Forcing the Spring (Book 9 of the Colplatschki Chronicles)

by Boykin, Alma

  “Do we try and board, Imperial Master?” a soldier asked.

  Pjtor wanted to, but shook his head. “No. Helm take us around, rejoin the fleet while we have the wind.” He looked up to check the damage to his own rigging. The main and mizzens stood intact, although one of the topgallant sails had a hole. The smaller center mast would need a new spar but not immediately. “Do not try to rescue any of the enemy,” he ordered, not that anyone would try. “Gunners to the rails in case someone tries to board.” He didn’t think it would happen, but better safe than have a fanatic trying to cut his throat.

  It took almost a turn of the sand glass before they finished reversing course. Pjtor thanked Godown and watched the horizons, looking for any more Turklavi ships, and saw none.

  The wind had picked up, giving them more speed once they finished turning back toward the main battle. Even so it took far longer than Pjtor wanted to rejoin the fleet. When he got close enough he spotted trouble. The bomb shots had worked, but the men seemed confused, with ships floating and firing but no infantry attack in progress. Pjtor’s temper started to flare. This was not acceptable. He could see the edge of the breach in the stone and mud and brick wall, what were they waiting for?

  “Lower a boat. I’m going to see what is going on.”

  Brunov opened his mouth to protest and stopped. “Imperial Master.” He gave the orders and Pjtor sent a servant for his pistols from his cabin, along with more ammunition. He already had his sword. The boat dropped and Pjtor was down the ropes and into it before the sailors were ready.

  “Take me to the fighting.” As soon as they had the oars in place, the men rowed with a will. Pjtor sat, but kept craning his neck to see what was going on. One of the fortress guns sounded and water splashed on them from the missed shot. The rowing accelerated. Pjtor stared at the breach in the wall as they rounded the curve of the fortress wall. He could see a heap of bodies in brown, and yellow figures mixed in, and more men trying to land. Damn, what is the problem?

  One of the sailors jerked and gurgled, slumping back as a shot from above hit him in the chest. Pjtor pushed the body out of the way and took the oar himself. “Closer! Get under the gun, so he can’t fire down on us,” Pjtor ordered the men. As soon as he felt the water getting shallower under them, he stood and went to the bow, then clambered ashore by way of rubble and rocks. “To me! Godown and empire!” He drew his sword and started scrambling up the mass of rubble where the wall had been breached. Rank be damned, he wanted that fortress!

  Men swarmed to him, then around, surging forward. Shots pinged, powder smoke made his eyes burn, and he pointed with his sword. “Godown!”

  “Godown and Pjtor!” came the call, and a group of men in brown rushed past, not quite shoving the regular soldiers out of the way in their haste. These were the surprise, the men who wanted revenge for Harrier attacks on their families. They’d taken extra training and carried different weapons including hand-bombs, and claws to pull the Harrier soldiers down from the wall and from ladders. Pjtor felt the fighting turn and heard fewer cries of “Selkow! Up for Selkow!” More yellow-draped bodies lay here and there, and he climbed up the rubble pile until he reached the top of the wall, killing a man in a green and yellow head wrap as he did. He shoved the body down into the space below and looked around. Fighting continued, but all at once a group of men in brown and gray appeared on the far end of the wall, well away from the breach. The stream of soldiers and irregulars turned into a flood, and they appeared on more of the wall. They’d breached the gates! Pjtor watched for a few minutes more, then climbed down and found his boat, the men cowering against the rubble pile. “Back to the Eagle,” he ordered.

  “What in the name of every saint of Godown the hell were you thinking, Pjtor Adamson?” That night, just after sundown, General Green did not give his target time to answer. “You great fool! I told you, you are the biggest target here aside from the fortress and the ships-of-war. You had no call to lead the attack into the breach. And you did it wrong. Never head on, not when you have a lateral route out of the direct line of fire. Godown as my witness, I should have you demoted.”

  “I get to do it first,” Paulson rasped. He was hoarse from calling orders and from inhaling powder smoke. “My turn. First, my compliments to your men for sinking the Turkowi ship. But you should not have put yourself in a position to be boarded or sunk, Pjtor Adamson.” The smaller admiral glowered up at the emperor, fire in his green eyes, and hissed, “That was Selkow’s Delight. We found papers in some of the things that are washing up, including information about the other ships in the fleet and which vessels they were expecting to come assist or bring supplies. She had twenty pounders. Think about that. If she’d turned a broadside against you, you’d have been dead. The only thing that saved you was the genius who pulled down your flags before you got close enough to be identified.”

  Pjtor stared, gape mouth. Who had what?

  “Yes, someone, Brunov or someone with more wit than you seemed to have at the moment, pulled down your flags. So the Turkowi didn’t know you were not one of theirs until you got close enough and they didn’t have time to turn a broadside to you after they misjudged the first shot. Godown is with fools and novices, Pjtor Adamson, because you should be underwater, explaining yourself to Godown, with St. Issa waiting to beat sense into your head with a slop bucket. And no I do not know how they got that blasted boat here.”

  Pjtor gulped. He had not been expecting applause and acclaim, but he certainly hadn’t expected to have his butt chewed by both commanders! And what was worse was that they were right. Things could have gone very, very badly, far worse than just looking like a rank beginner. And he knew it. As he thought back, he realized just exactly how lucky he’d been both times. And while Godown protected fools, Godown also ran out of patience with people who knew better. St. Issa had probably used up all of his powers of persuasion on Godown by the time Pjtor had reached the fortress. Pjtor ducked. “Yes, sir.”

  “Right, look at this diagram,” Green sighed, pointing to a map that had been made of the remains of the main fort. They were still flushing Harriers out of the external bits, or smoking them out. Pjtor studied the picture. “See this? This is what you should have done, had you been paying attention or more patient, or both. Here, then here, you could also have shifted around here, or just waited and acted like an attention-getter while the main body of the infantry came in, as they did, through this secondary gate.” Green gave a quick, loud sigh. “Fool of a powder man thought more would be better on the main gate. Broke it so badly it can’t be used until we move a bunch of rubble and bodies. Overkill is not always the best solution.”

  “Not if it blows the gun’s breech, or the bits start coming straight back down onto your own head,” Paulson agreed. “Lawrence III found that out, which was why Lawrence IV came to the throne at age ten. Almost as smart as using a lit candle to see if a gonne is loaded.”

  Pjtor filed the information away, humming a bit of something rude he’d overhead some of the Dalfan gunners singing over their beer one night.

  Green coughed and spat. “Sorry. Glad we found that sweet spring. My throat’s drier than Hämäl plank fish.” Pjtor had encountered the infamous chunks of salted tuncod himself and still believed that they were better used as hammers or for throwing contests than as food. “So, Imperial Majesty, tomorrow you will walk the fortress, once we finish clearing the last of the yellow-clad bastards.”

  “There’s no point in trying to keep any of them, is there?” Paulson asked, “To use as rowers or something?”

  Pjtor shook his head. “No. The few I’ve heard of being captured tried to kill their captors every waking moment, or killed themselves in such a way as to take others with them. But we’ve only ever captured men, not women or girl children or infants. I have no idea what the Harrier women would do.”

  A new voice spoke from the shadows. “The women make the men look mild and reasonable, most noble Imperial Master. They preserve
the traditions and teachings while their men are gone, teaching the children and supporting the priests and temples. That may be why the Turkowi say women can’t convert, only die and be re-born as worshippers if they are so blessed.”

  Pjtor raised his eyebrows. That did explain some things, but . . . “And you are?”

  “I am called Landis. I no longer know my true name, and I will not repeat what the horse-tupping monsters called me.” He stepped forward and bowed. Pjtor blinked and stared. Landis stood at most a hundred and forty centimeters tall, very lightly built, with a scarf over his lower face. What skin Pjtor saw was tan, not sun browned but a few shades lighter than Capt. Anderson, and the man had almond shaped black eyes with hidden lids. His wrap also covered his head, hiding his hair. He wore loose clothes snugged tight at the wrists and ankles. “I was taken from the Sea Kings’ islands as a boy of ten or so, sold as a toy. Sometimes Godown grants even toys their deepest prayers.”

  Paulson nodded. “He volunteered, came out of some of the frontier men. I trust him, Imperial Majesty.”

  “I can no longer return home. I want revenge, Imperial Master.” He unwrapped the cloth and Pjtor struggled to hide his reaction to what it revealed. “I failed to provide sufficient pleasure one night,” the twisted mouth explained. “So my so-called owner decided that burning wax and oil would kindle the heat of passion.” He re-wrapped his head. “One of the other slaves protected me, poured water on my eyes and nose so I did not die. I fight in her memory and honor.”

  Pjtor had never felt hatred as a physical thing before, but now he knew it. “You may have all the revenge you desire, so long as Godown continues to bless us.”

  “Ameen.” Landis bowed.

  Two days passed before Green would allow Pjtor, Geert, and their guards into the complicated maze of walls and chambers of the fortress at DawnMouth. “We needed to have the priests exorcise two rooms. They were . . . I take back any kind thoughts I might ever have had about the Harriers, Imperial Majesty.”

  From the top of the fortress wall, Pjtor took his time looking around now that no one was shooting at him. He’d found two holes in his hat the day after the battle and had felt rather pleased with himself. Godown had hit him with a spell of Blessed Toni’s fire for his arrogance. Now Pjtor squinted as sunlight danced on the waters of the vast lake, water as far as he could see to the south and west. The far end of the lake, tens of kilometers away, fed the Sweetwater River that went to the sea after flowing through the land of spices and strange beasts. That distant place held no interest for Pjtor, not yet. He wanted to go west, to the city where the Harriers ruled, and reclaim it for Godown. He wanted a river-mouth city on the White Sea, a safe anchor for trade and war ships. He wanted another son, one who would sail and fight alongside him. He also wanted the afternoon breeze to start blowing and chase the swarms of gnats and flies away and push the stench of the dead bodies away from the fortress. Flies grew from corruption as surely as disease came from the foul smells of filth and decay.

  The thick brown earth and timber walls held a stone core, a second wall also covered by wood but a false wood it proved to be. The Harriers had loosened the top and had pushed it back down on the attackers. Pjtor made a note to build the same false wall on his next fortress. He admired whoever had designed the fort. Captain Anderson said it resembled some of the ancient forts from Old Earth, and followed the pattern that had been used on Holikor, before the Gormi Wars, whatever those were, that Anderson had seen described in Lander writings. Each wall had multiple sides and corners like lop-sided stars, so attackers would have trouble finding a blind spot to attack from. At least, that had been the plan, until the kettle-cannon had made the first hole. Just looking at the bodies piled here and there, Pjtor and Green guessed that the Harrier commander had panicked and had pulled his men from the land-side gate, leaving it open for the sappers to get close enough to make a hole in it. Or under it, and Pjtor frowned, smoothing his thick dark-brown mustache as he thought about the effort needed to fill in the hole, repair the wall, and then make gates to re-hang in the repaired opening.

  They’d found bits of Harrier around the gates, but no intact bodies unless they were under chunks of wall or like the soldier they’d found beneath one of the gate panels. That man had been very flat, rather rug-like, and Pjtor caught himself smiling at the absurdity. Flat was not funny. Flat were too many of his own men, and many of the survivors had begun grumbling because he insisted on taking inventory of everything before distributing the loot. Even knowing that some of the things had been used in an even more twisted version of Selkow’s worship could not stop a few greedy men, who then got beaten twice for their folly: once by the men who discovered the cursed objects in their tents, and again by their officers, two strokes of the five-tailed whip. The priests disposed of those things.

  The innermost part of the three walls had contained the temple, a very permanent looking bright yellow tent that had gone up in a whoosh of flame when doused with earth-oil and bombarded with fire-shot, the senior officers’ quarters, and some of the four sets of slave chambers. About half the slaves had survived, although many of those had been injured. To everyone’s astonishment, six women had been found alive and freed, two of them very pregnant. Lord Tabor’s son said he knew how to help them, so they’d gone to him. One woman recognized her husband from among the few survivors of the revenge unit and they shared a tent. Her man had sworn before Godown and all men present that he accepted her as she was and that she bore no blame for anything that happened after her capture. Of the others, Pjtor knew little, although one refused to leave the company of the priests. She had been on the verge of taking the initial vows for the convent when she’d been captured, and Pjtor had let it be known that no one was to touch her.

  He found one of the remaining two by accident as he was visiting the various field commanders and conferring with them. He’d reassert his authority as emperor soon, but for now he was one war leader among many, and so he called on them as often as they called on him, with certain differences.

  Pjtor and General Boris Poliko been looking at a map of troop dispositions and discussing which needed to return north and which would stay to hold the fortress and defend it. Poliko had the internal flaps of his tent up, allowing air and light in as they spoke. After several minutes of talking, Pjtor paused and drank some watered wine. As he did, something rustled at the back of the tent, and Pjtor started to draw his knife. Poliko laughed, waving one hand. “No, Imperial Master, that is just some of the loot growing restless. I should have sent her out with the other servants, but she’s too valuable.”

  “A Harrier woman?” Poliko was insane if he was bedding a Harrier woman, assuming any had survived.

  Pjtor’s temper almost erupted when the general shook his head. “No, one of ours. No Harrier has yellow hair or speaks our dialect.”

  “Introduce her to me.” This does not sound good. If she was a captive and he’s claimed her for a servant, well, that will cause morale problems we do not need to deal with. Things are bad enough as it is.

  Poliko stood and called, “Come out, girl. Our Imperial Master wishes to see you.” When nothing happened, the general stood, walked back to the rear of the tent and shoved a hanging aside, leaned in, dragged a woman out by one arm, and threw her down at Pjtor’s feet. He could see nothing but torn cloth and matted hair. She pulled herself into a ball and he caught a glimpse of fair skin and blue-black marks.

  “Look at me,” Pjtor demanded. She remained curled up and shaking. Poliko pushed her with the toe of one polished boot. The girl flinched and looked up. Pjtor saw light green eyes, a sweet face, and a hand-shaped red mark on one cheek. He moderated his tone, speaking to the chit as he would a horse. “Do you have a name that you remember?”

  “Alsice, I, i, imperial M, m, master.” She looked down again.

  Pjtor’s anger blazed. He counted to five and reminded himself that killing Poliko would not help winning the war. And it could be that he’d
only hit her, not raped her. Pjtor hoped. “I need a maid servant.”

  “Then she’s yours, Imperial Master. I prefer more aggressive women.”

  Pjtor called for his guard to escort her to his sleeping quarters. “Clean yourself, Alsice, and wait for me,” he ordered. Then he turned his attention to the matter at hand. “What if the gonnes moved with each infantry unit, rather than traveling together and then sorting themselves out among the different regiments once they reach the battle site?”

  He did not return to his own quarters until late evening, as the hot sun was touching the western horizon. A servant bowed low, nose to knees, as he welcomed his master in. “The woman?”

  “She has fed and washed, Imperial Master, and waits your pleasure. The evening meal also waits.”

  Pjtor ate first, then went to the sleeping section and called, “Alsice, come here.” A thin figure in a much-too-large shirt worn as a dress crept toward him out of the shadows. In the better light, he realized that Alsice had very light brown hair, not blond, and was even more attractive than Pjtor had first thought. She knelt beside his cot, waiting, her eyes fixed on the carpet. As he watched, Pjtor could see her shaking harder and harder. Was it a spell? No, pure terror had her in its grip, he decided, as she waited for him to—

  No, he told his body. This was not what he wanted, not what the emperor of NovRodi did to his own people. Or allowed his own men to do, Pjtor decided. He asked, “Do you want to couple with me?”

  “If, if, if it is your desire,” she whispered, not looking up.

  Oh hell no, he snarled silently.

  “And what is your desire?”

  She shook her head.

  “You do not want to couple with me?”

  Pjtor would have thought she had the shaking fits, judging by the way her body vibrated, if he’d not guessed that it came from fear. She made a soft noise, as if trying to speak but unable for some reason.