by Eric Flint
“Oops. Sorry about that. What I am struggling to understand myself is the correlation between what happens in the netherworld and what happens in the natural world. In the natural world, mass and will are unrelated. A mountain has great mass, but no will. But in your world, the two are related. When Pucorl got knighted it changed him, and for that matter changed the shape of his lands. When he defeated Beslizoswian, that changed him again. Not only the land, but his personality. He’s still a scamp of a puck, but he is more mature and more serious than he was. He’s no longer the eight-year-old brat lying for the heck of it and giggling when he gets away with it.
“Mass and will are almost different aspects of the same thing in the netherworld. Like mass and energy are in the natural world. This is something I’ve been thinking about ever since Pucorl grabbed the van out of the twenty-first century, and I still don’t have a solid handle on it.”
“It’s not mass alone. It’s the kind of mass,” Themis pointed out. “Water is different from earth, which is different from fire or air, and aether is different from all of them.”
“Well, what did you lose the most of?” Wilber asked.
Themis paused only a beat if she paused at all. “More of earth, but a greater part of fire.”
It took Wilber a moment to parse that. Themis was mostly earth. He was guessing, but his guess was that eighty plus percent of Themis was earth, ten percent water, eight percent air, and only a couple of percent fire. So even if she lost a lot more earth than she did fire, she still lost a higher percentage of her fire than her earth. What Wilber didn’t have a clue about was what would happen if they tried to make up the loss by natural world mass-energy. But that seemed to be their only option. There was, at this point, no way to get back the part of herself she had left in the natural world.
“I want to try something,” Wilber said. “But I am going to need Pucorl’s permission. Can you tell me why you didn’t want Merlin or Igor in on this call?”
“Because Merlin is a muse of a god that existed in France in the time of the Neanderthals. That god sleeps and is ignoring Merlin, and will continue to do so unless Merlin learns something that will aid it. If Merlin does learn something from you or your experiments that would be of great value to his creator, he will be obligated to inform it. I don’t know that that is a thing I wish to avoid, but it might be.”
“Makes sense,” Wilber agreed. “Let me see if I can come up with an excuse for what I want to try. By the way, what about Pucorl? Who does he owe fealty to?”
“After he gained Beslizoswian’s lands, Pucorl became a special case. He is independent . . . no, that’s not right. He is more powerful now than his creator was. His creator sleeps, and if it tried to force him to serve it, it would be subsumed. Pucorl is as close as the netherworld has to a truly independent being.”
“Right. I will do my best to restore to you what was taken, or at least replace it with something that will work. In the meantime, we need the phone system.”
At which point Themis was gone and Wilber was on the phone with Iris who immediately said, in Lily Tomlin’s operator voice, “Is this the party to whom I am speaking? Please hold.” And muzak started up. Wilber was about to hang up when Iris came on and—still in Lily Tomlin’s voice—explained that she was really busy at the moment organizing the phone network. They were going to need to put pentagrams on their phone cases. “But everything will be up and running by tomorrow.”
Location: Near Tzouroulos, Byzantium
Time: 11:50 AM, November 20, 1372
As Pucorl approached the city of Tzouroulos, now called Corlu, there was great wailing and gnashing of teeth within the city. The Ottomans had taken Tzouroulos in 1355, renamed it Corlu, and torn down its walls, because Murad was a lot more concerned about Tzouroulos rebelling than he was about John V being able to do anything about his conquest of the city. Tearing down the walls was his none-too-subtle way of telling the people of Corlu that he would much prefer to see them dead than in rebellion.
The people of the city were unsure who they were more afraid of. Murad I and his army, who were approaching from the northwest, or the magical monster that was on the road from Byzantium from the southeast.
The Greek Orthodox Church was still allowed to operate and was profoundly concerned that if they in any way supported John V, that forbearance on the part of their Ottoman overlords would cease.
Still, there was no attempt to build any sort of barrier. Murad had made it clear that if the walls returned, then he would tear down the whole city, sow it with salt and cast the entire city into slavery. Since most of the young men of the city were now Janissary slave soldiers in Murad’s army, the city fathers didn’t doubt the claim.
✽ ✽ ✽
Pucorl twisted his front and rear wheels so that he shifted left while still keeping his windshield facing the city. A delegation of horsemen was riding out to meet them. They were wearing turbans and the sort of flowing clothing that went with the notion of an Arab warrior, but they were also wearing what looked to be perfectly functional breastplates and their turbans seemed to be attached to helmets.
Pucorl wasn’t alone. He had an escort of ten of Bertrand du Guesclin’s men at arms under the command of Charles de Long, who still didn’t have a replacement for Carlos. The demons, having heard about Carlos, were now anxious to avoid occupying anything, ah, edible.
There was also a company of some twenty knights of Byzantium, each with his retinue of squires and servants, so it was a fairly large group. Wilber, riding Meurtrier, and Leona were off to their left about fifteen miles, scouting. Leona was happy enough to scout as long as no one tried to claim any sort of ownership of her.
Roger was leading another group about fifteen miles to the right. And the largest part of the army, the rest of Bertrand’s riflemen, and almost two hundred Byzantine knights, were about four miles behind Pucorl. The reason for the placement was that they wanted the Ottomans to think that Pucorl was all there was, with maybe a couple of small scouting forces.
✽ ✽ ✽
At about twenty yards out, the Ottomans pulled up and one raised a hand in the universal symbol for “stop where you are.”
Pucorl didn’t stop. He wasn’t under these people’s orders. Instead, he continued forward until he was about ten feet from the leader, who by now had a bow out, loaded and drawn.
There were, in this time, no guns that a cavalryman could wield while in the saddle.
Well, that wasn’t strictly true. The French army had flintlock breech-loading carbines. And Bertrand’s force had demonlock carbines. And, oh, yes, Annabelle, as well as the other twenty-firsters, all had six-shot demon-lock revolvers. Plus the long rifle that Roger had used to kill Philip the Bold and an arrogant elf lord.
But these guys were a solid half-century away from that sort of thing. There was a flash in Pucorl’s dash cam.
That arrow was enchanted.
“Behave,” Pucorl said in demonic. But the arrow didn’t seem to understand. For that matter, Pucorl didn’t recognize the sort of demon that was in the arrow.
That was when Pucorl used the new phone system. He called Wilber and asked who or what it was.
Wilber spoke in demonic and the arrow glowed. “I’m not entirely sure, but I think it’s a djinn. An extremely minor fire djinn.”
“What are you doing, consorting with djinn?” Pucorl asked the soldier in Greek. “You being a good Muslim and all.”
In fourteenth-century Turkish, which Pucorl didn’t understand, the man answered, then a moment later Wilber told him, “I believe you have been consigned to the Pit of Hell there, Pucorl. You being a demon and all.”
Pucorl gave the guy a honk that would have done a Paris cabby proud. The horse reared in fright.
And the arrow came out of the bow at a forty-five degree up angle. It landed in a tree which immediately started to burn.
“Say,” shouted Annabelle, “Someone want to put that out before we start the forest on f
ire?”
Several of the riders rode over to the tree and started splashing it with water.
“Grab the arrow! You won’t put the fire out as long as the djinn is embedded in that tree,” Pucorl shouted. Then he started forward again and the troop fled.
✽ ✽ ✽
There wasn’t much out here, Wilber noted as Leona flicked from tree branch to tree branch, scouting ahead of them. It looked like the Ottoman force was still treating John V as a scared child hiding in his room, which wasn’t a totally unreasonable position to hold.
He looked over at the scout. “Murad seams to be marching on Tzouroulos with no scouts out. That doesn’t strike me as the canny military commander that Murad was supposed to be.”
“Why should he put out scouts? These are his lands, and they have been for over ten years. What does he need with scouts?” The man, one of Bertrand’s picked men, grinned.
Wilber got on his phone. “We’re coming in,” he told Pucorl. “We should be at Tzouroulos in around an hour.” The only reason that Wilber was here was because Igor was needed to stay in contact with the main army.
Location: Army of Emperor John V, Southeast of Tzouroulos, Byzantium
Time: 12:02 PM, November 20, 1372
As Bertrand rode out of the trees, he saw Pucorl at the edge of the city, stopped and waiting.
A moment later, Andronikos rode out and started complaining. “Why didn’t your tame demon stay here as he was told to? Your forces have no discipline. Someone should take a whip to that van.”
“You’re more than welcome to try,” Bertrand said. “But I would point out that Pucorl is the lord of his own domain and in no way under your authority.” As Bertrand knew perfectly well, the burr under Andronikos’ saddle was that Bertrand, not he, was in command of this expedition. Partly because of Bertrand’s reputation, freshly polished by the siege of Paris, but mostly because John V was still pissed over his son’s refusal to pay for his release from Venice in 1369.
“Meanwhile, let’s get inside the city. Walls or not, it’s still the most defensible place in the area. And with us in it, not a place that Murad can bypass.”
It took them the rest of the day to establish themselves in Tzouroulos. Which Andronikos, with arrogant ceremony, renamed back to Tzouroulos from Corlu.
✽ ✽ ✽
The next day, the first of Murad’s scouts came in sight of the city, took one quick look, and rode hell for leather back to Murad’s army.
Meanwhile Wilber inscribed a pentagram in a vacant lot next door to an Orthodox church that had been converted to a mosque when Murad took over the first time. In the pentagram he placed a small statue of Themis and a model of a phone.
The phone was a piece of wood carved into the shape of a landline phone, headset, and base, with little depressable buttons on the base. It didn’t connect to anything except that it was inside the pentagram. There was a matching pentagram in Themis’ lands.
The phone wouldn’t contact Themis. Instead, it contacted Iris, who would listen to the request and decide if she would bother Themis with it.
Neither the priests nor the mullahs were happy to see the thing. But Wilber made it clear that they got to keep their altars only so long as Themis got to keep hers.
Wilber was working on a theory. One that he wasn’t at all sure was valid. His idea was that prayer from the mortal realm acted as energy in the netherworld. He was working under the theory that if the worship of Themis could be reinstated, then her energy level would increase. The few hundred followers that Themis now had, mostly in France, weren’t enough of a sample to truly test the theory. She would need hundreds of thousands of followers to produce any real change in her energy level.
The other reason for the pentagram large enough for a small building with an altar was to give Wilber a route into Themis’ lands.
He used that route to take earth, oil, grain, and nightsoil into Themis’ lands from the mortal realm in an attempt to rebuild her. Her agents took the stuff and “plowed” it into the soil of Themis’ lands.
Location: Outside Tzouroulos, Byzantium
Time: Three Hours After Dawn, November 22, 1372
Murad I, the founder of the Ottoman Empire, sat his horse outside Corlu and examined the tactical situation while in his hidden heart, he raged. How dare they? Could they not see that he was the Chosen of Allah? Destined to found an empire the like of which the world hadn’t seem since Alexander?
In less hidden places in his mind, he determined that though there was a slight rise, there were no walls protecting the city, that the enemy placed on rooftops along the edge of the city would damage him before they were overrun, but they would be overrun.
He called his staff together and prepared for the battle.
✽ ✽ ✽
In Tzouroulos, Roger McLain, Bertrand du Guesclin, and Andronikos IV stood on a rooftop and watched as Murad arrayed his troops.
“Well, he’s not an idiot,” Bertrand said.
Roger grunted. Murad was arraying his troops into three columns, a large central column, and two smaller flanking columns. It was clear that he wasn’t going to try and be clever. He was going to come straight in and roll over them. An idiot would spend weeks working out a clever plan while the defenders fortified the town. “Still, he’s not considering Pucorl. Pucorl’s cow-catcher front armor is going to turn that central column’s charge into a disaster.” Roger looked over at Bertrand and lifted the long rifle. “I should go with Pucorl and we’ll repeat the trick of the last day of the siege of Paris.”
“It should work,” Bertrand agreed, “but you’re going to get a reputation if you keep offing great lords. People will start to think you’re some sort of republican, trying to put the plebes back in power.”
Again Roger grunted. “As it happens, I am. Both my parents were Republicans. And the more I see of kings, the better republics look.” Roger was looking right at Andronikos IV when he said it.
Andronikos looked back at Roger and didn’t say anything, though his knuckles were white on the hilt of his sword.
Bertrand continued. “As we discussed, Andronikos will command the right, I will command the left. Lord Demetrios, you’re mostly a reserve. Let Pucorl and Roger hammer the front of Murad’s central column. All we need from your contingent is to keep any cavalry that breaks free away from our people on the roofs.”
✽ ✽ ✽
Pucorl sat ready as Roger climbed onto his roof, lay down behind the wooden frame work, and strapped himself in with the canvas straps. The framework was about six inches high and completely surrounded Pucorl’s roof. It had two functions. One was to act as an anchor for the van’s side armor, and the other was to provide a rest for firing a rifle while lying prone on Pucorl’s roof. In that position, Roger would not only be secure in case Pucorl had to make sharp maneuvers, he would be mostly out of sight of archers. Not completely safe, but as good as they could reasonably manage. Then they waited, while Murad started his forces forward at a walk.
It took Murad’s central column almost ten minutes to get close enough to start their charge, but the moment they did, Pucorl pulled out from behind the building, made a sharp right turn, and charged right at them, horn blaring and speakers screeching dire threats. Not to the soldiers. To the horses. Wilber provided the horse, and what the horses heard was warning that a massive predator was coming for them, and it was time to run.
✽ ✽ ✽
In Murad’s army, the horses heard, and many of them bolted. But by no means all of them. Murad’s mount, for instance, was made of sterner stuff. Horses don’t think the way people do, but Murad’s mount was a war horse, trained from early age to fight in cooperation with humans. Its reaction was to charge forward to meet the threat, confident in itself and its rider to defeat anything that threatened its herd, which included the grooms back in camp, as well as the other horses and riders with them.
So while some ran, others charged. And Pucorl drove into a charging mass of ho
rsemen.
They tried to get out of his way when he got close, but they were too packed together, and the cow catcher knocked them aside like a bowling ball through pins.
If you didn’t count the blood and broken bodies that smashed against Pucorl’s windshield.
✽ ✽ ✽
Roger saw it. Then he felt it, as Pucorl jerked with each horse thrown aside. Pucorl was still moving, but the simple mass of horses was slowing him.
Then it happened.
With no intent at all, a horse trying to leap aside tossed his rider up onto Pucorl’s roof. He landed on Roger.
Roger was strapped in. There were quick releases on the straps, but Roger had to get to them. Before he could, he felt the dagger bite into his right arm.
Roger bellowed in rage and pain as he tried to undo the straps with his left hand.
He bucked under the weight of the man to no effect at all, then Pucorl reversed course, backing out of the mass, and the man on Roger was rolled forward almost off of Pucorl’s roof. Roger got one strap loose, and tried to get up on his knees. And the Turk, now lying on his back, holding onto Pucorl’s armor with one hand, kicked Roger in the face.
✽ ✽ ✽
In the van, Annabelle heard what was going on, and pushed the down button on the power windows. They didn’t move.
“Pucorl! You open that window unless you want me to shoot through your roof.”
“Shoot through my roof then. Better holes in me than in you,” Pucorl shouted back.
“I can’t see through the roof. Open the window.”
The window opened to Pucorl’s pleas for her to be careful.
With nothing really approaching care, Annabelle grabbed the upper edge of the window frame and pulled herself half out of the van. Then, with her right hand, she grabbed her pistol, pointed at the Turk who was less than two feet away, and shot.
And missed.
Pucorl had twisted his front wheels and his rear wheels, and turned to keep her door away from the Turkish army. Not easy, since they were surrounded.
