Arthur looked annoyed. “We had Siegfried’s word, too. What about Kai Lung? What about Yukifuri? If I move the reserves, we’ll be ripe for an attack from either of them—or from Nouvelle France.”
Michael de Rosen frowned. “We are at peace with all three of those countries. Why should they attack us now?”
“Opportunity!” Arthur said stridently.
The council representative from New New York cleared his throat. “Excuse me, High Steward, but am I correct in my understanding? You don’t want to respond to Cotswold, who has attacked one of our stewardships, because we might be attacked by countries with whom we have peaceful relations?”
Arthur shook his head. “That’s not what I said!”
“Then you’ll give the order?” De Rosen asked. “Speed is imperative. There are only two passes open through the Cloud Scrapers right now.”
Zanna held her breath, watching her father with narrowed eyes. If you fail to take action, you’ll lose the high stewardship. If you fail to go to Laal’s aid, what stewardship will trust you?
Arthur pulled the chair at the head of the table back and sat. His secretary jumped to scoot the chair back in. He leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table and briefly covered his face with his hands. When he removed them Zanna was shocked to see how old he looked.
“I have reason to believe that Siegfried coordinated this action with his son, Sylvan, who has disappeared. He seems to have taken Marilyn with him, apparently as a hostage. I have instigated an investigation, but there are no results yet.”
Michael De Rosen pulled out his chair and sat. The others, with the exception of the secretary, followed suit. De Rosen said, “I see. We must do everything we can to keep her safe…and still come to Laal’s aid.”
Zanna nodded. One person versus the thousands in Laal.
Arthur clenched his jaw for an instant, as if he were going to argue, but then he sighed and covered his face again, rubbing at his eyes. “Very well—I’ll give the orders.”
Zanna exhaled. “Father, may I carry your orders to the signal staff?”
Arthur glared at her for a moment but she kept calm, still. Then his expression changed and he looked at her as if she were suddenly a stranger, an unknown quality. His eyes narrowed and he pursed his lips. Then his shoulders squaring slightly, he said, “My secretary can carry the orders. I want you to find Marilyn.”
They didn’t take Marilyn out of the basket as much as spill her rudely onto the ground.
It was dark and the pressure on her bladder was prodigious. Her eyes were used to the dark, though, and she saw men—seven of them—making camp or unloading horses in the shelter of a stand of oaks. The mustached man who spilled her onto the ground bent to her legs and she thought about kicking him, but then realized he was untying her ankles.
Her feet and hands were numb, completely without feeling, and she knew she was about to pay the price of restored circulation.
The man took the resulting length of rope, still connected to her bound wrists, threw it over a tree limb, and tied it off with just enough slack that Marilyn’s wrists hung in front of her chest when she sat up.
She tried to curl her feet, then release them, flexing the muscles to hurry the blood flow—then the first sensation started and she wished she’d left well enough alone. Her eyes were clenched shut when she heard Sylvan’s voice.
“Resting?”
She opened her eyes to narrow slits to look at him but didn’t trust herself to say anything—not until the needles-and-pins throbbing in her feet stopped.
“Enjoying the journey, love?” Sylvan said. He squatted before her, sitting on his heels, and drew idly in the dirt with his finger.
She wondered if she could get the rope around his neck if she moved fast enough. Not enough slack and I’d probably just fall on my face trying. Better to wait until she’d had a chance to stretch her limbs.
Sylvan smiled again. “I’ll wait until you’re more talkative, my dear.” He stood and started to turn.
Marilyn spoke between clenched teeth. “What did you do with my guards?” Sylvan turned back and drew his thumb across his throat.
Marilyn squeezed her eyes shut again and inhaled sharply, through her teeth. She wanted to hurt him—an elbow lock, perhaps—only continuing until the bone broke or cartilage and tendons tore. But he was out of reach and it wouldn’t bring them back.
“I need a bathroom,” she said.
Sylvan paused and looked around. After a moment’s thought he said, “I’ll send a spoon over. You can dig a latrine behind the tree—the rope should reach that far if we loosen it a bit.”
She didn’t reply and, after a moment, he walked off.
The mustached man returned a few moments later with a wooden spoon and some toilet paper, then lengthened the rope tied to the tree branch overhead. Damn. I could’ve sharpened a metal spoon on a rock. Clenching it in her numb hands, she hobbled behind the tree trunk and managed, with great effort, to accomplish the task without wetting herself or her clothing.
The effort restored enough circulation to her hands that she repeated the agony she’d just finished with her feet. She sat back in front of the tree and clenched and released her fists, trying to get it over with.
She tried to reach the knots of her wrist bindings with her teeth but they were not amenable to such manipulations. She suspected they’d have to use pincers to untie the rope or cut it off. Or, she thought morbidly, they’ll just bury me in them.
Seeing her business behind the tree was done, the mustached man came back and shortened the line again. “If you have the need again, call.”
She eyed his belt dagger longingly but her hands were still in pain and she doubted she could cut herself loose before the others closed in on her.
There was the sound of hoofbeats and another horse entered the camp. Sylvan, seated by the new fire, stood.
“They’ve closed the border, Guide,” the new arrival said, swinging down from his horse. “The local militia, perhaps fifty strong, are stationed at the pass.”
Sylvan shrugged. In a voice that barely carried to Marilyn he said, “Well, it was a bit much, expecting Arthur to do nothing when we took his daughter. He’s fine about betraying thousands of people in Laal but draws the line at his kin. Don’t worry. My father has a contingency for this. He always has a contingency. One way or the other, we’ll be in Laal this time tomorrow.”
That can’t be true. He must be saying that to upset me. But Sylvan was so far away from her that surely he couldn’t count on her hearing? She remembered her father’s odd behavior when they were in Laal and back in Noram concerning anything to do with Leland.
Father, what have you done?
Siegfried sat in Dulan de Laal’s study and stared blindly at the mountains through the open window. The cold air swirled through the room, and he felt the chill but couldn’t be bothered to shut the window or add fuel to the cast-iron stove in the corner.
He wished Commander Plover were alive. He wished it very much. If he were alive, I could kill him. For a moment he actually saw the mountains and shuddered. I hate this stubborn, vicious place.
The chill finally overcame his shock and he looked around for a servant, momentarily annoyed, then remembered. He’d thrown the last one down the stairway shortly after the news reached him.
Plover, you deserved to die, but taking half my army with you!
He stepped out into the hallway and saw his guard straighten at the other end of the hallway, at the head of the stairwell.
“Get some charcoal up here for the stove!” he shouted, and they all jumped.
The guard commander pointed at one of the men and then pointed down the stairwell. The man went down the stairs two at time.
Siegfried walked down the hall and into the bathroom. He looked into the mirror hung over the basin and snarled. The lines in his face had deepened in the last month and there was an edge of panic in his eyes that he didn’t like at all.
Where is it?
He picked up a carved stone soap dish and threw it into the mirror. The glass shattered, scattering glittering shards across the floor, and the soap dish dropped into the wash basin with a harsh clatter.
The guard commander knocked on the door. “Are you all right, sir?”
“Yes!” he snarled.
He picked the soap dish out of the basin and tossed it aside, hard, to bang against the wall, then drop, with a clatter across the tile floor—bang, bang, thump, bang.
Thump?
He used his booted foot to sweep the worst of the glass shards from that side of the room, then dropped to his knees and began knocking on the tiles with the soap dish. There. He raised the dish higher and smashed down, cracking the tile and the thin wood panel it was bonded to. He used his dagger like a pry bar and, ripping up pieces of tile and wood, uncovered a box-shaped cavity filled with a cloth-wrapped object.
Could it be? He fumbled the cloth—a cloak, he realized—off the object, unwinding it as fast as he could. Then, with a clatter, it slipped out and rolled across the floor, coming to rest on its side near the door.
Yes!
He picked it up carefully, inspecting it for any sign of damage. A streak of blood from his cut finger dripped down the glistening surface and he laughed.
They don’t have any idea what’s in store for them.
Chapter 20
AI UCHI: MUTUAL KILL
They fed Marilyn cold camp bread in the predawn light. Her teeth clattered so hard in the cold that she was having trouble chewing and, in the night, her bound hands had gone to sleep again, causing the now-familiar pins-and-needles agony of renewed circulation.
After they’d all eaten, they put her on a horse and tied her hands to the saddle pommel, then ran a rope from ankle to ankle under the horse’s belly. The man who held the reins of her horse grinned. “Don’t give me any trouble, Gentle Guide. We’ll be on mountain trails all day and if your horse goes over the side, you go with it.”
Sylvan, overhearing this, laughed long and hard.
Marilyn indulged herself in several fantasies involving Sylvan and pain but paid no outward attention to either man. The column moved off, through the trees, and she kept her eyes open, waiting for whatever chance might come.
They came out of the woods as the sun cleared the horizon and rode across fallow farm fields. Now she could see the Cloud Scrapers, snow-topped and sharp like teeth, standing high above the trees, much closer than she’d realized. No wonder it was so cold last night. We’re already into the foothills.
It bothered her that they no longer hid her in a basket even though they were still this side of the mountains. Does he plan to buy passage with my well-being? The thought of being used in that way deeply disturbed her. Surely Father has given orders not to let me out of our territory no matter what the threat. Why else is the militia blocking the pass?
They rode through more fields and Marilyn caught a glimpse of the main road on the other side of the line of trees. She experimented with leg aids, to see if her horse would respond to the seat alone. He did, both in turning, slowing and once, transitioning from the trot to a canter, but the man leading her horse yanked viciously at the lead rope and Marilyn stopped confusing the poor animal.
Finally, as the ground rose higher and higher, they cut over to the main road and joined it. It was empty of traffic and the few houses along this way were abandoned for the winter. After a bit, the road hugged the face of a hill, turning this way and that as the switchbacks climbed higher and higher.
“How much farther?” Sylvan asked the man who’d joined them the night before.
“Two more hairpins, Guide. They’ve set up a post at the traveler’s aid station.”
Sylvan nodded. “I remember it.” He reached behind and took something from his saddlebag. “Who pulls the strongest bow?”
There was some argument over that but the matter was solved when Sylvan said, “Shut up! I don’t care.” He pointed at one of the three men claiming superiority. “Come here and give me one of your arrows.”
“Yes, Guide.”
Sylvan tied a small tube to the shaft of the arrow, just behind the head. Then, using a match, he lit a projecting fuse. Smoke, thick and white, poured from the tube. He handed it quickly back to the archer. “Straight up. Quickly.”
The archer fitted the arrow to the string and, coughing, loosed it high. The smoke made an easily seen arch across the sky.
“Let’s go!”
Sylvan started up the road again, moving at a walk. They rounded one hairpin and then another. Ahead, at a rare flat spot on the hillside, a large timber building stood surrounded by soldiers. As Sylvan’s party moved into sight, the soldiers spread across the road.
Marilyn frowned, wondering who the signal had been for.
Then she heard the sound of hoofbeats, hundreds of them, and she knew.
There must’ve been two hundred of the Cotswold cavalry thundering down the road. The militia at the station were seriously outnumbered. Sylvan moved his party forward, to the beginning of the flat, then, taking Marilyn’s horse’s reins, said, “Block their retreat.” He led her horse back down the road and waited.
It didn’t take long.
The captain in charge of the cavalry rode up to Sylvan and saluted. “A handful of them barricaded themselves in the aid station. Should I pry them out?”
Sylvan shook his head. “Not necessary, Captain. Not necessary.” As they rode by the traveler’s aid station, he pointed to it and said, “Burn it. Burn it to the ground.”
Zanna saw the fire from twenty kilometers away, but it took half the day to close the distance. When she and her men finally rode around the last bend, she saw one man with soot-blackened skin and clothing lining up bodies in neat rows besides the still-smoking embers of the former aid station.
She immediately dispatched twenty men to replace him and had her medic look him over.
“Some minor burns and he’s a bit shocky but he’ll be all right,” her medic reported.
“What happened here?”
The survivor looked at her, his face blank and his eyes very strange. This had been a militia unit so the dead were almost certainly his village neighbors and relatives. When he talked, his voice was a harsh croak. “There was a party coming up the road and we were getting ready to turn them back when they fired a smoke arrow into the sky. Several hundred cavalry came out of the pass above us and we ended up being trapped between them.
“I was knocked off the road by a horse, early on, and fell down the hillside, but a bush caught me before I went off the cliff farther down. By the time I climbed back up to the road, the fighting was over and they were torching the aid station.”
Zanna asked, “Why?”
“To kill them that was in it.” He held up his blistered hands. “After they rode off, I tried to get to them, but the roof collapsed and I was forced away by the flames.”
Zanna closed her eyes briefly. “Did the party coming from Noram have a prisoner?”
“Yes. A woman in a dress.” He looked up at Zanna, his eyes going over Zanna’s uniform, her vest of scale, her helm, then, finally, her face.
Zanna pulled the helmet off and let her hair show in the sun. The man grunted. “Yes, she looked like you.”
The Eight Hundred put to shore just east of Jaren’s Ford two days after entering the river. They left six destroyed Cotswold riverside border posts behind them, a relatively easy task since they’d been stripped of manpower for the invasion of Laal and their skeleton staffs were easily surprised.
Gahnfeld came to Leland. “What about the prisoners?”
There were twenty-three Cotswold prisoners, many of them wounded. They huddled at the riverbank watched by four squads from the Third Hundred.
“What do you suggest?”
“Put them across the river and harry them south for an hour.”
Leland shook his head. “It’s still the Anvil. Might as well shoot
them here.”
Gahnfeld shrugged. “Can’t leave them here where they can report our presence. We need all the surprise we can muster.”
“True.”
Leland looked at the papyrus rafts pulled up on the shore. “Tie them up and put them on one of the rafts with two of our men. They can float five hours downstream, cut one of them loose, then try to join us. The prisoners will be thirty kilometers away from us—longer by the time they’re all untied and get the raft to shore—but where they can get water. We only decrease our strength by two.”
Gahnfeld thought about it. “Sounds good. I’ll pick someone from that part of Laal.”
“Wait,” said Leland. “We’re going to have company so there may be more prisoners. Save five rafts.”
“Company? How do you know? And what about the other rafts?”
“Tear them apart, drag them into a pile, and burn them. Someone will come looking. Company. Hopefully,” he added, “on horseback.” He fingered his poncho. “And if we use our training properly, they won’t see us until it’s too late.”
Almost immediately after the occupation of Laal Station Siegfried had the plating workshop cleared of everything but the banks of lead acid batteries. He’d known, since his original visit when the peace treaty was signed, that he wouldn’t have to haul his own from Montrouge.
“I’m guessing at voltages here,” Siegfried said to Sylvan, still dusty from travel and the only other occupant. Siegfried connected a series of cells together and took leads off at strategic points. His voltmeter, brought from Montrouge, was a needle cantilevered to a pivoting electromagnet coil with a mercury column resistor. “If I’m right, these are the values we need. If only I could be sure that what I’m calling a volt is the same as the manual’s.”
Sylvan blinked. “Don’t the books tell you what a volt is?”
Siegfried laughed. “Sure, in terms of things I can’t duplicate! If I had cadmium, I could make a Weston cell and calculate it that way, but I don’t. And I don’t have a scale fine enough to calculate current based on how much silver is deposited per second. Roughly, perhaps.”