by Eric Flint
Annabelle woke. It took a few moments, then she checked the time on Pucorl’s dash clock. “What took so long?”
Pucorl was still explaining about the livestock when Roger opened the door. “We need to get to your lands and get set up. I want to hit them before dawn.”
“Why?” Annabelle asked.
“Because I want them asleep, not thinking about dropping rocks or burning oil on Pucky here.” He hooked a thumb at the van.
“Why, thanks, Jolly boy. That’s mighty green of you,” Pucorl said in accents reminiscent of Foghorn Leghorn. He wasn’t fond of the nickname. Well, except when Annabelle used it. But he was still a puck. He could give as good as he got in the nickname department.
Roger grinned and climbed into the back.
✽ ✽ ✽
Pucorl transferred to his lands, and Annabelle climbed out and grabbed the chain, doing her walk around examination of Pucorl as she went. The original van was a Mercedes-Benz Sprinter, metallic forest green with large darkened windows on the sides and back. But there had been many changes since Pucorl was called to the van. The cow-catcher was integrated into his front grill, but now it had spring muscles that let “Pucky”—Annabelle grinned at the nickname—pull it in tight, push it out, lift it up to cover his headlights, or lower it so it was touching the ground in front of him. It was also pushed out into the shape of a old fashioned cow-catcher, and armored, as Pucorl was now, it had polished steel facings and spikes that would make the ghost rider jealous.
She attached the chain to the top of the cow-catcher and dragged it over to the ram-cart. The ram-cart wouldn’t be integrated into Pucorl. It was an axe, not a hand. It had two heavy wooden wheels on an iron axle and a ten-foot-long ram that made a telephone pole look wimpy. The ram was steel tipped and sharpened to a blade edge. It also had wings pushing out to the sides, the idea being that they would push aside what the tip cut. At the moment it was tilted back on its trailer hook and that was where she hooked the chain.
Pucorl backed up and pulled the ram-cart into the parking lot.
She whistled and the crane slowly moved out of the garage and lifted the back of the ram so that she could bolt it to the cow-catcher grill. Once the ram was attached, she completed her inspection.
A framework of wood, something like a roll-cage or the face-guard on a football helmet but thicker and covering more of his surface, was attached to Pucorl, and it covered him from his wheels to his roof. It was wood where it touched his body but its outer surface was polished steel and patterned like a pentagram of protection. Which it was. Wilber, Doctor Delaflote, and Merlin had all consulted on its design.
She stepped up on the running board. It was part of the armor and let her see Pucorl’s roof. After Roger got nailed in the battle of Tzouroulos, they made some changes to Pucorl’s roof armor. It was no longer only the short wall of wood around the edge of the roof. Now there was a lattice of wood faced with steel that arched over. A soldier could still shoot out, but it was a lot harder to be stuck by a random arrow. Not that anyone would be riding on top for this trip. The jerk when they hit the castle’s gates was going to be way too severe for that.
“Okay, Pucorl.” She almost said “Pucky” but restrained herself. “Open up.”
Pucorl’s armor was a demon, created partly from the substance of Pucorl’s lands and partly from wood, steel, and craftsmanship from the mortal realm. From Pucorl’s lands it was mostly earth, but considerable fire as well. And at night or when Pucorl was angry, fire flickered over its surface and between the slats. The armor had no real intelligence, only instincts and reactions. It was all about protecting Pucorl and his passengers. It was heavy, but because it was part demon, lighter than it should have been. The ram-cart was also essentially mindless, but like a magical sword or ax, its function was to rend. Even with its magic, to wield it took strength.
Pucorl had a hundred and eighty-eight horsepower under his hood, and that was a lot of horsepower for a fourteenth-century wooden gate to withstand. A team of horses would have a hard time moving the ram-cart, even with the wheels. But Pucorl had plenty of horses. He could also turn both his front and rear wheels, so he could maneuver a lot more effectively than an ordinary van.
They jumped back to the camp outside Fort Rusion, and Pucorl got himself and the ram-cart positioned for the charge.
Location: Fort Rusion, Byzantium
Ilhani looked out at the Byzantine camp. There was activity of some sort out there, but he didn’t know what it meant. He thought about calling the sergeant, but he had called the sergeant when the demon van arrived and been cursed out for waking him.
Ilhani was deeply troubled by the way things were going here in Runelia. All the real leaders of the empire had gone south, across the Dardanelles to Anatolia, leaving second raters and nobles with blood or political connections in charge of Runelia, and the Byzantines had taken advantage of the lack of leadership and coordination, taking Runelia back from the Turks a piece at a time. And it was looking like this was the next piece. If they took Rusion, they would have effectively cut off the remaining Turks from Gallipoli and the rest of the empire.
He looked at the walls. They were good walls, and he tried to be reassured by that. Would have been, if it weren’t for the demons that now walked the lands. What good were walls against—
The shot came out of nowhere.
Ilhani never heard it, or anything, ever again. His lifeless body fell, and the wall behind his head was splattered red.
✽ ✽ ✽
Roger cracked open his demon-lock and loaded another round even as the rockets were lit. A moment later, Roger fired again. By then, the rockets were arching over the walls, their red tails lighting up the night.
✽ ✽ ✽
As the rockets reached the walls, Pucorl started his run. It was uphill and he started in low gear, but Pucorl was the van. He controlled his body as well as an athlete controls theirs, and his body was a lot more powerful. Pucorl and the ram had a combined mass of seven tons, and when it hit the gates it was traveling at over one hundred kilometers per hour, or twenty-eight meters per second, or 196 ton-seconds of momentum.
The gates didn’t break.
They shattered.
And Pucorl didn’t stop until he was through the second set of gates, and into the courtyard of the castle.
✽ ✽ ✽
Behind him—a long way behind him—were two hundred armored knights on warhorses. They were coming along as fast as they could, but the camp was over half a mile from the walls and a charger’s charge is not all that fast even at the gallop. At the trot, well, it was liable to be a full minute before they got here.
Pucorl backed up to get maneuvering room and tried to use his ram-cart as a weapon.
Didn’t work.
The gates hadn’t treated the ram a lot better than the ram had treated them. The wheels were broken and the ram’s spreaders, which had steel facings, were bent and twisted.
The good news was that the ram had taken the brunt of the damage. Pucorl himself was in good shape.
The bad news was the ram was still attached, acting like a sea anchor.
The worse news was the occupants of the fort were awake and, ah, grouchy.
✽ ✽ ✽
Bertrand du Guesclin and Andronikos IV rode side by side at the head of the knights of Byzantium. Andronikos was still a pain in the butt, but he wasn’t a coward. He had been right with Bertrand in most of the battles since the arrival of the “French Crusade,” as he called it. Bertrand and his little troop of eighty demon-lock equipped men at arms, with the increasingly willing aid of the Byzantine forces, had accomplished more in the way of restoring Byzantine territory than the Slavs had.
They were approaching the gate and the rockets still seemed to be keeping the enemies’ heads down. Had to be careful, as the leftover lumber from the gate was filling the entryway between the outer and inner gates.
It slowed them down and bunched them up under the mu
rder holes, but the attack had been so fast that they got through before the oil was ready.
Then it was sword work. There wasn’t room for lances, but they were in among the enemy.
✽ ✽ ✽
As Bertrand and company finally arrived, Annabelle opened Pucorl’s door and jumped out with her pistol in one hand and a wrench in the other. There were Turks all around, but they were busy with the knights and she needed to get that damn ram off Pucorl so he could move. She ran around front to reach the ram and right into an armored Turk with a scimitar that looked about ten feet long. She shot and missed, but the sound threw him off his swing and Pucorl jerked back, pulling the ram into the Turk’s legs and he went down.
Annabelle went for the bolts attaching the ram and the Turk started getting up.
“Annabelle! Behind you!” Pucorl shouted.
Annabelle turned and shot. Missed again, and this time he ignored it. He ran at her, sword over his head, then Andronikos was there, on his charger. A quick swing of his scimitar and the Turk’s head went flying.
Annabelle turned back to the ram. But by the time she had it loose, they held the courtyard and the enemy was forted up in the keep.
Roger, the slugabed, rode up looking fresh as a daisy, looked at the situation, then asked, “Why didn’t you transfer back to Pucorl’s lands and take it off there?” He sounded really curious.
And after he mentioned it, Annabelle couldn’t think of a reason why they hadn’t. “Pucorl?”
“I don’t know. I never thought of it. It would be running away in the midst of battle.” Suddenly he groaned. “It’s all Charles V’s fault. That bastard knighted me and my circuits have turned to noble mush.”
“It’s called a strategic— Well, in this case, a tactical retreat,” Bertrand told him. “All the properly trained knights know about it. Don’t you agree, Prince Andronikos?”
Andronikos, sitting on his horse, bloody sword in hand, started laughing. Roger and Bertrand joined him.
✽ ✽ ✽
The battle was over and it was a victory, but not a complete one. The Turks still held the keep and could hold out for weeks, locking the army in place. Andronikos made a deal with the Turks. They could leave and even take their weapons, but they had to abandon the keep and they would be under guard until they were out of the fort.
Location: Bursa, Capital of the Ottoman Turks
Time: Mid-afternoon, April 1, 1373
Dizdar Civan ben Kamber looked at the shadows stretching out from the gatehouse and guessed it was mid-afternoon. His horse had foundered the first day out of Fort Rusion. He got another after reaching this side of the Dardanelles, but the poor beast should have been used for glue years ago. Not that he was in any hurry to face the interview that was coming.
Savci seemed to be winning the civil war at the moment. He had control of the treasury and Yakub Celebi and Bayzid were out of the capital. All three of them had regents, but they weren’t the only contenders for the throne. At least three of Murad’s generals were claiming the throne in their own right.
Dizdar Civan ben Kamber and his aides were questioned by the gate guards, and then allowed to pass. At the palace they were stopped again, then brought into the royal presence to give their report to Savci and, behind a screen, his mother. There was also a general. Kara Halil had decided for Savci.
After Civan made his report, Savci looked at the curtained alcove and complained, “Your astrologer insisted that Andronikos would ally with me.”
There was murmuring from behind the curtain that Civan couldn’t make out.
Kara Halil grunted, then said, “Andronikos is an opportunist. He must see more opportunity with the demons.”
“Then he’s not wrong, General,” Civan said. “It was the demon van that took the fort. And the phones that the French brought with them are why they have been winning. They can coordinate much better than we.”
More murmuring from behind the curtain. This time Civan made out “need” and “djinn.”
That made sense to Civan. It might be chancy to deal with djinn, but they were not inherently evil, as demons were.
✽ ✽ ✽
It was that meeting that started it. Civan was part of it. The project to recruit or capture djinn to their cause, including ifrit, the djinn lords. It took months, while the Ottoman Empire collapsed into six warring tribes. But, eventually, using books from Constantinople and reports from spies, they built djinn-powered tanks.
Chapter 14—Rebuilding Byzantium
Location: Constantinople
Time: 9:32 AM, April 3, 1373
Amelia Grady tapped keys on Shakespeare. Demon inhabited or not, sometimes it was easier to work on her laptop like it was an ordinary computer. She was doing the books for the Byzantine Empire. And things were not as bad as they thought. The bank was almost accepted as a real institution, though Patriarch Kokkinos was writing sermons about money changers. Apparently because he was angry that they weren’t in the temple where they belonged.
“The only entity that can be trusted with money is the church. It will corrupt anyone else.” That was the Patriarch of Constantinople’s line.
John V and, especially, Queen Helena Kantakouzene, didn’t agree. The bank would remain part of the government, not the church.
Major transactions had to be done through the bank, so every ship that put in with a load of wheat, or sailed out with Russian furs or Chinese silks, had to do its business through the bank. By now, many of the local merchants had seen the wisdom of the check over the bag of gold or silver coins, and goods were changing hands through the exchange of checks, not the exchange of coins.
All of which meant that a spreadsheet and data entry were absolutely necessary. The data she was entering was data written out in a ledger by scribes and clerks as the bank’s customers deposited their coins or presented their checks. What Amelia was doing was making sure the figures added and that each account balance matched the balance in the balance book.
They were working on building an enchanted printer, but they weren’t there yet. So when Amelia ran across an inaccurate balance, she had to check all the entries in that column to be sure it was transcribed correctly, and then tracked down the clerk to find out where the money went. That was why Amelia was doing it. A hunt and peck typist would be taking forever and making a lot more mistakes.
The upshot was that there was a lot more money in Constantinople than there had been before the twenty-firsters arrived. At the same time, the techniques from France—partly twenty-firster and partly stuff that the French craftsmen had come up with by combining what they knew with what the twenty-firsters knew—were producing a lot of new goods. Better boats, better sails, better plows, and thread made faster and cheaper. Paris was experiencing an economic boom and Constantinople was striving to catch up.
Some of that money was finding its way into the royal coffers, and the lands retaken by Bertrand, Roger, and Andronikos were helping their credit, if not yet adding much of anything to the actual bottom line.
The door opened and the queen came in. “Oh, put that away or let Shakespeare do it. I need you for your real job.”
So off Amelia went to discuss a Greek translation of Romeo and Juliet with the royal director of pageants.
✽ ✽ ✽
In a building a street over, the beauty parlor opened its doors. It was by appointment only, and was entirely owned by Lakshmi Rawal, the young widow of a wealthy merchant, and three palace maids who were combining the beauty techniques of twenty-first century France, fourteenth century France and fourteenth century Constantinople to produce their own spa days, with everything from hair setting to seaweed wraps.
✽ ✽ ✽
Wilber watched Theodore Meliteniotes incant in front of the nine-pointed star of containment. Pentagrams were, it turned out, only one form of the containment spells. They worked best for some of the older, more minor, demons, the pucks and brownies and the like. Even the muses. But others, like the dji
nn, were more readily drawn to containment devices that had a different number of sides. Angels preferred six-sided and nine-sided stars, and djinn also liked nine sides, but uneven, with four sides a bit longer than the other five. And as he did with almost everything, Theodore was incanting in a meticulous monotone. He was putting a djinn into a locally made phone. It had a painted screen, a wooden case with gold inlay interior, and a demon-made tuning coil that was small enough to fit inside the phone.
The djinn residing in it would be able to operate it almost like a cellphone. It would lack the computing power and the games and apps that made the phones marvels even without djinn in them, but it would still let its owner access the phone network. This was the most recent of the locally made phones, and the princess was getting it because all the generals and admirals, as well as her older brothers and sisters, had phones now. It would still be a while before they started seeping out to the general public.
The djinn floated above the phone in the pentagram and didn’t look thrilled to be called. One of the drawbacks to these locally made pseudo-phones was that they lacked the computing power that made the real twenty-first century phones into virtual palaces for the demons, djinn, or whatever.
Theodore finished the incantation and the phone went active. The screen lit up with the face of the djinn. It was square-jawed with a red mustache on an orange face, with little flames flicking about it. Djinn were creatures with a lot of fire in their makeup, and they didn’t take kindly to being locked away in lamps or phones. In this case, though, it had a camera to see with, a microphone to hear with, and a speaker to speak through, which it used.
“How dare you?” the phone demanded loudly. “My lord Amar Utu Marduk will punish you!”
“We’ll take our chances,” Wilber said, “but if you truly have contact with him, we’d like to have a chat.”
The djinn shrank back on the screen as though he was moving away from a camera. “Are you crazy?”
