“Oh, no y’don’t, y’bloody buggers,” Nabb muttered, raising his rifle to his shoulder.
She’d definitely have to talk to the young man about his language, else she’d hear from his mother when next they were on Dalthus.
The rifle was long for such close quarters and nearly touched the back of the nearest of Kannstadt’s men. They were outnumbered, too, and she wished she’d called for Nabb to bring more, but most of her men were still spread out amongst Kannstadt’s on the farm and were busy freeing the slaves. There hadn’t been enough come back with Dockett to both hold Kannstadt downstairs and accompany her.
“Nabb, Veals, if a man so much as twitches burn him down.”
That would likely end their alliance, she thought, but better to end it now than to risk being overwhelmed by the Hanoverese and see this horror go on.
“Aye, sir.”
Kannstadt’s men might not understand English, but they understood her tone and the steady aim of the rifles’ barrels — and Alexis’ pistol. A bit of space had opened in the line of men, for Alexis had hers trained on Fischer and those between wanted no part of it.
“Away from her,” Alexis said to Fischer, gesturing with her pistol. What was the German? “Ab … weg … whatever it is, move your bloody arse over there!”
Fischer frowned. “Kapitän Kannstadt —”
Alexis lowered her aim to Fischer’s waist and then below.
Fischer raised his hands and moved aside.
“All of you,” Alexis said, keeping her pistol trained on Fischer, but taking in the rest of the men with her free hand and pointing at the farmer’s bed. “Get on it.”
Fischer seemed to understand best and crawled up onto the bed. It was silly, but it was also the most free space in the room, and with a dozen men to contend with, having them kneeling on the mattress instead of standing was to her advantage. The other Hanoverese followed.
“Watch them close, but the women, too,” Alexis said.
“Aye, sir.”
“Stay put,” she said to Fischer, and backed slowly through the doorway, keeping her pistol trained on them, but turning her head toward the stairs. “Mister Dockett! I’d admire an extra man or two up here!”
“Aye, sir — I would, as well, for where I stand! There’s a fair party brewin’ in the yard, sir, and a bit of your own attention might be warranted!”
“Bloody buggering hell,” Alexis muttered.
She looked around. Aiden was in the hall with the first girl and her buyer. “Aiden, put that one and the girl in here with the rest and stay with Nabb.”
“Aye, sir.”
That would put three guns on the Hanoverese atop the bed.
“Nabb, watch them —” She lowered her voice. “— but try not to shoot any of them dead, if you have the choice. We’re outnumbered, still.”
“Aye, sir.”
Alexis went downstairs.
A glance through the open door showed her there was, indeed, Mister Dockett’s fair-party brewing in the yard.
It seemed the shouts and clamor from the farmhouse had brought everyone to see what was the matter, both her men and Kannstadt’s as well as the farm’s slaves. Those last were milling about in the mud just short of the yard’s dike, not wanting to risk coming closer until they were certain the farmer’s transmitter for those things in their necks was off.
Kannstadt was still standing where she’d left him under the aim of Dockett’s rifle, but looking more amused than angry now.
“Will you kill us all, Leutnant Carew, to save your enemy?”
“You and your men were my enemy not so very long ago, Captain Kannstadt. The question is, what are you now?”
“You are too soft for this sort of war, I think,” Kannstadt said.
“Perhaps,” Alexis said. “But I’m hard enough for this moment. I’ll not have it, Captain Kannstadt, no matter Hanover’s history with the people of Erzurum, no matter your own thoughts on what’s proper in war — I’ll not stand by and see these people harmed.”
Kannstadt’s face darkened. “You are a fool.”
“Perhaps. In the cave, Captain Kannstadt, you said there was no war between our nations on Erzurum — should one of your men lay hands on an innocent again, there will be.”
“You and your men will die, even with more guns.”
Alexis nodded. “Should it come to that.”
Kannstadt stared at her for a moment. “I do not see how you can be so hard and so soft.”
“It’s because she’s standing for what’s right, Wendale,” Deckard’s voice sounded from the farmhouse doorway.
The New London lieutenant limped into view, moving slowly as though greatly wearied by the trek from cave to farm. He edged his way between the tense, still men of Alexis’ and Kannstadt’s crews as though they weren’t there.
“The right often appears soft until you’ve felt the steel within. We’ve spoken of this more than once, haven’t we?” He blinked, alternating between focusing on Kannstadt and seeming to stare into some vast distance. “Yes. Have.”
Kannstadt shook his head. “We must have the codes, Ian, or this has been for nothing and we are doomed.” He sighed. “You have not faced the things Hanover has. We have learned to deal with his sort.”
Deckard made his way to Kannstadt’s side. He laid one hand on the Hanoverese’s shoulder, then his face contorted as though he were clenching every muscle for a moment. When he opened his eyes, they were clearer than Alexis could remember them.
“You’ve never been comfortable with that sort of dealing, Wendale,” he said. “You told me so. Don’t do this. It’s wrong, and you know it.”
“Hanover —”
“Whatever’s built up in Hanover is not the whole of its people — you said that. It is not the whole of you, either, Wendale.” Deckard’s face clenched again. “You know what’s right.”
“Ian —”
Deckard’s eyes clouded and he looked around blankly. His hand dropped from Kannstadt’s shoulder. “Terrible lot of guns out for having won, isn’t there? Right. What?”
Kannstadt’s face fell and his shoulders slumped.
Twenty-One
O’, pull me hearties, haul me mates,
And listen why I'm here.
If it weren't for Queen and Little Bit,
You'd have to mourn me in your beer.
Deckard’s words, or his reversion to the half-present husk he was so much of the time, seemed to pull Kannstadt’s resolve from him.
His shoulders slumped and he waved his own men to stand down before going to Deckard’s side. Heedless of the wary looks Alexis’ crew gave him, Kannstadt led Deckard from the dining room to the farmhouse’s living area and settled him in a corner chair.
Alexis followed. Kannstadt squatted beside the chair, his hand on Deckard’s forearm, and seemed to stare off into vacant space just as the New London lieutenant did.
“He was not always so,” Kannstadt said, though not looking at Alexis.
She squatted near the chair and said nothing, not wanting to disturb whatever the Hanoverese might say next. Though she still burned with anger at what had almost happened upstairs, she needed Kannstadt and his men. If he revealed something, anything, in his concern over Deckard that might allow their alliance to continue, she must have it.
“He and I were the only officers, you see?” Kannstadt said. “In our group, hein? I think our ships did not fight each other, we —” He smiled sadly. “That is the one thing we never spoke of, I think. To be sure that we did not know if we had ever truly tried to kill one another.” He looked down at the floor, or rather through it.
“After the battle, we all tried to make our way, but ship’s boats?” He sighed. “Erzurum’s winds are so strong, and the der heiligenschein —” He looked up to frown at her. “The —” He formed his hands in a globe, fingers spread.
“The halo,” Alexis supplied. “The shell of dark matter around the system.”
Kannstadt n
odded.
“Ja, it is so strong here.”
Alexis pictured it in her head. Small boats, not meant to travel far in darkspace, driven by Erzurum’s strong winds and ever with the system’s heavy, impenetrable halo of dark matter to leeward. Worse, even, than the system’s shoals, that shell had made it so that Alexis’ force, and any other ships, could only enter along the system’s ecliptic plane. It would have been all those boat crews could manage to tack and tack, ever to windward, hoping to keep from having their fragile craft dashed upon that mass of dark matter and broken up, spilling men all unprotected to the mercies of the Dark.
“We could not speak,” Kannstadt said, “his boat and mine. Even crowded as we were, we could spare no hands for signals, only to set the sail, hold the lines, then come inside for a rest and food before a man’s next turn.”
Deckard closed his eyes and turned his head away.
“He hears,” Kannstadt said. “I am convinced he still hears and understands everything — it is the … it becomes more difficult for him to make his thoughts known.”
“I understand,” Alexis said.
“Perhaps.” Kannstadt shifted from squatting to sitting cross-legged on the farmhouse’s floor. “Our boats were pushed from the others, farther and farther around the halo. We could see the other boats, but only just in the distance.
“For a time, it was as though our two boats, Ian’s and mine, were all we had of the universe. We matched each other, tack for tack — I cannot say, even for myself — if this was to keep them in our sight or only the needs of the winds. I think it must have been to stay near, even if we did not think on it. To not feel so alone in the Dark as all the others spread out in clumps and alone.
“We saw the lights of some boats, blown off alone. Some onto the shoals, others found tricks of the winds to move away from Erzurum.” Kannstadt shuddered. “In the Barbary, with so much distance between worlds, I think they must have been lost. But then, I wonder to myself, if we had tried harder to get our own boat past the winds, then perhaps I could have spared my men this world.”
“There’s been no word of any,” Alexis said, understanding how the Hanoverese captain must have anguished, in his time on Erzurum, over whether he might have saved his crew by escaping with them, even in the face of weeks in the empty Dark. “Neither rescued by any ship, nor made planetfall.”
Kannstadt sighed. He did not seem heartened, and Alexis understood that, too. He would always, she thought, wonder at what he might have done differently that would have spared one of his men.
“Perhaps,” he said again. “We fought the winds, Ian’s boat and mine, for days. Sometimes sighting the others, sometimes alone. The winds drove die ruine — the abandoned ships left behind — through the boats. Striking some, or only for us to watch them break up on the shoals. Men aboard those, I am certain. Some had a bit of power and stubs of sails where the crews left behind had tried to rig what they might.
“Then die piraten came.
“They set on us like sharks. We could see them, those gunboats, their sails bigger and brighter than our little craft, cutting through our fellows. If a crew resisted, the pirates simply fired. These little boats were not made for such guns as they had. One strike and the fusion plant …” He grimaced. “Soon there is a stream of our boats and theirs, to where the pirates know where to enter Erzurum. A stream, then a river —” He closed his eyes. “All lit by the tiny suns of those who would not surrender.”
Kannstadt was silent for a long time, but Alexis waited with him.
“They came for us,” he said finally. “Closer and closer. We worked the sails then, to keep them away, but … one hit and we are all dead, we know. So, when they are close and signal for us to strike, we do.
“They put us in their gunboat’s hold for the sail and this is where I first saw Ian —” Kannstadt smiled at the New London lieutenant who still looked away with eyes closed. “— my friend in die Dunkelheit.
“We are the only officers, hein? So we must talk. And all his men, from his boat, are French, so many do not speak English to him.”
That brought Alexis’ mind to Delaine and her search for him here on Erzurum. Deckard had been New London’s liaison to Delaine’s ship.
“It is easy to put the war aside with him,” Kannstadt said. “Ian is a good man and knows the pirates are our enemy now, not each other, but not so easy for the crews. Hanover and these Beerenfrucht have history, so there is fighting, even in the crowded hold. Ian and I try to stop this, but die Beerenfrucht do not look to him and my men must defend themselves, hein?
“The pirates see this with other crews already and have their markets for each. Off the boat, die Beerenfrucht are taken from us to another place, but where we land has few of your New London, so the pirates do not know what to do with Ian. It is too much trouble to move one man, so they leave him with Hanover.
“By this time, we have talked, Ian and I, very much. I think, still, that he would have gone with die Beerenfrucht, he saw the captain of his ship among them, but —” Kannstadt took a deep breath and the knuckles of his hand on Deckard’s arm whitened. “I am glad that he did not, but must wish he had, hein?”
Alexis nodded. More regrets and more questioning of the past she understood quite well. If Lieutenant Deckard had gone with Delaine’s group of French, then he might never have been injured so severely — and he would not have been with Kannstadt in the cave for Alexis to learn that he’d seen Delaine alive and on Erzurum, but it seemed unkind to be glad of that in light of how badly the man had been hurt.
Deckard stirred for the first time and laid a hand over Kannstadt’s.
“Do you see?” the Hanoverese captain asked with a soft smile. “He hears.”
“Captain Kannstadt,” Alexis said, keeping her voice low. The reminder of Delaine had brought her back to their current situation and needs. “The farmer here, and how his family is to be treated —”
Kannstadt cleared his throat, cutting her off. “Ja, we must deal with the present, not the past.” He sighed. “The past, though, prods us even now, hein?” He jerked his head toward the dining room where Isikli and the other men were still held. “Do you think there is no past with him? Do you think we put his ancestors on this world for no reason?” Kannstadt snorted. “You New Londoners think we of Hanover are hard and cruel, yet you have not fought as we have.”
Deckard stirred again and his hand on Kannstadt’s tightened more.
“Ja, Ian,” Kannstadt said with a sigh. “As I said at the start, Kapitän Carew, Ian was not always so. He studied philosophy, do you know? And we talked — hours and hours we have talked. There is so little to do else in the fields or der Herr’s barns at night.
“We convinced each other, I think, that New London’s softness is not so weak, and that Hanover’s cruelty is not without reason — yet, there must be a middle, hein?” He sighed. “Still, there is too much of the past with Hanover and those like Isikli. Too much blood on both sides.” He leaned back against the wall, as though settling in to wait for a long time. “You may try your softness with this farmer. For Ian’s sake — perhaps for my own, if he is right.”
Twenty-Two
Alexis left Kannstadt to sit with Deckard and returned to the farm’s dining room.
Kannstadt was correct in one thing, they had little time, and she was at a loss as to how she might convince Isikli to divulge the codes, if any, that would ensure the farm’s comms system made no alert to his neighbors or the pirates.
If the farm were held by pirates, she might simply shoot one in order to convince others of their precarious situation, but doing so to these farmers, despite them also being slaveholders, seemed too close to what Kannstadt had been willing to do.
Where was that line? She wondered, and would she ever cross it if she, like Kannstadt, found herself facing a situation with the history of atrocities on both sides the Hanoverese captain suggested Hanover and Erzurum’s settlers had. Had she crossed it alre
ady, with what she’d done to Daviel Coalson in tossing him off a ship into darkspace to float and perish there?
She sent the Hanoverese out of the room and left only Nabb at the doorway with a gun. Isikli and the rest were bound, so there was little for her to fear.
The men watched her with varying expressions of wariness or open hatred as she took a chair from the dining table and sat before them. She was quite close to Isikli this way, knees nearly touching, and wished for a moment that she’d had the lads scoot the table back against the far wall or even sat on its far side to provide some buffer of space.
“I thank you,” Isikli said, “for my daughters.”
Alexis nodded.
“I will not tell you the codes,” Isikli went on.
Alexis sighed.
No, it couldn’t be that easy, could it?
What did she have to bargain with the man? Really, only the threat of Kannstadt and his men taking over after they’d overwhelmed hers and then returning to their own way of forcing the information from him. It was a sad thing, but torture, despite its detractors, was quite effective at eliciting information. It might fail miserably at gaining confessions and such, a man being willing to admit to anything to make such torment stop, but to get information that could be verified?
Oh, yes, it would work.
“Mister Isikli,” Alexis said, “we must have those codes to access the comms network without alerting your neighbors and the pirates. You must see that, don’t you?”
Isikli shrugged, as though a return to Kannstadt’s plan bothered him not at all.
Alexis wondered at the life he must have led here on Erzurum, to make him so stubborn and seemingly accepting of such a fate. Isikli had grown up with the pirates in control, seen how his father dealt with them — could he even imagine a life without them? Was he even able to respond to anything but threats and violence? What must it do to a man to scrape out his existence every day from Erzurum’s mud?
The Queen's Pardon (Alexis Carew Book 6) Page 12
