Destiny’s Crucible
Book 2
The Pen and the Sword
by
Olan Thorensen
Copyrighty 2016
All rights reserved
This is an original work of fiction. Any resemblance to people and places is coincidental.
ISBN: 978-0-9972878-1-3
Maps and More
For maps to help orient the reader to the planet Anyar, a website is under construction at www.olanthorensen.com. Additional maps, background, side stories, and information on the series will be added as the story evolves.
A list of major characters is given in the back of the book.
“The word is mightier than the sword.”—7th-century BC, Ahiqar (Assyrian sage)
“The pen is mightier than the sword.”—1839; taken from the play Richelieu by Edward Bulwer-Lytton
“There are only two powers in the world, saber and mind; at the end, saber is always defeated by mind.”—Napoleon Bonaparte.
“Anyone who thinks the pen is mightier than the sword has not been stabbed with both.”—Lemony Snicket.
“The quill may be mightier long term, but the sword wins short term.”—Yozef Kolsko
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1: Worry
Chapter 2: Who Is Yozef Kolsko?
Chapter 3: The Sword
Chapter 4: Self-Defense
Chapter 5: Narthani
Chapter 6: The Pen
Chapter 7: Maera Visits St. Sidryn’s
Chapter 8: Disappointments
Chapter 9: Life
Chapter 10: An Outing
Chapter 11: Maera’s Dilemma
Chapter 12: A Trip to Caernford
Chapter 13: Meet the Hetman
Chapter 14: Lingering in Caernford
Chapter 15: An Unexpected Proposal
Chapter 16: Moreland in the Crosshairs
Chapter 17: Culich and Yozef
Chapter 18: Defense of Dornfeld
Chapter 19: Preparations
Chapter 20: Wedding
Chapter 21: Settling In
Chapter 22: Secrets
Chapter 23: Raid into Moreland
Chapter 24: Going Awry
Chapter 25: What If?
Chapter 26: Ephemeral Joy
Chapter 27: Invasion
Chapter 28: Moreland City
Chapter 29: Committed
Chapter 30: Ambush
Chapter 31: Turn the Tables
Chapter 32: Take the Guns!
Chapter 33: Victory?
Major Characters
Prologue
To others, an enigma paced the room, the click of his heels on the polished plank floor synchronized to alternate heartbeats. Yet he didn’t think of himself as an enigma but as an imposter.
None of them knew the truth. How could they? Or maybe he was a mirage, something they wanted to exist so badly that nothing would shake their unwavering belief.
A light appeared in the corner of his vision. He turned his head toward the source—a full moon peeking through an open window. The second moon had already set. The scent of coralin vine flowers, pungent and sweet, wafted into the room. Once he thought the odor alien, but now he pulled the aroma deep into his lungs, anchoring himself.
“If just once to see the one big moon again, the one I was born under, or to smell jasmine or pines,” he whispered to the night. At times, the longings were a probing knife, though only a pang this night.
“We’ll be ready in a few minutes,” called a woman’s voice from the next room.
“That’s fine,” he responded.
Take all the time you want, take forever, or go without me.
He turned from the window and strode to stand before a full-length mirror framed in fine-grained kaskor wood. A stranger stared back, wearing a plain but finely tailored dark brown suit of clothes over a sturdy physique marred by a scar from his forehead edge to above the right ear and a sudden limp, as both men turned to complementary side views. They each raised one hand to gently stroke their head scars, while their other hands reached down to rub the shins below the knees.
“Nothing we can do about the head scar,” they’d told him. “The limp and ache in your leg will fade with time, although you may notice it during cold and damp weather.”
Not mentioned was the third scar, angry across his left side, the injury healed after his nearly dying. He remembered all three moments, the impact on his leg and the pain that only came later, a searing sensation as a jagged wood fragment slashed his head, and the flash of light and then darkness, awakening to agony. Three scars and a limp as lifelong companions, the scars always visible and the limp and ache recurring enough for him to . . . remember.
More voices. Soon they would come for him. He looked deep into the eyes in the mirror, eyes that could hold anyone’s focus: a rare pale color that in different lights changed chameleon-like among shades of blue, gray, and sometimes an unidentifiable hue, unsettling the object of their attention. Not that the man realized the effect.
The man standing before the mirror had brown hair. It had darkened in the first year after his arrival, now with only streaks of the original color left. How his hair darkened, he didn’t know, although he assumed it was tied to what the Watchers had done to him. He also remembered himself as young, with an unassuming form, a confident pleased-with-himself manner, a secure and comfortable future, and no urge for noble commitments. A man who knew his place in life and was content. In contrast, while the man in the mirror might appear young, a closer look belied the impression. Not that the face was older, merely . . . more lived. A determined face, a face with responsibilities, with resignation, with apprehension, a face foreseeing an unchosen future.
The man standing before the mirror remembered who he had been, while part of the man in the mirror longed for the same, someone with a quiet, unexciting life. Someone without monumental responsibilities. A different life from that of the man in the mirror; the man before the mirror had seen much, accomplished much, and lived thirty years in the last four. He was a man who knew his life would not be quiet. It would a meaningful life, one with joys and darkness, a life of making a difference, but also a life of burdens as heavy as a mountain. Both men recognized an irrevocable moment; after today, there was no turning back. The parting smile needed no words, because the men knew they would not see each other again. A smile of melancholy farewell. As they stared at each other, the man before the mirror morphed until the two men became one. He shifted his shoulders to adjust the new suit of clothes.
Voices again. The women’s voices he recognized, one in particular. She and others had told him this day was stirring, exhilarating, inspirational, and other words holding no weight for him. They were words he didn’t want to hear, words whispering “duty,” even if not voiced. She chided him for behaving as if it were an appointment to have his teeth pulled. In her annoyed remonstrations, she would never understand the depth of his reluctance. His acceptance would never be matched by any yearning for what others assumed for him—or themselves.
Questions. There would always be questions: Did all this really happen? Am I insane? Has it been nothing more than a dream? A nightmare? Who am I? Do I even exist? Will there ever be answers? A wry smile followed the last question and a gentle shake of head attested to his expectation. No, there would be no answers. There was only . . . to be.
Chapter 1: Worry
A musket ball splintered a wooden crate twelve inches from where Yozef Kolsko crouched for protection. He might have cried out, though if he did, the sound vanished within the cacophony of hundreds of
screaming voices, musket and pistol fire, and the clash of metal.
Blood splashed across his arm, after the battle axe wielded by the man next to him at the barricade cleaved a raider from neck to navel. Yozef stared at the warm, bright red coating on his arm, calmly satisfied the blood came from someone else.
He looked up to see a scarred, tattooed man charging with a spear leveled at his gut. Although time slowed, his reflexes betrayed him. He’d only just brought his own spear around to ward off the blade when a jolt of searing agony enveloped his midriff. He looked down at a blade end attached to the spear shaft, the rest of the blade buried in his flesh, blood spraying outward.
Yozef Kolsko jerked upright in bed, gasping, hands covering his abdomen, sweat running down his face. His heart pounded against his ribs and subsided only when he recognized his bedroom.
He had thought the nightmares were behind him. The attack on the abbey happened a month ago. Thirty-six Anyar days. After the attack, his dreams relived the terror and blood of that awful day.
He threw back the covers, stood naked by the bed for a moment, then pulled on a robe and walked out to the veranda. A weather front had pushed through hours earlier, and now the sky blazed with stars undimmed by competing lights of civilization. Around the town of Abersford, after the sun set and while hard-working people slept, no lights marked human presence.
After he took several deep breaths, his pulse eased, and his sweat turned chill. He recognized the Anyar night sky but would never quit missing the constellations of Earth. Whatever the distance to Earth, it was far enough that the shifting view lost any terrestrial star pattern—no Orion, Big Dipper, Southern Cross.
A flash caught his eye, streaking briefly before burning up. It took him a moment to recognize a meteor and not a vehicle of the Watchers, as he had named them.
I wonder if they’re up there looking down on Anyar the way they said they studied Earth?
It wasn’t the first time he’d had this thought. When Joseph Colsco’s San Francisco to Chicago flight accidently collided with the alien vessel, the occupants saved him but wouldn’t return him to Earth. His only contact had been with an artificial intelligence—Harlie, he named it—created to communicate with him. Despite his pleading, Harlie never wavered that Yozef couldn’t return to Earth, because he had knowledge of the Watchers’ existence.
Harlie’s creators were studying the mystery of who transplanted humans to other planets and why. The AI gave Joe the options of either being terminated, as presented in its dry and toneless voice, or being placed on another planet inhabited by humans. Despondent and afraid, he chose to live and awoke in the care of strangers who’d found him unconscious and naked on a beach.
His mind drifted from the Watchers to his new life. The first months were hard. Torn from his life and cast among a strange people and society, he’d adjusted and found a place, albeit drastically different from his previous life. In introspective moments, he wondered which life was better—the comfortable, mundane one on Earth or the one here in the town of Abersford, Keelan Province, Island of Caedellium, on planet Anyar.
Yozef shook his head. Well, he thought, it certainly isn’t always a safe life, but I can’t say it isn’t interesting.
He rubbed the scar on his lower left leg. The medicants had removed the stitches two sixdays ago—two Anyarian weeks—but the leg was still tender. He’d been lucky. The musket ball ricochet tore a two-inch gouge that nicked the shinbone. They said the wound wasn’t serious, but the leg might ache after sudden weather changes or when he got older. The former effect was already evident.
Finding himself in the middle of a musket-and-blade battle was one more shock in the last two years. He had accepted his fate enough to start a new life, had found friends, had had an affair with a local farm woman, had introduced technology unknown on Caedellium, and was on the way to becoming wealthy by local standards, when the harder reality of this world was thrust on him by a mercenary raid.
The night air brought shivers. Enough wondering for tonight. The nightmare faded. Yozef Kolsko walked back to the bedroom, lay down, pulled the covers over himself, and let sleep come again.
Others were also awake and thinking of recent events. Culich Keelan, hetman and leader of the sixty-thousand-member Keelan clan, sat in his study, rereading reports about the raid on St. Sidryn’s abbey and the adjacent town of Abersford. The raiders were Buldorians, freebooters from the Ganolar continent, yet the real enemy was the Narthon Empire. Caedellium and its twenty-one clans had seemed too distant to be threatened by conflicts plaguing the rest of Anyar. The Caedelli had blithely assumed their large island, off regular trading routes and not near major continents, prevented temptations for annexation. They were wrong. The Narthon Empire coveted their island.
The aggressive Narthani had roared out of the northern reaches of the Melosia continent three hundred years earlier and systematically subjugated people and nations until a coalition of neighboring realms stopped their expansion. When the Narthani first appeared on Caedellium six years ago, it was in the guise of mere traders. The naïve Preddi Clan accepted Narthani presence and was oblivious, until too late, to the surreptitious plan to enthrall the island. With shocking speed, the Narthani destroyed the Preddi Clan, usurped their province for Narthani colonists, and coerced two adjacent clans, Eywell and Selfcell, into alliance. Culich Keelan feared that only time separated similar threats to other clans.
The Buldorian raids carried out under Narthani tutelage reinforced his fears. Although the attack on St. Sidryn’s was the first overt move on Keelan Province, Culich suffered no illusions it would be the last. More trouble brewed. The Buldorians were only a foretaste; the main thrust was yet to come. No one clan could withstand the Narthani, and he chaffed at his failure to convince enough of the other clan hetmen of the threat level he foresaw.
As with too many nights, Culich’s sleep had eluded him. Rereading reports was better than lying in bed, trying to avoid looking to the future and fearing an abyss might stare back.
A hundred and sixty feet away in Keelan Manor, another person was awake. Maera Keelan lay in bed, covers pulled up to her chin, eyes open. She couldn’t hear her father, but somehow knew he was awake and worrying. Everything her father knew about the Narthani threat, so did Maera. She had been his scribe and assistant the last five years, sitting as recorder on important meetings and drafting much of his correspondence. It was an unusual role for any Caedelli female, and even more so for one only twenty-three years old (twenty-one Earth years). However, Meara wasn’t just anyone. The hetman’s eldest daughter possessed a brilliant mind restrained by acceptable roles in Caedelli society.
If she had been a son, everyone would assume her destined to be the next hetman. But there were no hetwomen. Instead, she helped her father where she could, studied Caedellium history, taught herself languages of other peoples of Anyar, and played the role of hetman’s daughter. She was already late in performing one duty to her father and clan, a duty she had accepted all of her life. There would be a marriage advantageous to the clan, and she would produce children. Because her father had no sons and Maera was who she was, everyone, including her, expected one of her sons to be the next hetman. That she hadn’t yet performed this duty was partly due to the prospective suitors’ reluctance to take a wife who was too intelligent, too opinionated, and too assertive, no matter the advantages of a familial liaison to a clan as important as Keelan.
Tonight, her fears about the Narthani intertwined with thoughts about marriage and children. She wasn’t as reticent as her father to look toward the future, but for her, the abyss also threatened any future children of her body.
In Preddi City, General Okan Akuyun slept fitfully until rising to go to his study. While the commander of all Narthani on Caedellium was not a habitual worrier, even he suffered doubts, most of which he shared with his wife, Rabia, but not all.
The Buldorian raids had gone as planned, except for the last, the first raid on Keelan P
rovince. He didn’t know any details of the raid’s failure, because the Buldorians had sailed for home without reporting back to Akuyun. That one failure didn’t matter. The successful raids, plus other actions meant to destabilize the Caedelli clans, had proceeded well enough that he and his command staff were near deciding it was time to move to the next phase—direct action against the clans. The first steps would be to ratchet up raids by Eywell and Selfcell, forcing the neighboring clans to concentrate on defending their own provinces and minimizing aiding one another. Soon, Akuyun would commit his Narthani troops to invade and force the islanders to fight open field battles, where his professional troops could use combined infantry, artillery, and cavalry to crush enough of the clans to compel the others to accept Narthani suzerainty.
Despite acceptable progress, Akuyun believed it his duty to worry. Any failure fell eventually to him, in both his own mind and that of the Narthani High Command in Narthon, but he reassured himself that nothing seemed to stand in their path, barring unforeseen factors that couldn’t be accounted for in any plan.
Chapter 2: Who Is Yozef Kolsko?
Keelan Manor, Caernford, Keelan Province
Culich pushed aside reports scattered across his desk, as Maera entered his study. He had reread the accounts so many times, he could recite many of them from memory. No matter whose perspective had produced the descriptions, the common thread was a sense of the miraculous that the people of St. Sidryn’s and the neighboring town of Abersford had beaten off the Buldorians, despite being short of fighting men. Not mentioned in all accounts, but prominent in those of St. Sidryn’s abbot and Denes Vegga, senior militiaman leading the defense, was the role of Yozef Kolsko.
The Pen and the Sword (Destiny's Crucible Book 2) Page 1
