toward the middle of the river.

  Thwump!

  The sound of the cannon jolted Quaeryt, but he looked to the river. The cannonball struck the water a good fifty yards aft of the first barge, and well short of the second one.

  “… what are they aiming at?” demanded Threkhyl.

  “… not as easy as you think,” murmured someone.

  Desyrk, Quaeryt thought. “Don’t even try to image the iron into one of the barges until it’s abreast of us. Don’t all of you try to image into the same barge. Threkhyl … you take the first barge, but not until I give the order. Voltyr, you take the second, and Shaelyt, the third … If one of you is having trouble with a given barge, I’ll direct another imager to help.”

  Two more cannon reports echoed between the stone walls of the Narrows, but neither shell was anywhere close to the first barge. Yet another shell splashed into the dark water short of the first barge, and another behind it. The next shell hit beside the barge, spraying a sheet of water over the front section, but apparently doing little damage.

  Quaeryt studied the first barge as it neared a point even with the west end of the parapet. The steersman was lashing the tiller in position, and the barge looked to be positioned directly at the tiny stone isle from which the central pylon rose. Then he bent down for several moments, then dived off the rear of the barge. After a moment, he bobbed up and began to swim toward the south side of the river, awkwardly. Quaeryt noted two white ovals under each arm.

  Bladders … filled with air. He returned his concentration to the first barge.

  Right after it came abreast of the western end of the parapet where Quaeryt had stationed the imagers, Quaeryt ordered, “Threkhyl! The first barge! Image now.”

  He watched as Threkhyl concentrated … and kept concentrating. Then, the oilcloth tarps covering the cargo area shivered … and exploded. Fragments flew everywhere, and spray and smoke obscured the spot where the barge had been. For several moments Quaeryt couldn’t determine how the barge had fared.

  Then he saw that it had broken into two pieces, with the aft section clearly sinking, but the forward part remained floating, and a section appeared to be burning.

  Bitumen-treated?

  The cannoneers had shifted fire to the second and third barges, presumably the crew on one end of the bridge targeting one, and the crew on the other end aiming at the other.

  While the next two barges weren’t that close together, Quaeryt worried because the remainder of the barges were far more closely clustered.

  “Voltyr, take the second barge!” Quaeryt ordered.

  Voltyr concentrated, but nothing happened—except that the cannoneers finally successfully targeted the third barge, which exploded in a hail of fire and fragments. Yet the second barge was already past the middle of the parapet, and the tillerman had fastened the rudder lever and bent to light the fuse. The Bovarian straightened and then jumped off the barge, heading toward the southern pier that rose out of comparatively shallow water. Even so, if the pier went …

  Quaeryt imaged two small chunks of red-hot iron, and then a third.

  A flash of light-headedness followed. Somehow imaging iron over water takes more effort. Another aspect of imaging that he hadn’t known or counted on.

  He watched the second barge, then took a deep breath as it exploded—before he looked back upriver, only to see three more barges, almost abreast of each other, but separated enough that the explosion of one wouldn’t trigger the explosion of another. Gouts of water sprouted across the river, but none struck the next group of barges. Another round of shells was equally ineffective, except one cannonball struck close enough to the middle barge to send spray over the Bovarian guiding it.

  “Shaelyt! Try for the barge on the far side.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Desyrk … the middle one, and Akoryt, the nearest to us.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Quaeryt turned to the oldest imager. Baelthm was actually shaking. “Don’t worry, the explosions won’t reach us here.” Not unless it’s a misaimed shell from our own cannon crews. “I want you to be ready to deal with any of the next barges that come close to this side of the river.”

  “Can I try hot silver? Silver’s easier for me than iron.”

  “You can certainly try it first. All I care about is getting metal hot enough to fire the powder.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Quaeryt turned his attention to the raft of barges. The one closest to the bridge was the one nearest the south side of the river. He glanced to Shaelyt, intently looking out at the river, hopefully concentrating on the barge aimed at the far bridge pier. The tillerman had fastened the rudder and had stooped to light the fuse when the barge flared into light, flinging the body of the hapless Bovarian skyward and then into the river.

  Shaelyt shivered, but straightened.

  The cannoneers bracketed one of the barges farther upriver, and after several misses hit the craft with two shells and enough force that the steersman jumped from the stern and the barge began to sink … without exploding.

  Desyrk’s face was drawn, but little shivers struck the oilcloth waterproof of the barge he’d been assigned. Nothing happened.

  Quaeryt wondered if he should offer unseen assistance when two things happened. The barge exploded, and Desyrk grasped at the stone parapet before his knees buckled. Voltyr managed to partly catch Desyrk and ease him to the stone before returning his attention to the river.

  The barge assigned to Akoryt exploded. Quaeryt didn’t see it happen, just the fire and remnants, but he didn’t think it had been a cannon shell that had accomplished the destruction. From somewhere, another barge pushed through that smoke, and Quaeryt called out, “Threkhyl! The lead barge!”

  Then he saw another barge, one that had escaped his notice, hugging the north edge of the river, a course that kept it shielded from one of the cannon emplacements. He stepped forward, to Baelthm’s shoulder and pointed. “Baelthm … you take the barge headed this way, but don’t try to image until it’s right below us.” Quaeryt just hoped that the older imager could account for at least one barge.

  “Got it!” announced Threkhyl, triumphantly.

  “Voltyr! The next one!” Quaeryt watched as Voltyr straightened his shoulde
rs, then waited.

  Voltyr’s target barge exploded.

  Quaeryt smiled.

  Baelthm was the next imager to collapse, right as the barge that passed almost directly below the rampart exploded.

  One barge, and he’s finished. But hot silver does work. Quaeryt scanned the river.

  “Akoryt! That one!” Quaeryt gestured.

  Akoryt concentrated on his second target … and crumpled. Quaeryt looked to the barge he’d assigned Akoryt, then imaged his own hot iron. After a long moment the barge went up in fragments.

  A flash of pain seared through Quaeryt’s eyes, followed by burning tears, such a flood that he could see nothing until he blotted them with his sleeve.

  “Shaelyt! Get that lead barge.”

  While the barge went up in smoke, and little flame, the young imager leaned forward over the parapet and vomited, then remained slumped there.

  Quaeryt scanned the river. Eight barges remained. Seven, he corrected himself as the cannon claimed another barge. But of the imager undercaptains, only Voltyr and Threkhyl remained standing.

  “Voltyr … can you do another? The one with the black splotch on the oilcloth?”

  “I’ll … try.” Voltyr’s face was pale, but he turned back toward the river.

  The splotched barge exploded, and Voltyr sat down on the stone, holding his head in his hands. “Can’t see…”

  “That’s all right. Just rest.” Quaeryt stepped up to Threkhyl. “Try for the one in the middle of the river.”

  “Two of them there.”

  “The one farthest downriver … closest to the bridge.”

  Sweat poured down the face of the ginger-bearded imager. Then his face went lax.

  Quaeryt barely managed to catch him and lower him to the stone.

  Quaeryt concentrated on the lead barge … and watched it explode and then sink through burning tears. He took a deep breath, then looked to the next barge, imaging just two small chunks of iron.

  This time, the pain was so intense that it was several moments before he could see anything at all. Iron over water … why so frigging hard. Think the Namer was blocking you. Absently, he almost smiled, knowing that he hardly believed in the Namer, but the smile ended before it began as a second wave of pain knifed through his eyes.