Trouble in the Wind

by Chris Kennedy

  General Ulugan’s expression was one of vexed indecision.

  “We have to get them out now,” Chrysoloras said firmly. “While there’s still time for them to depart, and have a chance. Us? We depend on that departure to mask our trip to the sea. Tamerlane’s army won’t be looking for a small group of a few dozen people. They will be looking for a cavalry formation so large that their passing will be unmistakable. So, while the Timurid troops pursue north, we keep going west until we reach the water, and then follow the water along the shore until we get to a port of our liking.”

  “It will be very hard going,” Ulugan said. “Both for them, and for us. With tremendous risk. I will also say that I am unused to taking gambles for which I don’t already know enough variables to feel confident of a win.”

  “If you have a better idea, I am definitely open to hearing it.”

  General Ulugan opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. He brought his thumb up to his lip and tapped several times—a habit of which Ulugan may or may not have been aware, Chrysoloras thought—and opened his mouth to speak a second time, then closed it once more. Seemingly realizing that anything he were to propose didn’t have any less risk associated with it, while the chance of the two generals getting caught and failing to reach Constantinople actually increased.

  “Very well, Chrysoloras. In addition to being a lifetime diplomat—who sometimes plays at being a general officer—do you also enjoy games of risk?”

  Chrysoloras simply smiled.

  Issuing instructions to the Eastern Roman captains proved more complicated. None of them were particularly thrilled with idea of allowing their commander to split off from the main group. Either because some of them suspected they were being abandoned to act as a decoy, or they believed Chrysoloras was dooming himself to near-certain capture and possibly death without their protection. Chrysoloras couldn’t be sure. He merely emphasized over and over again that their original mission had been to secure an ally in the fight against the Turks, and now they had such an ally—if only General Ulugan could be delivered to Palaiologos’s court, where Chrysoloras would help Ulugan make his appeal before the Eastern Roman throne.

  If Ulugan had similar trouble getting his lieutenants to buy into the plan, he didn’t say. But before the sun was halfway up the sky all of the Eastern Roman assets—along with the Yuan cavalry—had reformed into a column that headed directly north. There were no maps to tell them what they might face as they tried to get beyond Timur-controlled territory. But when the last horse had vanished out of sight, Chrysoloras breathed a great sigh on their behalf. Then prayed silently in his heart for God to watch over and protect those men—Christian and heathen alike.

  * * *

  For a full week, Chrysoloras and Ulugan went west until they found the beach, then traced the coast until they spied a significant settlement with fishing boats large enough that one might be hired for a cross-sea voyage.

  In terms of money, they were relying entirely on what Chrysoloras had managed to exchange during his time in garrison. Gold and silver remained gold and silver just about anywhere in the world. But using explicitly Eastern Roman coinage for this particular transaction would not be in anyone’s interest. So, when they entered the fishing port—this time with identifying weaponry and armor carefully tucked away—they did so as innocuously as possible.

  Chrysoloras also knew the local dialect, and was able to translate for the Yuan at each step of the way, though the Yuan themselves got some very odd looks from the Georgian locals who seemed to believe that the Yuan were in fact Timurid, but didn’t behave at all like the Timur people typically behaved.

  Having at last secured an interested ship’s captain, Chrysoloras used up most of the Georgian coin he’d managed to acquire and got the whole group a comfortable set of beds—with a hot meal that night and once again in the morning—before they were due to set sail.

  Alas, while men might plan, God tends to laugh.

  Soldiers of Tamerlane’s army were in the streets the following day.

  “This seems to fairly destroy our plan,” Ulugan said as he watched Timurid men passing below the window of the second-story lodging where they’d spent their night.

  “We can’t give up now!” Chrysoloras said, slapping his palm against the wooden window sill.

  “If we try to reach the ship, they’ll stop us. If the ship tries to launch, again they will stop us. No amount of money will change these facts.”

  “Are we sure about that?” Chrysoloras asked. “I don’t know a constable who can’t be bribed, assuming you can pay high enough.”

  “With what? You already gave most of your coin to the owner of the ship we’re commissioning. Do you have the means to bribe every single Timurid man we might see today?”

  “Well, what’s your alternative?” Chrysoloras asked, echoing himself from a week prior. “If you have a better idea, now’s the time to hear it.”

  The Mongolian general was unable to voice a different plan of action. They couldn’t just hide out. They didn’t have enough money to keep paying for lodging, and in any case, the officers of Tamerlane’s army would be by eventually to inquire about any strangers who might have come to stay in the past few days. At which point, the Georgian proprietor would give up his guests without a fight.

  When the group was back on the street, they made as much effort as possible to conceal weapons and put away potentially identifying finery. In those instances when a Timuran troop was seen asking questions, the group sidled into an alley or otherwise backtracked until they could take an alternate route, thus turning a foot walk which should have taken no more than ten minutes into an excruciating ordeal which lasted over an hour.

  When they reached the commissioned boat, the captain was seething with anger.

  “They’ve been by to ask about you three times!” he hissed between yellow teeth.

  “What did you tell them?” General Ulugan asked.

  “I told them I haven’t seen you at all today and that if you didn’t turn up soon, I was going to pocket the commission and refuse the voyage as a matter of principle. You may be paying me, but every hour I am not on the water is also an hour I am not bringing in a catch. We need to go now otherwise we’re liable to wind up with…oh shit. Shit.”

  Chrysoloras’s hair stood on end when he saw the captain’s eyes get big. The whites weren’t quite as prominent as those of the men who’d been speared during the Turkish ambush, but they were close.

  “What is it?” Chrysoloras hissed to his aide-de-camp. “I don’t dare turn around to look!”

  “They’re coming,” the young man—still with his bad arm in a sling—said under his breath.

  “How many?” Chrysoloras asked.

  “Five. And they’re armed. None of them are smiling.”

  “Quick, everyone aboard,” Chrysoloras ordered, then turned his head to look at the side of general Ulugan’s face. The Yuan officer seemed to stare at the approaching Timurid men like someone who’s seeing a long-lost relative for the first time in his life. There was an eerie familiarity to the Timur people, and yet, they weren’t Yuan at all.

  Neither Ulugan nor any of his men would stand a chance of fooling the Timur into believing Ulugan and his men were Timur themselves.

  “Get ready to push off,” Ulugan said to the captain, who continued to stare.

  “What? How?!” the captain said, his eyes fixed on the approaching soldiers.

  Sensing what was about to happen, Chrysoloras said one final prayer, and then stood face-to-face with the captain on the dock.

  “Just get these people to Constantinople,” he said. “You’ve been paid well enough to make a home for yourself in ports other than this one. If something happens to myself or my comrade, be good on your word, and get my men and their companions to their destination.”

  Both Ulugan and Chrysoloras were facing out to sea, away from approaching danger. Ulugan already had his hand on the curved sword he’d kept
concealed beneath baggy clothing.

  “Are you at all good with a blade?” Ulugan spat.

  “I told you before,” Chrysoloras admitted, “I use the tool God gave me.”

  “Talk isn’t going to get us out of this one, I am afraid,” Ulugan said.

  When the Tumurid men were at the dock’s edge, they began to loudly demand things in their own language. Not Georgian, which Chrysoloras would have understood. And not in the languages General Ulugan understood, either.

  Chrysoloras suddenly spun around and began walking back down the dock, past the men. As he did, he said very loudly in Greek, “I can’t understand a thing any of you are saying! This has got to be the worst hospitality of any seaside resort I’ve ever visited! I mean, the nerve of you people!”

  Chrysoloras gesticulated with great exaggeration to maximize emphasis on his words—which he knew none of the Timurid troops would understand.

  But Chrysoloras certainly got their attention. The lead Timur man spun on his heal and reached out to grab Chrysoloras by the arm.

  Which was when General Ulugan did what he’d been waiting to do, and whipped his sword from its scabbard. While the four troops were surrounding their officer and his subject—still talking loudly in a tongue none of them understood, and waving his arms and hands in the air—Ulugan sank his sword into the back of first one, then the next, then the third soldier in turn. Stab, yank, repeat. With a most precise, rapid, and clock-like precision. As if he’d practiced the move again, and again, and again.

  By the time the third body was toppling, the Timur officer himself had grabbed for his own weapon and opened his mouth to scream for help, when Chrysoloras used a free hand to ball a fist and punch the officer directly in his throat. The man gagged and fell backward, letting go of Chrysoloras’s arm, while General Ulugan wrestled with the fourth soldier on the dock.

  Chrysoloras looked up at the captain of the boat, who just stood there looking sick.

  “Go!” Chrysoloras shouted. “Now!”

  The captain blinked several times.

  “Please!” Chrysoloras implored him, then turned and tackled the Timur officer as he picked himself up off the ground and began to stagger back toward the street—where several Georgians had gathered to see what all the fuss was about.

  Ulugan’s sword finished the last soldier with a bloody stroke that opened the man’s neck from left ear to right breast. Then Ulugan was chasing after the stumbling officer who had Chrysoloras’s arms wrapped around his ankles.

  The Yuan officer’s blade plunged into the Timur officer’s back—in a scene which was sure to repeat itself a thousand times in the future, if the plans Chrysoloras and General Ulugan had hatched came to fruition—and the man was at last down.

  But not before one of the Georgian women began to scream at the sight of so much blood, which of course made heads turn up and down the dock proper.

  General Ulugan picked Chrysoloras up off the wood and said into his ear, “Are you alright?”

  “Fine, I think,” Chrysoloras said, and had to avert his eyes from the sight of redness spreading out fantastically from the Timur officer’s body.

  They each turned to look back at the ship, and realized the captain still hadn’t done anything. Looking instantly at each other, then the boat, then back at each other, Ulugan and Chrysoloras bolted to the dock’s edge and physically carried the captain across the plank and onto the deck of the boat.

  Chrysoloras leaned close and screamed into the captain’s ear, “If this vessel fails to launch they will put your neck on the block, to match ours, now MOVE!”

  That seemed to do the trick.

  Before either the Georgian dock patrol or the Timurid troops could muster a response, the fishing boat had separated itself from the dock’s cleats and was getting up a triangular sail to begin tacking with the wind, which blew blessedly from inland that morning.

  A quarter of an hour later the boat was slashing nicely through the waves of the Black Sea, putting mile after mile of water behind her.

  “Have you ever been on a lengthy ocean voyage before?” Chrysoloras asked his counterpart as they both stood at the gunwale, and looked southwest.

  “No,” Ulugan admitted. “I am hoping sea legs are akin to horseback.”

  “Interesting analogy. I will hope the same, for your sake. Meanwhile, I look forward to showing you my home.”

  Chrysoloras placed a hand on General Ulugan’s shoulder.

  * * * * *

  Brad R. Torgersen Bio

  Brad R. Torgersen is a multi-award-winning science fiction and fantasy writer whose book, A Star-Wheeled Sky, won the 2019 Dragon Award for Best Science Fiction Novel at the 33rd annual DragonCon fan convention in Atlanta, GA. A prolific short fiction author, Torgersen has published stories in numerous anthologies and magazines, to include several Best of Year editions. Brad is named in Analog magazine’s who’s who of top Analog authors, alongside venerable writers like Larry Niven, Lois McMaster Bujold, Orson Scott Card, and Robert A. Heinlein. Married for over 25 years, Brad is also a United States Army Reserve Chief Warrant Officer—with multiple deployments to his credit—and currently lives with his wife and daughter in the Mountain West, where they keep a small menagerie of dogs and cats.

  # # # # #

  A Shot Heard ‘Round the World

  by Kevin J. Anderson and Kevin Ikenberry

  Dusk

  5 December 1812

  Near Smorgon, Russia

  Antoine de Montagne nestled his chin against his chest, somewhat into the fold of his officer’s coat as the march stopped for the fourth time in the last hour. With his eyes closed, the din of the retreat faded to a soft roar as his desire for warmth and rest overtook his senses. A tight hand grabbed his right arm and jerked him upright.

  “Captain de Montagne.” The voice was low and firm. “You would do well to keep your bearing.”

  Montagne blinked and stared into the face of General Caulaincourt, Napoleon’s second in command. The man’s face contained a tight smile, but his eyes were chips of dull ice. “My apologies, sir.”

  “Sleep will come for us, Captain. But not quite yet. We have a mission to undertake,” Caulaincourt said. He leaned closer. “The Emperor wishes to depart for Paris immediately; within the hour. I have arranged for the Imperial Guard Horse Chasseurs to meet us at the front of the retreat. He will move along the line via sleigh and then east to Ashmiany. As a translator, you will accompany us.”

  Montagne brightened and felt ashamed for it. There would be warmth and sleep yet. A sleigh would speed him home, and his service could end in dignity rather than mired in the mud with dysentery or some other disease ravaging his body. In his joy, a concerned question formed. “Why not Colonel de Fleur?”

  Caulaincourt flashed a thin, vindictive smile. “The Emperor is disappointed with the Russian response to his demands for surrender, and so he wishes his Translator General to suffer a bit for his failures. As you are the only other officer fluent in the Slavic and German dialects he could encounter for the first part of the journey home, he has chosen you to translate for him.”

  Montagne flushed with pride. “I understand, General. I shall do my best.”

  “I know you will, Captain de Montagne,” Caulaincourt replied. “I will rejoin the Chasseurs, select a guard force for our journey, and will accompany the Emperor as well. You wait here and join the Emperor’s sleigh. Leave your horse with one of the lieutenants.”

  “Yes, sir,” Montagne said. “I will collect my things and be ready.”

  Caulaincourt nodded and turned his eyes to the ragged march. “Tell no one of his plan. The Grand Armeé will learn tomorrow.”

  Montagne squinted. “Sir? The rumor is a coup d’etat took place in Paris. They say General de Malet has aspirations for the throne? Is it true, sir?”

  Caulaincourt’s thin smile broadened slightly. “Nothing travels faster amongst an army than rumor, Antoine. There is business the Emperor alone must attend to,
and that is all you need to know. Our very government is at stake. Be ready to leave when the Emperor arrives. He will want to move quickly. There is peril at every turn.”

  So it is true. Montagne couldn’t help but smile at the general’s casual use of his first name. And I must ride with a surly Emperor all the way to Paris.

  “Will you assume command here, sir?”

  “No.” A quiet storm passed over the general’s face. “General Mamet will take command. I shall accompany you in the sleigh once the Chasseurs are briefed and prepared to undertake the escort mission.”

  Montagne said nothing. There wasn’t a proper reply to the general’s words any captain could utter. “I shall be ready, sir.”

  Caulaincourt nudged his horse and moved down the line to the east. Montagne saw him speak with several other officers as he moved forward. Caulaincourt exemplified leadership, and Montagne would have followed him anywhere. For a moment, he wondered if any of the officers whom Caulaincourt spoke to knew of Emperor Napoleon’s journey home. A freshening breeze pushed cold air past his tight collar and down under his wool coat, making him shiver. Montagne’s saddle bags and bedroll sat astride his horse; he would need nothing else for the journey.

  Chin tucked into his collar again, he began to realize that departing with the Emperor might indeed get him home soon. Perhaps even in time for Christmas. What a present that would be! Faint cheers filtered forward from the rear of the formation, and there could be no other explanation than the Emperor passing his troops in review.

  Montagne patted the horse’s neck and prepared to dismount. The closeness of the cheers caught his attention, and he turned. The small sleigh carrying Emperor Napoleon approached and slowed to greet him as the sporadic musket-fire from the near-constantly harassing Cossacks erupted toward the rear of the march.

  Montagne dismounted, collected his bags, and passed the reins to a young, shivering lieutenant before turning toward the Emperor. The twin, black horses of the Emperor’s team pulled a rickety wooden sleigh devoid of any of the rich trappings the great man often enjoyed during travel. The driver sat on a pedestal behind the passenger compartment under the light of a single lantern. Necessity versus comfort. The front rails of the sleigh came up to Montagne’s chest. Above the withers of the two horses was a crook used to hold a bell. It sat curiously empty as he stepped behind the horses toward the passenger compartment.