by M. C. Planck
“I need a volunteer,” he announced to the men within range of his voice. He looked around, but Kennet had already leapt forward and saluted.
“Don’t you know you’re not supposed to volunteer for anything in the army?” Christopher asked him.
“Yes, sir,” Kennet barked, with a perfectly straight face.
“You’re not afraid of heights, are you?”
Kennet’s eyes widened, just barely enough to betray there was a young man under that severe countenance. Apparently something other than combat and Dynae could still stir his emotions.
As usual, Christopher worried, even after having burdened the young man with rules, procedures, and threats. “Don’t go out of sight of the column. Don’t go over a thousand feet high. When you hear the gunfire, come immediately back. If you break any of these rules, I’ll never let you fly again.” Kennet took it in silently, either absorbing it or ignoring it, in either case waiting eagerly for the spell. When Christopher spoke the words and touched him, he looked up, without hesitation or fear, only a calm rapture on his face. Then he launched, fists clenched and jaw squared, a bottle-rocket aimed at the sky.
Charles the quartermaster counted silently under his breath, the closest they had to a clock. Christopher remembered seeing hourglasses in Flayn’s shop, but at the time he had not identified them as one of the ten thousand things he desperately needed. So he passed the time nervously, until Charles aimed his rifle at the sky and fired the signal shot.
Only moments later, Kennet swooped down to issue a salute and a report of a hill to the south, and the possibility of drier ground.
“Any trouble, Corporal?”
“No, sir,” Kennet said as calmly as if he’d been asked to walk around the block. “Although I did see some movement to the east, I did not investigate too closely, as per your orders.”
“Probably the rest of the herd,” D’Kan offered. “Your ranks should go after them, lest they assault the common men.”
“If we go running off after those, what else will attack while we’re gone?” Christopher answered. “Until the men are in a fort, they won’t be safe. We march south.”
They made better progress the next day, though not without cost. Gunfire erupted toward the rear of the column, and Christopher launched himself into the air, swooping over the heads of his men as he flew to the sound of trouble.
By the time he got there, it was mostly over. Another pair of voracious dinosaurs had been tempted by the pungent odor of horseflesh, springing out from a bush and tearing a scout in half between them. Ironically, the horse escaped with minor injuries, bolting forward to safety, but in the battle another infantryman was flung through the air by a savage flick of a monster’s tail. It took many bullets to bring down the dinosaurs, and the infantry rifles only held one shot.
Christopher knelt over the injured man, looking at the shattered bone sticking out from the shredded meat of the left shin. The situation was familiar: he had done this with Royal once.
“Hold him down,” he ordered, and when they did, he took the leg in both hands, snapping the bone back together while the man shrieked in agony and Christopher said the words in Celestial.
The bone knitted itself together, growing at incredible speed like a time-lapse movie, the flesh layering over it. The man whimpered and went limp, deserted by the shock and pain that had been flooding his system. Absently Christopher pulled the ripped trouser leg together and mended it with a minor spell, restoring the young man to what he had been moments before, except for the covering of blood.
He could not restore the horse’s rider. They gathered the halves of the scout, wrapped him in his great leather coat, and Christopher sent someone to find an empty barrel.
He would not be able to cast the spell that would preserve the body until the next day, and it would have to be renewed every five days until he could send the grisly package to the Cathedral. The revival would cost him a hundred tael. Pulling the purple stone from the monster’s skull with another minor spell, he weighed it in his palm.
The faces around him were careful not to betray the question that hung unspoken on every lip. They would not presume his generosity. It grieved him that they dared not expect revival as their right, but he could not afford to salve his conscience. He needed them alert, not comfortable to the point of sloppiness. More importantly, he needed them aware that a day might come when he could not afford the cost.
Holding the lump of tael up so they could see it, he stated the crassest calculation he could imagine at the moment. “As long as you kill three dinosaurs for every man we lose, I can afford to keep raising you.”
They were too proud of their manliness to cheer and too used to insignificance to be offended. But he could feel the electricity sweep out from him, a subtle ripple that ran up and down the column, galvanizing even those who did not know the facts yet.
The flight spell was still live, so he went into the air, ostensibly to scout—he’d used the spell for the day, so he could not send anyone else up—but really to escape the pressure of so much expectation. All military commanders must feel this terrible burden, knowing that they held lives in their hands, knowing that they must send some to their deaths so that others might live. Surely being able to bring some of them back to life was an improvement. But it didn’t feel that way. It just felt like a second chance to fail them, when cold accounting would force him to bury men he could have revived.
Even the man they were stuffing in the barrel might not return. If his last emotion was fear and flight, he might carry that with him to the other side and continue to flee, even when the Saint reached out a beckoning hand. Floating high above the army did not help to relieve his burgeoning sense of isolation, so he skimmed to the head of the column. The scouting effort was wasted: D’Kan had kept them on a steady course despite the lack of any visible guideposts, hewing to the direction Kennet had pointed to the previous day.
“A Ranger’s skill” was D’Kan’s explanation when Christopher asked him. Christopher hoped it wasn’t a tael-bought skill. His men would never have tael to spend on skills like that. And scouts who got lost weren’t worth the price of their horses.
They made the foot of the hill by nightfall, and a sense of relief could be seen on the faces of men who knew they would not spend the next day crawling through a swamp. Christopher shook his head sadly but said nothing. He wouldn’t be on the idiot end of a shovel for the next week. Might as well let them enjoy the illusion of labor’s end.
Bright and early the next morning, he addressed the squad of young men assembled before him. They were the ones who had spent their time in the city working on the wall, having been caught in the Captain’s trap after a single night of freedom.
“I hope you were paying attention in the city,” Christopher told them. They looked with dismay at the boxes of shovels and baskets being unloaded from the wagon. “Because now your job is supervising the rest of these lazy bastards. They’ll work in shifts, three a day, and I expect you to keep those shovels moving at maximum speed. Wear out a group and get the next one in the trenches.” He couldn’t afford enough shovels for everybody. Metal was too expensive.
The men grinned and fell out to inflict on their fellows the fate they had thought themselves doomed to. Karl had insisted that Christopher make this announcement, as he insisted that Christopher hand out all rewards and praise, while he dealt out punishment and discipline. The division meant that Christopher got their loyalty; it also meant that Karl got their obedience. A standard arrangement in any modern army, though not one that feudal lords could emulate or even understand. The typical Baron wanted his men’s obedience as well as their loyalty. Christopher’s willingness to channel their obedience to commoners, an officer corps, an institution, was simply inconceivable.
On the other hand, he hoped it meant his army would keep fighting even after he was incapacitated. His record for finishing battles on his feet was mixed, at best.
The other cons
ideration was that he intended to turn over command of this army to someone else, someday. Preferably a democratically elected president, or at least a republican senate. This vision of freedom was the only relief that made the burden of command bearable. It was the only way he could duck inside the tent others set up for him, accept the cup of tea that others brewed for him, sit and discuss plans that others would implement for him, and not cringe.
Outside the sound of obscenities mixed with the blows of axes, as the scraggly trees began to fall. They would clear the ground within fifty yards of their hilltop fortress. This part of the plan they could start on right away.
“We need to scout the hill,” D’Kan said. “It is a natural strong point. I would be surprised if it were not already occupied.”
“What are we waiting for?” Gregor said. The blue knight remained stung at having had no part in the destruction of the dinosaurs.
The trees were unusually thick on the solid ground of the hill. Combined with the steep angle and the usual coating of slick mud, just climbing the mound would be a challenge. Standing impatiently as they draped him in the heavy full-plate that was his battle gear, Christopher dreaded the next few hours. Heat, humidity, hill climbing, and plate armor were not a pleasant mix. But it was his job to be in front. He was the one most likely to survive any attack.
At least he wouldn’t be alone. Gregor’s armor and rank also marked him out as a principal, so with drawn swords, D’Kan at their side, and two dozen men at their backs, they started up the hill. They made it almost all the way to the top before something large, black, and furry slammed into Christopher like a freight train, knocking him flat on his back while it reared over him, roaring its ownership over this territory.
Karl shot the bear between the eyes, and it fell over backward without another sound. Two minutes later they shot its mate to death while Gregor pinned it against a tree with his sword.
“Bear stew,” Gregor said. “A blasted relief from porridge. Your men will love you. Dark take it, I’ll love you.”
“And the skins will make a fine rug for your tent.” D’Kan wasn’t being supercilious. He really meant it. A professional hunter, he saw nothing wrong with the events of the day.
Christopher was upset at dispossessing the bears. But there was nothing else he could have done. He couldn’t share the hill with the bears, and he couldn’t have merely driven them away. The hill was the only place to hide from the dinosaurs. From the top of the hill, they could see how the marsh flattened out on the other side, a vast soggy plain that could not support even the scraggly trees.
When the rest of the column began scrambling over the hill, the danger gone, Disa joined them and watched in dismay. Gregor was happily assisting D’Kan in transforming the dead animals into provisions, lending his strength to the Ranger’s skill in butchering. “Does it make you feel like a man to murder those poor animals and steal their home?” she snapped at Gregor, before breaking into tears and fleeing back to the wagons.
“What the Dark was that about?” Gregor asked, but no one could help him. Disa was the only woman in the camp. No doubt the presence of so much testosterone was a constant burden for her. Christopher went to talk to her, anyway.
“We had to, Disa. You know that.” It was the only decent site they had seen, and they were running out of time.
“Soldiers must kill,” she answered. “But they need not grin about it.”
“He’s just making the best of a bad situation.” Christopher couldn’t quite figure out how he had become Gregor’s advocate, but he told himself it was because he wanted peace in his camp. Guilt over destroying the blue knight’s relationship with the beautiful troubadour surely couldn’t be part of it.
“He could make better, if he cared to try,” Disa said cryptically, and then she changed the subject to other matters.
In only five days, they had changed the landscape. Like a cloud of locusts they stripped the hill bare, stacking logs in neat piles to dry while the overseers marked out trenches for the molds. Like a nest of ants, they dug mud from the swamp, carried in long lines of men with baskets up the hill, and filled the wooden structures. It was a small hill, which was just as well, since Christopher had only committed the wizard to ten walls. Still, that was nine hundred feet of circumference, which would cover the hilltop. With another fifty yards of swampland cleared behind, and the flat, open plain in front, Christopher would not fear Tyrannosaurus rex himself.
The tenth night since they had left town, he had his men light a massive bonfire. D’Kan was perplexed.
“Won’t that risk attracting attention before we are ready for it?”
Christopher had almost forgotten about the ulvenmen. But there was a specific attention he needed to attract.
“I’m expecting an air drop,” he grinned, anticipating it would baffle the Ranger. But D’Kan nodded sagely and refused to be surprised when the black shape of the wizard glided into the firelight.
“Lord Wizard,” Christopher greeted him, remembering the night they had spent drinking. Christopher’s men, having no such protection, shied away from the sinister robes dangling in midair.
“You were right,” the wizard said. “I could see your bonfire from the city, once I’d gone high enough. Yet it is nigh twenty miles.”
There was nothing else in the swamp making light, so there was no competition. Christopher knew that, having sent Kennet up just the night before.
“What about the journey?” Christopher asked. Even without superstition, flying at night through this crazy world would be terrifying. Who knew what would spring out of the nearest star-lit cloud?
“I was hidden until I reached your camp,” the wizard said matter-of-factly. “So do not expect me to come out here and rescue you. Not only does the trip take an hour, it depletes me of spells.”
“I don’t,” Christopher answered. “Your job is defending your people. Losing a whole city is far worse than losing a regiment.”
The wizard shook his head, a negative motion that somehow still signaled approval. “Your greed is as lively as a Yellow. I am well aware that you left my domain so you would not owe me taxes on your gains, but I am surprised to see you turning down my share from ordinary combat.”
Christopher blushed. He hadn’t realized this secondary motivation was that obvious. Technically being outside the borders of the realm, he would owe a tael-tax only to the King.
“Fear not.” The wizard sounded like he was laughing, although the illusion he wore wasn’t really consistent with humor. “I have never claimed a tael-tax on ulvenmen, and I’ll not start now. If people want to risk their lives killing monsters, I’ll not dissuade them, near or far. Nor will I come to your rescue and steal your thunder. That’s the King’s job. The only thing you need fear from me is admiration for your sharp practice. I would think a White priest to be shamed at words of praise from a Black wizard.”
“I don’t mind being shamed, as long as I’m richer for it,” Christopher said with a grin. He knew the wizard wasn’t really Black, but he could hardly compromise the carefully constructed false persona in public. “Speaking of which, I saved a bottle of wine for you, in case turning mud to stone is thirsty work.”
“Just one,” the wizard said. “I still have to find my way home.” He glided off to work his magic on the wall. His flight spell lasted considerably longer than Christopher’s.
Only after they had finished the bottle, while Christopher was trying to explain to the wizard why you could see a fire from the air when you couldn’t see it from the ground—apparently these people did not know their world was round—did it occur to Christopher how much trust the wizard had shown in drinking his wine. Karl would have had an apoplectic fit over such a security breach if Christopher had done the same. Though the wizard was highly ranked, he could still be killed, and poisoned wine would be an ideal opening shot.
This was the price of a life of paranoid solitude—once you did trust someone, you trusted them too mu
ch. After the wizard had zoomed off into the night, Christopher discussed it with his political officer.
Torme dismissed his speculations. “You are White, Brother. Of course he trusts you. He knows that should you become his enemy, you will send him an invitation before attacking, and you’ll probably heal him after the battle to boot.”
“Are we really that inept?” Christopher asked. No wonder the Church didn’t have an army.
“So I have always been taught,” Torme said. “Always the Dark crows about the stupidity of the Bright. And yet . . .”
“Yet what?”
Torme shook his head. “I have seen more power in your train than in any place I have looked in this world. I cannot explain it. But I believe it. And in any case, I am now White myself. If you did not send that invitation, I would deliver it by hand.”
“Not to worry,” Christopher laughed. “He’s on our side.”
“For now,” Torme said. “For now.”
The wizard had departed for the last time the night before. Now Christopher surveyed his new fortress.
The stone walls were being carved, not merely in decorative swirls. Men were drilling narrow firing ports instead of the wider sawtooth crenellations necessary for crossbows. Inside the ring of stone, buildings were being raised. Crude ones, made out of the scraggly lumber from the marsh, with tent-cloth roofs, but still a marked improvement over sleeping in the open. Regular latrines, stone hearths, storage pits, and stables dotted the grounds. The best lumber went into making the gate, bound with strips of iron brought from the city in wagons. The men had complained about carrying thick bars of metal and heavy barrels of nails. They weren’t complaining now.
Nor had they complained, even once, about dragging the cannons through the swamp. Seeing them ensconced in regular intervals around the walls gave everyone a deep sense of security.
The single greatest difficulty in supplying a fort was their easiest achievement. Instead of trying to dig a well in this muddy sinkhole, they had their magic water bottle, a gift from the Saint. The thick bronze vase shot out clean, cool water like a firehose on command. It had been invaluable in turning dirt to mud. Now it supplied them with uncontaminated water for drinking and cooking.
