by Rob Preece
Ellie promised him she would be careful, which wasn't something she had to lie about. She intended to be very careful. But she intended to make Sergius pay for being a low-down oath-breaking back-stabbing, assassin-sending jerk, too.
They left thirty ninja, mostly soldiers who had been wounded in the battle for Harrison, as a cadre for training the next generation of guerillas and Ellie set off with the rest—a hundred and twenty experienced fighters about evenly divided between men and women.
Mark rode up just as Ellie reached the gates of the city. “Take care of yourself, huh?"
"You don't need me to be a martyr?"
He shook his head. “I understand that you're angry and I don't blame you. I don't like some of what I'm doing, either, Ellie. It isn't like Civilization III where you figure you're going to have to backstab your allies from time to time. It hurts. But I'm doing the best I can to help you create the nation you risked your life for."
"That's what Pol Pot and his cronies said, I'll bet."
Mark nodded abruptly. “Don't you think I worry about that all the time?"
"I don't know, Mark. You always seem like the whatever it takes kind of guy to me."
He kneed his horse closer. “Maybe. But that doesn't mean I like it."
He brushed a knuckle against her cheek, then quickly, as if worrying about changing his mind, pressed his lips where his knuckle had rested. “Take care of yourself, Ellie. Better a live princess than a dead martyr."
He reined his horse and trotted back toward the ducal palace leaving Ellie more confused than ever.
She touched a hand to her cheek. What had that been about?
* * * *
By American standards, Lubica was a small country. Three Lubicas could rattle around in a state the size of California. To a small band of soldiers on foot, it felt huge.
Two days after they left Harrison, the mother of blizzards struck.
In three hours, more than two feet of snow fell. Marching became an exhausting and painful effort made ever more dangerous by unexpected pitfalls covered by snowdrifts and just waiting for a ninja to stumble on them.
The second time a man walked into one and broke his leg, Ellie called a stop.
They were still in Free Lubica controlled territory and it looked like this particular front in the guerilla war against Sergius was already grinding to a halt.
They found a relatively protected spot in a second growth woods and Ellie had them gather firewood, dig holes in the snow down to the frozen earth, and start fires. Although ninja are supposed to be able to ignore the elements, adding frostbite and hypothermia to their problems was piss-poor strategy.
Micael found her strolling around the outskirts of the camp and signed something to her.
She didn't have a clue. “What?"
He signed again, stared at her blank face, and vanished.
Two minutes later, he was back with Alys. “He says you can make gliders,” she translated.
That was a brilliant idea, Ellie thought sarcastically. If they only had some way of pulling them in the air, they could fly above the blizzard and go wherever they were needed. If real magic worked the way it did in Mark's fantasy books, she supposed she could fly or even teleport them somewhere. But reality can suck sometimes.
She started to tell them that but Alys shook her head. “Small gliders. For the feet. Don't sink into the snow."
Torrance had more than its share of rich kids, who disappeared every winter and went—skiing. Ellie realized that was a Lubica word her parents hadn't taught her. Okay, gliders were skis.
"We don't have any skis,” she told them. “And I doubt that many of the ninja know how to use them anyway."
But that wasn't a problem. Her ninja were willing to try anything.
An hour later, Micael produced his first pair of skis.
Four hours later, they had two more broken legs and an army who was getting accustomed to a sort of skate-gliding that had relatively little to do with the downhill and slalom skiing that Ellie had seen on television, but that managed to cover the ground about twice as fast as a woman could walk. Which was about twenty times as fast as their army could march through the drifts.
If she had any effectives left by the time they got to Sergius's territory, she would have a workable strike force. Because, as long as there was snow on the ground, she could actually outmaneuver cavalry.
* * * *
Sergius had turned Ranolf's Barony over to the highest bidder, equipped him with a couple hundred guards, and demanded a doubling in the taxes the fiefdom would supply.
The peasants weren't happy with the added taxes, but they didn't know they had an alternative. Ellie intended to give them one.
The first day after they arrived, a pair of ninja infiltrated the manor house and suggested that the servants leave.
The next day, they started picking off guards.
She captured the first one herself—a kid, really—when he was at the small village near the manor looking for food.
He and another guard had their arms loaded with hams, flour, and, in the case of his fellow, a keg of wine from the tavern.
Ellie stepped behind them, slit their sword belts, and gave the older one a kick in the rear to send him on his way.
He took a quick look at the ten ninja Ellie had with her, shrugged his shoulders, and ran for home.
The young guard held up his hands. “What are you going to do to me?"
"That depends on you, kid. You can head up north and join the Free Lubica Army. Or you can run back to Moray and wait for Free Lubica to arrive. Or you can stay here with the rest of the guards."
"And die,” Micael signed.
Ellie smiled. “My friend here wanted me to tell you that if you stay, you die."
Chapter 22
Two weeks later, Ellie and her ninja had the barony to themselves. Some of the guards had died. More retreated with the fake baron back to the capital. Most deserted.
The ninja practiced with their skis and their new white uniforms which Micael designed to blend with the snow, prepared for Sergius's counter-attack, and raided baronies surrounding Ranolf's.
The raids were pinpricks, mostly. Late-night attacks on minor nobility who remained loyal to Sergius. Sabotage against toll collectors and taxmen. But their guerilla army swelled with each trivial victory. She even recognized some of the bandits who'd waylaid her on her way to the capital months earlier in her growing band.
Although the pinpricks couldn't do much damage to Sergius, they were annoying. And they proved that he didn't have his country under control. A wise and mature king would have recognized that Ellie would have to come to him and hunkered down behind his defenses. But Sergius was not wise and definitely not mature.
He sent an army, commanded by his uncle, the Duke of Sullivan, after her.
After letting that army march, unmolested, for three days until they were well away from any succor from the capital, Ellie and her ninja struck.
Sullivan had two thousand professional soldiers. Ellie had a hundred trained ninja and another hundred lightly trained local bandits. It wasn't even close.
Sullivan's army huddled together in a harvested field, protected by quickly formed berms of snow and a dozen fire circles where sentries watched for any movement.
* * * *
Ellie went sentry hunting.
The snow was bitterly cold and had a nasty habit of getting under her uniform and melting against her skin.
She forced herself to ignore the pain. She had dug in an hour, between when Sullivan's scouts had marked out the campsite and when his main army arrived, creating a small cave under the snowdrifts.
When dusk fell, she poked a small hole through the snow and checked out Sullivan's camp.
He'd been smart enough to set fake sentry fires, hoping to create a distraction or to trick Ellie's guerillas into a trap.
She ignored the fires and looked for evidence of people.
Then she tunneled.
Beneath the hard ice crust, the snow was soft and easy to pack.
She dug her way as silently as she could until she was only a few feet from one of the sentry outposts.
At precisely midnight, she pushed her blow tube through the snow and puffed a thin dart, tipped with quick acting poison, toward the nearest soldier.
"What the—"
His shout and the crash he made as he collapsed alerted the sentries to danger—but Ellie was hidden beneath the snow—all but invisible.
She replaced the dart and blew two more times.
The third sentry was heavily dressed. His thick wool layers protected him from both cold and from poisoned darts.
"Poison dart,” the sentry shouted. “He's got to be over there."
He pointed directly at her, then grabbed a musket and fired.
She closed her eyes just as the musket went off but the glare of burning gunpowder pierced through her closed lids, reducing her night vision.
Snow exploded around her as the heavy musket ball slammed into a drift a foot to Ellie's left.
She drew her sword and pushed out of the drift.
If the shot had damaged her night vision, it had largely blinded the soldier who'd shot at her. He didn't even see her white-clad form as she slid across the snow and brushed the tip of her katana against his throat.
He tried to scream, but only a gurgle sounded from his ruined neck. Gore fountained past the hands he raised in a futile attempt to keep his lifeblood inside.
Ellie ducked, avoiding the largest gush of blood, then skied on to the next sentry who slipped on the snow as he tried to draw his sword.
He died with his weapon only halfway out of the sheath.
Ellie tossed a bomb into the tent where the remainder of the sentries had been huddled and closed her eyes to the flash.
Two made it out. The others weren't so lucky.
She could have killed the two who'd survived, but she'd warned her fellow ninja not to take chances. If she ignored her own instructions, she would have a hard time keeping them under control after this.
Instead of staying, she used her skis to skate away from the uproar.
They lost two ninja that night. One had been uncovered while the soldiers had been setting up the camp. The other had been hit by a freak musketshot.
They killed at least thirty of the sentries. Sullivan could stand those kinds of losses, but he wouldn't like it. More importantly, Sullivan's army looked discouraged and overly cautious as they continued their march the next day.
The fourth night, Sullivan's sentries were on high guard. They stomped around their campground making sure that no ninja could be hidden within a thousand feet of their outposts.
When the ninja had captured Ranolf's manor house, though, Ellie had found the bow she'd brought across the dimensions.
Unlike a musket, whose sound is a warning and whose red flash of fire pinpoints the shooter's location, the bow is deadly silent. In capable hands, the bow is more accurate than a musket and can be fired more quickly.
Ellie had capable hands. And the composite, space technology, bow was stronger and more accurate than anything this dimension had seen before.
She skied around beyond the reach of the lights shed by the camp, joining those of her fellow ninja who had been assigned the task of target acquisition, and fired her bow until she ran out of arrows.
Sullivan's army continued the next day, but it was noticeably smaller now. Between the arrows she'd brought across the dimensions and those her fellow ninja had fletched for her, she'd had over a hundred arrows. She didn't think she'd missed with more than half.
Sullivan retaliated against any peasants he found, but Ellie's ninja were faster, and had skied ahead to tell everyone about the slaughter outside of Dinan. Few peasants stuck around to find out if Sullivan had become more merciful after his defeat at Dinan. The foolish few quickly learned that he had not.
On the fifth night, Ellie sent the ninja on simultaneous frontal attacks on all Sullivan's sentry posts.
Around the camp, three dozen ninja squads simultaneously attacked. She personally led three ninja against an outpost near the main camp gate.
They struck just after nightfall, skiing in close before they could be observed, then slashing their way through the outpost, swords out and silent.
She kept low, stayed moving, tried to remember everything her father had taught her about the sword and everything she'd learned in a year of training and warfare in Lubica.
A musketshot from the camp splintered hardpacked snow near her face and she blinked quickly, then drew and cut.
The hardened steel of the katana cut through the cheap metal sword the sentry raised against her and continued through to his chest.
The sword caught on a rib, penetrated, and then stuck as her momentum pulled her forward and tipped her off balance.
She hated to leave it, but the katana was only a tool, not worth throwing her life away for. Her father would have been the first to remind her of that.
She had waited too long to let go, though, and felt herself falling off balance.
Without skis, she wouldn't have worried. But enough of the ninja had suffered sprains and breaks to make her terribly aware of the danger and the fact that the skis had none of the safety equipment Americans depended on.
She threw herself into the fall, managed a cartwheel, and came up with her skis under her.
She yanked out a dagger in time to stab another guard, left the second weapon behind her, and tossed another bomb over the snow barrier into the main camp.
They lost six ninja that night. The sentries had been ready and represented many of Sullivan's best troops.
But nightly attacks, spread over different times, wore on the sentries. That night, their attack killed at least forty of Sullivan's veterans. And she was replacing her losses with peasants dispossessed by Sullivan's destruction. Nobody was joining Sullivan.
The duke could have pressed, on but Sullivan wasn't stupid. His soldiers didn't like this kind of war and he wasn't conquering or occupying territory. The following morning, he burned Ranolf's chateau and turned back toward Moray.
Her guerilla force of two hundred had forced an army of well over two thousand to run, killed over a hundred professional mercenaries, while losing fewer than a dozen of her own troops.
Ellie, Micael, and Alys watched Sullivan's soldiers leave the still burning chateau.
"We'll harass them all day,” Ellie announced. “Micael, I want you to lead that effort. Slow them down, keep them ducking. Use my bow and whatever muskets you find. I don't think they're going to chase too hard. If they do, cut off and kill whomever they send out. Use your skis for mobility."
"Right,” he signed. Micael wasn't a born soldier but he was a fighter. He knew that you have to attack when you have an enemy beaten. Otherwise, he'll regain his footing, reclaim his confidence, and then turn on you like a wounded wolf. “What about you?"
"I'm going to ski ahead. See if I can set up a reception for Sullivan."
"Be careful,” he signed.
She laughed. “Not going to happen."
* * * *
Sullivan had probably hoped to get farther, but Ellie anticipated that his soldiers would be overjoyed to reclaim the dubious shelter of the previous night's camp. They'd already thrown up snow berms, dug latrines, and gathered firewood and stomped down any snowdrifts that ninja could use for cover. Under constant attacks from Micael, they'd need to stop. Sullivan wouldn't be able to persuade them to march further.
If Ellie still had the barrels of gunpowder they'd captured in Harrison, she would have mined the camp, causing them no end of grief. But she'd left those, along with all heavy weapons, when she'd gone guerilla. She'd have to do this on her own.
She and Alys skied ahead to Sullivan's former camp and rested. They had plenty of time to prepare her hiding place.
At nightfall, a couple of her ninja skied up and let them know that Sullivan was
close. He'd lost another twenty men that day, and was carrying another thirty or so with assorted injuries.
Ellie nodded. “I'll do it, then."
"Let me,” Alys offered. “What can you do that I can't?"
"I'm better with the sword."
"I'm better with the dart."
Ellie shook her head. “I'm staying. Bury me."
Alys shook her head, but piled the snow on top of her, then stomped it down so it would look like the rest of the tromped snow.
Ellie waited.
An hour later, she felt the snow shift under the weight of marching men.
She'd counted on the force of habit, on Sullivan pitching his tent near the spot where he'd set it up the previous night.
After a miserable three hours buried beneath a foot of packed and stomped snow, Ellie dug herself to the surface.
As she'd hoped, Sullivan's tent was only a few feet away from her hiding place.
He had two guards in front of his tent. Neither looked especially alert and she was tempted to neutralize them before entering Sullivan's tent. She weighed the danger of one of them finding a slit cut in Sullivan's tent against that of another soldier stumbling across their corpses or Sullivan's unguarded tent and decided to let them live.
Her razor-sharp dagger made only the slightest sound as she cut through Sullivan's tent. She would have bet that no human would have heard the sound. It was a bet she would have lost.
Sullivan swung his longsword at her as she rolled through the hole and to her feet.
She barely got her own blade up in time. It wasn't the multifolded steel of her father's antique Japanese katana, but it wasn't the cheap ninja trash they'd been forced to use when their rebellion had been nothing but glorified banditry either. Harrison had real weapon smiths and they had been working hard since she and Mark had captured the city. Mostly they'd been experimenting with rifles but some made good swords.
Her blade held.
She riposted automatically—and almost had her sword stripped from her by Sullivan's strong counter.
His tent wasn't the over-decorated and fusty environment that Sergius insisted upon. Only a narrow camp cot, a small desk covered with maps and a five-pointed star icon distinguished his tent from that of his lowest soldier.
