"Piper, H Beam - Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen" - читать интересную книгу автора (Piper H Beam)Lord Kalvan of OtherwhenH. Beam Piper v1.5. There were a fair number of small scanning errors. Spell-checked. TORTHA Karf, Chief of Paratime Police, told himself to stop
fretting. He was only three hundred years old, so by the barest life-expectancy
of his race he was good for another two centuries. Two hundred more days wouldn’t
matter. Then it would be Year-End Day, and precisely at midnight, he would rise
from this chair and Verkan Vall would sit down in it, and after that he would
be free to raise grapes and lemons and wage guerrilla war against the rabbits
on the island of Sicily, which he owned outright on one uninhabited Fifth Level
time-line. He wondered how long it would take Vall to become as tired of the
Chief’s seat as he was now. Actually, Karf knew, Verkan Vall had never wanted to be
Chief. Prestige and authority meant little to him, and freedom much. Vall liked
to work outtime. But it was a job somebody had to do, and it was the job for
which Vall had been trained, so he’d take it, and do it, Karf suspected, better
than he’d done it himself. The job of policing a near-infinity of worlds, each
of which was this same planet Earth, would be safe with Verkan Vall. Twelve thousand years ago, facing extinction on an exhausted
planet, the First Level race had discovered the existence of a second, lateral,
time dimension and a means of physical transposition to and from a
near-infinity of worlds of alternate probability parallel to their own. So the
conveyers had gone out by stealth, bringing back wealth to Home Time-Line a
little from this one, a little from that, never enough to be missed anywhen. It all had to be policed. Some paratimers were less than
scrupulous in dealing with outtime races he’d have retired ten years ago except
for the discovery of a huge paratemporal slave-trade, only recently smashed.
More often, somebody’s bad luck or indiscretion would endanger the Paratime
Secret, or some incident—nobody’s fault, something that just happened, would
have to be explained away. But, at all costs, the Paratime Secret must be
preserved. Not merely the actual technique of transposition—that went without
saying—but the very existence of a race possessing it. If for no other reason
(and there were many others), it would be utterly immoral to make any outtime
race live with the knowledge that there were among them aliens
indistinguishable from themselves, watching and exploiting. It was a big
police-beat. Second Level that had been civilized almost as long as the
First, but there had been dark-age interludes. Except for paratemporal
transposition, most of its sectors equaled First Level, and from many, Home
Time Line had learned much. The Third Level civilizations were more recent, but
still of respectable antiquity and advancement. Fourth Level had started late
and progressed slowly; some Fourth Level genius was first domesticating animals
long after the steam engine was obsolescent all over the Third. And Fifth Level
on a few sectors, subhuman brutes, speechless and fireless, were cracking nuts
and each other’s heads with stones, and on most of it nothing even vaguely humanoid
had appeared. Fourth Level was the big one. The others had devolved from
low-probability genetic accidents; it was the maximum probability. It was
divided into many sectors and subsectors, on most of which human civilization
had first appeared in the valleys of the Nile and Tigris-Euphrates, and on the Indus and Yangtze. Europo-American Sector they might have to pull out of that entirely, but
that would be for Chief Verkan to decide. Too many thermonuclear weapons and
too many competing national sovereignties. That had happened all over Third
Level at one time or another within Home Time Line experience.
Alexandrian-Roman off to a fine start with the pooling of Greek theory and
Roman engineering talent, and then, a thousand years ago, two half forgotten
religions had been rummaged out of the dustbin and fanatics had begun
massacring one another. They were still at it, with pikes and matchlocks, having
lost the ability to make anything better. Europo-American could come to that if
its rival political and economic sectarians kept on. Sino-Hindic—that wasn’t a
civilization; it was a bad case of cultural paralysis. And so was Indo-Turanian—about
where Europo-American had been ten centuries ago. And Aryan-Oriental—the Aryan migration of three thousand
years ago, instead of moving west and south, as on most sectors, had rolled
east into China. And Aryan-Transpacific, an offshoot on one sector, some of
them had built ships and sailed north and east along the Kuriles and the Aleutians and settled in North America, bringing with them horses and cattle and iron
working skills, exterminating the Amerinds, warring with one another, splitting
into diverse peoples and cultures. There was a civilization, now decadent, on
the Pacific coast, and nomads on the central plains herding bison and
crossbreeding them with Asian cattle, and a civilization around the Great Lakes
and one in the Mississippi Valley, and a new one, five or six centuries old,
along the Atlantic and in the Appalachians. Technological level premechanical,
water-and-animal power; a few subsectors had gotten as far as gunpowder. But Aryan-Transpacific was a sector to watch. They were going
forward; things were ripe to start happening soon. Let Chief Verkan watch it, for the next couple of centuries.
After Year-End Day, ex-Chief Tortha would have his vineyards and lemon-groves
to watch. RYLLA tried to close her mind to the voices around her in
the tapestried room, and stared at the map spread in front of her and her
father. There was Tarr-Hostigos overlooking the gap, only a tiny fleck of gold
on the parchment, but she could see it in her mind’s eye—the walled outer
bailey with the sheds and stables and workshops inside, the inner bailey and
the citadel and keep, the watchtower pointing a blunt finger skyward. Below,
the little Darro flowed north to join the Listra and, with it, the broad Athan
to the east. Hostigos Town, white walls and slate roofs and busy streets; the
checkerboard of fields to the west and south; the forest, broken by farms, to
the west. A voice, louder and harsher than the others, brought her
back to reality. Her cousin, Sthentros. “He’ll do nothing at all? Well, what in Dralm’s holy name is
a Great King for, but to keep the peace?” She looked along the table, from one to another. Phosg, the
speaker for the peasants, at the foot, uncomfortable in his feast-day clothes
and ill at ease seated among his betters. The speakers for the artisans’
guilds, and for the merchants and the townsfolk; the lesser family members and
marriagekin; the barons and landholders. Old Chartiphon, the chief-captain, his
golden beard streaked with gray like the lead splotches on his gilded
breastplate, his long sword on the table in front of him. Xentos, the cowl of his
priestly robe thrown back from his snowy head, his blue eyes troubled. And
beside her, at the table’s head, her father, Prince Ptosphes, his mouth tight
between pointed gray mustache and pointed gray beard. How long it had been
since she had seen her father smile! Xentos passed a hand negatively across his face. “King
Kaiphranos said that it was every Prince’s duty to guard his own realm; that it
was for Prince Ptosphes, not for him, to keep bandits out of Hostigos.” “Bandits? They’re Nostori soldiers!” Sthentros shouted. “Gormoth
of Nostor means to take all Hostigos, as his grandfather took Sevenhills Valley after the traitor we don’t name sold him Tarr-Dombra.” That was a part of the map her eyes had shunned the bowl valley
to the east, where Dombra Gap split the Mountains of Hostigos. It was from
thence that Gormoth’s mercenary cavalry raided into 14ostigos. “And what hope have we from Styphon’s House?” her father
asked. He knew the answer; he wanted the others to hear it at first hand. “The Archpriest wouldn’t talk to me; the priests of Styphon
hold no speech with priests of other gods,” Xentos said. “The Archpriest wouldn’t talk to me, either,” Chartiphon
said. “Only one of the upper-priests of the temple. He took our offerings and
said he would pray to Styphon for us. When I asked for fireseed, he would give
me none.” “None at all?” somebody down the table cried. “Then we are
indeed under the ban.” Her father rapped with the pommel of his poignard. “You’ve
heard the worst, now. What’s in your minds that we should do? You first, Phosg.” The peasant representative rose and cleared his throat. “Lord
Prince, this castle is no more dear to you than my cottage is to me. I’ll fight for mine as you would for yours.” There was a
quick mutter of approval along the table. “Well said, Phosg!” “An example for all of us!” The others spoke in turn; a few
tried to make speeches. Chartiphon said “Fight. What else.” “I am a priest of Dralm,” Xentos said, “and Dralm is a god
of peace, but I say, fight with Dralm’s blessing. Submission to evil men is the
worst of all sins.” “Rylla,” her father said. “Better die in armor than live in
chains,” she replied. “When the time comes, I will be in armor with the rest of
you.” Her father nodded. “I expected no less from any of you.” He rose, and all
with him. “I thank you. At sunset we will dine together; until then servants
will attend you. Now, if you please, leave me with my daughter. Chartiphon, you
and Xentos stay.” Chairs scraped and feet scuffed as they went out. The
closing door cut off the murmur of voices. Chartiphon had begun to fill his
stubby pipe. “I know there’s no use looking to Balthar of Beshta,” Rylla
said, “but wouldn’t Sarrask of Sask aid us? We’re better neighbors to him than
Gormoth would be.” “Sarrask of Sask’s a fool,” Chartiphon said shortly. “He
doesn’t know that once Gormoth has Hostigos, his turn will come next.” “He knows that,” Xentos differed. “He’ll try to strike
before Gormoth does, or catch Gormoth battered from having fought us. But even
if he wanted to help us, he dares not. Even King Kaiphranos dares not aid those
whom Styphon’s House would destroy.” “They want that land in Wolf Valley, for a temple-farm,” she
considered. “I know that would be bad, but... “ “Too late,” Xentos told her. “They have made a compact with
Gormoth, to famish him fireseed and money to hire mercenaries, and when he has
conquered Hostigos he will give them the land.” He paused and added “And it was
on my advice, Prince, that you refused them.” “I’d have refused against your advice, Xentos,” her father
said. “Long ago I vowed that Styphon’s House should never come into Hostigos
while I lived, and by Dralm and by Galzar neither shall they! They come into a
princedom, they build a temple, they make temple-farms and slaves of everybody
on them. They tax the Prince, and make him tax the people, till nobody has
anything left. Look at that temple-farm in Sevenhills Valley!” “Yes, you’d hardly believe it,” Chartiphon said. “Why, they
even make the peasants for miles around cart their manure in, till they have
none left for their own fields. Dralm only knows what they do with it.” He
puffed at his pipe. “I wonder why they want Sevenhills Valley.” “There’s something in the ground there that makes the water
of those springs taste and smell badly,” her father said. “Sulfur,” said Xentos, “But why do they want sulfur?” CORPORAL Calvin Morrison, Pennsylvania State Police,
squatted in the brush at the edge of the old field and looked across the small
brook at the farmhouse two hundred yards away. It was scabrous with peeling
yellow paint, and festooned with a sagging porch-roof. A few white chickens
pecked uninterestedly in the littered barnyard; there was no other sign of
life, but he knew that there was a man inside. A man with a rifle, who would
use it; a man who had murdered once, broken jail, would murder again. He looked at his watch; the minute-hand was squarely on the
nine. Jack French and Steve Kovac would be starting down on the road above,
where they had left the car. He rose, unsnapping the retaining-strap of his
holster. “Watch that middle upstairs window,” he said. “I’m starting
now.” “I’m watching it.” Behind him, a rifle-action clattered
softly as a cartridge went into the chamber. “Luck.” He started forward across
the seedling-dotted field. He was scared, as scared as he had been the first
time, back in ’51, in Korea, but there was nothing he could do about that. He
just told his legs to keep moving, knowing that in a few moments he wouldn’t
have time to be scared. He was within a few feet of the little brook, his hand close
to the butt of the Colt, when it happened. There was a blinding flash, followed by a moment’s darkness.
He thought he’d been shot; by pure reflex, the .38-special was in his hand.
Then, all around him, a flickering iridescence of many colors glowed, a perfect
hemisphere fifteen feet high and thirty across, and in front of him was an oval
desk with an instrument-panel over it, and a swivel-chair from which a man was
rising. Young, well-built; a white man but, he was sure, not an American. He
wore loose green, trousers and black ankle-boots and a pale green shirt. There
was a shoulder holster under his left arm, and a weapon in his right hand. He was sure it was a weapon, though it looked more like an
electric soldering-iron, with two slender rods instead of a barrel, joined, at
what should be the muzzle, by a blue ceramic or plastic knob. It was probably
something that made his own Colt Official Police look like a kid’s cap-pistol,
and it was coming up fast to line on him. He fired, held the trigger back to keep the hammer down on
the fired chamber, and flung himself to one side, coming down, on his left hand
and left hip, on a smooth, polished floor. Something, probably the chair, fell with a crash. He rolled, and kept on rolling until he was out of the nacreous dome
of light and bumped hard against something. For a moment he lay still, then
rose to his feet, letting out the trigger of the Colt. What he’d bumped into was a tree. For a moment he accepted
that, then realized that there should be no trees here, nothing but low brush.
And this tree, and the ones all around, were huge; great rough columns rising
to support a green roof through which only a few stray gleams of sunlight
leaked. Hemlocks; must have been growing here while Columbus was still conning
Isabella into hocking her jewelry. He looked at the little stream he had been
about to cross when this had happened. It was the one thing about this that
wasn’t completely crazy. Or maybe it was the craziest thing of all. He began wondering how he was going to explain this. “While
approaching the house,” he began, aloud and in a formal tone, “I was
intercepted by a flying saucer landing in front of me, the operator of which
threatened me with a ray-pistol. I defended myself with my revolver, firing one
round.. No. That wouldn’t do at all. He looked at the brook again,
and began to suspect that there might be nobody to explain to. Swinging out the
cylinder of his Colt, he replaced the fired round. Then he decided to junk the
regulation about carrying the hammer on an empty chamber, and put in another
one. VERKAN Vall watched the landscape outside the almost invisible
shimmer of the transposition-field; now he was in the forests of the Fifth
Level. The mountains, of course, were always the same, but the woods around
flickered and shifted. There was a great deal of randomness about which tree
grew where, from time-line to time-line. Now and then he would catch fleeting
glimpses of open country, and the buildings and airport installations of his
own people. The red light overhead went off and on, a buzzer sounding each
time. The conveyer dome became a solid iridescence, and then a mesh of cold
inert metal. The red light turned green. He picked up a sigma-ray needier from
the desk in front of him and bolstered it. As he did, the door slid open and
two men in Paratime Police green, a lieutenant and a patrolman, entered. When
they saw him, they relaxed, bolstering their own weapons. “Hello, Chief’s Assistant,” the lieutenant said. “Didn’t
pick anything up, did you?” In theory, the Ghaldron-Hesthor transposition-field was impenetrable;
in practice, especially when two paratemporal vehicles going in opposite “directions”
interpenetrated, the field would weaken briefly, and external objects,
sometimes alive and hostile, would intrude. That was why paratimers kept
weapons ready at hand, and why conveyers were checked immediately upon materializing.
It was also why some paratimers didn’t make it home. “Not this trip. Is my rocket ready?” “Yes, sir. Be a little delay about an aircar for the
rocket-port.” The patrolman had begun to take the transposition record-tapes
out of the cabinet. “They’ll call you when it’s ready.” He and the lieutenant strolled out into the noise and
colorful confusion of the conveyor-head rotunda. He got out his cigarette case
and offered it; the lieutenant flicked his lighter. They had only taken a few
puffs when another conveyer quietly materialized in a vacant circle a little to
their left. A couple of Paracops strolled over as the door opened,
drawing their needlers, and peeped inside. Immediately, one backed away,
snatching the hand-phone of his belt radio and speaking quickly into it. The
other went inside. Throwing away their cigarettes, he and the lieutenant
hastened to the conveyer. Inside, the chair at the desk was overturned. A Paracop lay
on the floor, his needier a few inches from his out flung hand. His tunic was
off and his shirt, pale green, was darkened by blood. The lieutenant, without
touching him, bent over him. “Still alive,” he said. “Bullet or sword-thrust?” “Bullet. I smell nitro powder.” Then he saw the hat lying on
the floor, and stepped around the fallen man. Two men were entering with an
antigrav stretcher; they got the wounded man onto it and floated him out. “Look
at this, Lieutenant.” The lieutenant looked at the hat—gray felt, wide-brimmed,
the crown peaked by four indentations. “Fourth Level,” he said. “Europo-American, Hispano-Colombian
Subsector.” He picked up the hat and glanced inside. The lieutenant was
right. The sweat-band was stamped in golden Roman-alphabet letters, JOHN B.
STETSON COMPANY. PHILADELPHIA, PA., and, hand-inked, Cpl. Calvin Morrison, Pennsylvania
State Police, and a number. “I know that crowd,” the lieutenant said. “Good men, every
bit as good as ours. “One was a split second better than one of ours.” He got out
his cigarette case. “Lieutenant, this is going to be a real badie. This pickup’s
going to be missed, and the people who’ll miss him will be one of the ten best
constabulary organizations in the world, on their time-line. We won’t satisfy
them with the kind of lame-brained explanations that usually get by in that
sector. And we’ll have to find out where he emerged, and what he’s doing. A man
who can beat a Paracop to the draw after being sucked into a conveyer won’t
just sink into obscurity on any time-line. By the time we get to him, he’ll be
kicking up a small fuss.” “I hope he got dragged out of his own Subsector. Suppose he
comes out on a next-door time-line, and reports to his police post, where a
duplicate of himself, with duplicate fingerprints, is on duty.” “Yes. Wouldn’t that be dandy, now?” He lit a cigarette. “When
the aircar comes, send it back. I’m going over the photo-records myself. Have
the rocket held; I’ll need it in a few hours. I’m making this case my own
personal baby.” CALVIN Morrison dangled his black-booted legs over the edge
of the low cliff and wished, again, that he hadn’t lost his hat. He knew
exactly where he was he was right at the same place he had been, sitting on the
little cliff above the road where he and Larry Stacey and Jack French and Steve
Kovac had left the car, only there was no road there now, and never had been
one. There was a hemlock, four feet thick at the butt, growing where the farmhouse
should have been, and no trace of the stonework of the foundations of house or
barn. But the really permanent features, like the Bald Eagles to the north and Nittany Mountain to the south, were exactly as they should be. That flash and momentary darkness could have been subjective;
put that in the unproven column. He was sure the strangely beautiful dome of
shimmering light had been real, and so had the desk and the instrument-panel,
and the man with the odd weapon. And there was nothing at all subjective about
all this virgin timber where farmlands should have been. So he puffed slowly on
his pipe and tried to remember and to analyze what had happened to him. He hadn’t been shot and taken to a hospital where he was now
lying delirious, he was sure of that. This wasn’t delirium. Nor did he consider
for an instant questioning either his sanity or his senses, nor did he indulge
in dirty language like “incredible” or “impossible.” Extraordinary—now there
was a good word. He was quite sure that something extraordinary had happened to
him. It seemed to break into two parts one, blundering into that dome of pearly
light, what had happened inside of it, and rolling out of it; and two, this
same-but-different place in which he now found himself. What was wrong with both was anachronism, and the anachronisms
were mutually contradictory. None of the first part belonged in 1964 or, he
suspected, for many centuries to come; portable energy-weapons, for instance.
None of the second part belonged in 1964, either, or for at least a century in
the past. His pipe had gone out. For awhile he forgot to relight it,
while he tossed those two facts back and forth in his mind. He still didn’t use
those dirty words. He used one small boys like to scribble on privy, walls. In spite—no, because—of his clergyman father’s insistence
that he study for and enter the Presbyterian ministry, he was an agnostic.
Agnosticism, for him, was refusal to accept or to deny without proof. A good
philosophy for a cop, by the way. Well, he wasn’t going to reject the
possibility of time machines; not after having been shanghaied aboard one and
having to shoot his way out of it. That thing had been a time-machine, and
whenever he was now, it wasn’t the twentieth century, and he was never going to
get back to it. He settled that point in his mind and accepted it once and for
all. His pipe was out; he started to knock out the heel, then
stirred it with a twig and relit it. He couldn’t afford to waste anything now.
Sixteen rounds of ammunition; he couldn’t do a hell of a lot of Indian-fighting
on that. The blackjack might be some good at close quarters. The value of the
handcuffs and the whistle was problematical. When he had smoked the contents of
his pipe down to ash, he emptied and pocketed it and climbed down from the little
cliff, going to the brook and following it down to where it joined a larger
stream. A bluejay made a fuss at his approach. Two deer ran in front
of him. A small black bear regarded him suspiciously and hastened away. Now, if
he could only find some Indians who wouldn’t throw tomahawks first and ask
questions afterward.... A road dipped in front of him to cross the stream. For an instant
he accepted that calmly, then caught his breath. A real, wheel-rutted road. And
brown horse-droppings in it—they were the most beautiful things he had ever
seen. They meant he hadn’t beaten Columbus here, after all. Maybe he might have
trouble giving a plausible account of himself, but at least he could do it in
English. He waded through the little ford and started down the road, toward
where he thought Bellefonte ought to be. Maybe he was in time to get into the
Civil War. That would be more fun than Korea had been. The sun went down in front of him. By now he was out of the
big hemlocks; they’d been lumbered off on both sides of the road, and there was
a respectable second growth, mostly hardwoods. Finally, in the dusk, he smelled
freshly turned earth. It was full dark when he saw a light ahead. The house was only a dim shape; the light came from one window
on the end and two in front, horizontal slits under the roof overhang. Behind,
he thought, were stables. And a pigpen—his nose told him that. Two dogs,
outside, began whauff whauffing in the road in front of him. “Hello, in there!” he called. Through the open windows, too
high to see into, he heard voices a man’s, a woman’s, another man’s. He called
again, and came closer. A bar scraped, and the door swung open. For a moment a
heavy-bodied woman in a sleeveless dark dress stood in it. Then she spoke to
him and stepped inside. He entered. It was a big room, lighted by two candles, one on a table
spread with a meal and the other on the mantel, and by the fire on the hearth.
Double-deck bunks along one wall, fireplace with things stacked against it.
There were three men and another, younger, woman, besides the one who had
admitted the comer of his eye he could see children peering around a door that
seemed to open into a shed-annex. One of the men, big and blonde-bearded, stood
with his back to the fireplace, holding what looked like a short gun. No, it wasn’t, either. It was a crossbow, bent, with a
quarrel in the groove. The other two men were younger—probably his sons, Both
were bearded, though one’s beard was only a blonde fuzz. He held an axe; his
older brother had a halberd. All three wore sleeveless leather jerkins,
short-sleeved shirts, and cross-gartered hose. The older woman spoke in a
whisper to the younger woman, who went through the door at the side, hustling
the children ahead of her. He had raised his hands pacifically as he entered. “I’m a
friend,” he said. “I’m going to Bellefonte; how far is it?” The man with the crossbow said something. The woman replied.
The youth with the axe said something, and they all laughed. “My name’s Morrison. Corporal, Pennsylvania State Police.” Hell, they wouldn’t know the State Police from the Swiss Marines. “Am I on the
road to Bellefonte?” They ought to know where that was, it had been settled in
1770, and this couldn’t be any earlier than that. More back-and-forth. They weren’t talking Pennsylvania Dutch—he
knew a little of it. Maybe Polish. no, he’d heard enough of that in the
hard-coal country to recognize it, at least. He looked around while they
argued, and noticed, on a shelf in the far corner, three images. He meant to
get a closer look at them. Roman Catholics used images, so did Greek Catholics,
and he knew the difference. The man with the crossbow laid the weapon down, but kept it
bent with the quarrel in place, and spoke slowly and distinctly. It was no
language he had ever heard before. He replied, just as distinctly, in English.
They looked at one another, and passed their hands back and forth across their
faces. On a thousand-to-one chance, he tried Japanese. It didn’t pay off. By
signs, they invited him to sit and eat with them, and the children, six of
them, trooped in. The meal was ham, potatoes and succotash. The eating tools
were knives and a few horn spoons; the plates were stabs of corn-bread. The men
used their belt-knives. He took out his jackknife, a big switchblade he’d taken
off a j d. arrest, and caused a sensation with it. He had to demonstrate
several times. There was also elderberry wine, strong but not particularly
good. When they left the table for the women to clear, the men filled pipes
from a tobacco-jar on the mantel, offering it to him. He filled his own,
lighting it, as they had, with a twig from the hearth. Stepping back, he got a
look at the images. The central figure was an elderly man in a white robe with a
blue eight pointed star on his breast. Flanking him, on the left, was a seated
female figure, nude and exaggeratedly pregnant, crowned with wheat and holding
a cornstalk; and on the right a masculine figure in a mail shirt, holding a
spiked mace. The only really odd thing about him was that he had the head of a
wolf. Father god, fertility goddess, war god. No, this crowd weren’t Catholics
Greek, Roman or any other kind. He bowed to the central figure, touching his forehead, and repeated
the gesture to the other two. There was a gratified murmur behind him; anybody
could see he wasn’t any heathen. Then he sat down on a chest with his back to
the wall. They hadn’t re-barred the door. The children had been herded
back into the annex by the younger woman. Now that he recalled, there’d been a
vacant place, which he had taken, at the table. Somebody had gone off somewhere
with a message. As soon as he finished his pipe, he pocketed it, managing,
unobtrusively, to unsnap the strap of his holster. Some half an hour later, he caught the galloping thud of
hooves down the road—at least six horses. He pretended not to hear it; so did
the others. The father moved to where he had put down the crossbow; the older
son got hold of the halberd, and the fuzz-chinned youth moved to the door. The
horses stopped outside; the dogs began barking frantically. There was a clatter
of accoutrements as men dismounted. He slipped the. 38 out and cocked it. The youth went to the door, but before he could open it, it
flew back in his face, knocking him backward, and a man—bearded face under a
high combed helmet, steel long sword in front of him—entered. There was another
helmeted head behind, and the muzzle of a musket. Everybody in the room shouted
in alarm; this wasn’t what they’d been expecting, at all. Outside, a pistol
banged, and a dog howled briefly. Rising from the chest, he shot the man with the sword.
Half-cocking with the double-action and thumbing the hammer back the rest of
the way, he shot the man with the musket, which went off into the. ceiling. A
man behind him caught a crossbow quarrel in the forehead and pitched forward,
dropping a long pistol unfired. Shifting the Colt to his left hand, he caught up the sword
the first man had dropped. Double-edged, with a swept guard, it was lighter
than it looked, and beautifully balanced. He stepped over the body of the first
man he had shot, to be confronted by a swordsman from outside, trying to get
over the other two. For a few moments they cut and parried, and then he drove
the point into his opponent’s unarmored face, then tugged his blade free as the
man went down. The boy, who had gotten hold of the dropped pistol, fired past
him and hit a man holding a clump of horses in the road. Then he was outside,
and the man with the halberd along with him, chopping down another of the
party. The father followed; he’d gotten the musket and powder-flask, and was
reloading it. Driving the point of the sword into the ground, he bolstered
his Colt and as one of the loose horses passed, caught the reins, throwing
himself into the saddle. Then, when his feet had found the stirrups, he stooped
and retrieved the sword, thankful that even in a motorized age the state police
taught their men to ride. The fight was over, at least here. Six attackers were down,
presumably dead; two more were galloping away. Five loose horses milled about,
and the two young men were trying to catch them. Their father had charged the
short musket, and was priming the pan. This had only been a sideshow fight, though. The main event
was a half mile down the road; he could hear shots, yells and screams, and a
sudden orange glare mounted into the night. While he was quieting the horse and
trying to accustom him to the change of ownership, a couple more fires blazed
up. He was wondering just what he had cut himself in on when the fugitives
began streaming up the road. He had no trouble identifying them as such; he’d
seen enough of that in Korea. There were more than fifty of them—men, women and children.
Some of the men had weapons spears, axes, a few bows, one musket almost six
feet long. His bearded host shouted at them, and they paused.
“What’s going on down there?” he demanded. Babble answered
him. One or two tried to push past; he cursed them luridly and slapped at them
with his flat. The words meant nothing, but the tone did. That had worked for
him in Korea, too. They all stopped in a clump, while the bearded man spoke to
them. A few cheered. He looked them over; call it twenty electives. The bodies
in the road were stripped of weapons; out of the comer of his eye he saw the
two women passing things out the cottage door. Four of the riderless horses had
been caught and mounted. More fugitives came up, saw what was going on, and
joined. “All right, you guys! You want to live forever?” He swung
his sword to include all of them, then pointed down the road to where a whole
village must now be burning. “Come on, let’s go get them!” A general cheer went up as he started his horse forward, and
the whole mob poured after him, shouting. They met more and more fugitives, who
saw that a counter-attack had been organized, if that was the word for it. The
shooting ahead had stopped. Nothing left in the village to shoot at, he
supposed. Then, when they were within four or five hundred yards of
the burning houses, there was a blast of forty or fifty shots in less than ten
seconds, and loud yells, some in alarm. More shots, and then mounted men came
pelting toward them. This wasn’t an attack; it was a rout. Whoever had raided
that village had been hit from behind. Everybody with guns or bows let fly at
once. A horse went down, and a saddle was emptied. Remembering how many shots
it had taken for one casualty in Korea, that wasn’t bad. He stood up in his
stirrups, which were an inch or so too short for him to begin with, waved his
sword, and shouted, “Chaaarge! “ Then he and the others who were mounted kicked
their horses into a gallop, and the infantry—axes, scythes, pitchforks and all—ran
after them. A horseman coming in the opposite direction aimed a
sword-cut at his bare head. He parried and thrust, the point glancing from a
breastplate. Before either could recover, the other man’s horse had carried him
on past and among the spears and pitchforks behind. Then he was trading thrusts
for cuts with another rider, wondering if none of these imbeciles had ever
heard that a sword had a point. By this time the road for a hundred yards in
front, and the fields on either side, were full of horsemen, chopping and
shooting at one another in the firelight. He got his point in under his opponent’s arm, the
memory-voice of a history professor of long ago reminded him of the gap in a
cuirass there, and almost had the sword wrenched from his hand before he
cleared it. Then another rider was coming at him, unarmored, wearing a cloak
and a broad hat, aiming a pistol almost as long as the arm that held it. He
swung back for a cut, urging his horse forward, and knew he’d never make it.
A11 right, Cal, your luck’s run out! There was an up flash from the pan, a belch off flame from
the muzzle, and something hammered him in the chest. He hung onto consciousness
long enough to kick his feet free of the stirrups. In that last moment, he
realized that the rider who had shot him had been a girl. RYLLA sat with her father at the table in the small study.
Chartiphon was at one end and Xentos at the other, and Harmakros, the cavalry
captain, in a chair by the hearth, his helmet on the floor beside him. Vurth,
the peasant, stood facing them, a short horseman’s musketoon slung from his
shoulder and a horn flask and bullet-bag on his belt. “You did well, Vurth,” her father commended. “By sending the
message, and in the fighting, and by telling Princess Rylla that the stranger
was a friend. I’ll see you’re rewarded.” Vurth smiled. “But, Prince, I have this gun, and fireseed
for it,” he replied. “And my son caught a horse, with all its gear, even pistols
in the holsters, and the Princess says we may keep it all.” “Fair battle-spoil, yours by right. But I’ll see that
something is sent to your farm tomorrow. Just don’t waste that fireseed on
deer. You’ll need it to kill more Nostori before long.” He nodded in dismissal, and Vurth grinned and bowed, and
backed out, stammering thanks. Chartiphon looked after him, remarking that
there went a man Gormoth of Nostor would find costly to kill. “He didn’t pay cheaply for anything tonight,” Harmakros
said. “Eight houses burned, a dozen peasants butchered, four of our troopers
killed and six wounded, and we counted better than thirty of his dead in the village
on the road, and six more at Vurth’s farm. And the horses we caught, and the
weapons.” He thought briefly. “I’d question if a dozen of them got away alive
and hale.” Her father gave a mirthless chuckle. “I’m glad some did.
They’ll have a fine tale to carry back. I’d like to see Gormoth’s face at the
telling.” “We owe the stranger for most of it,” she said. “If he hadn’t
rallied those people at Vurth’s farm and led them back, most of the Nostori
would have gotten away. And then I had to shoot him myself” . “You couldn’t know, kitten,” Chartiphon told her. “I’ve
been near killed by friends myself, in fights like that.” He turned to Xentos. “How
is he?” “He’ll live to hear our thanks,” the old priest said. “The
ornament on his breast broke the force of the bullet. He has a broken rib, and
a nasty hole in him—our Rylla doesn’t load her pistols lightly. He’s lost more
blood than I’d want to, but he’s young and strong, and Brother Mytron has much
skill. We’ll have him on his feet again in a half-moon.” She smiled happily. It would be terrible for him to die, and
at her hand, a stranger who had fought so well for them. And such a handsome
and valiant stranger, too. She wondered who he was. Some noble, or some great
captain, of course. “We owe much to Princess Rylla,” Harmakros insisted. “When
this man from the village overtook us, I was for riding back with three or four
to see about this stranger of Vurth’s, but the Princess said, ‘We’ve only Vurth’s
word there’s but one; there may be a hundred Vurth hasn’t seen.’ So back we all
went, and you know the rest.” “We owe most of all to Dram.” Old Xentos’s face lit with a
calm joy. “And Galzar Wolfhead, of course,” he added. “it is a sign that the
gods will not turn their backs upon Hostigos. This stranger, whoever he may be,
was sent by the gods to be our aid.” VERKAN Vall put the lighter back on the desk and took the
cigarette from his mouth, blowing a streamer of smoke. “Chief, it’s what I’ve been saying all along. We’ll have to
do something.” After Year-End Day, he added mentally, I’ll do something. “We
know what causes this conveyers interpenetrating in transposition. It’ll have
to be sorted.” Tortha Karf laughed. “The reason I’m laughing he explained, “is
that I said just that, about a hundred and fifty years ago, to old Zarvan
Tharg, when I was taking over from him, and he laughed at me just as I’m
laughing at you, because he’d said the same thing to the retiring Chief when he
was taking over. Have you ever seen an all-time-line conveyer-head map?” No. He couldn’t recall. He blanked his mind to everything
else and concentrated with all his mental power. “No, I haven’t—” “I should guess not. With the finest dots, on the biggest
map, all the inhabited areas would be indistinguishable blotches. There must be
a couple of conveyers interpenetrating every second of every minute of every
day. You know,” he added gently, “we’re rather extensively spread out.” “We can cut it down.” There had to be something that could
be done. “Better scheduling, maybe.” “Maybe. How about this case you’re taking an interest in?” “Well, we had one piece of luck. The pickup time-line is one
we’re on already. One of our people, in a newspaper office in Philadelphia,
messaged us that same evening. He says the press associations have the story, and
there’s nothing we can do about that.” “Well, just what did happen?” “This man Morrison and three other state police officers
were closing in on a house in which a wanted criminal was hiding. He must have
been a dangerous man—they don’t go out in force like that for chicken-thieves.
Morrison and another man were in front; the other two were coming in from
behind. Morrison started forward, with his companion covering for him with a
rifle. This other man is the nearest thing to a witness there is, but he was
watching the front of the house and only marginally aware of Morrison. He says
he heard the other two officers pounding on the back door and demanding
admittance, and then the man they were after burst out the front door with a
rifle in his hands. This officer—Stacey’s his name—shouted to him to drop the
rifle and put up his hands. Instead, the criminal tried to raise it to his
shoulder; Stacey fired, killing him instantly. Then, he says, he realized that
Morrison was nowhere in sight. “He called, needless to say’ without response, and then he
and the other two hunted about for some time. They found nothing, of course.
They took this body in to the county seat and had to go through a lot of
formalities; it was evening before they were back at the substation, and it
happened that a reporter was there, got the story, and phoned it to his paper.
The press association actions then got hold of it. Now the state police refuse
to discuss the disappearance, and they’re even trying to deny it.” “They think their man’s nerve snapped, he ran away in a
panic, and is ashamed to come back. They wouldn’t want a story like that
getting around; they’ll try to cover up.” “Yes. This hat he lost in the conveyer, with his name in it—we’ll
plant it about a mile from the scene, and then get hold of some local,
preferably a boy of twelve or so, give him narco-hyp instructions to find the
hat and take it to the state police substation, and then inform the reporter
responsible for the original news-break by an anonymous phone call. After that,
there will be the usual spate of rumors of Morrison being seen in widely
separated localities.” “How about his family?” “We’re in luck there, too. Unmarried, parents both dead, no
near relatives.” The Chief nodded. “That’s good. Usually there are a lot of
relatives yelling their heads off. Particularly on sectors where they have
inheritance laws. Have you located the exit time-line?” “Approximated it; somewhere on Aryan-Transpacific. We can’t
determine the exact moment at which he broke free of the field. We have one
positive indication to look for at the scene.” The Chief grinned. “Let me guess’ The empty revolver cartridge.” “That’s right. The things the state police use don’t eject
automatically; he’d have to open it and take the empty out by hand. And as soon
as he was outside the conveyer and no longer immediately threatened, that’s
precisely what he’d do open his revolver, eject the empty, and replace it with
a live round. I’m as sure of that as though I watched him do it. We may not be
able to find it, but if we do it’ll be positive proof.” MORRISON woke, stiff and aching, under soft covers, and for
a moment lay with his eyes closed. Near him, something clicked with soft and
monotonous regularity; from somewhere an anvil rang, and there was shouting.
Then he opened his eyes. It was daylight, and he was on a bed in a fairly large
room with paneled walls and a white plaster ceiling. There were two windows at
one side, both open, and under one of them a woman, stout and gray-haired, in a
green dress, sat knitting. It had been her needles that he had heard. Nothing
but blue sky was visible through the windows. There was a table, with things on
it, and chairs, and, across the room, a chest on the top of which his clothes
were neatly piled, his belt and revolver on top. His boots, neatly cleaned,
stood by the chest, and a long unsheathed sword with a swept guard and a copper
pommel leaned against the wall. The woman looked up quickly as he stirred, then put her knitting
on the floor and rose. She looked at him, and went to the table, pouring a cup
of water and bringing it to him. He thanked her, drank, and gave it back. The
cup and pitcher were of heavy silver, elaborately chased. This wasn’t any
peasant cottage. Replacing the cup on the table, she went out. He ran a hand over his chin. About three days’ stubble. The
growth of his fingernails checked with that. The whole upper part of his torso
was tightly bandaged. Broken rib, or ribs, and probably a nasty hole in him. He
was still alive after three days. Estimating the here-and-now medical art from
the general technological level as he’d seen it so far, that probably meant
that he had a fair chance of continuing so. At least he was among friends and
not a prisoner. The presence of the sword and the revolver proved that. The woman returned, accompanied by a man in a blue robe with
an eight pointed white star on the breast, the colors of the central image on
the peasants’ god-shelf reversed. A priest, doubling as doctor. He was short
and chubby, with a pleasant round face; advancing, he laid a hand on Morrison’s
brow, took his pulse, and spoke in a cheerfully optimistic tone. The bedside
manner seemed to be a universal constant. With the woman’s help, he got the bandages,
yards of them, off. He did have a nasty wound, uncomfortably close to his
heart, and his whole left side was black and blue. The woman brought a pot from
the table; the doctor-priest smeared the wound with some dirty looking unguent,
they put on fresh bandages, and the woman took out the old ones. The
doctor-priest tried to talk to him; he tried to talk to the doctor-priest. The
woman came back with a bowl of turkey-broth, full of finely minced meat, and a
spoon. While he was finishing it, two more visitors arrived. One was a man, robed like the doctor, his cowl thrown back
from his head, revealing snow-white hair. He had a gentle, kindly face, and was
smiling. For a moment Morrison wondered if this place might be a monastery of
some sort, and then saw the old priest’s definitely unmonastic companion. She was a girl, twenty, give or take a year or so, with
blonde hair cut in what he knew as a page-boy bob. She had blue eyes and red
lips and an impudent tilty little nose dusted with golden freckles. She wore a
jerkin of something like brown suede, sewn with gold thread, and a yellow
under-tunic with a high neck and long sleeves, and brown knit hose and
thigh-length jackboots. There was a gold chain around her neck, and a
gold-hilted dagger on a belt of gold links. No, this wasn’t any monastery, and
it wasn’t any peasant hovel, either. As soon as he saw her, he began to laugh. He’d met that
young lady before. “You shot me!” he accused, aiming an imaginary pistol and
saying “Bang!” and then touching his chest. She said something to the older priest, he replied, and she
said something to Morrison, pantomiming sorrow and shame, covering her face
with one hand, and winking at him over it. Then they both laughed. Perfectly
natural mistake—how could she have known which side he’d been on? The two priests held a colloquy, and then the younger
brought him about four ounces of something dark brown in a glass tumbler. It
tasted alcoholic and medicinally bitter. They told him, by signs, to go back to
sleep, and left him, the girt looking back over her shoulder as she went out. He squirmed a little, decided that he was going to like it,
here-and-now, and dozed off. LATE in the afternoon he woke again. A different woman,
thin, with mouse brown hair, sat in the chair under the window, stitching on
something that looked like a shirt. Outside, a dark was barking, and farther
off somebody was drilling troops—a couple of hundred, from the amount of noise
they were making. A voice was counting cadence Heep, heep, heep, heep! Another
universal constant. He smiled contentedly. Once he got on his feet again, he
didn’t think he was going to be on unemployment very long. A soldier was all he’d
ever been, since he’d stopped being a theological student at Princeton between
sophomore and junior years. He’d owed a lot of thanks to the North Korean
Communists for starting that war; without it, he might never have found the
moral courage to free himself from the career into which his father had been
forcing him. His enlisting in the Army had probably killed his father; the Rev.
Alexander Morrison simply couldn’t endure not having his own way. At least, he
died while his son was in Korea. Then there had been the year and a half, after he came home,
when he’d worked as a bank guard, until his mother died. That had been
soldiering of a sort; he’d worked armed and in uniform, at least. And then,
when he no longer had his mother to support, he’d gone into the state police.
That had really been soldiering, the nearest anybody could come to it in
peacetime. And then he’d blundered into that dome of pearly light, that
time-machine, and come out of it into—into here-and-now, that was all he could
call it. When here was, was fairly easy. It had to be somewhere
within, say, ten or fifteen miles of where he had been time-shifted, which was
just over the Clinton County line, in Nittany Valley. They didn’t use
helicopters to evacuate the wounded here-and-now, that was sure. When now was was something else. He lay on his back, looking
up at the white ceiling, not wanting to attract the attention of the woman
sewing by the window. It wasn’t the past. Even if he hadn’t studied history—it
was about the only thing at college he had studied—he’d have known that Penn’s
Colony had never been anything like this. It was more like sixteenth century
Europe, though any sixteenth-century French or German cavalryman who was as
incompetent a swordsman as that gang he’d been fighting wouldn’t have lived to
wear out his first pair of issue boots. And enough Comparative Religion had
rubbed off on him to know that those three images on that peasant’s shelf didn’t
belong in any mythology back to Egypt and Sumeria. So it had to be the future. A far future, long after the
world had been devastated by atomic war, and man, self-blasted back to the
Stone Age, had bootstrap-lifted himself back this far. A thousand years, ten
thousand years; ten dollars if you guess how many beans in the jar. The
important thing was that here-and-now was when-where he would stay, and he’d
have to make a place for himself. He thought he was going to like it. That lovely, lovely blonde! He fell asleep thinking about
her. BREAKFAST the next morning was cornmeal mush cooked with
meat broth and tasting rather like scrapple, and a mug of sassafras tea.
Coffee, it seemed, didn’t exist here-and-now, and that he was going to miss. He
sign talked for his tunic to be brought, and got his pipe, tobacco and lighter
out of it. The woman brought a stool and set it beside the bed to put things
on. The lighter opened her eyes a trifle, and she said something, and he said
something in a polite voice, and she went back to her knitting. He looked at
the tunic; it was tom and blood-soaked on the left side, and the badge was
leadsplashed and twisted. That was why he was still alive. The old priest and the girl were in about an hour later.
This time she was wearing a red and gray knit frock that could have gone into
Bergdorf Goodman’s window with a $200 price-tag any day, though the dagger on
her belt wasn’t exactly Fifth Avenue. They had slates and soapstone sticks with
them; paper evidently hadn’t been rediscovered yet. They greeted him, then
pulled up chairs and got down to business. First, they taught him the words for you and me and he and
she, and, when he had that, names. The girl was Rylla. The old priest was Xentos.
The younger priest, who dropped in for a look at the patient, was Mytron. The
names, he thought, sounded Greek; it was the only point of resemblance in the
language. Calvin Morrison puzzled them. Evidently they didn’t have surnames,
here and now. They settled on calling him Kalvan. There was a lot of picture
drawing on the slates, and play-acting for verbs, which was fun. Both Rylla and
Xentos smoked; Rylla’s pipe, which she carried on her belt with her dagger, had
a silver-inlaid redstone bowl and a cane stem. She was intrigued by his Zippo,
and showed him her own lighter. It was a tinderbox, with a flint held down by a
spring against a quarter-circular striker pushed by hand and returned by
another spring for another push. With a spring to drive instead of return the
striker it would have done for a gunlock. By noon, they were able to tell him
that he was their fiend because he had killed their enemies, which seemed to be
the definitive test of friendship, here-and-now, and he was able to assure
Rylla that he didn’t blame her for shooting him in the skirmish on the road. They were back in the afternoon, accompanied by a gentleman
with a gray imperial, wearing a garment like a fur-collared bathrobe and a
sword-belt over it. He had a most impressive gold chain around his neck. His
name was Ptosphes, and after much sign-talk and picture-making, it emerged that
he was Rylla’s father, and also Prince of this place. This place, it seemed,
was Hostigos. The raiders with whom he had fought had come from a place called
Nostor, to the north and east. Their Prince was named Gormoth, and Gormoth was
not well thought of in Hostigos. The next day, he was up in a chair, and they began giving
him solid food, and wine to drink. The wine was excellent; so was the local tobacco.
Maybe he’d get used to sassafras tea instead of coffee. The food was good,
though sometimes odd. Bacon and eggs, for instance; the eggs were turkey eggs.
Evidently they didn’t have chickens, here-and-now. They had plenty of game,
though. The game must have come back nicely after the atomic wars. Rylla was in to see him twice a day, sometimes alone and
sometimes with Xentos, or with a big man with a graying beard, Chartiphon, who
seemed to be Ptosphe’s top soldier. He always wore a sword, long and heavy,
with a two hand grip; not a real two-hander, but what he’d known as a
hand-and-a-half, or bastard, sword. Often he wore a gilded back-and-breast,
ornately wrought but nicked and battered. Sometimes, too, he visited alone, or
with a young cavalry officer, Harmakros. Harmakros wore a beard, too, obviously copied after Prince
Ptosphes’s. He decided to stop worrying about getting a shave; you could wear a
beard, here-and-now, and nobody’d think you were either an Amishman or a
beatnik. Harmakros had been on the patrol that had hit the Nostori raiders from
behind at the village, but, it appeared, Rylla had been in command. “The gods,” Chartiphon explained, “did not give our Prince a
son. A Prince should have a son, to rule after him, so our little Rylla must be
as a son to her father.” The gods, he thought, ought to provide Prince Ptosphes with
a son-in-law, name of Calvin Morrison. or just Kalvan. He made up his mind to
give the gods some help on that. There was another priest in to see him occasionally a red-nosed,
graybearded character named Tharses, who had a slight limp and a scarred face.
One look was enough to tell which god he served; he wore a light shirt of
finely linked mail and a dagger and a spiked mace on his belt, and a wolfskin
hood topped with a jewel-eyed wolf head. As soon as he came in, he would toss
that aside, and as soon as he sat down somebody would provide him with a drink.
He almost always had a cat or a dog trailing him. Everybody called him Uncle
Wolf. Chartiphon showed him a map, elaborately illuminated on
parchment. Hostigos was all Center County, the southern comer of Clinton, and all Lycoming south of the Bald Eagles. Hostigos Town was exactly on the site
of other when Bellefonte; they were at Tarr-Hostigos, or Hostigos Castle, overlooking it from the end of the mountain east of the gap. To the south, the valley
of the Juniata, the Besh, was the Princedom of Beshta, ruled by a Prince
Balthar. Nostor was Lycoming County north of the Bald Eagles, Tioga County to the north, and parts of Northumberland and Montour Counties, to the forks of
the Susquehanna. Nostor Town would be about Hughesville. Potter and McKean Counties were Nyklos, ruled by a Prince Armanes. Blair and parts of Clearfield, Huntington and Bedford Counties made up Sask, whose prince was called
Sarrask. Prince Gormoth of Nostor was a deadly enemy. Armanes was a
friendly neutral. Sarrask of Sask was no friend of Hostigos; Balthar of Beshta
was no friend of anybody’s. On a bigger map, he saw that all this was part of the Great
Kingdom of Hos-Harphax—all of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and southern New Jersey—ruled by a King Kaiphranos at Harphax City, at the mouth of the Susquehanna, the
Harph. No, he substituted—just reigned over lightly. To judge from what he’d
seen on the night of his arrival, King Kaiphranos’s authority would be enforced
for about a day’s infantry march around his capital and ignored elsewhere. He had a suspicion that Hostigos was in a bad squeeze
between Nostor and Sask. He could hear the sounds of drilling soldiers every
day, and something was worrying these people. Too often, while Rylla was
laughing with him—she was teaching him to read, now, and that was fun—she would
remember something she wanted to forget, and then her laughter would be
strained. Chartiphon seemed always preoccupied; at times he’d forget, for a moment,
what he’d been talking about. And he never saw Ptosphes smile. Xentos showed him a map of the world. The world, it seemed,
was round, but flat like a pancake. Hudson’s Bay was in the exact center, North America was shaped rather like India, Florida ran almost due east, and Cuba north and south. Asia was attached to North America, but it was all blankly unknown.
An illimitable ocean surrounded everything. Europe, Africa and South America simply weren’t. Xentos wanted him to show the country from whence he had
come. there’d been expecting that to come up, sooner or later, and it had
worried him. He couldn’t risk lying, since he didn’t know on what point he
might be slipped up, so he had decided to tell the truth, tailored to local
beliefs and preconceptions. Fortunately, he and the old priest were alone at
the time. He put his finger down on central Pennsylvania. Xentos
thought he misunderstood. “No, Kalvan. This is your home now, and we want you to stay
with us always. But from what place did you come?” “Here,” he insisted. “But from another time, a thousand
years in the future. I had an enemy, an evil sorcerer, of great power. Another
sorcerer, who was not my friend but was my enemy’s enemy, put a protection
about me, so that I might not be sorcerously slain. So my enemy twisted time
for me, and hurled me far back into the past, before my first known ancestor
had been born, and now here I am and here I must stay.” Xentos’s hand described a quick circle around the white star
on his breast, and he muttered rapidly. Another universal constant. “How terrible! Why, you have been banished as no man ever
was!” “Yes. I do not like to speak, or even think, of it, but it
is right that you should know. Tell Prince Ptosphes, and Princess Rylla, and
Chartiphon, pledging them to secrecy, and beg them not to speak of it to me. I
must forget my old life, and make a new one here and now. For all others, it
may be said that I am from a far country. From here,.” He indicated what ought
to be the location of Korea on the blankness of Asia. “I was there, once,
fighting in a great war.” “Ah! I knew you had been a warrior.” Xentos hesitated, then
asked “Do you also know sorcery9” “No. My father was a priest, as you are, and our priests
hated sorcery.” Xentos nodded in agreement with that. “He wished me also to
become a priest, but I knew that I would not be a good one, so when this war
came, I left my studies and joined the army of my Great King, Truman, and went
away to fight. After the war, I was a warrior to keep the peace in my own
country.” Xentos nodded again, “If one cannot be a good priest, one
should not be a priest at all, and to be a good warrior is the next best thing.
What gods did your people worship?” “Oh, my people had many gods. There was Conformity, and
Authority, and Expense Account, and Opinion. And there was Status, whose
symbols were many, and who rode in the great chariot Cadillac, which was almost
a god itself And there was Atom-bomb, the dread destroyer, who would some day
come to end the world. None were very good gods, and I worshiped none of them.
Tell me about your gods, Xentos.” Then he filled his pipe and lit it with the tinderbox that replaced
his now fuelless Zippo. He didn’t need to talk any more; Xentos was telling him
about his gods. There was Dram, to whom all men and all other gods bowed; he
was a priest of Dralm himself. Yirtta Allmother, the source of all life. Galzar
the war god all of whose priests were called Uncle Wolf; lame Tranth, the
craft-man god; fickle Lytris, the weather goddess; all the others. “And Styphon,” he added grudgingly. “Styphon is an evil god
and evil men serve him, but to them he gives wealth and great power.” AFTER that, he began noticing a subtle change in manner toward
him. Occasionally he caught Rylla regarding him in awe tinged with compassion.
Chartiphon merely clasped his hand and said, “You’ll like it here, Lord Kalvan.”
It amused him that he had accepted the title as though born to it. Prince Ptosphes
said casually, “Xentos tells me there are things you don’t want to talk about.
Nobody will speak of them to you. We’re all happy that you’re with us; we’d
like you to make this your home always.” The others treated him with profound respect; the story for
public consumption was that he was a Prince from a distant country, beyond the Western Ocean and around the Cold Lands, driven from his throne by treason. That was the
ancient and forgotten land of wonder; that was the Home of the Gods. And Xentos
had told Mytron, and Mytron told everybody else, that the Lord Kalvan had been
sent to Hostigos by Dralm. As soon as he was on his feet again, they moved him to a
suite of larger rooms, and gave him personal servants. There were clothes for
him, more than he had ever owned at one time in his life, and fine weapons.
Rylla contributed a pair of her own pistols, all of two feet long but no
heavier than his Colt .38-special, the barrels tapering to almost paper
thinness at the muzzles. The locks worked with the tinderboxes, flint held
tightly against moving striker, like wheel-locks but with a simpler and more
efficient mechanism. “I shot you with one of them,” she said. “If you hadn’t,” he said, “I’d have ridden on, after the
fight, and never come to Tarr-Hostigos.” “Maybe it would have been better for you if you had.” “No, Rylla. This is the most wonderful thing that ever happened
to me.” As soon as he could walk unaided, he went down and outside to watch the
soldiers drilling. They had nothing like uniforms, except blue and red scarves
or sashes, Prince Ptosphes’ colors. The flag of Hostigos was a blue halberd
head on a red field. The infantry wore canvas jacks sewn with metal plates, or
brigantines, and a few had mail shirts; their helmets weren’t unlike the one he
had worn in Korea. A few looked like regulars; most of them were peasant levies.
Some had long pikes; more had halberds or hunting-spears or scythe-blades with
the tangs straightened and fitted to eight-foot staves, or woodcutters’ axes
with four-foot halves. There was about one firearm to three polearms. Some were
huge muskets, five to six feet long, 8- to 6-bore, aimed and fired from rests.
There were arquebuses, about the size and weight of an M1 Garrand, 16- to
20-bore, and calivers about the size of the Brown Bess musket of the Revolution
and the Napoleonic Wars. All were fitted with the odd back-acting flintlocks;
he wondered which had been adapted from which, the gunlock or the tinderbox.
There were also quite a few crossbowmen. The cavalry wore high-combed helmets and cuirasses; they
were armed with swords and pistols, a pair in saddle-holsters and, frequently,
a second pair down the boot-tops. Most of them also carried short musketoons or
lances. They all seemed to be regulars. One thing puzzled him while the
crossbowmen practiced constantly, he never saw a firearm discharged at a
target. Maybe a powder-shortage was one of the things that was worrying the people
here. The artillery was laughable; it would have been long out of
date in the sixteenth century of his own time. The guns were all wrought-iron,
built up by welding bars together and strengthened with shrunk-on iron rings.
They didn’t have trunnions; evidently nobody here-and-now had ever thought of
that. What passed for field-pieces were mounted on great timbers, like
oversized gunstocks, and hauled on four-wheel carts. They ran from four to
twelve pound bore. The fixed guns on the castle walls were bigger, some huge
bombards firing fifty, one hundred, and even two-hundred pound stone balls. Fifteenth century stuff; Henry V had taken Harfleur with
just as good, and John of Bedford had probably bombarded Orleans with better.
He decided to speak to Chartiphon about this. He took the broadsword he had captured on the night of his advent
here-and-now to the castle blacksmith, to have it ground down into a rapier..
The blacksmith thought he was crazy. He found a pair of wooden practice swords
and went outside with a cavalry lieutenant to demonstrate. Immediately, the
lieutenant wanted a rapier, too. The blacksmith promised to make real ones, to
his specifications, for both of them. His was finished the next evening, and by
that time the blacksmith was swamped with orders for rapiers. Almost everything these people used could be made in the
workshops inside the walls of Tarr-Hostigos, or in Hostigos Town, and he seemed to have an unlimited expense-account with them. He began to wonder what,
besides being the guest from the Land of the Gods, he was supposed to do to
earn it. Nobody mentioned that; maybe they were waiting for him to mention it. He brought the subject up, one evening, in Prince Ptosphes’s
study, where he and the Prince and Rylla and Xentos and Chartiphon were smoking
over a flagon of after-dinner wine. “You have enemies on both sides—Gormoth of Nostor and
Sarrask of Sask—and that’s not good. You have taken me in and made me one of
you. What can I do to help against them?” “Well, Kalvan,” Ptosphes said, “perhaps you could better
tell us that. We don’t want to talk of what distresses you, but you must come
of a very wise people. You’ve already taught us new things, like the
thrusting-sword”—he looked admiringly at the new rapier he had laid aside and
what you’ve told Chartiphon about mounting cannon. What else can you teach us?” Quite a lot, he thought. There had been one professor at Princeton whose favorite pupil he had been, and who had been his favorite teacher. A
history prof, and an unusual one. Most academic people at the middle of the
twentieth century took the same attitude toward war that their Victorian
opposite numbers had toward sex one of those deplorable facts nice people don’t
talk about, and maybe if you don’t look at the horrid thing it’ll go away. This
man had been different. What happened in the cloisters and the guild-halls and
the parliaments and council-chambers was important, but none of them went into
effect until ratified on the battlefield. So he had emphasized the military
aspect of history in a freshman from Pennsylvania named Morrison, a divinity
student, of all unlikely things. So, while he should have been studying
homiletics and scriptural exegesis and youth-organization methods, that
freshman, and a year later that sophomore, had been reading Sir Charles Oman’s
4rt of War. “Well, I can’t tell you how to make weapons like that
six-shooter of mine, or ammunition for it,” he began, and then tried, as simply
as possible, to ex plain about mass production and machine industry. They only
stared in incomprehension and wonder. “I can show you a few things you can do
with the things you have. For instance, we cut spiral grooves inside the bores
of our guns, to make the bullet spin. Such guns shoot harder, straighter and
farther than smoothbores. I can show you how to build cannon that can be moved
rapidly and loaded and fired much more rapidly than what you have. And another
thing.” He mentioned never having seen any practice firing. “You have very
little powder—fireseed, you call it. Is that it?” “There isn’t enough fireseed in all Hostigos to load all the
cannon of this castle for one shot,” Chartiphon told him. “And we can get no
more. The priests of Styphon have put us under the ban and will let us have
none, and they send cartload after cartload to Nostor.” “You mean you get your fireseed from the priests of Styphon?
Can’t you make your own?” They all looked at him as though he was a cretin. “Nobody
can make fireseed but the priests of Styphon,” Xentos told him. “That was what
I meant when I told you that Styphon’s House has great power. With Styphon’s
aid, they alone can make it, and so they have great power, even over the Great
Kings.” “Well I’ll be Dralm-damned!” He gave Styphon’s House that
grudging respect any good cop gives a really smart crook. Brother, what a
racket! No wonder this country, here-and-now, was divided into five Great
Kingdoms, and each split into a snakepit of warring Princes and petty barons.
Styphon’s House wanted it that way; it was good for business. A lot of things
became clear. For instance, if Styphon’s House did the weaponeering as well as
the powder-making, it would explain why small-arms were so good; they’d see to
it that nobody without fireseed stood an outside chance against anybody with
it. But they’d keep the brakes on artillery development. Styphon House wouldn’t
want bloody or destructive wars—they’d be bad for business. Just wars that
burned lots of fireseed; that would be why there were all these great
powder-hogs of bombards around. And no wonder everybody in Hostigos had monkeys on their
backs. They knew they were facing the short end of a war of extermination. He
set down his goblet and laughed. “You think nobody but those priests of Styphon can make fireseed?”
There was nobody here that wasn’t security-cleared for the inside version of
his cover-story. “Why, in my time, everybody, even the children, could do that.”
(Well, children who’d gotten as far as high school chemistry; he’d almost been
expelled, once) “I can make fireseed right here on this table.” He refilled his
goblet. “But it is a miracle; only by the power of Styphon...” Xentos
began. “Styphon’s a big fake!” he declared. “A false god; his
priests are lying swindlers.” That shocked Xentos; good or bad, a god was a god
and shouldn’t be talked about like that. “You want to see me do it? Mytron has
everything in his dispensary I’ll need. I’ll want sulfur, and saltpeter.”
Mytron prescribed sulfur and honey (they had no molasses here-and-now), and
saltpeter was supposed to cool the blood. “And charcoal, and a brass mortar and
pestle, and a flour-sieve and something to sift into, and a pair of
balance-scales.” He picked up an unused goblet. “This’ll do to mix it in.” Now they were all staring at him as though he—had three
heads, and a golden crown on each one. “Go on, man! Hurry!” Ptosphes told Xentos. “Have everything
brought here at once.” Then the Prince threw back his head and laughed—maybe a trifle
hysterically, but it was the first time Morrison had heard Ptosphes laugh at
all. Chartiphon banged his fist on the table. “Ha, Gormoth!” he cried. “Now see whose head goes up over whose
gate!” Xentos went out. Morrison asked for a pistol, and Ptosphes brought him one
from a cabinet behind him. It was loaded; opening the pan, he spilled out the
priming on a sheet of parchment and touched a lighted splinter to it. It
scorched the parchment, which it shouldn’t have done, and left too much black
residue. Styphon wasn’t a very honest powder maker; he cheapened his product
with too much charcoal and not enough saltpeter. Morrison sipped from his
goblet. Saltpeter was seventy-five percent, charcoal fifteen, sulfur ten. After a while Xentos returned, accompanied by Mytron, bringing
a bucket of charcoal, a couple of earthen jars, and the other things. Xentos
seemed slightly dazed; Mytron was frightened and making a good game try at not
showing it. He put Mytron to work grinding saltpeter in the mortar. The sulfur
was already pulverized. Finally, he had about a half pint of it mixed. “But it’s just dust,” Chartiphon objected. “Yes. It has to
be moistened, worked into dough, pressed into cakes, dried, and ground. We can’t
do all that here. But this will flash.” Up to about 1500, all gunpowder had
been like that—meal powder, they had called it. It had been used in cannon for
a long time after grain powder was being used in small arms. Why, in 1588, the
Duke of Medina-Sidonia had been very happy that all the powder for the Armada
was coined arquebus powder, and not meal powder. He primed the pistol with a
pinch from the mixing goblet, aimed at a half-burned log in the fireplace, and
squeezed. Outside somebody shouted, feet pounded up the hall, and a guard with
a halberd burst into the room. “The Lord Kalvan is showing us something about a pistol,”
Ptosphes told him. “There may be more shots; nobody is to be alarmed.” “All right,” he said, when the guard had gone out and closed
the door. “Now let’s see how it’ll fire.” He loaded with a blank charge,
wadding it with a bit of rag, and handed it to Rylla. “You fire the first shot.
This is a great moment in the history of Hostigos. I hope.” She pushed down the striker, set the flint down, aimed at
the fireplace, and squeezed. The report wasn’t quite as loud, but it did fire.
Then they tried it with a ball, which went a half inch into the log. Everybody
thought that was very good. The room was full of smoke, and they were all
coughing, but nobody cared. Chartiphon went to the door and shouted into the
hall for more wine. Rylla had her arms around him. “Kalvan! You really did it!”
she was saying. “But you said no prayers,” Mytron faltered. “You just made
fireseed.” “That’s right. And before long, everybody’ll be just making
fireseed. Easy as cooking soup.” And when that day comes, he thought, the
priests of Styphon will be out on the sidewalk, beating a drum for pennies. Chartiphon wanted to know how soon they could march against
Nostor. “It will take more fireseed than Kalvan can make on this table,”
Ptosphes told him. “We will need saltpeter, and sulfur, and charcoal. We will
have to teach people how to get the sulfur and the saltpeter for us, and how to
grind and mix them. We will need many things we don’t have now, and tools to
make them. And nobody knows all about this but Kalvan, and there is only one of
him.” Well, glory be! Somebody had gotten something from his lecture
on production, anyhow. “Mytron knows a few things, I think.” He pointed to the jars
of sulfur and saltpeter. “Where did you get these?” he asked. Mytron had gulped his first goblet of wine without taking it
from his lips. He had taken three gulps to the second. Now he was working on
his third, and coming out of shock nicely. It was about as he thought. The
saltpeter was found in crude lumps under manure-piles, then refined; the sulfur
was evaporated out of water from the sulfur springs in Wolf Valley. When that was mentioned, Ptosphes began cursing Styphon’s House bitterly. Mytron knew
both processes, on a quart-jar scale. He explained how much of both they would
need. “But that’ll take time.” Chartiphon objected. “And as soon
as Gormoth hears that we’re making our own fireseed, he’ll attack at once.” “Don’t let him hear about it. Clamp down the security.” He
had to explain about that. Counter-intelligence seemed to be unheard of,
here-and-now. “Have cavalry patrols on all the roads out of Hostigos. Let
anybody in, but let nobody out. Not just to Nostor; to Sask and Beshta, too.”
He thought for a moment. “And another thing. I’ll have to give orders people
aren’t going to like. Will I be obeyed?” “By anybody who wants to keep his head on his shoulders,”
Ptosphes said. “You speak with my voice.” “And mine, too!” Chartiphon cried, reaching his sword across
the table for him to touch the hilt. “Command me and I will obey, Lord Kalvan.” He established himself, the next morning, in a room inside
the main gateway to the citadel, across from the guardroom, a big flagstone-floored
place with the indefinable but unmistakable flavor of a police-court. The walls
were white plaster; he could write and draw diagrams on them with charcoal.
Nobody, here-and-now, knew anything about paper. He made a mental note to do
something about that, but no time for it now. Rylla appointed herself his
adjutant and general Girl Friday. He collected Mytron, the priest of Tranth,
all the master-craftsmen in Tarr-Hostigos, some of the craftsmen’s guild people
from Hostigos Town, a couple of Chartiphon’s officers, and a half dozen
cavalrymen to carry messages. Charcoal would be no problem—there was plenty of that,
burned exclusively in the iron-works in the Listra Valley and extensively
elsewhere. There was coal, from surface outcroppings to the north and west, and
it was used for a number of purposes, but the sulfur content made it unsuitable
for iron furnaces. He’d have to do something about coke some time. Charcoal for
gunpowder, he knew, ought to be willow or alder or something like that. He’d do
something about that, too, but at present he’d have to use what he had
available. For quantity evaporation of sulfur he’d need big iron pans,
and sheet metal larger than skillets and breastplates didn’t seem to exist. The
ironworks were forges, not rolling mills. So they’d have to beat the sheet-iron
in two-foot squares and weld them together like patch quilts. He and Mytron got
to work on planning the evaporation works. Unfortunately, Mytron was not
pictorial-minded, and made little or no sense of the diagrams he drew. Saltpeter could be accumulated all over. Manure-piles would
be the best source, and cellars and stables and underground drains. He set up a
saltpeter commission, headed by one of Chartiphon’s officers, with authority to
go any where and enter any place, and orders to behead any subordinate who
misused his powders and to deal just as summarily with anybody who tried to
obstruct or resist. Mobile units, wagons and oxcarts loaded with caldrons,
tubs, tools and the like, to go from farm to farm. Peasant women to be collected
and taught to leech nitrated soil and purify nitrates. Equipment, manufacture
of. Grinding mills there was plenty of water-power, and by good
fortune he didn’t have to invent the waterwheel. That was already in use, and
the master millwright understood what was needed in the way of converting a
gristmill to a fireseed mill almost at once. Special grinding equipment,
invention of Sifting screens, cloth. Mixing machines; these would be big
wine-casks, with counter-revolving paddlewheels inside. Presses to squeeze
dough into cakes. Mills to grind caked powder; he spent considerable thought on
regulations to prevent anything from striking a spark around them, with
bloodthirsty enforcement threats. During the morning he managed to grind up the cake he’d made
the evening before from what was left of the first experimental batch, running
it through a sieve to about FFFG fineness. A hundred grains of that drove a
ball from an 8-bore musket an inch deeper into a hemlock log than an equal
charge of Styphon’s best. By noon he was almost sure that almost all of his War Production
Board understood most of what he’d told them. In the afternoon there was a
meeting, in the outer bailey, of as many people who would be working on fireseed
production as could be gathered. There was an invocation of Dralm by Xentos,
and an invocation of Galzar by Uncle Wolf, and an invocation of Tranth by his
priest. Ptosphes spoke, emphasizing that the Lord Kalvan had full authority to
do anything, and would be backed to the limit, by the headsman if necessary.
Chartiphon made a speech, picturing the howling wilderness they would shortly
make of Nostor. (Prolonged cheering.) He made a speech, himself, emphasizing
that there was nothing of a supernatural nature whatever about fireseed,
detailing the steps of manufacture, and trying to give some explanation of what
made it explode. The meeting then broke up into small groups, everybody having
his own job explained to him. He was kept running back and forth, explaining to
the explainers. In the evening they had a feast. By that time he and Rylla
had gotten a rough table of organization charcoal onto the wall of his
headquarters. Of the next four days, he spent eighteen hours each in that
room, talking to six or eight hundred people. Some of them he suffered
patiently if not gladly; they were trying to do their best at something they’d
never been expected to do before. Some he had trouble with. The artisans’
guilds bickered with one another about jurisdiction, and they all complained
about peasants invading their crafts. The masters complained that the
journeymen and apprentices were becoming intractable, meaning that they’d
started thinking for themselves. The peasants objected to having their byres invaded
and their dunghills forked down, and to being put to unfamiliar work. The
landlords objected to having their peasants taken out of the fields, predicting
that the year’s crop would be lost. “Don’t worry about that,” he told them. “If we win, we’ll
eat Gormoth’s crops. If we lose, we’ll all be too dead to eat.” And the Iron Curtain went down. Within a few days, indignant
packtraders and wagoners were being collected in Hostigos Town, trapped for the
duration, protesting vehemently but unavailingly. Sooner or later, Gormoth and
Sarrask would begin to wonder why nobody was coming out of Hostigos, and would
send spies slipping through the woods to find out. Counterespionage; organize
soonest. And a few of his own spies in Sask and Nostor. And an anti-Styphon fifth
column in both princedoms. Discuss with Xentos. By the fifth day, the Wolf Valley sulfur-evaporation plant
was ready to go into operation, and saltpeter production was up to some ten
pounds a day. He put Mytron in charge at Tarr-Hostigos, hoping for something
better than the worst, and got into his new armor. He and Rylla and a half
dozen of Harmakros’s cavalrymen trotted out the gate and down the road from the
castle into Hostigos Gap. It was the first time he’d been outside the castle
since he had been brought there unconscious, tied onto a horse-litter. It was not until they were out of the gap and riding toward
the town, spread around the low hill above the big spring, that he turned in
his saddle to look back at the castle. For a moment he couldn’t be certain what
was wrong, but he knew something was. Then it struck him. There was no trace whatever of the great stone-quarries.
There should have been. No matter how many thousands of years had passed since
he had been in and out of that dome of shifting light that had carried him out
of his normal time, there would have been some evidence of quarrying there.
Normal erosion would have taken not thousands but hundreds of thousands’ of
years to obliterate those stark man-made cliffs, and enough erosion to have
done that would have reduced the whole mountain by half. I remembered how
unchanged the little cliff, under which he and Larry and Jack and Steve had
parked the car, had been when he had. emerged. No. That mountain had never been
quarried, at any time in the past. So he wasn’t in the future; that was sure. And he wasn’t in
the past, unless every scrap of history everybody had ever written or taught
was an organized lie, and that he couldn’t swallow. Then when the hell was he? Rylla had reined in her horse and stopped beside him. The
six troopers came to an unquestioning halt. “What is it, Kalvan?” “I was just. just thinking of the last time I saw this
place.” “You mustn’t think about that, any more.” Then, after a moment
“Was there somebody. somebody you didn’t want to leave?” He laughed. “No, Rylla. The only somebody like that is right
beside me now.” They shook their reins and started off again, the six
troopers clattering behind them. VERKAN Vall watched Tortha Karf spin the empty revolver
cartridge on his desk. It was a very valuable empty cartridge; it had taken
over forty days and cost ten thousand man-hours of crawling on hands and knees
and pawing among dead hemlock needles to find it. “That was a small miracle, Vall,” the Chief said. “Aryan-Transpacific?” “Oh, yes; we were sure of that from the beginning. Styphon’s
House Sub sector.” He gave the exact numerical designation of the time-line. “They’re
all basically alike; the language, culture, taboo and situation-response tapes
we have will do.” The Chief was fiddling with the selector for the map screen;
when he had gotten geographical area and run through level and sector, he lit
it with a map of eastern North America, divided into five Great Kingdoms.
First, Hos-Zygros—he chose to identify it in the terms the man he was hunting
would use—its capital equivalent with Quebec, taking in New England and
southeastern Canada to Lake Ontario. Second, Hos-Agrys New York, western Quebec Province and northern New Jersey. Third, Hos-Harphax, where the pickup incident had
occurred. Fourth, Hos-Ktenmos Virginia and North Carolina. Finally, Hos-Bletha,
south from there to the tip of Florida and west along the Gulf to Mobile Bay. And also Trygath, which was not Hos-, or great, in the Ohio Valley. Glancing at a note in front of him, Tortha Karf made a dot of light in the middle of
Hos-Harphax. “That’s it. Of course, that was over forty days ago. A man
can go a long way, even on foot, in that time.” The Chief knew that. “Styphon’s House,” he said. “That’s
that gunpowder theocracy, isn’t it. It was. He’d seen theocracies all over paratime, and liked
none of them; priests in political power usually made themselves insufferable,
worse than any secular despotism. Styphon’s House was a particularly nasty case
in point. About five centuries ago, Styphon had been a minor healer-god; still
was on most of Aryan-Transpacific. Some deified ancient physician, he supposed.
Then, on one time-line, some priest experimenting with remedies had mixed a
batch of saltpeter, sulfur and charcoals small batch, or he wouldn’t have
survived it. For a century or so, it had merely been a temple miracle,
and then the propellant properties had been discovered, and Styphon had gone
out of medical practice and into the munitions business. Priestly researchers
had improved the powder and designed and perfected weapons to use it. Nobody
had discovered fulminating powder and invented the percussion-cap, but they had
everything short of that. Now, through their monopoly on this essential tool
for maintaining or altering the political status quo, Styphon’s House ruled the
whole Atlantic seaboard, while the secular sovereigns merely reined. He wondered if Calvin Morrison knew how to make gunpowder,
and while he was wondering silently, the Chief did so aloud, adding “If he does, we won’t have any trouble locating him. We may
afterward, though.” That was how pickup jobs usually were, on the exit end; the
pickup either made things easy or impossibly difficult. Many of these
paratemporal DP’s, suddenly hurled into an unfamiliar world, went hopelessly
insane, their minds refusing to cope with what common sense told them was
impossible. Others were quickly killed through ignorance. Others would be
caught by the locals, and committed to mental hospitals, imprisoned, sold as
slaves, executed as spies, burned as sorcerers, or merely lynched, depending on
local mores. Many accepted and blended into their new environment and sank into
traceless obscurity. A few created commotions and had to be dealt with. “Well,
we’ll find out. I’m going outtime myself to look into it.” “You don’t need to, Vall. You have plenty of detectives who
can do that.” He shook his head obstinately. “On Year-End Day, that’ll be
a hundred and seventy-four days, I’m going to be handcuffed to that chair you’re sitting in. Until then, I’m going to do as much outtime work as I possibly can.” He
leaned over and turned a dial on the map-selector, got a large-scale map of
Hos-Harphax and increased the magnification and limited the field. He pointed. “I’m
going in about there. In the mountains in Sask, next door. I’ll be a
pack-trader—they go everywhere and don’t have to account for themselves to
anybody. I’ll have a saddle-horse and three pack-horses loaded with wares. It’ll
take about five or six days to collect and verify what I’ll take with me. I’ll
travel slowly, to let word seep ahead of me. It may be that I’ll hear something
about this Morrison before I enter Hostigos.” “What’ll you do about him when you find him?” That would
depend. Sometimes a pickup could be taken alive, moved to Police Terminal on
the Fifth Level, given a complete memory obliteration, and then returned to his
own time-line. An amnesia case; that was always a credible explanation. Or he
would be killed with a sigma-ray needier, which left no traceable effects.
Heart failure or “He just died.” Amnesia and heart failure were wonderful
things, from the Paratime Police viewpoint. Anybody with any common sense would
accept either. Common sense was a wonderful thing, too. “Well, I don’t want to kill the fellow; after all, he’s a
police officer, too. But with the explanation we’re cobbling up for his disappearance,
returning him to his own time-line wouldn’t be any favor to him.” He paused,
thinking. “We’ll have to kill him, I’m afraid. He knows too much.” “What does he know, Vall?” “One, he’s seen the inside of a conveyer,, something completely
alien to his own culture’s science. Two, he knows he’s been shifted in time,
and time travel is a common science-fiction concept in his own world. If he can
disregard verbalisms about fantasies and impossibilities, he will deduce a race
of time-travelers. &’Only a moron, which no Pennsylvania State Police
officer is, would be so ignorant of his own world’s history as to think for a
moment that he’d been shifted into the past. And he’ll know he hasn’t been
shifted into the future, because that area, on all of Europo-American, is
covered with truly permanent engineering works of which he’ll find no trace. So
what does that leave?” “A lateral shift in time, and a race of lateral time
travelers,” the Chief said. “Why, that’s the Paratime Secret itself” THEY were feasting at Tarr-Hostigos that evening. All morning,
pigs and cattle had been driven in, lowing and squealing, to be slaughtered in
the outer bailey. Axes thudded for firewood; the roasting-pits were being
cleaned out from the last feast; casks of wine were coming up from the cellars.
Morrison wished the fireseed mills were as busy as the castle bakery and
kitchen. A whole day’s production shot to hell. He said as much to
Rylla. “But, Kalvan, they’re all so happy.” She was pretty happy, herself. “And
they’ve worked so hard.” He had to grant that, and maybe the morale gain would
offset the production loss. And they did have something to celebrate a Ml hundredweight
of fireseed, fifty percent better than Styphon’s Best, and half of it made in
the last two days. “It’s been so long since any of us had anything to be really
happy about,” she was saying. “When we’d have a feast, everybody’d try to get
drunk as soon as they could, to keep from thinking about what was coming. And
now maybe it won’t come at all.” And now, they were all drunk on a hundred pounds of black
powder. Five thousand caliver or arquebus rounds at most. They’d have to do
better than twenty-five pounds a day—get it up above a hundred at least.
Saltpeter production was satisfactory, and Mytron had figured a couple of
angles at the evaporation plant that practically gave them sulfur running out
their ears. The bottleneck was mixing and caking, and grinding the cakes. That
meant more machinery, and there weren’t enough men competent to build it. It
would mean stopping work on the other things. The carriages for the new light four-pounders. The
iron-works had turned out four of them, so far—welded wrought-iron, of course,
since nobody knew how to cast iron, here-and-now, and neither did he, but made
with trunnions. They only weighed four hundred pounds, the same as Gustavus
Adolphus’s, and with four horses the one prototype already completed could keep
up with cavalry on any kind of decent ground. He was happier about that little
gun than anything else—except Rylla, of course. And they were putting trunnions on some old stuff, big
things, close to a ton metal-weight but only six and eight pounders, and he
hoped to get field carriages under them, too. They’d take eight horses apiece,
and they would never keep up with cavalry. And rifling-benches—long wooden frames in which the barrel
would be clamped, with grooved wooden cylinders to slide in guides to rotate
the cutting-heads. One turn in four feet—that, he remembered, had been the
usual pitch for the Kentucky rifles. So far, he had one in the Tarr-Hostigos
gunshop. And drilling troops—he had to do most of that himself, too,
till he could train some officers. Nobody knew anything about foot-drill by
squads; here-and-now troops maneuvered in columns of droves. It would take a year to build the sort of an army he wanted.
And Gormoth of Nostor would give him a month, at most. He brought that up at the General Staff meeting that
afternoon. Like rifled firearms and trunnions on cannon, General Staffs hadn’t
been invented here-and-now, either. You just hauled a lot of peasants together
and armed them; that was Mobilization. You picked a reasonably passable march-route;
that was Strategy. You lined up your men and shot or hit anything in front of
you; that was Tactics. And Intelligence was what mounted scouts, if any,
brought in at the last minute from a mile ahead. It cheered him to recall that
that would probably be Prince Gormoth’s notion of the Art of War. Why, with
twenty thousand men, Gustavus Adolphus, or the Duke of Parma, or Gonzalo de
C6rdoba could have gone through all five of these Great Kingdoms like a dose of
croton oil. And what Turenne could have done! Ptosphes and Rylla were present as Prince and
Heiress-Apparent. The Lord Kalvan was Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of
Hostigos. Chartiphon, gratifyingly unresentful at seeing an outlander promoted
over his head, was Field Marshal and Chief of Operations. An elderly “captain”—actual
functioning rank about brigadier-general—was quartermaster, paymaster, drillmaster,
inspector-general and head of the draft board. A civilian merchant, who wasn’t
losing any money at it, had charge of procurement and supply. Mytron was
surgeon-general, and the priest of Tranth had charge of production. Uncle Wolf
Tharses was Chief of Chaplains. Harmakros was G2, mainly because his cavalry
were patrolling the borders and keeping the Iron Curtain tight, but he’d have to
be moved out of that. He was too good a combat man to be stuck with a Pentagon
Job, and Xentos was now doing most of the Intelligence work. Besides his
ecclesiastical role as high priest of Dralm, and his political function as
Ptosphes’ Chancellor, he was in contact with his co-religionists in Nostor, all
of whom hated Styphon’s House inexpressibly and were organizing an active Fifth
Column. Like Iron Curtain, Fifth Column was now part of the local lexicon. The first blaze of optimism, he was pleased to observe, had
died down on the upper echelon. “Dralm-damn fools!” Chartiphon was growling. “One keg of
fireseed—they’ll want to shoot that all away tonight celebrating—and they think
we’re saved. Making our own fireseed’s given us a chance, and that’s all.” He
swore again, this time an oath that made Xentos frown. “We have three thousand
under arms; if we take all the boys with bows and arrows and all the old
peasants with pitchforks, we might get that up to five thousand, but not
another child or dotard more. And Gormoth’ll have ten thousand four thousand of
his own people and those six thousand mercenaries he has.” “I’d call it eight thousand,” Harmakros said. “He won’t take
the peasants out of the fields; he needs them there.” “Then he won’t wait till the harvest’s in; he’ll invade
sooner,” Ptosphes said. He looked at the relief-map on the long table. The idea that
maps were important weapons of war was something else he’d had to introduce.
This one was only partly finished; he and Rylla had done most of the work on
it, in time snatched from everything else that ought to have been done last
week at the latest. It was based on what he remembered from the US. Geological Survey quadrangle sheets he’d used on the State Police, on interviews with
hundreds of soldiers, woodsmen, peasants and landlords, and on a good bit of
personal horseback reconnaissance. Gormoth could invade up the Li star Valley, crossing the
river at the equivalent of Lock Haven, but that wouldn’t give him a third of
Hostigos. The whole line of the Bald Eagles was strongly defended everywhere.
but at Dombra Gap. Tarr-Dombra guarding it, had been betrayed seventy-five
years ago to Prince Gormoth’s grandfather, and Sevenhills Valley with it. “Then we’ll have to do something to delay him. This Tarr-Dombra.
say we take that, and occupy Sevenhills Valley. That’ll cut off his best
invasion route.” They all stared at him, just as he’d been stared at when he’d
first spoken of making fireseed. It was Chartiphon who first found his voice “Man! You never saw Tarr-Dombra or you wouldn’t talk like
that! Nobody can take Tarr-Dombra unless they buy it, like Prince Galtrath did,
and we haven’t enough money for that.” “That’s right,” said the retread “captain” who was GI and
part of G4. “It’s smaller than Tarr-Hostigos, of course, but it’s twice as
strong.” “Do the Nostori think it can’t be taken, too? Then it can
be. Prince, are there any plans of that castle here?” “Well, yes. On a big scroll, in one of my coffers. It was my
grandfather’s, and we’ve always hoped that some time. “ “I’ll want to see that. Later will do. Do you know if any
changes have been made since the Nostori got it?” None on the outside, at least. He asked about the garrison;
five hundred, Harmakros thought. A hundred of Gormoth’s regulars, and four
hundred mercenary cavalry to patrol Sevenhills Valley and raid into Hostigos. “Then we stop killing raiders who can be taken alive.
Prisoners can be made to talk.” He turned to Xentos. “Is there a priest of
Dralm in Sevenhills Valley? Can you get in touch with him, and will he help us?
Explain to him that this is not a war against Prince Gormoth, but against
Styphon’s House.” “He knows that, and he will help as much as he can, but he
can’t get into Tarr-Dombra. There is a priest of Galzar there for the
mercenaries, and a priest of Styphon for the lord of the castle and his
gentlemen, but among the Nostori, Dralm is but a god for the peasants.” Yes, and that rankled, too. The priests of Dralm would help,
all right. “Good enough. He can talk to people who can get inside, can’t he?
And he can send messages, and organize an espionage apparatus. I want to know
everything that can be found out about Tarr-Dombra, no matter how trivial.
Particularly, I want to know the guard-routine, and I want to know how the castle
is supplied. And I want it observed at all times. Harmakros, you find men to do
that. I take it we can’t storm the place. Then we’ll have to get in by
trickery.” VERKAN the pack-trader went up the road, his horse plodding
unhurriedly and the three pack-horses on the lead-line trailing behind. He was
hot and sticky under his steel back-and-breast, and sweat ran down his cheeks
from under his helmet into his new beard, but nobody ever saw an unarmed
packtrader, so he had to endure it. A paratimer had to be adaptable, if nothing
else. The armor was from an adjoining, nearly identical time-line, and so were
his clothes, the short carbine in the saddle-sheath, his sword and dagger, the
horse-gear, and the loads of merchandise—all except the bronze coffer on one
pack-load. Reaching the brow of the hill, he started slowly down the
other side, and saw a stir in front of a whitewashed and thatch-roofed roadside
cottage. Men mounting horses, sun-glints on armor, and the red and blue colors
of Hostigos. Another cavalry post, the third since he’d crossed the border from
Sask. The other two had ignored him, but this crowd meant to stop him. Two
had lances, and a third a musketoon, and a fourth, who seemed to be in command,
had his holsters open and his right hand on his horse’s neck. Two more, at the
cottage, were getting into the road on foot with musketoons. He pulled up; the pack-horses, behind, came to a
well-trained stop. “Good cheer, soldiers,” he greeted. “Good cheer, trader,” the man with his hand close to his
pistol-butt replied. “From Sask?” “Sask latest. From Ulthor, this trip; Grefftscharr by birth.”
Ulthor was the lake port in the north; Grefftscharr was the kingdom around the Great Lakes. “I’m for Agrys City.” One of the troopers chuckled. The sergeant asked “Have you
fireseed?” He touched the flask on his belt. “About twenty charges. I was going
to buy some in Sask Town, but when the priests heard I was passing through
Hostigos they’d sell me none. Doesn’t Styphon’s House like you Hostigi?” “We’re under the ban.” The sergeant didn’t seem greatly distressed
about it. “But I’m afraid you’ll not get out of here soon. We’re on the edge of
war with Nostor, and Lord Kalvan wants no tales carried to him, so he’s ordered
that none may leave Hostigos.” He cursed; that was expected of him. The Lord Kalvan, now? “I’d
feel ill-used, too, in your place, but you know how it is,” the sergeant
sympathized. “When lords command, common folk obey, if they want to keep their
heads on. You’ll make out all right, though. You’ll find ready sale for all
your wares at good price, and then if you’re skilled at any craft, work for
good pay. Or you might take the colors. You’re well horsed and armed, and Lord
Kalvan welcomes all such.” “Lord Kalvan? I thought Ptosphes was Prince of Hostigos. Or
have there been changes?” “No; Dralm bless him, Ptosphes is still our Prince. But the
Lord Kalvan, Dralm bless him, too, is our new war leader. It’s said he’s a
Prince himself, from a far land, which he well could be. It’s also said he’s a
sorcerer, but that I doubt.” “Yes. Sorcerers are more heard of than seen,” Vall
commented. “Are there many more traders caught here as I am?” “Oh, the Styphon’s own lot of them; the town’s full of them.
You’d best go to the Sign of the Red-Halberd; the better sort of them all stay
there. Give the landlord my name”—he repeated it several times to make sure it
would be remembered——“and you’ll fare well.” He chatted pleasantly with the sergeant and his troopers,
about the quality of local wine and the availability of girls and the prices
things fetched at sale, and then bade them good luck and rode on. The Lord Kalvan, indeed! Deliberately, he willed himself no
longer to think of the man in any other way. And a Prince from a far country,
no less. He passed other farmhouses; around them some work was going on. Men
were forking down dunghills and digging under them, and caldrons steamed over
fires. He added that to the cheerfulness with which the cavalrymen had accepted
the ban of Styphon’s House. Styphon, it appeared, had acquired a competitor.. Hostigos Town, he saw, was busier and more crowded than Sask Town had been. There were no
mercenaries around, but many local troops. The streets were full of carts and
wagons, and the artisans’ quarter was noisy with the work of smiths and joiners.
He found the inn to which the sergeant had directed him, mentioning his name to
make sure he got his rake-off, put up his horses, safe-stowed his packs and had
his saddlebags, valise and carbine carried to his room. He followed the inn-servant
with the bronze coffer on his shoulder. He didn’t want anybody else handling
that and finding out how light it was. When he was alone, he went to the coffer, an almost
featureless rectangular block without visible lock or hinges, and pressed his thumbs
on two bright steel ovals on the top. The photoelectric lock inside responded
to his thumbprint patterns with a click, and the lid rose slowly. Inside were
four globes of gleaming coppery mesh, a few instruments with dials and knobs,
and a little sigma-ray needier, a ladies’ model, small enough to be covered by
his hand but as deadly as the big one he usually carried. There was also an antigrav unit attached to the bottom of
the coffer; it was on, with a tiny red light glowing. When he switched it off,
the floorboards under the coffer creaked. Lined with collapsed metal, it now
weighed over half a ton. He pushed down the lid which only his thumbprints
could open, and heard the lock click. The command-room downstairs was crowded and noisy. He found
a vacant place at one of the long tables, across from a man with a bald head
and a straggling red beard, who grinned at him. “New fish in the net?” he asked. “Welcome, brother. Where
from?” “Ulthor, with three horse-loads of Grefftscharr wares. My
name’s Verkan.” “Mine’s Skranga.” The bald man was from Agrys City, on the island at the mouth of the Hudson. He had been trading for horses in the
Trygath country. “These people here took the lot, fifty of them. Paid me less
than I asked, but more than I expected, so I guess I got a fair price. I had
four Trygathi herders—they all took the colors in the cavalry. I’m working in
the fireseed mill, till they let me leave here’ “The what?” He made his voice sound incredulous. “You mean
they’re making their own fireseed? But only the priests of Styphon can do that.” Skranga laughed. “That’s what I used to think, too, but anybody
can do it. It’s easy as boiling maple-sugar. See, they get saltpeter from under
dunghills... “ He detailed the process step by step. The man—next to him
joined the conversation; he even understood, roughly, the theory the charcoal
was what burned, the sulfur was the kindling, and the saltpeter made the air to
blow up the fire and blow the bullet out of the gun. And there was no secrecy
about it, Vall mused as he listened. If a man who had been a constabulary
corporal, and a combat soldier before that, wasn’t keeping any better security
it was because he didn’t care. Lord Kalvan just didn’t want word getting into
Nostor till he had enough fireseed to fight a war with. “I bless Dralm for bringing me here,” Skranga was saying. “When
I can leave here, I’m going somewhere and set up making fireseed myself. Hos-Ktemnos—no,
I don’t want too close to Styphon’s House Upon Earth. Maybe Hos-Bletha, or
Hos-Zygros. But I’ll make myself rich at it. So can you, if you keep your eyes
and ears open.” The Agrysi finished his meal, said he had to go back to
work, and left. A cavalry officer, a few places down, promptly picked up his
goblet and flagon and moved into the vacated seat. “You just got in?” he asked. “From Nostor?” “No, from Sask.” The answer seemed to disappoint the cavalryman;
he went into the Ulthor-Grefftscharr routine again. “How long will I have to
stay here?” The officer shrugged. “Dralm and Galzar only know. Till we
fight the Nostori and beat them. What do the Saski think we’re doing here?” “Waiting for Gormoth to cut your throats. They don’t know
you’re making your own fireseed.” The officer laughed. “Ha! Some of those buggers’ll get
theirs cut, if Prince Sarrask doesn’t mind his step. You say you have three
pack-loads of Grefftscharr wares. Any sword-blades?” “About a dozen; I sold a few in Sask Town. Some daggers, a
dozen gunlocks, four good shirts of rivet-link mail, a lot of bullet-moulds.
And jewelry, and tools, and brassware.” “Well, take your stuff up to Tarr-Hostigos. They have a
little fair in the outer bailey each evening; you can get better prices from
the castle-folk than here in town. Go early. Use my name.” He gave it, and his
cavalry unit. “See Captain Harmakros; he’ll be glad of any news you can give
him.” Late in the afternoon, he re-packed his horses and went up
the road to the castle on the mountain above the gap. The workshops along the
wall of the outer bailey were all busy. Among other things, he saw a new
carriage for a field-piece being put together—not a four-wheel cart, but two
big wheels and a trail, to be hauled with a limber, which was also being built.
The gun was a welded iron four-pounder, which was normal for Styphon’s House
Subsector, but it had trunnions, which was not. Lord Kalvan, again. Like all the local gentry, Harmakros had a small neat beard.
His armor was rich but commendably well battered; his sword, instead of the
customary cut-and-thrust (mostly cut) broadsword, was a long rapier, quite new.
Kalvan had evidently introduced the revolutionary concept that swords had
points, which should be used. He asked a few exploratory questions, then
listened to a detailed account of what the Grefftscharr trader had seen in Sask, including mercenary companies Prince Sarrask had lately hired, with the names of the
captains. “You’ve kept your eyes and ears open,” he commended, “and
you know what’s worth telling about. I wish you’d come through Nostor instead.
Were you ever a soldier?” “All free-traders are soldiers, in their own service.” “Yes; that’s so. Well, when you’ve sold your loads, you’ll
be welcome in ours. Not as a common trooper—I know you traders too well for
that. As a scout. You want to sell your pack-horses, too? We’ll give you a good
price for them.” “If I can sell my loads, yes.” “You’ll have no trouble doing that. We’ll buy the mail, the
gunlocks, the sword-blades and that sort of thing ourselves. Stay about; have
your meals with the officers here. We’ll find something for you.” He had some tools, both for wood and metal work. He peddled
them among the artisans in the shops along the outer wall, for a good price in
silver and a better one in information. Besides rapiers and cannon with
trunnions, Lord Kalvan had introduced rifling in firearms. Nobody knew whence he
had come, except that it was far beyond the Western Ocean. The more pious were
positive that he had been guided to Hostigos by the very hand of Dralm. The officers
with whom he ate listened avidly to what he had picked up in Sask Town. Nostor first and then Sask seemed to be the schedule. When they talked about Lord
Kalvan, the coldest expressions were of deep respect, shading from there up to
hero-worship. But they knew nothing about him before the night he had appeared
to rally some fleeing peasants for a counter-attack on Nostori raiders and had
been shot, by mistake, by Princess Rylla herself. Vall sold the mail and sword-blades and gunlocks as a lot,
and spread his other wares for sale in the bailey. There was a crowd, and the
stuff sold well. He saw Lord Kalvan, strolling about from display to display,
in full armor probably wearing it all the time to accustom himself to the
weight, Vall decided. Kalvan was carrying a .38 Colt on his belt along with his
rapier and dagger, and clinging to his arm was a beautiful blonde girl in male riding
dress. That would be Prince Ptosphes’s daughter, Rylla. The happy possessiveness
with which she clung to him, and the tenderness with which he looked at her,
made him smile. Then the thought of his mission froze the smile on his lips. He
didn’t want to kill that man, and break that girl’s heart, but. They came over to his display, and Lord Kalvan picked up a
brass mortar and pestle. “Where did you get this?” he asked. “Where did it come from?” “it was made in Grefftscharr, Lord; shipped down the lakes
by boat to Ulthor.” “It’s cast. Are there no brass foundries nearer than
Grefftscharr?” “Oh, yes, Lord. In Zygros City there are many.” Lord Kalvan
put down the mortar. “I see. Thank you. Captain Harmakros tells me he’s been
talking to you. I’d like to talk to you, myself I think I’ll be around the
castle all miming, tomorrow; ask for me, if you’re here.” Returning to the Red Halberd, Val] spent some time and a
little money in the common-room. Everybody, as far as he could learn, seemed
satisfied that the mysterious Lord Kalvan had come to Hostigos in a perfectly
normal manner, with or without divine guidance. Finally, he went up to his
room. Opening the coffer, he got out one of the copper-mesh
globes, and from it drew a mouthpiece on a small wire, into which he spoke for
a long time. “So far,” he concluded “there seems to be no suspicion of anything
paranormal about the man in anybody’s mind. I have been offered an opportunity to
take service with his army as a scout. I intend doing this; assistance can be
given me in performing this work. I will find a location for an antigrav
conveyer to land, somewhere in the woods near Hostigos Town; when I do, I will
send a message-ball through from there.” Then he replaced the mouthpiece, set the timer for the
transposition-field generator, and switched on the antigrav. Carrying the ball
to an open window, he tossed it outside, and then looked up as it vanished in
the night. After a few seconds, high above, there was an instant’s flash among
the many visible stars. It looked like a meteor; a Hostigi, seeing it, would
have made a wish. KALVAN sat on a rock under a tree, wishing he could smoke,
and knowing that he was getting scared again. He cursed mentally. It didn’t
mean anything—as soon as things started happening held forget about it but it
always happened, and he hated it. That sort of thing was all right for a buck
private, or a platoon-sergeant, or a cop going to arrest some hillbilly killer,
but, for Dralm’s sake, a five-star general, now! And that made him think of what Churchill had called Hitter
the lance corporal who had promoted himself to commander-in-chief at one jump.
Corporal Morrison had done that, cut Hitler’s time by quite a few years, and
gotten into the peerage, which Hitler hadn’t. It was quiet on the mountain top, even though there were two
hundred men squatting or lying around him, and another five hundred, under
Chartiphon and Prince Ptosphes, five hundred yards behind. And, in front, at
the edge of the woods, a skirmish line of thirty riflemen, commanded by Verkan,
the Grefftscharr trader. There had been some objections to giving so important a command
to an outlander; he had informed the objectors rather stiffly that until
recently he had been an outlander and a stranger himself. Verkan was the best
man for it. Since joining Harmakros’s scouts, he had managed to get closer to Tarr-Dombra
than anybody else, and knew the ground ahead better than any. He wished he
could talk the Grefftscharrer into staying in Hostigos. He’d fought bandits all
over, as any trader must, and Trygathi, and nomads on the western plains, and
he was a natural rifle-shot and a born guerrilla. Officer type, too. But
free-traders didn’t stay anywhere; they all had advanced cases of foot-itch and
horizon-fever. And out in front of Verkan and his twenty rifled calivers at
the edge of the woods, the first on any battlefield in here-and-now history,
were a dozen men with rifled 8-bore muskets, fitted with peep-sights and
carefully zeroed in, in what was supposed to be cleared ground in front of the
castle gate. The condition of that approach ground was the most promising thing
about the whole operation. It had been cleared, all right—at least, the trees had been
felled and the stumps rooted out. But the Nostori thought Tarr-Dombra couldn’t
be taken and they’d gone slack the ground hadn’t been brushed for a couple of
years. There were bushes all over it as high as a man’s waist, and not a few
that a man could hide behind standing up. And his men would have been hard
enough to see even if it had been kept like a golf-course. _ The helmets and body-armor had all been carefully rusted;
there’d been anguished howls about that. So had every gun-barrel and spearhead.
Nobody wore anything but green or brown, and most of them had bits of greenery
fastened to helmets and clothing. The whole operation had been rehearsed four
times back of Tarr-Hostigos, starting with twelve hundred men and eliminating
down to the eight hundred best. There was a noise, about what a wild-turkey would make feeding,
and a soft voice called, “Lord Kalvan!” It was Verkan; he carried a rifle and
wore a dirty gray-green smock with a hood; his sword and belt were covered with
green and brown rags. “I never saw you till you spoke,” Morrison commended him. “The
wagons are coming up. They’re at the top switchback now.” He nodded. “We start, then.” His mouth was dry. What was
that thing in For Whom the Bell Tolls about spitting to show you weren’t afraid?
He couldn’t have done that now. He nodded to the boy squatting beside him; the
boy picked up his arquebus and started back to where Ptosphes and Chartiphon
were waiting. And Rylla. He cursed vilely—in English, since he still
couldn’t get much satisfaction out of taking the names of these local gods in
vain. She’d announced that she was coming along. He’d told her she’d do nothing
of the sort; so had her father and Chartiphon. She’d thrown a tantrum, and
thrown other things as well. She had come along. He was going to have his hands
full with that girl, after they were married. “All right,” he said softly to the men around him. “Let’s
start earning our pay.’ The men around and behind him rose quietly, two spears or
halberds or long-handled scythe-blades to every caliver or arquebus, though
some of the spearmen had pistols in their belts. He and Verkan advanced to the
edge of the woods, where riflemen crouched in pairs behind trees. Across four
hundred yards of clearing rose the limestone walls of Tarr-Dombra, the castle
that couldn’t be taken, above the chasm that had been quarried straight across
the mountain top. The drawbridge was down and the portcullis up, and a few
soldiers with black and orange scarves and sashes—his old college colors; he
ought to be ashamed to shoot them—loitered in the gateway or kept perfunctory
watch from the battlements. Ptosphes and Chartiphon—and Rylla, damn it!—came up with the
rest of the force, with a frightful clatter and brush-crashing which nobody at
the castle seemed to hear. There was one pike or spear or halberd or something—too
often something—to every two arquebuses or calivers. Chartiphon wore a long
brown sack with arm and neck holes over his armor. Ptosphes wore brown, and
browned armor; so did Rylla. They nodded greetings, and peered through the
bushes to where the road from Sevenhills Valley came up to the summit of the
mountain. Finally, four cavalrymen, with black and orange pennons and
scarves, came into view. They were only fake Princeton men; he hoped they’d get
rid of that stuff before some other Hostigi shot them by mistake. A long ox
wagon, piled high with hay which covered eight Hostigi infantrymen, followed.
Then a few false-color cavalry, another big hay wagon, more cavalry, two more
wagons, and a dozen cavalry behind. The first four clattered over the drawbridge, spoke to the
guards, and rode through the gate. Two wagons followed vanishing through the
gate. Great Galzar, if anybody noticed anything now! The third rumbled onto the
drawbridge and stopped directly below the portcullis; that was the one with the
log framework under the hay, and the log slung underneath; the driver must have
cut the strap to let it drop, jamming the wagon. The fourth, the one loaded
with rocks to the top of the bed, stopped on the end of the drawbridge,
weighting it down. Then a pistol banged inside, and another; there were shouts
of “Hostigos!” and “Ptosphes!” He blew his State Police whistle, and six of the
big elephant-size muskets went off in front, from places where he’d have sworn
there’d been nobody at all. The rest of Verkan’s rifle-platoon began firing,
sharp whipcrack reports entirely different from the smoothbores. He hoped they’d
remember to patch their bullets when they reloaded; that was something new for
them. He blew his whistle twice and started running forward. The men who had been showing themselves on the walls were
gone now, but a musket-shot or so showed that the snipers in front hadn’t
gotten all of them. He ran past a man with fishnet over his helmet stuck full
of twigs, ramming a ball into his musket; another, near him, who had been
waiting till he was half through, fired. Gray powder smoke hung in the gateway;
all the Hostigi were inside now, and there was an uproar of shouting——“Hostigos!”,
“Nostor!”—and shots and blade-clashing. He broke step to look behind him; his
two hundred were pouring in after him and Ptosphes’s spearmen; the arquebusiers
and calivermen had advanced to two hundred yards and were plastering the
battlements as fast as they could load and fire, without bothering to aim.
Aimed smoothbore fire at that range was useless; they were just trying to throw
as much lead as they could. A cannon went off above him when he was almost to the end of
the drawbridge, and then, belatedly, the portcullis slammed down and stopped
eight feet from the ground on the iron framework hidden
under the hay of the third wagon. They’d tested that a couple of times with the
portcullis at Tarr-Hostigos, first. All six of the oxen on the last wagon were
a ; and the infantrymen inside had been furnished short broadaxes to make sure
of that. The oxen of the portcullis wagon had been cut loose and driven inside.
There were a lot of ripped-off black and orange scarves on the ground, and more
on corpses. The gate, and the two gate-towers, had been secured. But shots were coming from the citadel, across the bailey,
and a mob of Nostori was pouring out the gate from it. This, he thought, was
the time to expend some .38-specials. Standing with his feet apart and his left
hand on his hip, he drew the Colt and began shooting, timed-fire rate. He
killed six men with six shots (he’d done that well on silhouette targets often
enough), and they were the front six men. The rest stopped, just long enough
for the men behind him to come up and sweep forward, arquebuses banging. Then
he holstered the empty Colt—he had only eight rounds left for it—and drew his
rapier and poignard. Another cannon thundered from the outside wall; he hoped
Rylla and Chartiphon hadn’t been in front of it. Then he was fighting his way
through the citadel gate, shoulder to shoulder with Prince Ptosphes. Behind, in the bailey, something else besides “Ptosphes!”
and “Gormoth!” and “Hostigos!” was being shouted. It was “Mercy, comrade! Mercy; I yield! Oath to Galzar!” There was
much more of that as the morning passed; before noon, all the garrison had
either cried for mercy or hadn’t needed it. There had only been those two
cannon-shots, though between them they had killed or wounded fifty men. Nobody
would be crazy enough to attack Tarr-Dombra, so the cannon had been left empty,
and they’d only had time to load and fire two. The hardest fighting was inside the citadel. He ran into Rylla
there, with Chartiphon hurrying to keep up with her. There was a bright sword-nick
on her brown helmet, and blood on her light rapier; she was laughing happily.
Then the melee swept them apart. He had expected that taking the keep would be
even grimmer work, but as soon as they had the citadel, it surrendered. By that
time, he had used the last of his irreplaceable cartridges. Muzzle-loaders for
him, from now on. They hauled down Gormoth’s black Rag with the orange lily
and ran up the halberd-head of Hostigos. They found four huge bombards,
throwing hundred-pound stone balls, loaded them, hand-spiked them around, and
sent the huge gun-stones crashing into the roofs of the town of Dyssa, at the
mouth of Gorge River, to announce that Tarr-Dombra was under new management. They
set the castle cooks to work skinning and cutting up the dead wagon oxen for a
barbecue. Then they turned their attention to the prisoners, herded into the
inner bailey. First, there were the mercenaries. They all agreed to enter
Prince Ptosphes’s service. They couldn’t be used against Gormoth until the term
of their contract with him expired; they would be sent to patrol the Sask border. Then there were Gormoth’s own subject troops. They couldn’t be made to bear
arms at all, but they could be put to work, as long as they were given soldiers’
pay and soldierly treatment. Then there was the governor of the castle, a Count
Phebion, cousin to Gormoth, and his officers. They would be released on oath to
send their ransoms to Hostigos. The castle priest of Galzar, after
administering the oaths, elected to go to Hostigos with his parishioners. As for the priest of Styphon, Chartiphon wanted to question
him under torture, and Ptosphes thought he should be beheaded out of hand. “Send him to Nostor with Phebion,” Morrison said. “No, send
him to Balph, in Hos-Ktemnos, with a letter to the Supreme Priest, Styphon’s
Voice, telling him that we make our own fireseed, that we will teach everybody
else to make it, and that we are the enemies of Styphon’s House until Styphon’s
House is destroyed.” Everybody, including those who had been suggesting novel and
interesting ways of putting the priest to death, shouted approval. “And a letter to Gormoth,” he continued, “offering him peace
and friendship. Tell him we’ll put his soldiers to work in the fireseed mill
and teach them the whole art, and when we release them, they can teach it in
Nostor.” Ptosphes was horrified. “Kalvan! What god has addled your
wits, man? Gormoth’s our enemy by birth, and he’ll be our enemy as long as he
lives.” “Well, if he tries to make his own fireseed without joining
us, that won’t be long. Styphon’s House will see to that.” VERKAN the Grefftscharrer led the party that galloped back
to Hostigos Town in the late afternoon with the good news—Tarr-Dombra taken,
with over two hundred prisoners, a hundred and fifty horses, four tons of
fireseed, twenty cannon, and rich booty of small arms, armor and treasure. And Sevenhills Valley was part of Hostigos again. Harmakros had defeated a large company of mercenary
cavalry, killing over twenty of them and capturing the rest. And he had taken
the Styphon temple-farm, a nitriary, freeing the slaves and putting the priests
to death. And the long-despised priest of Dralm had gathered his peasant flock
and was preaching to them that the Hostigi had come not as conquerors but as
liberators. That sounded familiar to Verkan Vall; he’d heard the like on
quite a few time-lines, including Morrison/Kalvan’s own. Come to think of it,
in the war in which Morrison had fought, both sides had made that claim. He also brought copies of the letters Prince Ptosphes had
written—more likely, that Kalvan had written and Ptosphes had signed—to Gormoth
and to Sesklos, Styphon’s Voice. The man was clever; those letters would do a
lot of harm, where harm would do the most good. Dropping a couple of troopers to spread the news in the
town, he rode up to the castle; as he approached the gate, the great bell of
the town hall began pealing. It took some time to tell the whole story to
Xentos, counting interruptions while the old priest-chancellor told Dralm about
it. When he got away from Xentos, he was dragged bodily into the officers’
mess, where a barrel of wine had already been broached. Fortunately, he had some
First Level alcodote-vitamin pills with him. By the time he got down to Hostigos
Town it was dark, everybody was roaring drunk, the bell was still ringing, and
somebody was wasting fireseed in the square with a little two-pounder. He was mobbed there, too; the troopers who had come in with
him betrayed him as one of the heroes of Tarr-Dombra. Finally he managed to get
into the inn and up to his room. Getting another message-ball and a small
radioactive beacon from his coffer, he hid them under his cloak, got his horse,
and managed to get out of town, riding to a little clearing two miles away. Pulling out the mouthpiece, he recorded a message, concluding:
“I wish especially to thank Skordran Kirv and the people with him for the
reconnaissance work at Tarr-Dombra, on this and adjoining time-lines. The
information so secured, and the success this morning resulting from it, places
me in an excellent position to carry out my mission. “I will need the assistants, and the equipment, at once. The
people should come in immediately; there is a big victory celebration in the
town, everybody’s drunk, and they could easily slip in unnoticed. There will be
a formal thanksgiving ceremony in the temple of Dralm, followed by a great
feast, three days from now. At this time the betrothal of Lord Kalvan to the
Princess Rylla will be announced.” Then he set the transposition timer, put the ball on
antigrav, and tossed it up with a gesture like a falconer releasing his hawk.
There was a slight overcast, and it flashed just below the ceiling, but that
didn’t matter. On this night, nobody would be surprised at portents in the sky
over Hostigos. Then, after stripping the shielding from the beacon and planting
it to guide the conveyer in, he sat down with his back to a tree and lit his
pipe. Half an hour transposition time to Police Terminal, maybe an hour to get
the men and equipment together, and another half hour to transpose in. He wouldn’t be bored waiting. First Level people never were.
He had too many interesting things in his memory, all of which were available
to total recall. INVITED to sit, the Agrysi horse-trader took the chair facing the desk in the room that had been fitted up as Lord Kalvan’s private office. He
was partly bald, with a sparse red beard; about fifty, five-eight, a hundred
and forty-five. The sort of character Corporal Calvin Morrison would have taken
a professional interest in: he’d have a record, was probably wanted somewhere,
for horse-theft at a guess. Shave off that beard and he’d double for a
stolen-car fence he had arrested a year ago. A year before he’d gone elsewhen,
anyhow. The horse-trader, Skranga, sat silently, wondering why he’d been
brought in, and trying to think of something they might have on him. Another
universal constant, he thought. “Those were excellent horses we got from you,” he began. “The
officers snapped most of them up before they could get to the remount corrals.” “I’m glad to hear you say so, Lord Kalvan,” Skranga said cautiously.
“I try to deal only in the best.” “You’ve been working in the fireseed mill since. I’m told
you’ve learned all about making fireseed.” “Well, Lord, I try to learn what I’m doing, when I’m
supposed to do some thing.” “Most commendable. Now, we’re going to open the frontiers.
There’s no point in keeping them closed since we took Tarr-Dombra. Where had
you thought of going?” Skranga shrugged. “Back to the Trygath country for more
horses, I suppose.” “If I were you, I’d go to Nostor, before Gormoth closes his
frontiers. Speak to Prince Gormoth privately, and be sure the priests of
Styphon don’t find out about it. Tell him you can make fireseed, and offer to
make it for him. You’ll be making your fortune if you do.” That was the last thing Skranga had expected. He was almost successful
in concealing his surprise. “But, Lord Kalvan! Prince Gormoth is your enemy.” Then he
stopped, scenting some kind of top-level double-crossing. “At least, he’s
Prince Ptosphes’s enemy.” “And Prince Ptosphes’s enemies are mine. But I like my enemies
to have all the other enemies possible, and if Styphon’s House find out that
Gormoth is making his own fireseed, they’ll be his. You worship Dralm? Then,
before you speak to Prince Gormoth, go to the Nostor temple of Dralm, speak secretly to the high priest there, tell him I sent you, and ask his advice. You
mustn’t let Gormoth know about that. Dralm, or somebody, will reward you well.” Skranga’s eyes widened for a moment, then narrowed craftily. “Ah. I understand, Lord Kalvan. And if I get into Gormoth’s
palace, I’ll find means of sending word to the priests of Dralm, now and then.
Is that it, Lord Kalvan?” “You understand perfectly, Skranga. I suppose you’d like to
stay for the great feast, but if I were you, I’d not. Go the first thing in the
morning, tomorrow. And before you go, speak to High Priest Xentos; ask the blessing
of Dralm before you depart.” He’d have to get somebody into Sask and start Prince Sarrask
up in fireseed production, too, he thought. That might be a little harder. And
after the feast, all these traders and wagoners who’d been caught in the Iron
Curtain would be leaving, fanning out all over the five Great Kingdoms. He
watched Skranga go out, and then filled and lit a pipe—not the otherwhen
Dunhill, but a local corncob, regular Douglas MacArthur model—and lit it at the
candle on his desk. Styphon’s House was the real enemy. Beat Gormoth properly,
on his own territory, and he’d stay beaten. Sarrask of Sask was only a
Mussolini to Gormoth’s Hitler; a decisive defeat of Nostor would overawe him.
But Styphon’s House wouldn’t stop till Hostigos was destroyed; their prestige,
which was their biggest asset, demanded it. And Styphon’s House was big; it
spread over all the Great Kingdoms, from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf. Big but vulnerable, and he knew, by now, the vulnerable
point. Styphon wasn’t a popular god, like Dralm or Galzar or Yirtta Allmother. The
priests of Styphon never tried for a following among the people, or even the
minor nobility and landed gentry who were the backbone of here-and-now society.
They ruled by pressure on the Great Kings and the Princes, and as soon as the
pressure was relieved, as soon as the fireseed monopoly was broken, those
rulers and their people with them would turn on Styphon’s House. The war
against Styphon’s House was going to be won in little independent powder mills
all over the Five Kingdoms. But beating Gormoth was the immediate job. He didn’t know
how much good Skranga would be able to do, or Xentos’s Dralm-temple Fifth
Column. You couldn’t trust that kind of thing. Gormoth would have to be beaten
on the battlefield. Taking Tarr-Dombra had been a good start. The next morning,
two thousand Nostori troops, mostly mercenaries, had tried to force a crossing
at Dyssa Ford, at the mouth of Pine Creek; they’d been stopped by artillery
fire. That night, Harmakros had taken five hundred cavalry across the West
Branch at Vryllos Gap, and raided western Nostor, firing thatches, running off
cattle, and committing all the usual atrocities. He frowned slightly. Harmakros was a fine cavalry leader,
and a nice guy to sit down and drink with, but Harmakros was just a trifle
atrocity-prone. That massacre at the Sevenhills temple-farm, for instance.
Well, if that was the way they made war, here-and-now, that would be the way to
make it. Then he sat for a while longer, thinking about the Art of
War, here-and-now. He hoped taking Tarr-Dombra would hold Gormoth off for the
rest of this year, and give him a chance to organize a real army, trained in
the tactics he could remember from the history of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries of his own time. Light cannon, the sort Gustavus Adolphus had smashed Tilly’s
unwieldy tercios at Breitenfeld with. And plenty of rifles, and men trained to
use them. There was a lot of forest country, here-and-now, and oddly, no game
laws to speak of, everybody was a hunter. And bore-standardization, so that
bullets could be issued, instead of every soldier having to carry his own
bullet-mould and make his own bullets. He wondered how soon he could get socket
bayonets, unknown here-and-now, produced. Not by the end of this year, not
along with everything else. But if he could get rid of all these bear spears,
and these scythe-blade things, whatever they were called, and get the spearmen
armed with eighteen-foot Swiss pikes, then they’d keep the cavalry off his
arquebusiers and calivermen. He dug the heel out of his pipe and put it down, rising and
looking at his watch (the only one in the world, and what would he do if he
broke it?). It was 1700; dinner in an hour and a half. He went out, returning
the salute of the halberdier at the door, and up the stairway. His servant had the things piled on a table in his parlor,
on a white sheet. The tunic with the battered badge that had saved his life;
the gray shirt, tom and blood-stained. The breeches; he left the billfold in
the hip pocket. He couldn’t spend the paper currency of a nonexistent United States, and the identification cards belonged to a man similarly nonexistent
here-and-now. He didn’t want the boots, either; the castle cordwainer did
better work, now that he had learned to make right and left feet. The Sam
Browne belt, with the empty cartridge-loops and the holster and the
handcuff-pouch. Anybody you needed handcuffs for, here-and-now, you knocked on
the head or shot. He tossed the blackjack down contemptuously; blackjacks didn’t
belong here-and-now. Rapiers and poignards did. He picked up the .38 Colt Official Police, swung out the
cylinder and checked it by habit-reflex, and dry-practiced a few rounds at a
knot-hole in the paneling. He didn’t want to part with that, even if there were
no more cartridges for it, but the rest of this stuff would be rather
meaningless without it. He slipped it into the holster and buttoned down the
retaining-strap. “That’s the lot,” he told the servant. “Take them to High
Priest Xentos.” The servant put them compactly together, one boot on either
side, and wrapped them in the sheet. Tomorrow, at the thanksgiving ceremony,
they would be deposited as votive offerings in the temple of Dralm. He didn’t believe in Dralm, or any other god, but now, besides being a general and an
ordnance engineer and an industrialist, he had to be a politician and no
politician can afford to slight his constituents’ religion. If nothing else, a
parsonage childhood had given him a talent for hypocritical lip-service. He watched the servant carry the bundle out. There goes Corporal
Calvin Morrison, he thought. Long live Lord Kalvan of Hostigos. VERKAN Vall, his story finished, relaxed in his chair and sipped his tall drink. There was no direct light on the terrace, only a sky-reflection
of the city lights below, dim enough. that the tip of Tortha Karf’s cigarette
glowed visibly. There were four of them around the low table: the Chief of
Paratime Police; the Director of the Paratime Commission, who acted only on the
Chief’s suggestion; the Chairman of the Paratemporal Trade Board, who did as
the Commission Director told him; and himself, who, in a hundred and twenty-odd
days, would have all Tortha Karf’s power and authority—and all his headaches. “You took no action?” the Paratime Commission Director was
asking. “None whatever. None was needed. The man knows he was in some kind of a
time-machine, which shifted him not into the past or future of his own world
but laterally, in another time-dimension, and from that he can deduce the
existence, somewhen, of a race of lateral time-travelers. That, in essence, is
the Paratime Secret, but this Calvin Morrison—Lord Kalvan, now—is no threat to
it. He’s doing a better job of protecting it in his own case than we could. He
has good reason to. “Look what he has, on his new time-line, that his old one
could never have given him. He’s a great nobleman; they’ve gone out of fashion
on Europo-America, where the Common Man is the ideal. He’s going to marry a
beautiful princess, and they’ve even gone out of fashion for children’s fairy-tales.
He’s a sword-swinging soldier of fortune, and they’ve vanished from a
nuclear-weapons world. He’s commanding a good little army, and making a better
one of it, the work he loves. And he has a cause worth fighting for, and an
enemy worth beating. He’s not going to jeopardize his position with those
people. “You know what he did? He told Xentos, under pledge of secrecy,
that he had been banished by sorcery from his own time, a thousand years in the
future. Sorcery, on that time-line, is a perfectly valid explanation for
anything. With his permission, Xentos gave that story to Rylla, Ptosphes and
Chartiphon; they handed it out that he is an exiled Prince from a country
completely outside local geographical knowledge. See what he has? Regular
defense in depth; we couldn’t have done nearly as well ourselves.” “Well, how’d it leak to you?” the Board Chairman wanted to
know. “From Xentos, at the big victory feast. I got him off to one side, got
him into a theological discussion, and spiked his drink with some hypno truth-drug.
He doesn’t even remember, now, that he told me.” “Nobody on that time-line’ll get it that way,” the Board
Chairman agreed. “But didn’t you take a chance on getting that stuff of his out
of the temple?” He shook his head. “We ran a conveyer in the night of the
feast, when it was empty. The next morning, when the priests discovered that
the uniform and the revolver and the other things had vanished, they cried, ‘Lo!
Dralm has accepted the offering! A miracle! I was there, and saw it. Kalvan doesn’t
believe in any miracles; he thinks some of these transients that left Hostigos
that day when the borders were opened stole the stuff. I know Harmakros’s
cavalry were stopping people at all the exit roads and searching wagons and
packs. Publicly, of course, Kalvan had to give thanks to Dralm for accepting
the offering.” “Well, was it necessary?” “Not on that time-line. On the pickup line, yes. The stuff
will be found ... first the clothing and the badge with his number on it. Not
too far from where he vanished; I think at Altoona. We have a man planted on
the city police force there. Later, maybe in a year, the revolver will turn up,
in connection with a homicide we will arrange. The Sector Regional Subchief can
take care of that. There are always plenty of prominent people on any time-line
who wouldn’t be any great loss.” “But that won’t explain anything,” the Commission Director
objected. “No; it’ll be an unsolved mystery. Unsolved mysteries are just as
good as explanations, as long as they’re mysterious within a normal framework.” “Well, gentlemen, all this is very interesting, but how does
it concern me officially?” the Paratemporal Trade Board Chairman asked. The Commission Director laughed. “You disappoint me! This
Styphon’s House racket is perfect for penetration of that subsector, and in a
couple of centuries, long before either of us retire, it’ll be a good area to
have penetrated. We’ll just move in on Styphon’s House and take over the same
way we did the Yat-Zar temples on the Hulgun Sector, and build that up to
general political and economic control.” “You’ll have to stay off Morrison’s—Kalvan’s—time-line,”
Tortha Karf said. “I should say they will! You know what’s going to be done
with that? We’re going to turn that over to the University of Dhergabar as a study-area, and five adjoining time-lines for controls. You know what we have
here?” He was becoming excited about it. “We have the start of an entirely new
subsector, identified from the exact point of divarication, something we’ve
never been able to do before, except from history. I’m already established on
that time-line as Verkan the Grefftscharr trader; Kalvan thinks that I’m traveling
on horseback to Zygros City to recruit brass-founders for him, to teach his
people how to cast brass cannon. In about forty or so days, I can return with
them. They will, of course, be the University study-team. And I will be back,
every so often, as often as horse-travel rates would plausibly permit. I’ll put
in a trade depot, which can mask the conveyer-head ...” Tortha Karf began laughing. “I knew you’d figure yourself
some way! And, of course, it’s such a scientifically important project that the
Chief of Paratime Police would have to give it his personal attention, so you’ll
be getting outtime even after I retire and you take over.” “Well, all right. We all have our hobbies; you’ve been going
to that farm of yours on Fifth Level Sicily for as long as I’ve been on the
Paracops. Well, my hobby farm’s going to be Kalvan Subsector, Fourth Level
Aryan Transpacific. I’m only a hundred and thirty; by the time I’m ready to
retire ...” IN the quiet of the Innermost Circle, in Styphon’s House
Upon Earth, at Balph, the great image looked down, and Sesklos, Supreme Priest
and Styphon’s Voice, returned the carven stare almost as stonily. Sesklos did
not believe in Styphon or in any other god; if he had, he would not be sitting
here. The policies of Styphon’s House were too important to entrust to
believers, and such could never hope to rise above the white robed outer
circle, or at most don the black robes of under-priests. None might wear the
yellow robe, let alone the flame-colored robe of primacy. The image, he knew,
was of a man—the old high priest who had, by discovering the application of a
minor temple secret, taken the cult of a minor healer-god out of its mean
back-street shrines and made it the power that ruled the rulers of all the Five
Kingdoms. If it had been in Sesklos to worship anything, he would have
worshiped the memory of that man. And now, the first Supreme Priest looked down upon the last
one. Sesklos lowered his eyes to the sheets of parchment in front of him,
flattening one with his hands to read again. PTOSPHES, Prince of Hostigos, to SESKLOS, calling himself
Styphon’s Voice, these: False priest of a false god, impudent swindler, liar
and cheat! Know that we in Hostigos, by simple mechanic arts, now make
for ourselves that fireseed which you pretend to be the miracle of your fraudulent
god, and that we propose teaching these arts to all, that hereafter Kings and
Princes minded to make war may do so for their own defense and advancement, and
not to the enrichment of Styphon’s House of Iniquities. In proof thereof, we send fireseed of our own make, enough
for twenty musket charges, and set forth how it is made, thus: To three parts of refined saltpeter and three fifths of one
part of charcoal and two fifths of one part of sulfur, all ground to the fineness
of bolted wheat flour. Mix thoroughly, moisten the mixture, and work it to a
heavy dough, then press into cakes and dry them, and when they are fully dry,
grind and sieve them. And know that we hold you and all in Styphon’s House of Iniquities
our deadly enemies, and the enemies general of all men, to be dealt with as
wolves are, and that we will not rest content until Styphon’s House of
Iniquities is utterly cast down and destroyed. PTOSPHES, Prince of and for the nobles and people of Hostigos. ing Gormoth’s best route of invasion
into Hostigos, and a black-robe priest who had been there had been released to
bear this letter to him. Vybios had sent the letter on by swift couriers; the
priest was following more slowly to tell his tale in person. It had, of course, been this Kalvan who had given Ptosphes
the fireseed secret. He wondered briefly if this Kalvan might be some renegade
from Styphon’s House, then shook his head. No; the full secret, as Ptosphes had
set it down, was known only to yellow-robe priests of the Inner Circle, upper
priests, high priests and archpriests. If one of these had absconded, the news
would have reached him as fast as relays of galloping horses could bring it.
Some Inner Circle priest might have written it down, a thing utterly forbidden,
and the writing might have fallen into unconsecrated hands, but he doubted
that. The proportions were different: more saltpeter and less charcoal. He
would have Ptosphes’s sample tried; he suspected that it might be better than
their own. A man, then, who had rediscovered the secret for himself. That could
be, though it had taken many years and the work of many priests to perfect the
process, especially the caking and grinding. He shrugged. That was not
important. The important thing was that the secret was out. Soon everybody
would be making fireseed, and then Styphon’s House would be only a name, and a
name of mockery at that. He might, however, postpone that day for as long as mattered
to him. He was near his ninetieth year; he would not live to see many more, and
for each man the world ends when he dies. Letters of urgency to the archpriests of the five Great Temples,
plainly telling them all, each to tell those under him as much as he saw fit. A
story to be circulated among the secular rulers that fireseed stolen by bandits
was being smuggled and sold. Prompt investigation of reports of anyone
gathering sulfur or saltpeter, or building or altering grinding-mills. Death by
assassination of anyone suspected of knowing the secret. That would only do for the moment; he knew that. Something
better must be devised, and quickly. And care must be taken not to spread,
while trying to suppress, the news that someone outside Styphon’s House was
making fireseed. A Great Council of all the archpriests, but that later. And, of course, immediate destruction of Hostigos, and all
in it, not one to be spared even for slavery. Gormoth had been waiting until
his own people could harvest their crops; he must be made to move at once. An
archpriest of Styphon’s House Upon Earth to be sent to Nostor, since this was
entirely beyond poor Vyblos’s capacities. Krastokles, he thought. Lavish gifts
of fireseed and silver and arms for Gormoth. He glanced again at Vyblos’s letter. A copy of Ptosphes’s
letter to himself had gone to Gormoth, by the hand of the castellan of
Tarr-Dombra, released on ransom-oath. Why, Ptosphes had given his enemy the
fireseed secret! He rebuked himself for not having noticed that before. That
had been a daring, and a fiendishly clever, thing to do. So, with Krastokles would go fifty mounted Guardsmen of the Temple, their captain to be an upper priest without robe. And more silver, to corrupt
Gormoth’s courtiers and mercenary captains. And a special letter to the high priest of the Sask Town temple. It had been planned to use Prince Sarrask as a counterpoise to Gormoth,
when the latter had grown too great by the conquest of Hostigos. Well, the time
for that was now. Gormoth was needed to destroy Hostigos; as soon as that was
accomplished, he, too, must be destroyed. Sesklos struck the gong thrice, and as he did, he thought
again of this mysterious Kalvan. That was nothing to shrug off. It was
important to learn who he was, and whence he had come, and with whom he had
been in contact before he had appeared—he was intrigued by Vyblos’s choice of
the word—in Hostigos. He could have come from some far country where the making
of fireseed was commonly known. He knew of none such, but the world might well
be larger than he thought. Or could there be other worlds? The idea had occurred to
him, now and then, as an idle speculation. THE man called Lord Kalvan—except in retrospect, he never
thought of himself as anything else now—sipped from the goblet and set it on
the stand beside his chair. It was what they called winter-wine: set out in
tubs to freeze, and the ice thrown off until it was sixty to seventy proof, the
nearest they had to spirits, here-and-now. Distillation, he added to the long
list of mental memos; invent and introduce. Bourbon, he thought; they grew
plenty of com. It was past midnight; a cool breeze fluttered the curtains
at the open windows, and flickered the candies. He was tired, and he knew that
he would have to rise at dawn tomorrow, but he knew that he would lie awake a
long while if he went to bed now. There was too much to think about. Troop strengths: better than two to one against Hostigos. If
Gormoth waited till his harvests were in and used all his peasant levies, more
than that. Of course, if he waited, they’d be a little better prepared in
training and materiel, but not much. Three thousand regular infantry, meaning
they had been organized into companies and given a modicum of drill. Two
thousand were pikemen and halberdiers, and too many of the pikes were short
huntingspears, and too many of the halberds were those scythe-blade things (he
still didn’t know what else to call them), and a thousand calivermen,
arquebusiers and musketeers. And fifty riflemen, though in another thirty days
there would be a hundred more. And eight hundred cavalry, all of whom could be
called regulars—nobles and gentlemen-farmers, and their attendants. Artillery—there was the real bright spot. Four of the light
four-pounders were finished and in service, gun-crews training with them, and
two more would be finished in another eight or ten days. And the old guns had
been remounted; they were at least three hundred percent better than anything
Gormoth would have. All right, they couldn’t do anything about numbers; then cut
the odds by concentrating on mobility and firepower. It didn’t really matter
who had the mostest; just git th’ar fustest and fire the most shots and score
the most hits with them. But he didn’t want to think about that right now. He emptied the goblet and debated pouring himself more, lighting
his pipe. Instead, he turned to something he hadn’t had time to think about
lately: the question of just when now was. He wasn’t at any time in the past or the future of May 19,
1964, when he’d walked into that dome of light. He’d settled that in his mind
definitely. So what did that leave? Another time-dimension. Say time was a plane, like a sheet of paper. Paper, experiment
with manufacture of, that mental memo popped up automatically, and was promptly
shoved down again. He wished he’d read more science fiction; time dimensions
were a regular science-fiction theme, and a lot of it carefully thought out. Well,
say he was an insect, capable of moving only in one direction, crawling along a
line on the paper, and say somebody picked him up and set him down on another
line. That figured. And say, long ago, one of these lines of time
had forked, maybe before the beginning of recorded history. Or say these lines
had always existed, an infinite number of them, and on each one, things
happened differently. That could be it. He was beginning to be excited;
Dralm-dammit, now he’d be awake half the night, thinking about this. He got up
and filled the goblet with almost-brandy. He’d found out a little about these people’s history. Their
ancestors had been living on the Atlantic coast for over five hundred years;
they all spoke the same language, and were of the same stock: Zarthani. They
hadn’t come from across the Atlantic, but from the west, across the continent.
Some of that was recorded history he had read, and some was legend; all of it
was supported by the maps, which showed all the important seacoast cities at
the mouths of rivers. There were no cities on the sites of such excellent
harbors as Boston, Baltimore or Charleston. There was the Grefftscharr Kingdom, at the west end of the Great Lakes, and Dorg at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri, and XipWon at the site of New Orleans. But there was nothing but
a trading town at the mouth of the Ohio, and the Ohio valley was full of
semi-savages. Rivers flowing east and south had been the pathway. So these people had come from across the Pacific. But they
weren’t Asiatics, as he used the word; they were blond Caucasians. Aryans! Of
course; the Aryans had come out of Central Asia, thousands of years ago,
sweeping west and south into India and the Mediterranean basin, and west and
north to Scandinavia. On this line of events, they’d gone the other way. The names sounded Greek—all those -os and -es and -on endings—but
the language wasn’t even the most corrupt Greek. It wasn’t even grammatically
the same. He’d had a little Greek in college, dodging it as fast as it was
thrown at him, but he knew that. Wait a minute. The words for “father” and “mother.” German,
vater; Spanish, padre; Latin, pater; Greek, as near that as didn’t matter;
Sanskrit, pitr. German, mutter; Spanish, madre; Latin, mater; Greek, meter; Sanskrit,
matr. In Zarthani, they were phadros and mavra. IT was one of those small late-afternoon gatherings, nobody
seeming to have a care in the world, lounging indolently, sipping tall drinks,
nibbling canapйs, talking and laughing. Verkan Vall held his lighter for his
wife, Hadron Dalia, then applied it to his own cigarette. Across the low table,
Tortha Karf was mixing himself a drink, with the concentrated care of an
alchemist compounding the Elixir of Life. The Dhergabar University people—the
elderly professor of Paratemporal Theory, the lady professor of Outtime History
(M, and the young man who was director of outtime study operations—were all
smiling like three pussy-cats at a puddle of spilled cream. “You’ll have it all to yourselves,” Vall told them. “The Paratime
Commission has declared that time-line a study-area, and it’s absolutely
quarantined to everybody but University personnel and accredited students. I’m
making it my personal business to see that the quarantine is enforced.” Tortha Karf looked up. “After I retire, I’m taking a seat on
the Paratime Commission,” he said. “I’ll see to it that the quarantine isn’t
revoked or modified.” “I wish we could account for those four hours from the time
he got out of that transposition field until he stopped at that peasant’s
cottage,” the paratemporal theorist said. “We have no idea what he was doing.” “Wandering in the woods, trying to orient himself,” Dalla
said. “Sitting and thinking, most of the time, I’d say. Getting caught in a
conveyer field must be a pretty shattering experience if you don’t know what it
is, and he seems to have adjusted very nicely by the time he had those Nostori
to fight. I don’t believe he Was changing history all by himself.” “You can’t say that,” the old professor chided. “He could
have shot a rattlesnake which would otherwise have bitten and killed a child
who would otherwise have grown up to be an important personage. That sounds
far-fetched and trivial, but paratemporal alternate probability is built on
different trivialities. Who knows what started the Aryan migration eastward on
that sector instead of westward, as on all the others? Some tribal chief’s
hangover; some wizard’s nightmare.” “Well, that’s why you’re getting those five adjoining
time-lines for controls,” the outtime study operations director said. “And I’d
keep out of Hostigos on all of them. We don’t want our people massacred along
with the resident population by Gormoth’s gang, or forced to defend themselves
with Home Time-Line weapons.” “What bothers me,” the lady professor of history said, “is
Vall’s beard.” “It bothers me, too,” Dalla said, “but I’m getting used to
it.” “He hasn’t shaved it off since he came back from Kalvan’s
time-line, and it begins to look like a permanent fixture. And I notice that
Dalla’s a blonde, now. Blondes are less conspicuous on Aryan-Transpacific. They’re
both going to be on and off that time-line all the time.” “Well, nobody’s exclusive rights to anything outtime
excludes the Paratime Police. I told you I was going to give that time-line my
personal attention. And Dalla is officially Special Chief’s Assistant’s Special
Assistant, now; she’ll be promoted automatically along with me.” “Well, you won’t introduce a lot of probability
contamination, will you?” the elderly theorist asked anxiously. “We want to observe
the effect of this man’s appearance on that time-line .. “You know any kind of observation that doesn’t contaminate
the thing observed, professor?” Tortha Karf, who had gotten the drink mixed,
asked. “If anything, I’ll be able to minimize the amount of
contamination his study-teams introduce. I’m already well established with
these people as Verkan the Grefftscharr trader. Why, Lord Kalvan offered me a
commission in his army, commanding a rifle regiment he’s raising, and right now
I’m supposed to be recruiting brass-founders for him in Zygros.” Vall turned to
the operations director. “I can’t plausibly get back to Hostigos for another
thirty days. Can you have your first team ready by then? They’ll have to know
their trade; if they cast cannon that blow up on the first shot, I know where
their heads will go, and I won’t try to intervene for them.” “Oh, yes. They have everything now but local foundry techniques
and correct Zygrosi accent. Thirty days will be plenty.” “But that’s contamination!” the professor of Paratemporal
Theory objected. “You’re teaching his people to make cannon, and...” “Just to make better cannon, and if I didn’t bring in fake Zygrosi
founders, Kalvan would send somebody else to bring in real ones. I will help
him in any other way a wandering pack-trader could; information and things like
that. I may even go into battle with him again—with one of those back-acting
flintlocks. But I want him to win. I admire the man too much to want to hand
him an unearned victory on a platter.” “He sounds like a lot of man to me,” the lady historian
said. “I’d like to meet him, myself.” “Better not, Eldra,” Dalla warned. “That princess of his is
handy with a pistol, and I don’t think she cares much who she shoots.” THE general staff had a big room of their own to meet in,
just inside the door of the keep, and the relief map was finished and set up.
The General Staff were all new at it. So was he, but he had some vague idea of
what a General Staff was supposed to do, which put him several up on any of the
rest of them. Xentos was reporting what he had gotten from the Nostori Fifth
Column. “The bakeries work night and day,” he said. “And milk cannot
be bought at any price—it is all being made into cheese. And most of the meat
is being made into smoked sausages.” Stuff a soldier could carry in a haversack and eat uncooked:
field-rations. That stuff, even the bread, could be stored, Kalvan thought, but
Xentos was also reporting that wagons and oxen were being commandeered, and
peasants impressed as drivers. They wouldn’t do that too long in advance. “Then Gormoth isn’t waiting to get his harvests in,”
Ptosphes said. “He’ll strike soon, and taking Tarr-Dombra didn’t stop him at
all.” “It delayed him, Prince,” Chartiphon said. “He’d be pouring
mercenaries into Nostor now through Sevenhills Valley if we hadn’t.” “I grant that.” There was a smile on Ptosphes’s lips. He’d
been learning to smile again, since the powder mills had gone into operation,
and especially since Tarr-Dombra had fallen. “We’ll have to be ready for him a
little sooner than I’d expected, that’s all.” “We’ll have to be ready for him yesterday at the latest,” Rylla
said. She’d picked that expression up from him. “What do you think he’ll hit us
with?” “Well, he’s been shifting troops around,” Harmakros said. “He
seems to be moving all his mercenaries east, and all his own soldiers west.” “Marax Ford,” Ptosphes guessed. “He’ll throw the mercenaries
at us first.” “Oh, no, Prince!” Chartiphon dissented. “Go all the way
around the mountains and all the way up through East Hostigos? He wouldn’t do
that. Here’s how he’ll come in.” He drew his big hand-and-a-half sword—none of these newfangled
pokers for him—and gave it a little toss in his hand to get the right grip on
it, then pointed on the map to where the Listra flowed into the Athan.
“There—Listra-Mouth. He can move his whole army up the river
in his own country, force a crossing here—if we let him—and take all Listra Valley to the Saski border. That’s where all our iron-works are.” Now that was something. Not so long ago, to Chartiphon,
weapons had been just something you fought with; he’d taken them for granted.
Now he was realizing that they had to be produced. That started an argument. Somebody thought Gormoth would try
to force one of the gaps. Not Dombra; that was too strong. Maybe Vryllos Gap. “He’ll attack where we don’t expect him, that’s where,” Rylla
declared. “Well, that means we have to expect him everywhere. “Great Galzar!”
Ptosphes exploded, drawing his rapier. “That means we have to expect him
everywhere from here”—he touched the point to the map to the mouth of the
Listra——“to here,” which was about where Lewisburg had been in Calvin Morrison’s
world. “That means that with half Gormoth’s strength, we’ll have to be stronger
than he is at every point.” “Then we’ll have to move what men we have around faster,”
his daughter told him. Well, good girl! She’d seen what none of the others had,
what he’d been thinking about last night, that mobility could make up for lack
of numbers. “Yes,” he said. “Harmakros, how many infantrymen could you
put horses under? They don’t have to be good horses, just good enough to take
them where they’ll fight on foot.” Harmakros was scandalized. Mounted soldiers were cavalry,
everybody knew it took years to train a cavalryman; he had to be practically born
at it. Chartiphon was scandalized, too. Infantrymen were foot soldiers;
they had no business on horses. “It’ll mean,” he continued, “that in action about one out of
four will have to hold horses for the others, but they’ll get into action
before the battle’s over, and they can wear heavier armor. Now, how many
infantry can you find mounts for?” Harmakros looked at him, decided that he was serious,
thought for a moment, then grinned. It always took Harmakros a moment or so to
recover from the shock of a new idea, but he always came up punching before the
count was over. “Just a minute; I’ll see.” He pulled the remount officer
aside; Rylla joined them with a slate and soapstone. Among other things, Rylla
was the mathematician. She’d learned Arabic numerals, even the reason for
having a symbol for nothing at all. Very high on the I love Rylla, reasons why
list was the fact that the girt had a brain and wasn’t afraid to use it. He turned to Chartiphon and began talking about the defense
of Listra-Mouth. They were still discussing it when Rylla and Harmakros came
over and joined them. “Two thousand:’ Rylla said. “They all have four legs, and we
think they were all alive last evening.” “Eighteen hundred,” Harmakros cut it. “We’ll need some for
pack-train and replacements.” “Sixteen hundred:’ Kalvan decided. “Eight hundred pikemen,
with pikes and not hunting-spears or those scythe-blade things, and eight
hundred arquebusiers, with arquebuses and not rabbit-guns. Can you do that,
Chartiphon?” Chartiphon could. All men who wouldn’t fall off their
horses, too. “It’ll make a Styphon’s own hole in the army, though,” he added. Aside from the Mobile Force, that would leave twelve hundred
pikemen and two hundred with firearms. Of course, there was the militia: two
thousand peasant levies, anybody who could do an hour’s foot-drill without
dropping dead, armed with anything at all. They would fight bravely if
unskillfully. A lot of them were going to get killed. And, according to best intelligence estimates, Corinth had six thousand mercenaries, of whom four thousand were cavalry, and four
thousand of his own subjects, including neither the senile nor the adolescent
and none of them armed with agricultural implements or crossbows. He looked at
the map again. Gormoth would attack where he could use his cavalry superiority
to best advantage. Either Listra-Mouth or Marax Ford. “Good. And all the riflemen.” All fifty of them. “Put them
on the best horses, they’ll have to be everywhere at once. And five hundred
regular cavalry.” Everybody howled at that. There weren’t that many, not uncommitted.
Swords flashed over the map, indicating places where they only had half enough
now. Contradictions were shouted. One of these days somebody was going to use a
sword for something besides map-pointing in one of these arguments. Finally, by
robbing Peter and Paul both, they scraped up five hundred for the Mobile Force. “And I want all those musketoons and lances turned in,” he
said. “The lances are better pikes than half our pikemen have, and the
musketoons are almost as good as arquebuses. We won’t have cavalrymen burdened
with infantry weapons when the infantry need them as desperately as they do.” Harmakros wanted to know what the cavalry would fight with. “Swords
and pistols. The purpose of cavalry is to scout and collect information,
neutralize enemy cavalry, harass enemy movement and communications, and pursue
fugitives. It is not to fight on foot—that’s why we’re organizing mounted
infantry—and it is not to commit suicide by making attacks on massed pikemen—that’s
why we’re building these light four-pounders. The lances and musketoons will go
to the infantry, and the fowling-pieces and scythe-blade things they replace
can go to the militia. “Now, you’ll command this Mobile Force, Harmakros. Turn all
your intelligence work over to Xentos; Prince Ptosphes and I will help him. You’ll
have all four of the four-pounders, and the two being built as soon as they’re
finished, and pick out the lightest four of the old eight-pounders. You’ll be
based in Sevenhills Valley; be prepared to move either east or west as soon as
you have orders. “And another thing: battle-cries.” They had to be shouted constantly,
to keep friend from killing friend. “Besides ‘Ptosphes!’ and ‘Hostigos!’ we
will shout ‘Down Styphon!” That met with general approval. They all knew who the real
enemy was. GORMOTH, Prince of Nostor, set down the goblet, wiping his
bearded lips on the back of his hand. The candies in front of him and down the
long tables at the sides flickered. Tableware clattered, and voices were loud. “Lost everything!” The speaker was a baron driven from Sevenhills Valley when Tarr-Dombra had fallen almost a moon ago. “My house, a score of
farms, a village ...” “You think we’ve lost nothing?” another noble demanded. “They
crossed the river the night after they chased you out, and burned everything on
my land. It was Styphon’s own miracle I got out with my own blood unspilled.” “For shame!” cried Vyblos, the high priest of the temple of Styphon, sitting with him at the high table. “You speak of cow-byres and
peasant-huts; what of the temple-farm of Sevenhills, a holy place pillaged and
desecrated? What of fifteen consecrated priests and novices, and a score of lay
guards, all cruelly murdered? ‘Dealt with as wolves are’,” he quoted. “That’s Styphon’s business; let him took to his own,” the
lord from western Nostor said. “I want to know why our Prince isn’t looking to
the protection of Nostor.” “It can be stopped, Prince.” That was the mayor, and
wealthiest merchant, of Nostor Town. “Prince Ptosphes has offered peace, now
that Hostigos has Tarr-Dombra again. He’s a man of his word.” “Peace tossed like a bone to a cur?” yelled Netzigon, the
chief captain of Nostor. “Friendship shot at us out of cannon?” “Peace with a desecrator of holy places, and a butcher of Styphon’s
priests?” Vyblos fairly screamed. “Peace with a blasphemer who pretends, with
his mortal hands, to work Styphon’s own miracle, and make fireseed without
Styphon’s aid?” “More than pretends!” That was Gormoth’s cousin, Count
Phebion. He still hadn’t taken Pheblon back into his favor after losing
Tarr-Dombra, but for those words he was close to it. “By Dralm, the Hostigi
burned more fireseed taking Tarr-Dombra than we thought they had in all
Hostigos. I was there, which you weren’t. And when they opened the magazines,
they only sneered and said, ‘That filthy trash; don’t get it mixed with ours’.” “That’s all aside,” the baron from Listra-Mouth said. “I
want to know what’s being done to keep their raiders out of Nostor. Why, they’ve
harried all the strip between the mountains and the river; there isn’t a house
standing there now.” Weapons clattered at the door. Somebody else sneered: “That’s
Ptosphes, now! Under the tables, everybody!” A man in mail and black leather
strode in, advancing and saluting; the captain of the dungeons. “Lord Prince, the special prisoner has been made to talk. He
will tell all.” “Ha!” Gormoth knew what that meant., Then he laughed at the
looks of concern on faces down the side tables. Not a few at his court had
cause to dread somebody telling all about something. He drew his poignard and
cut a line across the candle in front of him, a thumb’s breadth from the top. “You bring good news. I’ll go to hear him in that time.” As
he nodded dismissal, the captain bowed and backed away. He rapped loudly on the
table with the pommel of the dagger. “Be silent, all of you; I’ve little time,
so give heed. Klestreus,” he addressed the elected captain-general of the
mercenary free-companies, “you have four thousand horse, two thousand foot, and
ten cannon. Add to them a thousand of my infantry and such guns of mine as you
think fit. You’ll cross the Athan at Marax Ford. Be on the road before the dew’s
off the grass tomorrow; before dawn of the next day, take and hold the ford,
put the best of your cavalry across at once, and let the others follow as
speedily as they can. “Netzigon,” he told his own chief-captain, “you’ll gather
every man you can, down to the very peasant rabble, and such cannon as
Klestreus leaves you. Post companies to confront every pass in the mountains
from across the river; use the peasants for that. With the rest of your force,
march to Listra-Mouth and Vryllos Gap. As Klestreus moves west through East Hostigos, he will attack each gap from behind; when he does, your people will cross
over and give aid. Tarr-Dombra we’ll have to starve out; the rest must be taken
by storm. When Klestreus is as far as Vryllos Gap, you will cross the Athan and
move up Listra Valley. After that, we’ll have Tarr-Hostigos to take. Gazer only
knows how long we’ll be at that, but by the end of the moon-half all else in
Hostigos should be ours.” There were gratified murmurs all along the table; this made
good hearing, and they had waited long to hear it. Only the high priest, Vyblos,
was ill-pleased. “But why so soon, Prince?” “Soon? By the Mace of Galzar, you’ve been bawling for it
like a branded calf since greenleaf-time. Well, now you have your invasion—yet
you object. Why?” “A few more days would cost nothing, Prince,” Vyblos said. “Today
I had word from Styphon’s House Upon Earth, from the pen of His Divinity,
Styphon’s Voice Himself. An archpriest, His Sanctity Krastokles, is traveling
hither with rich gifts and the blessing of Styphon. It were poor reverence not
to await His Sanctity’s coming.” Another cursed temple-rat, bigger and fatter and more
insolent than this one. Well, let him come after the victory, and content
himself with what bones were tossed to him. “You heard me,” he told the two captains. “I rule here, not
this priest. Be about it; send out your orders now, and move in the morning.” Then he rose, pushing back the chair before the servant
behind him could touch it. The line was still visible at the top of the candle. Guards with torches attended him down the winding stairs
into the dungeons. The air stank. His breath congealed; the heat of summer
never penetrated here. From the torture chamber shrieks told of some wretch
being questioned; idly he wondered who. Stopping at an iron-bound door, he
unlocked it with a key from his belt and entered alone, closing it behind him. The room within was large, warmed by a fire on a hearth in
the corner and lighted by a great lantern from above. Under it, a man bent over
a littered table, working with a mortar and pestle. As the door closed, he
straightened and turned. He had a bald head and a red beard, and wore a most unprisoner-like
dagger on his belt. A key for the door lay on the table, and by them a pair of
heavy horseman’s pistols. He smiled. “Greetings, Prince; it’s done. I tried some, and it’s as
good as they make in Hostigos, and better than the dirt the priests sell.” “And no prayers to Styphon, Skranga?” Skranga was chewing tobacco. He spat brownly on the floor. “That in the face of Styphon! You want to try it, Prince?
The pistols are empty.” There was a bowl half full of fireseed on the table. He measured
a charge and poured it into one, loaded and wadded a ball on top of it, primed
the pan, readied the flint and striker. Aiming at a billet of wood by the
hearth, he fired, then laid the pistol down and went to probe the hole with a
straw. The bullet had gone in almost a little finger’s length; Styphon’s powder
wouldn’t do that much. “Well, Skranga! “ he laughed. “We’ll have to keep you hidden
for awhile yet, but from this hour you’re first nobleman of Nostor after
myself. Style yourself Duke. There’ll be rich lands for you in Hostigos, when
Hostigos is mine.” “And in Nostor the Styphon temple-farms?” Skranga asked. “If
I’m to make fireseed for you, there’s all there that I’ll need.” “styes, by Galzar, that too! After I’ve
dealt with Ptosphes, I’ll have a reckoning with Vyblos, and before I let him
die, he’ll be envying Ptosphes.” Snatching up a pewter cup without looking to see if it were
clean, he went to the wine-barrel and drew it full. He tasted the wine, then
spat it out. “Is this the swill they’ve given you to drink?” he demanded.
“Whoever’s at fault won’t see tomorrow’s sun set!” He flung open the door and
bellowed into the hall: “Wine! Wine for Prince Gormoth and Duke Skranga! And
silver cups!” He hurled the pewter, still half full of wine, at a guard. “Move
your feet, you bastard! And see it’s fit for nobles to drink!” MOBILE force HQ had been the mansion of a Nostori noble
driven from Sevenhills Valley on D-for-Dombra Day. Kalvan’s name had been
shouted ahead as he rode to it through the torch-lit, troop-crowded village,
and Harmakros and some of his officers met him at the door. “Great Dralm, Kalvan!” Harmakros laughed. “Don’t tell me you’re
growing wings on horses, now. Our messengers only got off an hour ago.” “Yes, I met them at Vryllos Gap.” They crossed the outer
hall and entered the big room beyond. “We got the news at Tarr-Hostigos just
after dark. What have you heard since?” At least fifty candles burned in the central chandelier. Evidently
the cavalry had gotten here before the peasants, on D-Day, and hadn’t looted
too destructively themselves. Harmakros led him to an inlaid table on which a
map, scorched with hot needles on white deerskin, was spread. “We have reports from all the watchtowers along the mountains.
They’re too far back from the river for anything but dust to be seen, but the
column’s over three miles long. First cavalry, then infantry, then guns and
wagons, and then more infantry and some cavalry. They halted at Nirfa at dusk
and built hundreds of campfires. Whether they left them burning and moved on
after dark, and how far ahead the cavalry are now, we don’t know. We expect
them at Marax Ford by dawn.” “We got a little more than that. The Nostor priest of Dralm
got a messenger off a little after noon, but he didn’t get across the river
till twilight. Your column’s commanded by Klestreus, the mercenary captain-general.
All Gormoth’s mercenaries, four thousand cavalry and two thousand infantry, a
thousand of his own infantry, and fifteen guns, he didn’t say what kind, and a
train of wagons that must be simply creaking with loot. At the same time,
Netzigon’s moving west on Listra-Mouth with an all-Nostori army; dodging them
was what delayed this messenger. Chartiphon’s at Listra-Mouth with what he can
scrape up; Ptosphes is at Vryllos Gap with a small force.” “That’s it,” Harmakros said. “Double attack, but the one
from the east will be the heavy one. We can’t do anything to help Chartiphon,
can we?” “Beat Klestreus as badly as we can; that’s all I can think
of.” He had gotten out his pipe; as soon as he had it filled, one of the staff
officers was offering a light. That was another universal constant. “Thank you.
What’s been done here, so far?” “I started my wagons and the eight-pounders east on the main
road; they’ll halt just west of Fitra, here.” He pointed on the map to a little
farming village. “As soon as they’re all collected, here, I’ll start down the
back road, which joins the main road at Fitra. After I’m past, the heavy stuff
will follow on. I have two-hundred militia—the usual odd-and-sods, about half
with crossbows—marching with the wagons.” “That was all smart.” He looked again at the map. The back
road, adequate for cavalry and four-pounders but not for wagons or the heavy
guns, followed the mountain and then bent south to join the main valley road. Harmakros
had gotten the slow stuff off first, and wouldn’t be impeded by it on his own
march, and he was waiting to have all his force together, instead of feeding it
in to be chopped up by detail. “Where had you, thought of fighting?” “Why, on the Adm, of course.” Harmakros was surprised that
he should ask. “Klestreus will have some of his cavalry across before we get
there, but that can’t be helped. We’ll kill them or run them back, and then
defend the line of the river.” “No.” Kalvan touched the stem of his corncob on the Fitra
road-junction. “We fight here.” “But, Lord Kalvan! That’s miles inside Hostigos!” one of the
officers expostulated. Maybe he owned an estate down there. “We can’t let them
get that far!” “Lord Kalvan,” Harmakros began stiffly. He was going to be
insubordinate; he never bothered with titles otherwise. “We cannot give up a
foot of Hostigi ground. The honor of Hostigos forbids it.” Here we are, back in the Middle Ages! He seemed to hear the
voice of the history professor, inside his head, calling a roll of battles lost
on points of honor. Mostly by the French, though they weren’t the only ones. He
decided to fly into a rage. “To Styphon with that!” he yelled, banging his fists on the
table. “We’re not fighting this war for honor, and we’re not fighting this war
for real-estate. We’re fighting this Dralm-damned war for survival, and the
only way we can win it is to kill all the damned Nostori we can, and get as few
of our men killed doing it as we can. “Now, here,” he continued quietly, the rage having served
its purpose. “Here’s the best place to do it. You know what the ground’s like
there. Klestreus will cross here at Marax. He’ll rush his best cavalry ahead,
and after he’s secured the ford, he’ll push on up the valley. His cavalry’ll
want to get in on the best looting before the infantry come up. By the time the
infantry are over, they’ll be strung out all up East Hostigos. “And they’ll be tired, and, more important, their horses
will be tired. We’ll all have gotten to Fitra by daylight, and by the time they
begin coming up, we’ll have our position prepared, our horses will be fresh
again, all the men will have at least an hour or so sleep, and a hot meal. You
think that won’t make a difference? Now, what troops have we east of here?” A hundred-odd cavalry along the river; a hundred and fifty
regular infantry, and about twice as many militia. Some five hundred, militia
and some regulars, at posts in the gaps. “All right ... get riders off at once, somebody who won’t be
argued with. Have that force along the river move back, the infantry as rapidly
as possible, and the cavalry a little ahead of the Nostori, skirmishing. They
will not attempt to delay them; if the ones in front are slowed down, the ones
behind will catch up with them, and we don’t want that.” Harmakros had been looking at the map, and also looking over
the idea. He nodded. “East Hostigos,” he declared, “will be the graveyard of
the Nostori.” That took care of the honor of Hostigos. “Well, mercenaries from Hos-Agrys and Hos-Ktemnos. Who hired
those mercenaries, anyhow—Gormoth or Styphon’s House?” “Why, Gormoth. Styphon’s House furnished the money, but the
mercenary captains contracted with Gormoth.’. “Stupid of Styphon. The reason I asked, the Rev. What’s-his-name,
in Nostor, included an interesting bit of gossip in his report. It seems that
this morning Gormoth had one of his under-stewards put to death. Forced a
funnel into his mouth, and had close to half a keg of wine poured into him. The
wine was of inferior quality, and had been furnished to a prisoner, or supposed
prisoner, for whom Gormoth had commanded good treatment.” One of the officers made a face. “Sounds like Gormoth.” Another
laughed and named a couple of innkeepers in Hostigos Town who deserved the
same. Harmakros wanted to know who this pampered prisoner was. “You know him. That Agrysi horse-trader, Skranga.” “Yes, we got some good horses from him. I’m riding one, myself,”
Harmakros said. “Hey! He was working in the fireseed mill. Do you think he’s
making fireseed for Gormoth now?” “If he’s doing what I told him to he is.” There was an
outcry; even Harmakros stared at him in surprise. “If Gormoth starts making his
own fireseed, Styphon’s House will find it out, and you know what’ll happen
then. That’s why I was wondering who’d be able to use those mercenaries against
whom. That’s another thing. We can’t be bothered with Nostori prisoners, but
take all the mercenaries who’ll surrender. We’ll need them when Sarrask’s turn
comes up.” DAWN was only a pallor in the east, and the whitewashed
walls were dim blurs under dark thatches, but the village of Fitra was awake, and the shouting began as he approached: “Lord Kalvan! Dralm bless Lord
Kalvan!” He was used to it now; it didn’t give him the thrill it had at first.
Light streamed from open doors and windows, and a fire blazed on the little
common, and there was a crowd of villagers and cavalrymen who had ridden on
ahead. Behind him, hooves thudded on the road, and far back he could hear the four-pounders
clattering over the pole bridge at the mill. He had to make a speech from the
saddle, while orders were shouted and reshouted to the rear and men and horses
crowded off the road to make way for the guns. Then he and Harmakros and four or five other officers rode
forward, reining in where the main road began to dip into the little hollow.
The eastern pallor had become a bar of yellow light. The Mountains of Hostigos
were blackly plain on the left, and the jumble of low ridges on the right were
beginning to take shape. He pointed to a ravine between two of them. “Send two hundred cavalry around that ridge and into that
little valley, where those three farms are clumped together,” he said. “They’re
not to make fires or let themselves be seen. They’re to wait till we’re engaged
here, and the second batch of Nostori come up. Then they’ll come out and hit
them from behind.” An officer galloped away to attend to it. The yellow light
spread; only a few of the larger and brighter stars were still visible. In
front, the ground fell away to the small brook that ran through the hollow, to
join a larger stream that flowed east along the foot of the mountain. The
mountain rose steeply to a bench, then sloped up to the summit. On the right
was broken ground, mostly wooded. In front, across the hollow, was mostly open
farmland. There were a few trees around them, in the hollow and on the other
side. This couldn’t have been better if he’d had Dralm create it to special order. The yellow light had reached the zenith, and the eastern horizon
was a dazzle. Harmakros squinted at it and said something about fighting with
the sun in their eyes. “No such thing; it’ll be overhead before they get here. Now,
you go take a nap. I’ll wake you in time to give me some sack-time. As soon as
the wagons get here, we’ll give everybody a hot meal.” An ox-cart appeared on the brow of the hill across the
hollow, piled high, a woman and a boy trudging beside the team and another
woman and some children riding. Before they were down to the brook, a wagon had
come into sight. This was only the start; there’d be a perfect stream of them
soon. They couldn’t be allowed on the main road west of Fitra until the wagons
and the eight-pounders were through. “Have them turned aside,” he ordered. “And use the wagons
and carts for barricades, and the oxen to drag trees.” The village peasants were coming out now, with four- and
six-ox teams dragging chains. Axes began thudding. More refugees were coming
in; there were loud protests at being diverted and at having wagons and oxen commandeered.
The axe-men were across the hollow now, and men shouted at straining oxen as
felled trees were dragged in to build an abatis. He strained his eyes against the sunrise; he couldn’t see
any smoke. Too far away, but he was sure it was there. The enemy cavalry had
certainly crossed the Athan by now, and pyromania was as fixed in the mercenary
character as kleptomania. The abatis began to take shape, trees dragged into
line with the tops to the front and the butts to the rear, with spaces for
three of the six/four-pounders on either side of the road and a barricade of
wagons and farm carts a little in advance at either end. He rode forward now
and then to get an enemy’s-eye view of it. He didn’t want it to look too
formidable from in front, or too professional—for one thing, he wanted to make
sure that the guns were completely camouflaged. Finally he began to notice
smears of smoke against the horizon, maybe six or eight miles away. Klestreus’s
mercenaries weren’t going to disappoint him after all. A company of infantry came up. They were regulars, a hundred
and fifty of them, with two pikes (and one of them a real pike) to every
caliver, marching in good order. They’d come all the way from the Athan,
reported fighting behind them, and were disgusted at marching away from it. He
told them they’d get all they wanted before noon, and to fall out and rest. A
couple of hundred militia, some with crossbows, dribbled in. There were more
smokes on the eastern horizon, but he still couldn’t hear firing. At
seven-thirty, the supply wagons, the four eight-pounders, and the two hundred
militia arrived. That was good. The refugees, now a steady stream, could be
sent on up the road. He saw to it that fires were lit and a hot meal started,
and then went into the village. He found Harmakros asleep in one of the cottages, wakened
him, and gave him the situation to date. “Send somebody to wake me,” he finished, “as soon as you see
smoke within three miles, as soon as our cavalry skirmishers start coming in,
and in any case in two and a half hours.” Then he pulled off his helmet and boots, unbuckled his
sword-belt, and lay down in the rest of his armor on the cornshuck tick
Harmakros had vacated, hoping that it had no small inhabitants or, if so, that
none of them would find lodgement under his arming-doublet. It was cool in here
behind the stone walls and under the thick thatch. The wet heat of his body
became a clammy chill. He shifted positions a few times, decided that fewer
things gouged into him when lying on his back, and close is eyes. So far, everything had gone nicely; all he was worried about
was who was going to let him down, and how badly. He hoped some valiant fool
wouldn’t get a rush of honor to the head and charge when he ought to stand
fast, like the Saxons at Hastings. If he could bring this off just half as well as he’d planned
it, which would be about par for any battle, he could go to Valhalla when he
died and drink at the same table with Richard Coeur-de-Lion, the Black Prince
and Henry of Navarre. A complete success would entitle him to take a salute
from Stonewall Jackson. He fell asleep receiving the commendation of George S.
Patton. AN infantry captain wakened him at a little before ten. “They’re
burning Systros now,” he said. That was a town of some two thousand, two and a
half miles away. “A couple of the cavalry who’ve been keeping contact with them
just came in. The first batch, about fifteen hundred, are coming up fast, and
there’s another lot, about a thousand, a mile and a half behind them. And we’ve
been hearing those big bombards at Narza Gap.” Between Montoursville and Muncy; that would be Klestreus’s
infantry on this side, and probably some of Netzigon’s ragtag and bobtail on
the other. He pulled on his boots and buckled on his belt, and somebody brought
him a bowl of beef stew with plenty of onion in it, and a mug of sour red wine.
When his horse was brought, he rode forward to the line, noticing in passing
that the Mobile Force Uncle Wolf and the village priest of Dralm and priestess
of Yirtta had set up a field hospital in the common, and that pole-and-blanket
stretchers were being made. He hoped he wouldn’t be wounded. No anesthetics,
here-and-now, though the priests of Galzar used sandbags. A big cloud of smoke dirtied the sky over Systros. Silly buggers—first
crowd in had fired it. Here-and-now mercenaries were just the same as Tilly’s
or Wallenstein’s. Now the ones behind would have to bypass it, which would
bring them to Fitra in even worse order. The abatis was finished, and he cantered forward for a final
look at it. He couldn’t see a trace of any of the guns, and it looked, as he
had wanted it to, like the sort of thing a lot of peasant home-guards would
throw up. At each end, between the abatis itself and the short barricades of
carts, was an opening big enough for cavalry to sortie out. The mounted
infantry horse-lines were back of the side road, with the more poorly armed
militia holding horses. Away off, one of the Narza Gap bombards boomed; they were
still holding out. Then he began to hear the distant, and then not-so-distant,
pop of small arms. Cavalry drifted up the road, some reloading pistols as they
came. The shouts grew louder; more cavalry, in more of a hurry, arrived.
Finally, four of them topped the rise and came down the slope; the last one
over the top turned in his saddle and fired a pistol behind him. A dozen
Nostori cavalry appeared as they were splashing through the brook. Immediately, a big 8-bore rifled musket bellowed from behind
the abatis, and then another and another. His horse dance-stepped daintily.
Across the hollow, a horse was down, kicking, another reared, riderless, and a
third, also empty saddled, trotted down to the brook and stopped to drink. The
mercenaries turned and galloped away out of sight into the dead ground beyond
the rise. He was wondering where Harmakros had put the rest of the riflemen
when a row of smoke-puffs blossomed along the edge of the bench above the
stream on the left, and shots cracked like a string of firecrackers. There were
yells from out of sight across the hollow, and musketoons thumped in reply.
Wasting Styphon’s good fireseed—at four hundred yards, they couldn’t have hit
Grant’s Tomb with smoothbores. He wished he had five hundred rifles up there. Hell, why not
wish for twenty medium tanks and half a dozen Sabre-Jets, while he was at it?! Then Klestreus’s mercenary cavalry came up in a solid front
on the brow of the hill—black and orange pennons and helmet-plumes and scarves,
polished breastplates. Lancers all in front, musketoon-men behind. A shiver ran
along the front as the lances came down. As though that had been the signal, and it probably had
been, six four-pounders and four eight-pounders went off together. It wasn’t a
noise, but a palpable blow on the ears. His horse started to buck; by the time
he had him under control the smoke was billowing out over the hollow, and
several perfect rings were floating up against the blue, and everybody behind
the abatis was yelling, “Down Styphon!” Round-shot; he could see where it had tom furrows back into
the group of black and orange cavalry. Men were yelling, horses rearing, or
down and screaming horribly, as only wounded horses can. The charge had stopped
before it had started. On either side of him, gun-captains were shouting, “Grapeshot!
Grapeshot!” and cannoneers were jumping to their pieces before they had stopped
recoiling with double-headed swabs, one end wet to quench lingering powder-bag
sparks and one end dry. The cavalry charge slid forward in broken chunks, down the
slope and into the hollow. When they were twenty yards short of the brook, four
hundred arquebuses crashed. The whole front went down, horses behind falling
over dropped horses in front. The arquebusiers who had fired stepped back,
drawing the stoppers of their powder-flasks with their teeth. Spring powder
flasks, self-measuring, get made and issued soonest. He also added cartridge
paper to the paper memo. When they were half reloaded, the other four hundred arquebuses
crashed. The way those cavalry were jammed down there, it would take an
individual miracle for any bullet to miss something. The smoke was clogging the
hollow like spilled cotton now, but through it he could see another wave of
cavalry coming up on the brow of the opposite hill. A four-pounder spewed
grapeshot into them, then another and another, till the whole six had fired. Gustavus Adolphus’s four-pounder crews could load and fire
faster than musketeers, the dry lecture-room voice was telling him. Of course,
the muskets they’d been timed against had been matchlocks; that had made a big
difference. Lord Kalvan’s were doing almost as well: the first four-pounder had
fired on the heels of the third arquebus volley. Then one of the eight-pounders
fired, and that was a small miracle. A surprising number of Klestreus’s cavalry had survived the
fall of their horses. Well, not so surprising; horses were bigger targets, and
they didn’t wear breastplates. Having nowhere else to go, the men were charging
on foot, using their lances as pikes. A few among them had musketoons; they’d
been in the rear. Quite a few were shot coming up, and more were piked trying
to get through the abatis. A few did get through. As he galloped to help deal
with one of these parties, he heard a trumpet sound on the left, and another on
the right, and there was a clamor of “Down Styphon!” at both ends. That would
be the cavalry going out; he hoped the artillery wouldn’t get excited. Then he was in front of a dozen unhorsed Nostori cavalrymen,
pulling up his horse and aiming a pistol at them. “Yield, comrades! We spare mercenaries!” An undecided second
and a half, then one of them lifted a reversed musketoon. “We yield; oath to
Galzar.” That, he thought, they would keep. Galzar didn’t like
oath-breaking soldiers; he let them get killed at the next opportunity. Cult of
Galzar encourage. Some peasants ran up, brandishing axes and pitchforks. He
waved them back with his pistol, letting them have a look at the muzzle. “Keep your weapons,” he told the mercenaries. “I’ll find
somebody to guard you.” He detailed a couple of Mobile Force arquebusiers; they impressed
some militia. Then he had to save a wounded mercenary from having his throat
cut. Dralm-damned civilians! He’d have to detail prisoner-guards. Disarm these
mercenaries and the peasants’d cut their throats; leave them armed, and the
temptation might overcome the fear of Galzar. Along the abatis, the firing had stopped, but the hollow
below was a perfect hell’s bedlam—pistol shots, clashing steel, “Down Styphon!”
and, occasionally, “Gormoth!” Over his shoulder he could see villagers, even women
and children, replacing militiamen on the horse-lines. Captains were shouting, “Pikes forward!” and pikemen were dodging among the branches
to get through the abatis. Dimly, through the smoke, he could see red and blue
on horsemen at the brow of the opposite hill. Uniforms; do something about.
Brown, or dark green. The road had been left unobstructed, and he trotted through
and down toward the brook. What he saw in the hollow made his stomach heave,
and it didn’t heave easily. It was the horses that bothered him more than
anything else, and he wasn’t the only one. The infantry, going forward, were
stopping to cut wounded horses throats, or brain them, or shoot them with
pistols from saddle-holsters. They shouldn’t do that, they ought to keep on,
but he couldn’t stand seeing horses suffer. Stretcher-bearers were coming forward to, and villagers to
loot. Corpse robbing was the only way the here-and-now civil population had of
getting a little of their own back after a battle. Most of them had clubs or
hatchets, to make sure that what they were robbing really were corpses. There were a lot of good weapons lying around. They ought to
be collected before they rusted into uselessness, but there was no time for
that now. Stopping to do that, once, had been one of Stonewall Jackson’s few
mistakes. Something was being done toward that, though: he saw crossbows lying
around, and each one meant a militiaman who had armed himself with An enemy
cavalry musketoon. The battle had passed on eastward; unopposed infantry were
forming up, blocks of pikemen with blocks of arquebusiers between, and men were
running back to bring up horses. Away ahead, there was an uproar of battle;
that would be the two hundred cavalry he had posted on the far right hitting
another batch of Gormoth’s mercenaries, who, by now, would be disordered by fugitives
streaming back from the light at the hollow. The riflemen on the bench were
drifting eastward, too, firing as they went. And enemy cavalry were coming in in groups, holding their
helmets up on their sword-points, calling out, “We yield, oath to Galzar.” One
of the officers of the flanking party, with four troopers, was coming in with
close to a hundred of them, regretting that so many had gotten away. And all
the infantry who had marched in from the Athan, and many of the local militia,
had mounted themselves on captured horses. There was a clatter behind him, and he got his horse off the
road to let the four-pounders pass in column. Their captain waved to him and
told him, laughing, that the eights would be along in a day or so. “Where do we get some more shooting?” he asked. “Down the road a piece; just follow along and we’ll show you
plenty to shoot at.” He slipped back the knit cuff under his mail sleeve and
looked at his watch. It was still ten minutes to noon, Hostigos Standard
Sundial Time. BY 17:30, they were down the road a really far piece, and
there had been considerable shooting on the way. Now they were two miles west
of the Athan, on the road to Marax Ford, and the Nostori wagons and cannon were
strung out for half a mile each way. He was sitting, with his helmet off, on an
upended wine keg at a table made by laying a shed-door across some boxes, with
Harmakros’s pyrographed deerskin map spread in front of him, and a mug where he
could reach it. Beside the road, some burned out farm buildings were still
smoking, and the big oaks which shaded him were yellowed on one side from heat.
Several hundred prisoners squatted in the field beyond, eating rations from
their own wagons. Harmakros, and the commander of mounted infantry, Phrames—he’d
be about two-star rank—and the brigadier-general commanding cavalry, and the
Mobile Force Uncle Wolf—somewhat younger than the Tarr-Hostigos priest of Galzar
and about chaplain-major equivalent—sat or squatted around him. The messenger
from Sevenhills Valley, who had just caught up with him, paced back and forth,
trying to walk the stiffness out of his legs. He drank from a mug as he talked.
He was about U.S. first lieutenant equivalent. Titles of rank, regularize. This business of calling
everybody from company commander up to commander-in-chief a captain just wouldn’t
do. He’d made a start with that, on the upper echelons; he’d have to carry it
down to field and company level. Rank, insignia of, establish. He thought he’d
adopt the Confederate Army system—it was simpler, with no oak and maple leaves
and no gold and silver distinctions. Then he pulled his attention back to what
the messenger was saying. “That’s all we know. All morning, starting before mess call,
there was firing up the river. Cannon-fire, and then small arms, and, when the
wind was right, we could hear shouting. About first morning drill break, some
of our cavalry, who’d been working up the river along the mountains, came back
and reported that Netzigon had crossed the river in front of Vryllos Gap, and
they couldn’t get through to Ptosphes and Princess Rylla.” He cursed, first in Zarthani and then in English. “Is she at
Vryllos Gap, too?” Harmakros laughed. “You ought to know that girl by now,
Kalvan; you’re going to marry her. Just try and keep her out of battles.” That he would, by Dralm! With how much success, though, was
something else. The messenger, having taken time out for a deep drink, continued:
“Finally, a rider came in from this side of the mountain. He said that the Nostori were across and pushing Prince Ptosphes back into
the gap. He wanted to know if the captain of Tarr-Dombra could send him help.” well? The messenger shrugged. “We only had two hundred regulars
and two hundred and fifty militia, and it’s ten miles to Vryllos along the
river, and an even longer way around the mountains on the south side. So the
captain left a few cripples and kitchen-women to hold the castle, and crossed
the river at Dyssa. They were just starting when I left; I could hear
cannon-fire as I was leaving Sevenhills Valley.” “That was about the best thing he could do.” Gormoth would have a couple of hundred men at Dyssa. Just a holding
force; they’d given up the idea of any offensive operations against Dombra Gap.
If they could be run out and the town burned, it would start a scare that might
take a lot of pressure off Ptosphes and Chartiphon both. “Well, I hope nobody expects any help from us,” Harmakros
said. “Our horses are ridden into the ground; half our men are mounted on
captured horses, and they’re in worse shape than what we have left of our own.” “Some of my infantrymen are riding two to a horse,” Phrames
said. “You can figure what kind of a march they’d make. They’d do almost as
well on foot.” “And it would be midnight before any of us could get to Vryllos
Gap, and that would be less than a thousand.” “Five hundred, I’d make it,” the cavalry brigadier said. “We’ve
been losing by attrition all the way east.” “But I’d heard that your losses had been very light.” “You heard? From whom?” “Why, the men guarding prisoners. Great Galzar, Lord Kalvan,
I never saw so many prisoners.. “That’s been our losses: prisoner-guard details. Every one
of them is as much out of it as though he’d been shot through the head.” But the army Klestreus had brought across the Athan had
ceased to exist. Not improbably as many as five hundred had recrossed at Marax
Ford. Six hundred had broken out of Hostigos at Narza Gap. There would be
several hundred more, singly and in small bands, dodging through the woods to
the south; they’d have to be mopped up. The rest had all either been killed or
captured. First, there had been the helter-skelter chase east from
Fitra. For instance, twenty riflemen, firing from behind rocks and trees, had
turned back two hundred trying to get through at the next gap down. Mostly,
anybody who was overtaken had simply pulled off his helmet or held up a
reversed weapon and cried for quarter. He’d only had to fight once, himself, he and two Mobile
Force cavalrymen had caught up to ten fleeing mercenaries and shouted to them
to yield. Maybe this crowd were tired of running, maybe they were insulted at
the demand from so few, or maybe they’d just been bullheaded. Instead, they had
turned and charged. He had half-dodged—and half parried a lance and spitted the
lancer in the throat, and then had been fighting two swordsman, and good ones,
when a dozen mounted had come up. Then, they’d had a small battle a half-mile west of Systros.
Fifteen hundred infantry and five hundred cavalry, all mercenaries, had just
gotten onto the main road again after passing on both sides of the burning town
when the Fitra fugitives came dashing into them. Their own cavalry were swept
away, and the infantry were trying to pike off the fugitives, when mounted
Hostigi infantry arrived, dismounted, gave them an arquebus volley, and then
made a pike charge, and then a couple of four-pounders came up and began
throwing case-shot, leather tubes full of pistol balls. The Fitra fugitives had
never been exposed to case-shot before, and after about two hundred were
casualties they began hoisting their helmets and invoking Galzar. Galzar was being a big help today. Have to do something nice
for him. That had been where the mercenary general, Klestreus, had
been captured. Phratnes had taken his surrender; Kalvan and Harmakros had been
too busy chasing fugitives. A lot of these had turned toward Narza Gap. Hestophes, the Hostigi CO there, had been a real cool cat.
He’d had two hundred and fifty men, two old bombards, and a few lighter pieces.
Klestreus’s infantry had attacked Nirfa Gap, the last one down, and, with the
help of Netzigon’s people from the other side, swamped it. A few survivors had
managed to get away along the mountain top and brought him warning. An hour
later, he was under attack from both sides, too. He had beaten off three attacks, by a probable total of two
thousand, and was bracing for a fourth when his lookouts on the mountain
reported seeing the fugitives from Fitra and Systros streaming. east.
Immediately he had spiked his guns and pulled his men up the mountain. The
besieging infantry on the south were swept through by fleeing cavalry, and they
threw the Nostori on the other side into confusion. Hestophes spattered them
generously with small-arms fire to discourage loitering and let them go to
spread panic on the other side. By now, they would be spreading it in Nostor Town. Then, just west of the river, they had run into the wagon
train and artillery, inching along under ox-power, accompanied by a thousand of
Gormoth’s subject troops and another five hundred mercenary cavalry. This had
been Systros over again, except it had been a massacre. The fugitive cavalry
had tried to force a way past, the infantry had resisted them, the
four-pounders—only five of them, now; one was off the road just below Systros
with a broken axle—arrived and began firing case-shot, and then two
eight-pounders showed up. Some of the mercenaries attempted to fight—when they
later found the pay chests in one of the wagons, they understood why—but the
Nostori simply emptied their arquebuses and calivers and ran. Along with “Down
Styphon! “ the’ pursuers were shouting “Dralm and no Quarter!” He wondered what
Xentos would think of that; Dralm wasn’t supposed to be that kind of a god, at
all. “You know,” he said, getting out his pipe and tobacco, “we
didn’t have a very big army to start with. What do we have now?” “Five hundred, and four hundred along the river,” Phrames
said. “We lost about five hundred, killed and wounded. The rest are guarding
prisoners all the way back to Fitra.” He looked up at the sun. “Back almost to Hostigos Town, by now.” “Well, we can help Ptosphes and Chartiphon from here,” he
said. “That gang Hestophes let through Narza Gap will be in Nostor Town by now, panting their story out, and the way they’ll tell it, it will be five times
worse than it really was.” He looked at his watch. “By this time, Gormoth
should be getting ready to fight the Battle of Nostor.” He turned to Phrames. “You’re
in charge of this stuff here. How many men do you really need to guard it? Two
hundred?” Phrames looked up and down the road, and then at the prisoners,
and then, out of the comer of his eye, at the boxes under the improvised table.
They hadn’t gotten around to weighing that silver yet, but there was too much
of it to be careless with. “I ought to have twice that many.” “The prisoners are mercenaries, and have agreed to take
Prince Ptosphes’s colors,” the priest of Galzar said. “Of course, they may not
bear arms against Prince Gormoth or any in his service until released from
their oaths to him. In the sight of the war god, helping guard these wagons
would be the same, for it would release men of yours to fight. But I will speak
to them, and I will answer that they will not break their surrender. You will
need some to keep the peasants from stealing, though.” “Two hundred:’ Phrames agreed. “We have some walking wounded
who can help.” “All right. Take two hundred; men with the worst beat up
horses and those men who are riding double, and mind the store. Harmakros, you
take three hundred and two of the four-pounders, and cross at the next ford
down. I’ll take the other four hundred and three guns and work north and east.
You might split into two columns, a hundred men and one gun, but no smaller.
There’ll be companies and parts of companies over there, trying to re-form.
Break them up. And burn the whole country out—everything that’ll catch fire and
make a smoke by daylight or a blaze at night. Any refugees, head them up the
river, give them a good scare and let them go. We want Gormoth to think we’re
across the river with three or four thousand men. By Dralm, that’ll take some
pressure off Ptosphes and Chartiphon!” He rose, and Phrames took his seat. Horses were brought, and
he and Harmakros mounted. The messenger from Sevenhills Valley sat down,
stretching his legs in front of him. He rode slowly along the line of wagons,
full of food the Nostori wouldn’t eat this winter, and would curse Gormoth for
it, and fireseed the Styphon temple-farm slaves would have to toil to replace.
Then he came to the guns, and saw one that caught his eye. It was a long brass eighteen-pounder,
on a two-wheel cart, with the long tail of the heavy timber stock supported by
a four-wheel cart. There were two more behind it, and an officer with a
ginger-brown beard sat morosely smoking a pipe on the limber-cart of the middle
one. He pulled up. “Your guns, Captain?” “They were. They’re Prince Ptosphes’s guns now, I suppose.” “They’re still yours, if you take our colors, and good pay
for the use of them. We have other enemies besides Gormoth, you know.” The captain grinned. “So I’ve heard. Well, I’ll take
Ptosphes’s colors. You’re the Lord Kalvan? Is it true that you people make your
own fireseed?” “What do you think we were shooting at you, sawdust? You
know what the Styphon stuff’s like. Try ours and see the difference.” “Well, Down Styphon, then!” They chatted for a little. The
mercenary artilleryman’s name was Alkides; his home, to the extent that any
free-captain had one, was in Agrys City, on Manhattan Island. His guns, of
which he was inordinately proud, and almost tearfully happy at being able to
keep, had been cast in Zygros City. They were very good; if Verkan could
collect a few men capable of casting guns like that, with trunnions ... “Well, go back there by that burned house, by those big
trees. You’ll find one of my officers, Count Phrames, and our Uncle Wolf there.
You’ll find a keg of something, too. Where are your men?” “Well, some were killed before we cried quits. The rest are
back with the other prisoners.” “Gather them up. Tell Count Phrames you’re to have oxen—we
have no horses to spare—and get your company and guns on the road for Hostigos Town as soon as you can. I’ll talk to you later. Good luck, Captain Alkides Or Colonel Alkides; if he was as good as he seemed to be,
maybe Brigadier-General Alkides. There were dead infantry all along the road, mostly killed
from behind. Another case of cowardice carrying its own penalty; infantry who
stood against cavalry had a chance, often a good one, but infantry who turned
tail and ran had none. He didn’t pity them a bit. It grew progressively worse as he neared the river, where
the crews of the four-pounders and the two eight-pounders were swabbing and
polishing their pieces, and dark birds rose cawing and croaking and squawking
when disturbed. Must be every crow and raven and buzzard in Hos-Harphax; he
even saw eagles. The river, horse-knee deep at the ford, was tricky; his mount
continually stumbled on armor-weighted corpses. That had been case-shot,
mostly, he thought. SO your boy did it, all by himself,” the lady history
professor was saying. Verkan Vall grinned. They were in a seminar room at the
University, their chairs facing a big map of Fourth Level Aryan-Transpacific
Hostigos, Nostor, northeastern Sask and northern Beshta. The pin-points of
light he had been shifting back and forth on it were out, now. “Didn’t I tell you he was a genius?” “Just how much genius did it take to lick a bunch of klunks
like that?” said Taigan Dreth, the outtime studies director. “The way I heard
it, they licked themselves.” “Well, considerable, to predict their errors accurately and
plan to exploit them,” argued old Professor Shalgro, the paratemporal
probability theorist. To him, it was a brilliant theoretical achievement, and
the battle was merely the experiment which had vindicated it. “I agree with
Chief’s Assistant Verkan; the man is a genius, and the fact that he was only
able to become a minor police officer on his own time-line shows how these
low-order cultures allow genius to go to waste.” “He knew the military history of his own time-line, and he
knew how to apply it on Aryan-Transpacific.” The historian wasn’t letting her
own subject be slighted. “Actually, I think Gormoth planned an excellent
campaign against people like Ptosphes and Chartiphon. If it hadn’t been for
Kalvan, he’d have won.” “Well, Chartiphon and Ptosphes fought a battle of their own
and won it, didn’t they?” “More or less.” He began punching buttons on the arm of his chair and throwing on red and blue lights. “Netzigon was supposed to wait here, at Listra-Mouth,
till Klestreus got up to here. Chartiphon began cannonading him—ordnance
engineering by Lord Kalvan—and Netzigon couldn’t take it. He attacked
prematurely.” “Why didn’t he just pull back? He had that river in front of
him. Chartiphon couldn’t have gotten his guns across that, could he?” Talgan
Dreth asked. “Oh, that wouldn’t have been honorable. Besides, he didn’t
want the mercenaries to win the war; he wanted the glory of winning it himself.” The historian laughed. “How often I’ve heard that!” she
said. “But don’t these Hostigi go in for all this honor and glory jazz too?” “Sure—till Kalvan talked them out of it. As soon as he
started making fireseed, he established a moral ascendancy. And then, the new
tactics, the new swordplay, the artillery improvements; now it’s ‘Trust Lord
Kalvan. Lord Kalvan is always right’.” “He’ll have to work at that now,” Dreth said. “He won’t dare
make any mistakes. What happened to Netzigon?” “He made three attempts to cross the river, which is a
hundred yards wide, in the face of artillery superiority. That was how he lost
most of his cavalry. Then he threw his infantry across here at Vryllos, pushed
Ptosphes back into the gap, and started a flank attack up the south bank on
Chartiphon. Ptosphes wouldn’t stay pushed; he waited till Netzigon was between
the river and the mountain, and then counter-attacked. Then Rylla took what cavalry
they had across the river, burned Netzigon’s camp, butchered some
camp-followers, and started a panic in his rear. That was when everything came
apart and the pieces began breaking up, and then the commander at Tarr-Dombra,
there, took some of his men across, burned Dyssa, and started another panic.” “It was too bad about Rylla,” the lady historian said. “Yes.”
He shrugged. “Things like that happen, in battles.” That was why Dalla was
always worried when she heard he’d been in one. “We had a couple of antigrav
conveyers in, after dark. They had to stay up to twenty thousand feet, since we
didn’t want any heavenly portents on top of everything else, but they got some
good infrared telephoto views. Big fires all over western Nostor, and around
Dyssa, and more of them, the whole countryside, in the southwest—that was
Kalvan and Harmakros. And a lot of hasty fortifying and entrenching around Nostor Town; Gormoth seems to think he’s going to have to fight the next battle there.” “Oh, that’s ridiculous,” Talgan Dreth said. “It’ll be a
couple of weeks before Kalvan has his army in shape for an offensive, after
those battles. And how much powder do you think he has left?” “Six or seven tons. That came in just before I came here,
from our people in Hostigos Town. After he crossed the river last evening,
Harmakros captured a big wagon train. A Styphon’s House archpriest, on his way
to Nostor Town, with four tons of fireseed and seven thousand ounces of gold.
Subsidies for Gormoth.” “Now that’s what’s called making war support war,” the history
professor commented. “And another ton or so in Mistress’s supply train, and the
pay-chests for his army,” he added. “Hostigos came out of this all right.” “Wait till I get this all worked up,” old Professor Shalgro
was gloating. “Absolute proof of the decisive effect of one superior individual
on the course of history. Kalthar Morth and his Historical Inevitability, and
his vast, impersonal social forces, indeed!” “Well, what are we going to do now?” Talgan Dreth asked. “We
have the study-team organized, the five men who’ll be the brass-founders, and
the three girls who’ll be the pattern-makers.” “Well, we have horseback travel-time between Zygros City and Hostigos Town to allow for. They’ve been familiarizing on adjoining near-identical
time-lines? Send them all to Zygros City on the Kalvan time-line. I have a
couple of Paracops planted there already. Let them make local contacts and call
attention to themselves. Dalla and I will do the same. Then we won’t have to
worry about some traveler from Zygros showing up in Hostigos Town and punching holes in our stories.” “How about conveyer-heads?” He shook his head. “You’ll have
to have your team established in Hostigos Town before they can put one in
there. You have a time-line for operations on Fifth Level, of course; work from
there. You’ll have to get onto Kalvan timeline by an antigrav conveyer drop.” “Horses and all?” “Horses and all. That will be mounts for myself and Dalla,
for two Paracops who will pose as hired guards, and for your team. Seventeen saddle
horses. And twelve pack horses, with loads of Zygrosi and Grefftscharr wares.
Lord Kalvan’s friend Verkan is a trader; traders have to have merchandise.” Talgan Dreth whistled softly. “That’ll mean at least two hundred-foot
conveyers. Where had you thought of landing them?” “Up here.” He twisted the dial; the map slid down until he
had the Southern corner of the Princedom of Nyklos, north and west of Hostigos.
“About here,” he said, making a spot of light. GORMOTH of Nostor stood inside the doorway of his presence-chamber,
his arm over the shoulder of the newly ennobled Duke Skranga, and together they
surveyed the crowd within. Netzigon, who had come stumbling in after midnight with all his guns and half his army lost and the rest a frightened rabble. His
cousin, Count Pheblon, his ransom still unpaid; he’d hoped Ptosphes wouldn’t be
alive to be paid by the moon’s end. The nobles of the Elite Guard, who had
attended him here at Tarr-Hostigos, waiting for news of victory until news of
defeat had come in. Three of Mistress’s officers, who had broken through at
Narza Gap to bring it, and a few more who had gotten over Marax Ford and back
to Nostor alive. And Vyblos, the high priest, and with him the Archpriest
Krastokles from Styphon’s House Upon Earth, and his black-armored
guard-captain, who had arrived at dawn with half a dozen troopers on
broken-down horses. He hated the sight of all of them, and the two priests most
of all. He cut short their greetings. “This is Duke Skranga,” he told them. “Next to me, he is
first nobleman of Nostor. He takes precedence over all here.” The faces in
front of his went slack with amazement, then stiffened angrily. A mutter of
protest was hushed almost as soon as it began. “Do any object? Then it had better
be one who’s served me at least half as well as this man, and I see none such
here.” He turned to Vyblos. “What do you want, and who’s this with you?” “His Sanctity, the Archpriest Krastokles, sent by His
Divinity, Styphon’s Voice,” Krastokles began furiously. “And how has he fared
since entering your realm? Set upon by Hostigi heathens, hounded like a deer
through the hills, his people murdered, his wagons pillaged ... “His wagons, you say? Well, great Galzar, what of my gold
and my fireseed, sent me by Styphon’s Voice in his care, and look how he’s
cared for them. he and Styphon between them.” “You blaspheme!” Archpriest Krastokles cried. “And it was
not your gold and fireseed, but the god’s, to be given you in the god’s service
at my discretion.” “And lost at your indiscretion. You witless fool in a yellow
bed gown, didn’t you know a battle when you were riding into one?” “Sacrilege!” A dozen voices said it at once: Vyblos’s and
Krastokles’s, and, among others, Netzigon’s. By the Mace of Galzar, now didn’t
he have a fine right to open his mouth here? Anger almost sickened him; in a
moment he was afraid that he would vomit pure bile. He strode to Netzigon, snatching
the golden chief-captain’s chain from over his shoulder. “All the gods curse you, and all the devils take you! I told
you to wait at Listra-Mouth for Klestreus, not to throw your army away along
with his. By Galzar, I ought to have you flayed alive!” He struck Netzigon
across the face with the chain. “Out of my sight, while you’re still alive!”
Then he turned to Vyblos. “You, too—out of here, and take the Archpimp
Krastokles with you. Go to your temple and stay there; return here either at my
bidding or at your peril.” He watched them leave: Netzigon shaken, the black-armored
captain stolidly, Vyblos and Krastokles stiff with rage. A few of Netzigon’s
officers and gentlemen attended him; the rest drew back from them as though
from contamination. He went to Pheblon and threw the golden chain over his
head. “I still don’t thank you for losing me Tarr-Dombra, but that’s
a handful of dried peas to what that son of a horse-leech’s daughter cost me.
Now, Galzar help you, you’ll have to make an army out of what he left you.” “My ransom still needs paying,” Phebion reminded him. “Till
that’s done, I’m oath-bound to Prince Ptosphes and Lord Kalvan.” “So you are; twenty thousand ounces of silver for you and
those taken with you. You know where to find it? I don’t.” “I do, Prince,” Duke Skranga said. “There’s ten times that
in the treasure vault of the temple of Styphon.” COLONEL Netzigon waited until he was outside to touch a
handkerchief to his check. It was bleeding freely, and had dripped onto his
doublet. Now, by Styphon, the cleaning of that would cost Gormoth dear! It wasn’t his fault, anyhow. Great Styphon, was he to sit
still while Chartiphon cannonaded him from across the river? And how had he
known what sort of cannon Chartiphon had? The Hostigi really must be making
fireseed; he hadn’t believed that until yesterday. Three times he had sent his cavalry
splashing into the river, and three times the guns had murdered them. He’d
never seen guns throw small-shot so far. So then he’d sent his infantry over at
Vryllos, and driven those with Prince Ptosphes back into the gap, and then,
while he was driving against Chartiphon’s right and the day had seemed won,
Ptosphes had brought his beaten soldiers back, fighting like panthers, and that
she-devil daughter of his—he’d heard, later, that she’d been killed. Styphon
bless whoever did it! Then everything had gone down in bloody ruin. Driven back
across the river again, the Hostigi pouring after them, and then riders from
Nostor Town with word that Mistress’s army was beaten in East Hostigos and
orders to fall back, and they had retreated, with the whole country burning
around them, fire and smoke at Dyssa and fugitives screaming that a thousand
Hostigi were pouring out of Dombra Gap, and his worthless peasant levies
throwing away their weapons and taking to their heels.... Sorcery, that’s what it was! That cursed foreign wizard, Kalvan!
Someone touched his arm. His hand flew to his poignard, and then he saw that it
was the archpriest’s guard-captain. He relaxed. “You were ill-used, Count
Netzigon,” the man in black armor said. “By Styphon, it ired me to see a brave
soldier used like a thievish serf!” “His Sanctity wasn’t reverently treated, nor His Holiness Vyblos.
It shocked me to hear such words to the consecrated of Styphon” he replied. “What
good can come to a realm whose Prince so insults the anointed of the god?” “Ah!” The captain smiled. “It’s a pleasure, in such a court,
to hear such piety. Now, Count Netzigon, if you could have a few words with His
Sanctity—this evening, say, at the temple. Come after dark, cloaked and in
commoner’s dress.” KALVAN’S horse stumbled, jerking him awake. Behind him,
fifty-odd riders clattered, many of them more or less wounded, none seriously.
There had been a score on horse litters, or barely able to cling to their
mounts, but they had been left at the base hospital in Sevenhills Valley. He couldn’t remember how long it had been since he had had his clothes, or even all his
armor, off, except for quarter-hour pauses, now and then, he had been in the
saddle since daylight, when he had recrossed the Athan with the smoke of southern
Nostor behind him. That had been as bad as Phil Sheridan in the Shenandoah, but
every time some peasant’s thatching blazed up, he knew it was burning another
hole in Prince Gormoth’s morale. He’d felt better about it today, after
following the mile-wide swath of devastation west from, Marax Ford and seeing
it stop, with dramatic suddenness, at Fitra. And the story Harmakros’s stragglers had told him: fifteen
eight-horse wagons, four tons of fireseed, seven thousand ounces of gold—that
would come to about $150,000—two wagon-loads of armor, three hundred new
calivers, six hundred pistols, and all of a Styphon’s House archpriest’s
personal baggage and vestments. He was sorry the archpriest had gotten away;
his execution would have been an interesting feature of the victory
celebration. He had passed prisoners marching east, all mercenaries,
under arms and in good spirits, at least one pike or lance in each detachment
sporting a red and blue pennon. Most of them shouted, “Down Styphon!” as he
rode by. The back road from Fitra to Sevenhills Valley hadn’t been so bad, but
now, in what he had formerly known as Nittany Valley, traffic had become heavy
again. Militia from Listra-Mouth and Vryllos, marching like regulars, which was
what they were, now. Trains of carts and farm-wagons, piled with sacks and
barrels or loaded with cabbages and potatoes, or with furniture that must have
come from manor-houses. Droves of cattle, and droves of prisoners, not armed,
not in good spirits, and under heavy guard: Nostori subjects headed for
labor-camps and intensive Styphon-is-a-fake indoctrination. And guns, on
four-wheel carts, that he couldn’t remember from any Hostigi ordnance
inventory. Hostigos Town was in an all-time record traffic-jam. He ran
into Alkides, the mercenary artilleryman, with a strip of blue cloth that
seemed to have come from a bedspread and a strip of red from the bottom of a
petticoat. He was magnificently drunk. “Lord Kalvan!” he shouted. “I saw your guns; they’re wonderful!
What god taught you that? Can you mount mine that way?” “I think so. I’ll have a talk with you about it tomorrow, if
I’m awake then.” Harmakros was on his horse in the middle of the square, his
rapier drawn, trying to untangle the chaos of wagons and carts and riders.
Kalvan shouted to him, above the din: “What the Styphon—when did we start using three-star generals
for traffic-cops?” Military Police; organize soonest. Mercenaries, tough ones. “Just till I get a detail here. I sent all my own crowd up
with the wagons.” He started to say something else, then stopped short and
asked, “Did you hear about Rylla?” “No, for Dralm’s sake.” He went cold under his scalding armor.
“What about her?” “Well, she was hurt—late yesterday, across the river. Her
horse threw her; I only know what I got from one of Chartiphon’s aides. She’s
at the castle.” “Thanks; I’ll see you there later.” He swung his horse about
and plowed into the crowd, drawing his sword and yelling for way. People
crowded aside, and yelled his name to others beyond. Outside town, the road was
choked with troops, and with things too big and slow to get out of the way; he
rode mostly in the ditch. The wagons Harmakros had captured, great
canvas-covered things like Conestogas, were going up to Tarr-Hostigos. He
thought he’d never get past them: there always seemed to be more ahead. Finally
he got through the outer gate and galloped across the bailey. Throwing his reins to somebody at the foot of the keep
steps, he stumbled up them and through the door. From the Staff Room, he heard
laughing voices, Ptosphes’s among them. For an instant he was horrified, then
reassured; if Ptosphes could laugh, it couldn’t be too bad. He was mobbed as soon as he entered, everybody shouting his
name and thumping him on the back; he was glad for his armor. Chartiphon,
Ptosphes, Xentos, Uncle Wolf, most of the General Staff crowd. And a dozen
officers he had never seen before, all wearing new red and blue scarves.
Ptosphes was presenting a big man with a florid face and gray hair and beard. “Kalvan, this is General Klestreus, late of Prince Gormoth’s
service, now of ours.” “And most happy at the change, Lord Kalvan,” the mercenary
said. “An honor to have been conquered by such a soldier.” “Our honor, General. You fought most brilliantly and valiantly.”
He’d fought like a damned imbecile, and gotten his army chopped to hamburger,
but let’s be polite. “I’m sorry I hadn’t time to meet you earlier, but things
were a trifle pressing.” He turned to Ptosphes. “Rylla? What happened to her?” “Why, she broke a leg,” Ptosphes began. That frightened him.
People had died from broken legs in his own world when the medical art was at
least equal to its here-and-now level. They used to amputate.... “She’s in no danger, Kalvan,” Xentos assured him. “None of
us would be here if she were. Brother Mytron is with her. If she’s awake, she’ll
want to see you.” “I’ll go to her at once.” He clinked goblets with the
mercenary and drank. It was winter-wine, aged quite a few winters, and evidently
frozen down in a very cold one. It warmed and relaxed him. “To your good
fortune in Hostigos, General. Your capture,” he lied, “was Gormoth’s heaviest
loss, yesterday, and our greatest gain.” He set down the goblet, took off his
helmet and helmet-coif and detached his sword from his belt; then picked up the
wine again and finished it. “If you’ll excuse me now, gentlemen. I’ll see you
all later.” Rylla, whom he had expected to find gasping her last, sat
propped against a pile of pillows in bed, smoking one of her silver-inlaid
redstone pipes. She was wrapped in a loose gown, and her left leg, extended,
was buckled into a bulky encasement of leather-no plaster casts, here-and-now.
Mytron, the chubby and cherubic physician-priest, was with her, and so were
several of the women who functioned as midwives, hexes, herb-boilers and
general nurses. Rylla saw him first, and her face lighted like a sunrise. “Hi, Kalvan! Are you all right? When did you get in? How was
the battle?” “Rylla, darling!” The women sprayed away from in front of
him like grasshoppers. She flung her arms around his neck as he bent over her;
he thought Mytron stepped in to relieve her of her pipe. “What happened to you?” “You stopped in the Staff Room,” she told him, between
kisses. “I smell it on you.” “How is she, Mytron?” he asked over his shoulder. “Oh, a
beautiful fracture, Lord Kalvan!” the doctor enthused. “One of the priests of
Galzar set it; he did an excellent job.” “Gave me a fine lump on the head, too,” Rylla added. “Why,
my horse fell on me. We were burning a Nostori village, and he stepped on a hot
ember. He almost threw me, and then fell over something, and down we both went,
the horse on top of me. I was carrying an extra pair of pistols in my boots and
I fell on one of them. The horse broke a leg, too. They shot him. I guess they
thought I was worth making an effort about.... Kalvan! Never hug a girl so
tight when you’re wearing mail sleeves!” “It’s nothing to worry about, Lord Kalvan,” Mytron was saying.
“Not the first time for this young lady, either. She broke an ankle when she
was eight, trying to climb a cliff to rob a hawk’s nest, and a shoulder when
she was twelve, firing a musket-charge out of a carbine.” “And now,” Rylla was saying, “it’ll be a moon, at least,
till we can have the wedding.” “We could have it right now, sweetheart...” “I will not be married in my bedroom,” she declared. “People
make jokes about girls who have to do that. And I will not limp to the temple of Dralm on crutches.” “All right, Princess; it’s your wedding.” He hoped the war
with Sask that everybody expected would be out of the way before she was able
to ride again. He’d have a word with Mytron about that. “Somebody,” he said, “go
and have a hot bath brought to my rooms, and tell me when it’s ready. I must
stink to the very throne of Dralm.” “I was wondering when you were going to mention that, darling,”
Rylla said. HE did speak to Mytron the next day, catching him between a
visit to Rylla and his work at the main army hospital in Hostigos Town. Mytron thought, at first, that he was impatient for Rylla’s full recovery and the
wedding. “Oh, Lord Kalvan, quite soon. You know, of course, that broken
bones take time to knit, but our Rylla is young and young bones knit fast.
Inside a moon, I’d say.” “Well, Mytron; you know we’re going to have to fight Sarrask
of Sask now. When war with Sask comes, I’d be most happy if she were still in
bed, with that thing on her leg. So would Prince Ptosphes.” “Yes. Our Rylla, shall we say, is a trifle heedless of her
own safety.” That was a generous five hundred percent understatement. Mytron
put on his professional portentous frown. “You must understand, of course, that
it is not good for any patient to be kept too long in bed. She should be able
to get up and walk about as soon as possible. And wearing the splints is not
pleasant.” He knew that. It wasn’t any light plaster cast; it was a frame
of heavily padded steel splints, forged from old sword-blades, buckled on with
a case of saddle leather. It weighed about ten pounds, and it would be even
more confining and hotter than his armor. But the next thing she broke might be
her neck, or she might stop a two-ounce musket ball, and then his luck would
run out along with hers. His mind shied like a frightened horse from the
thought of no more happy, lovely Rylla. “I’ll do my best, Lord Kalvan, but I can’t keep her in bed
forever.” War with Sask wouldn’t wait that long, either. Xentos was in contact
with the priests of Dralm in Sask Town; they reported that the news of Fitra
and Listra-Mouth had stunned Sarrask’s court briefly, then thrown Sarrask into
a furor of activity. More mercenaries were being hired, and some sort of
negotiations, the exact nature undetermined, were going on between Sarrask and
Balthar of Beshta. A Styphon archpriest, one Zothnes, had arrived in Sask Town, with a train of wagons as big as the one taken by Harmakros in southern Nostor. A priest of Galzar arrived at Tarr-Hostigos from Nostor Town
with an escort and a thousand ounces of gold-gold and silver seemed to be on a
twenty-to-one ratio, here-and-now—to pay the ransoms of Count Pheblon and the
other gentlemen taken at Tarr-Dombra. The news was that Phebion was now Gormoth’s
chief-captain and was trying to reorganize what was left of the Nostori army.
Gormoth would be back in the ring for another bout in the spring; that meant
that Sarrask must be dealt with this fall. He was having his own reorganization problems. They’d taken
heavier losses than he’d liked, mostly the poorly armed and partly trained
militia who’d fought at Listra-Mouth. On the other hand, they’d acquired over a
thousand mercenary infantry and better than two thousand cavalry. They were a
headache; they’d have to be integrated into the army of Hostigos. He didn’t
want any mercenary troops at all. Mercenary soldiers, as individual soldiers,
were as good as any; in fact, any regular army man was simply a mercenary in
the service of his own country. But mercenary troops, as troops, weren’t good
at all. They didn’t fight for the Prince who hired them; they fought for their
own captains, who paid them from what the Prince had paid him. Mercenary
captains, he could hear his history professor quoting Machiavelli, are either
very capable men or not. If they are, you cannot rely upon them, for they will
always aspire to their own greatness, either by oppressing you, their master,
or by oppressing others against your intentions; but if the captain is not an
able man, he will generally ruin you. Most of the captains captured in East Hostigos seemed to be quite able. Klestreus was one exception. As a battle commander, he was
an incompetent—Fitra had proven that. He wasn’t a soldier at all; he was a
military businessman. He could handle sales, promotion and public relations,
but not management and operations. That was how he’d gotten elected captain-general
in Nostor. But he did have a wide knowledge of political situations, knew most
of the Princes of Hos-Harphax, and knew the composition and command of all the
mercenary outfits in the Five Kingdoms. So Kalvan appointed him Chief of
Intelligence, where he could really be of use, and wouldn’t be able to lead
troops in combat. He was quite honored and flattered. Nothing could be done about breaking up the mercenary cavalry
companies, numbering over two thousand men. The mercenary infantry, however,
were broken up and put into militia companies, one mercenary to three
militiamen. This almost started a mutiny, until he convinced them that they
were being given posts of responsibility and the rank of private first class,
with badges. The sergeants were all collected into a quickie OCS company, to
emerge second lieutenants. Alkides, the artilleryman, was made captain of
Tarr-Esdreth-of-Hostigos, and sent there with his three long brass eighteens,
now fitted with trunnions on welded-on iron bands and mounted on proper
field-carriages. Tarr-Esdreth-of-Hostigos was a sensitive spot. The
Sask-Hostigos border followed the east branch of the Juniata, the Besh, and ran
through Esdreth Gap. Two castles dominated the gap, one on either side; until
one or the other could be taken, the gap would be closed both to Hostigos and Sask. TEN days after Fitra and Listra-Mouth, an unattached mercenary,
wearing the white and black colors of unemployment, put in an appearance at Tarr-Hostigos.
There were many such; they were equivalent to the bravos of Renaissance Italy.
This one produced letters of credence, which Xentos found authentic, from
Prince Armanes of Nyklos. His client., he said, wanted to buy fireseed, but
wished to do so secretly; he was not ready for an open break with Styphon’s
House. When asked if he would trade cavalry and artillery horses, the
unofficial emissary instantly agreed. Well, that was a beginning. SESKLOS rested his elbows on the table and palmed his smarting
eyes. Around him, pens scratched on parchment and tablets clattered. He longed
for the cool quiet and privacy of the Innermost Circle, but there was so much
to do, and he must order the doing of all of it himself. There were frantic letters from everywhere; the one before
him was from the Archpriest of the Great Temple of Hos-Agrys. News of Gormoth’s
defeat was spreading rapidly, and with it rumors that Prince Ptosphes, who had
defeated him, was making his own fireseed. Agents-inquisitory were reporting
that the ingredients, and even the proportions, were being bandied about in
taverns; it would take an army of assassins to deal with everybody who seemed
to know them. Even a pestilence couldn’t wipe out everybody who knew at least
some of the secret. Oddly, it was even better known in far northern Zygros City than elsewhere. And they all wanted him to tell them how to check the spread of
such knowledge. Curse and blast them! Did they have to ask him about anything?
Couldn’t any of them think for themselves? He opened his eyes. Why, admit it; better that than try to
deny what would soon be proven everywhere. Let everyone in Styphon’s House,
even the lay Guardsmen, know the full secret, but for those outside, and for
the few believers within, insist that special rites and prayers, known only to
the yellow-robes of the Inner Circle, were essential. But why? Soon it would be known that fireseed made by unconsecrated
hands would fire just as well, and to judge from Prince Ptosphes’s sample, with
more force and less fouling. Well, there were devils, malignant spirits of the
netherworld; everybody knew that. He smiled, imagining them thronging about—scrawny
bodies, bat-wings, bristling beards, clawed and fanged. In fireseed, there were
many—they made it explode—and only the prayers of anointed priests of Styphon
could slay them. If fireseed were made without the aid of Styphon, the devils
would be set free as soon as the fireseed burned, to work manifold evils and
frights in the world of men. And, of course, the curse of Styphon was upon any
who presumed profanely to make fireseed. But Ptosphes had made fireseed, and he had pillaged a
temple-farm, and put consecrated priests cruelly to death, and then he had
defeated the army of Gormoth, which had marched under Styphon’s blessing. How
about that? But wait! Gormoth himself was no better than Ptosphes. He
too had made fireseed—both Krastokles and Vyblos were positive of that. And
Gormoth had blasphemed Styphon and despitefully used a holy archpriest, and
forced a hundred thousand ounces of silver out of the Nostor temple, at as
close to pistol-point as made no difference. To be sure, most of that had
happened after the day of battle, but outside Nostor who knew that? Gormoth, he
decided, had suffered defeat for his sins. He was smiling happily now, wondering why he hadn’t thought
of that before. And what was known in Nostor would matter little more than what
was known in Hostigos before long. Both would have to be destroyed utterly. He wondered how many more Princedoms he would have to doom
to fire and sword. Not too many—a few sharp examples at the start ought to be
enough. Maybe just Hostigos and Nostor, and Sarrask of Sask and Balthar of
Beshta could attend to both. An idea began to seep up in his mind, and he
smiled. Balthar’s brother, Balthames, wanted to be a Prince,
himself; it would take only a poisoned cup or a hired dagger to make him Prince
of Beshta, and Balthar knew it. He should have had Balthames killed long ago.
Well, suppose Sarrask gave up a little corner of Sask, and Balthar gave up a
similar piece of Beshta, adjoining and both bordering on western Hostigos, to
form a new Princedom; call it Sashta. Then, to that could be added all western
Hostigos south of the mountains; why, that would be a nice little Princedom for
any young couple. He smiled benevolently. And the father of the bride and the
brother of the groom could compensate themselves for their generosity,
respectively, with the Listra Valley, rich in iron, and East Hostigos, manured
with the blood of Gormoth’s mercenaries. This must be done immediately, before winter put an end to
campaigning. Then, in the spring, Sarrask, Balthar and Balthames could hurl
their combined strength against Nostor. And something would have to be done about fireseed making in
the meantime. The revelation about the devils would have to be made public
everywhere. And call a Great Council of Archpriests, here at Balph—no, at Harphax City: let Great King Kaiphranos bear the costs—to consider how they might best meet
the threat of profane fireseed making, and to plan for the future. It could be,
he thought hopefully, that Styphon’s House might yet survive. VERKAN Vall watched Dalla pack tobacco into a little
cane-stemmed pipe. Dalla preferred cigarettes, but on Aryan-Transpacific they
didn’t exist. No paper; it was a wonder Kalvan wasn’t trying to do something
about that. Behind them, something thumped heavily; voices echoed in the barn-like
pre-fab shed. Everything here was temporary—until a conveyor-head could be established
at Hostigos Town, nobody knew where anything should go at Fifth Level Hostigos
Equivalent. Talgan Dreth, sitting on the ed e of a packing case with a
clipboard on his knee, looked up, then saw what Dalla was doing and watched as
she got out her tinderbox, struck sparks, blew the tinder aflame, lit a pine
splinter, and was puffing smoke, all in fifteen seconds. “Been doing that all your life,” he grinned. “Why, of course,” Dalla deadpanned. “Only savages have to
rub sticks together, and only sorcerers can make fire without flint and steel.” “You checked the pack-loads, Vall?” he asked. “Yes. Everything perfectly in order, all Kalvan time-line
stuff. I liked that touch of the deer and bear skins. We’d have to shoot for
the pot, on the way south, and no trader would throw away saleable skins.” Talgan Dreth almost. managed not to show how pleased he was.
No matter how many outtime operations he’d run, a back-pat from the Paratime
Police still felt good. “Well, then we make the drop tonight,” he said. “I had a reconnaissance
crew checking it on some adjoining time-lines, and we gave it a looking over on
the target time-line last night. You’ll go in about fifteen miles east of the
Hostigos-Nyklos road.” “That’s all right. They’re hauling powder to Nyklos and bringing
back horses. That road’s being patrolled by Harmakros’s cavalry. We make camp
fifteen miles off the road and start around sunrise tomorrow; we ought to run
into a Hostigi patrol before noon.” “Well, you’re not going to get into any more battles, are
you?” Dalla asked. “There won’t be any more battles,” Talgan Dreth told her. “Kalvan
won the war while Vall was away.” “He won a war. How long it’ll stay won I don’t know, and neither
does he. But the war won’t be over till he’s destroyed Styphon’s House. That is
going to take a little doing.” “He’s destroyed it already,” Talgan Dreth said. “He
destroyed it by proving that anybody can make fireseed. Why, it was doomed from
the start. It was founded on a secret, and no secret can be kept forever.” “Not even the Paratime Secret?” Dalla asked innocently. “Oh,
Dalla!” the University man cried. “You know that’s different. You can’t compare
that with a trick like mixing saltpeter and charcoal and sulfur,” THE late morning sun baked the open horse market; heat and
dust and dazzle, and flies at which the horses switched constantly. It was hot
for so late in the year; as nearly as Kalvan could estimate it from the way the
leaves were coloring, it would be mid-October. They had two calendars
here-and-now—lunar, for daily reckoning, and solar, to keep track of the seasons—and
they never matched. Calendar reform; do something about. He seemed to recall
having made that mental memo before. And he was sweat-sticky under his armor, forty pounds of it—quilted
arming-doublet with mail sleeves and skirt, quilted helmet-coif with mail
throat-guard, plate cuirass, plate tassets down his thighs into his jackboots,
high combed helmet, rapier and poignard. It wasn’t the weight—he’d carried
more, and less well distributed, as a combat infantryman in Korea—but he
questioned if anyone ever became inured to the heat and lack of body
ventilation. Like a rich armor worn in heat of day, That scalds with safety. Shakespeare
had never worn it himself except on the stage, he’d known plenty of men who
had, like that little Welsh pepperpot Williams, who was the original of
Fluellen. “Not a bad one in the lot!” Harmakros, riding beside him,
was enthusing. “And a dozen big ones that’ll do for gun-horses.” And fifty-odd cavalry horses; that meant, at second or third
hand, that many more infantrymen could get into line when and where needed, in
heavier armor. And another lot coming in tonight; he wondered where Prince
Armanes was getting all the horses he was trading for bootleg fireseed. He
turned in his saddle to say something about it to Harmakros. As he did, something hit him a clanging blow on the breastplate,
knocking him almost breathless and nearly unhorsing him. He thought he heard
the shot; he did hear the second, while he was clinging to his seat and clawing
a pistol from his saddlebow. Across the alley, he could see two puffs of smoke
drifting from back upstairs windows of one of a row of lodginghouse-wineshop-brothels.
Harmakros was yelling; so was everybody else. There was a kicking, neighing
confusion among the horses. His chest aching, he lifted the pistol and fired
into one of the windows. Harmakros was filing, too, and behind him an arquebus
roared. Hoping he didn’t have another broken rib, he bolstered the pistol and
drew its mate. “Come on!” he yelled. “And Dralm-dammit, take them alive! We
want them for questioning.” Torture. He hated that, had hated even the relatively mild
third-degree methods of his own world, but when you need the truth about
something, you get it, no matter how. Men were throwing poles out of the corral
gate; he sailed past them, put his horse over the fence across the alley, and
landed in the littered backyard beyond. Harmakros took the fence behind him,
with a Mobile Force arquebusier and a couple of horse-wranglers with clubs
following on foot. He decided to stay in the saddle; till he saw how much
damage the bullet had done, he wasn’t sure how much good he’d be on foot.
Harmakros Rung himself from his horse, shoved a half-clad slattern out of the
way, drew his sword, and went through the back door into the house, the others
behind him. Men were yelling, women screaming; there was commotion everywhere
except behind the two windows from which the shots had come. A girl was
bleating that Lord Kalvan had been murdered. Looking right at him, too. He squeezed his horse between houses to the street, where a
mob was forming. Most of them were pushing through the front door and into the
house; from within came yells, screams, and sounds of breakage. Hostigos Town would be the better for one dive less if they kept at that. Up the street, another mob was coagulating; he heard savage
shouts of “Kill! Kill!” Cursing, he bolstered the pistol and drew his rapier,
knocking a man down as he spurred forward, shouting his own name and demanding
way. The horse was brave and willing, but untrained for riot work; he wished he
had a State Police horse under him, and a yard of locust riot-stick instead of
this sword. Then the combination provost-marshal and police chief of Hostigos Town arrived, with a dozen of his men laying about them with arquebus-butts.
Together they rescued two men, bloodied, half-conscious and almost ripped
naked. The mob fell back, still yelling for blood. He had time, now, to check on himself. There was a glancing
dent on the right side of his breastplate, and a lead-splash, but the plate was
unbroken. That scalds with safety—Shakespeare could say that again. Good thing
it hadn’t been one of those great armor-smashing brutes of 8-bore muskets. He
drew the empty pistol and started to reload it, and then he saw Harmakros
approaching on foot, his rapier drawn and accompanied by a couple of soldiers,
herding a pot-bellied, stubble-chinned man in a dirty shirt, a blowsy woman
with “madam” stamped all over her, and two girls in sleazy finery. “That’s them! That’s them!” the man began, as they came up,
and the woman was saying, “Dralm smite me dead, I don’t know nothing about it! “Take these two to Tarr-Hostigos,” Kalvan directed the provost-marshal.
“They are to be questioned rigorously.” Euphemistic police-ese; another
universal constant. “This lot, too. Get their statements, but don’t harm them
unless you catch them trying to lie to you.” “You’d better go to Tarr-Hostigos yourself, and let Mytron
look at that,” Harmakros told him. “I think it’s only a bruise; plate isn’t broken. If it’s
another broken rib, my back-and-breast’ll hold it for awhile. First we go to
the temple of Dralm and give thanks for my escape. Temple of Galzar, too.” He’d been building a reputation for piety since the night of his appearance, when
he’d bowed down to those three graven images in the peasant’s cottage; not
doing that would be out of character, now. “And we go slowly, and roundabout.
Let as many people see me as possible. We don’t want it all over Hostigos that
I’ve been killed.” AS a child, he had heard his righteous Ulster Scots father
speak scornfully of smoke-filled-room politics and boudoir diplomacy. The Rev.
Alexander Morrison should have seen this—it was both, and for good measure, two
real idolatrous heathen priests were sitting in on it. They were in Rylla’s
bedroom because it was easier for the rest of Prince Ptosphes’s Privy Council
to gather there than to carry her elsewhere, they were all smoking, and because
the October nights were as chilly as the days were hot, the windows were all
closed. Rylla’s usually laughing eyes were clouded with anxiety. “They
could have killed you, Kalvan.” She’d said that before. She was quite right,
too. He shrugged. “A splash on my breastplate, and a big black-and-blue place
on me. The other shot killed a horse; I’m really provoked about that.” “Well, what’s being done with them?” she demanded. “They
were questioned,” her father said distastefully. He didn’t like using torture,
either. “They confessed. Guardsmen of the Temple—that’s to say, kept cutthroats
of Styphon’s House—sent from Sask Town by Archpriest Zothnes, with Prince
Sarrask’s knowledge. They told us there’s a price of five hundred ounces gold
on Kalvan’s head, and as much on mine. Tomorrow,” he added, “they will be beheaded
in the town square.” “Then it’s war with Sask.” She looked down at the saddler’s
masterpiece on her leg. “I hope I’m out of this before it starts.” Not between him and Mytron she wouldn’t; Kalvan set his mind
at rest on that. “War with Sask means war with Beshta,” Chartiphon said
sourly. “And together they outnumber us five to two.” “Then don’t fight them together,” Harmakros said. “We can
smash either of them alone. Let’s do that, Sask first.” “Must we always fight?” Xentos implored. “Can we never have
peace?” Xentos was a priest of Dralm, and Dralm was a god of peace, and in his
secular capacity as Chancellor Xentos regarded war as an evidence of bad
statesmanship. Maybe so, but statesmanship was operating on credit, and sooner
or later your credit ran out and you had to pay off in hard money or get sold
out. Ptosphes saw it that way, too. “Not with neighbors like
Sarrask of Sask and Balthar of Beshta we can’t,” he told Xentos. “And we’ll
have Gormoth of Nostor to fight again in the Spring, you know that. If we haven’t
knocked Sask and Beshta out by then, it’ll be the end of us.” The other heathen priest, alias Uncle Wolf, concurred. As
usual, he had put his wolfskin vestments aside; and as usual, he was nursing a
goblet, and playing with one of the kittens who made Rylla’s room their
headquarters. “You have three enemies,” he said. You, not we; priests of
Galzar advised, but they never took sides. “Alone, you can destroy each of
them; together, they will destroy you.” And after they had beaten all three, what then? Hostigos was
too small to stand alone. Hostigos, dominating Sask and Beshta, with Nostor
beaten and Nyklos allied, could, but then there would be Great King Kaiphranos,
and back of him, back of everything, Styphon’s House. So it would have to be an empire. He’d reached that
conclusion long ago. Klestreus cleared his throat. “If we fight Balthar first,
Sarrask of Sask will hold to his alliance and deem it an attack on him,” he
pronounced. “He wants war with Hostigos anyhow. But if we attack Sask, Balthar will vacillate, and take counsel of his doubts and fears, and consult his
soothsayers, whom we are bribing, and do nothing until it is too late. I know
them both.” He drained his goblet, refilled it, and continued: “Balthar of Beshta is the most cowardly, and the most
miserly, and the most suspicious, and the most treacherous Prince in the world.
I served him, once, and Galzar keep me from another like service. He goes about
in an old black gown that wouldn’t make a good dust-clout, all hung over with
wizards’ amulets. His palace looks like a pawnshop, and you can’t go three lance-lengths
anywhere in it without having to shove some impudent charlatan of a soothsayer
out of your way. He sees murderers in every shadow, and a plot against him
whenever three gentlemen stop to give each other good day.” He drank some more, as though to wash the taste out of his
mouth. “And Sarrask of Sask’s a vanity-swollen fool who thinks with
his fists and his belly. By Galzar, I’ve known Great Kings who hadn’t half his
arrogance. He’s in debt to Styphon’s House beyond belief, and the money all
gone for pageants and feasts and silvered armor for his guards and jewels for
his light-o’-loves, and the only way he can get quittance is by conquering
Hostigos for them.” “And his daughter’s marrying Balthar’s brother,” Rylla
added. “They’re both getting what they deserve. The Princess Amnita likes
cavalry troopers, and Duke Balthames likes boys.” And he, and all of them, knew what was back of that marriage—this
new Princedom of Sashta that there was talk of, to be the springboard for
conquest and partition of Hostigos, and when that was out of the way, a
concerted attack on Nostor. Since Gormoth had started making his own fireseed,
Styphon’s House wanted him destroyed, too. It all came back to Styphon§ House. “If we smash Sask now, and take over some of these mercenaries
Sarrask’s been hiring on Styphon’s expense-account, we might frighten Balthar
into good behavior without having to fight him.” He didn’t really believe that,
but Xentos brightened a little. Ptosphes puffed thoughtfully at his pipe. “If we could get
our hands on young Balthames,” he said, “we could depose Balthar and put
Balthames on the throne. I think we could control him.” Xentos was delighted. He realized that they’d have to fight Sask, but this looked like a bloodless—well, almost—way of conquering Beshta. “Balthames would be willing,” he said eagerly. “We could
make a secret compact with him, and loan him, say, two thousand mercenaries,
and all the Beshtan army and all the better nobles would join him.” “No, Xentos. We do not want to help Balthames take his
brother’s throne,” Kalvan said. “We want to depose Balthar ourselves, and then
make Balthames do homage to Ptosphes for it. And if we beat Sarrask badly
enough, we might depose him and make him do homage for Sask.” That was something Xentos seemed not to have thought of. Before
he could speak, Ptosphes was saying, decisively “Whatever we do, we fight Sarrask now; beat him before that
old throttle-purse of a Balthar can send him aid.” Ptosphes, too, wanted war now, before Rylla could mount a
horse again. Kalvan wondered how many decisions of state, back through the
history he had studied, had been made for reasons like that. “I’ll make sure of that,” Chartiphon promised. “He won’t
send any troops up the Besh.” That was why Hostigos now had two armies: the Army of the
Listra, which would make the main attack on Sask, and the Army of the Besh,
commanded by Chartiphon in person, to drive through southern Sask and hold the
Beshtan border. “How about Tarr-Esdreth?” Harmakros asked. “You mean
Tarr-Esdreth-of-Sask? Alkides can probably shoot rings around anybody they have
there. Chartiphon can send a small force to hold the lower end of the gap, and
you can do the same from the Listra side.” “Well, how soon can we get started?” Chartiphon wanted to
know. “How much sending back and forth will there have to be first?” Uncle Wolf put down his goblet, and then lifted the kitten
from his lap and set her on the floor. She mewed softly, looked around, and
then ran over to the bed and jumped up with her mother and brothers and sisters
who were keeping Rylla company. “Well, strictly speaking,” he said, “you’re at peace with
Prince Sarrask, now. You can’t attack him until you’ve sent him letters of
defiance, setting forth your causes of enmity.” Galzar didn’t approve of undeclared wars, it seemed. Harmakros
laughed. “Now, what would they be, I wonder?” he asked. “Send them Kalvan’s breastplate.” “That’s a just reason,” Uncle Wolf nodded. “You have many
others. I will carry the letter myself.” Among other things, priests of Galzar
acted as heralds. “Put it in the form of a set of demands, to be met on pain of
instant war—that would be the quickest way.” “Insulting demands,” Klestreus specified. “Well, give me a
slate and a soapstone, somebody,” Rylla said. “Let’s see how we’re going to
insult him.” “A letter to Balthar, too,” Xentos said thoughtfully. “Not
of defiance, but of friendly warning against the plots and treacheries of
Sarrask and Balthames. They’re scheming to involve him in war with Hostigos,
let him bear the brunt of it, and then fall on him and divide his Princedom
between them. He’ll believe that—it’s what he’d do in their place.” “Your job, Klestreus,” Kalvan said. A diplomatic assignment
would be just right for him, and would keep him from combat command without
hurting his feelings. “Leave with it for Beshta Town tomorrow. You know what
Balthar will believe and what he won’t; use your own judgment.” “We’ll get the letters written tonight,” Ptosphes said. “In
the morning, we’ll hold a meeting of the Full Council of Hostigos. The nobles
and people should have a voice in the decision for war.” As though the decision hadn’t been made already, here in Princess
Rylla’s smoke-filled boudoir. Real democracy, this was. Just like Pennsylvania. THE Full Council of Hostigos met in a long room, with tapestries
on one wall and windows opening onto the inner citadel garden on the other. The
speaker for the peasants, a work-gnarled graybeard named Phosg, sat at the foot
of the table, flanked by the speaker for the shepherds and herdsmen on one
side, and for the woodcutters and charcoal burners on the other. They graded up
from there, through the artisans, the master-craftsmen, the merchants, the
yeomen farmers, the professions, the priests, the landholding gentry and
nobility, to Prince Ptosphes, at the head of the table, in a magnificent fur
robe, with a heavy gold chain on his shoulders. He was flanked, on the left, by
the Lord Kalvan, in a no less magnificent robe and an only slightly less
impressive gold chain. The place on his right was vacant, and everybody was looking
at it. It had been talked about—Kalvan and Xentos and Chartiphon
and Harmakros had seen to that—that the Princess Rylla would, because of her
injury, be unable to attend. So, when the double doors were swung open at the
last moment and six soldiers entered carrying Rylla propped up on a couch,
there were exclamations of happiness and a general ovation. Rylla was really
loved in Hostigos. She waved her hand in greeting and replied to them, and the
couch was set down at Ptosphes’ right. Ptosphes waited until the clamor had
subsided, then drew his poignard and rapped on the table with the pommel. “You all know why we’re here,” he began without preamble. “The
last time we met, it was to decide whether to have our throats cut like sheep
or die fighting like men. Well, we didn’t have to do either. Now, the question
is, shall we fight Sarrask of Sask now, at our advantage, or wait and fight Sarrask
and Balthar together at theirs? Let me hear what is in your minds about it.” It was like a council of war; junior rank first. Phosg was
low man on the totem-pole. He got to his feet. “Well, Lord Prince, it’s like I said the last time. If we
have to fight, let’s fight.” “Different pack of wolves, that’s all,” the shepherds’ and
herdsmen’s speaker added. “We’ll have another wolf-hunt like Fitra and
Listra-Mouth.” It went up the table like that. The speaker for the lawyers,
naturally, wanted to know if they were really sure Prince Sarrask was going to
attack. Somebody asked him why not wait and have his throat cut, his house
burned and his daughters raped, so that he could really be sure. The priestess
of Yirtta abstained; a servant of the Allmother could not vote for the shedding
of the blood of mothers’ sons. Uncle Wolf just laughed. Then it got up among
the nobility. “Well, who wants this war with Sask?” one of them demanded. “That
is, besides this outlander who has grown so great in so short a time among us,
this Lord Kalvan.” He leaned right a little to look. Yes, Sthentros. He was
some kind of an in-law of Ptosphes ... had a barony over about where Boalsburg
ought to be. He’d made trouble when the fireseed mills were being started—refused
to let his peasants be put to work collecting saltpeter. Kalvan had threatened
to have his head off, and Sthentros had run spluttering to Ptosphes. The
interview had been private, nobody knew exactly what Ptosphes had told him, but
he had emerged from it visibly shaken. The peasants had gone to work collecting
saltpeter. “Just who is this Kalvan?” Sthentros persisted. “Why, until
five moons ago, nobody in Hostigos had even heard of him!” A couple of other nobles, including one who had just sworn
to wade to his boot-tops in Saski blood, muttered agreement. Another, who had
fought at Fitra, said: “Well, nobody’d ever heard of you in Hostigos, either, till
your uncle’s wife’s sister married our Prince.” Uncle Wolf laughed again. “They’ve heard of Kalvan since,
and in Nostor, too, by the war god’s mace!” “Yes,” another noble said, “I grant that. But you’ll have to
grant that the man’s an outlander, and it’s a fine thing indeed to see him rise
so swiftly over the heads of nobles of old Hostigi family. Why, when he came
among us, he couldn’t speak a word that anybody could understand.” “By Dralm, we understand him well enough now!” That was
another newcomer to the Full Council—the speaker for the fireseed makers. There
were murmurs of agreement; quite a few got the point. Sthentros refused to be silenced. “How do we know that he
isn’t some runaway priest of Styphon himself.” Mytron, present as speaker for the physicians, surgeons and
apothecaries, rose. “When Kalvan came among us, I tended his wounds. He is not
circumcised, as all priests of Styphon are.” Then he sat down. That knocked that on the head. It was a
good thing the Rev. Morrison had refused to let the doctor load the bill with
what he’d considered non-essentials when his son had been born.—He’d never say
another word against Scotch-Irish frugality. Sthentros, however, was staying
with it. “Well, maybe that’s worse,” he argued. “It’s flatly against
nature for anything to act like fireseed. I think there are devils in it that
make it explode, and maybe the priests of Styphon do something to keep the
devils from getting out when it explodes ... something that we don’t know
anything about.” The speaker for the fireseed makers was on his feet. “I make
the stuff, I know what goes in it. Saltpeter and sulfur and charcoal, and there
aren’t any devils in any of them.” He didn’t know anything about oxidization,
but he knew that the saltpeter made the rest of it burn fast. “Next thing, he’ll
be telling us there are devils in wine, or in dough to make the bread rise, or
in ...” “Has anybody heard of any devils around Fitra?” somebody
else asked. “We burned plenty of fireseed there.” “What in Galzar’s name does Sthentros know about Fitra?—he
wasn’t there!” “I’m going to have a little talk with that fellow, after
this is over,” Ptosphes said quietly to Kalvan. “All he is in Hostigos, he is
by my favor, and my favor to him is getting frayed now.” “Well, devils or not, the question is Lord Kalvan’s place
among us,” the noble who had sided with Sthentros said. “He is no Hostigi—what
right has he to sit at the Council table?” “Fitra!” somebody cried, from a place or two above
Sthentros; “Tarr-Dombra!” added another voice, from across the table. “He sits here,” Rylla said icily, “as my betrothed husband,
by my choice. Do you question that, Euklestes?” “He sits here as heir-matrimonial to the throne of Hostigos,
and as my son-adoptive,” Ptosphes added. “I hope none of you presume to
question that.” “He sits here as commander of our army,” Chartiphon roared, “and
as a soldier I am proud to obey. If you want to question that, do it with your
sword against mine!” “He sits here as one sent by Dralm. Do you question the
Great God?” Xentos asked. Euklestes gave Sthentros a look-what-you-got-me-into look. “Great
Dralm, no!” “Well, then. We still have the question of war with Sask to be voted:’ Ptosphes said. “How vote you, Lord Sthentros?” “Oh, war, of course; I’m as loyal a Hostigi as any here.” There was no more argument. The vote was unanimous. As soon
as Ptosphes had thanked them, Harmakros was on his feet. “Then, to show that we are all in loyal support of our
Prince, let us all vote that whatever decision he may make in the matter of our
dealings with Sask, with Beshta, or with Nostor, either in making war or in
making peace afterward, shall stand approved in advance by the Full Council of
Hostigos.” “What? “ Ptosphes asked in a whisper. “Is this some idea of
yours, Kalvan?” “Yes. We don’t know what we’re going to have to do, but
whatever it is, we may have to do it in a hurry, and afterward we won’t want
anybody like Sthentros or Euklestes whining that they weren’t consulted.” “That’s probably wise. We’d do it anyhow, but this way there’ll
be no argument. Harmakros’s motion was also carried unanimously. The organization
steamroller ran up the table without a bump. VERKAN, the free-trader from Grefftscharr, waited till the
others—Prince Ptosphes, old Xentos, and the man of whom he must never under any
circumstances think as Calvin Morrison—were seated, and then dropped into a chair at the table in Ptosphes’s study. “Have a good trip?” Lord Kalvan was asking him. He nodded,
and ran quickly over the fictitious details of the journey to Zygros City, his stay there, and his return to Hostigos, checking them with the actual facts.
Then he visualized the panel, and his hand reaching out and pressing the black
button. Other Paratimers used different imagery, but the result was the same.
The pseudo-memories fed to him under hypnosis took over, the real memories of
visits on this time-line to Zygros City were suppressed, and a complete
blockage imposed on anything he knew about Fourth Level Europo-American,
Hispano-Columbian Subsector. “Not bad,” he said. “I had a little trouble at Glarth Town, in Hos-Agrys. I’d sold those two kegs of Tarr-Dombra fireseed to a merchant,
and right away they were after me, the Prince of Glarth’s soldiers and Styphon’s
House agents. It seems Styphon’s House had put out a story about one of their
wagon-trains being robbed by bandits, and everybody’s on the lookout for
unaccountable fireseed. They’d arrested and tortured the merchant; he put them
onto me. I killed one and wounded another, and got away.” “When was that?” Xentos asked sharply. “Three days after I left here.” “Eight days after we took Tarr-Dombra and sent that letter
to Sesklos,” Ptosphes said. “That story’ll be all over the Five Kingdoms by
now.” “Oh, they’ve dropped that. They have a new story, now. They
admit that some Prince in Hos-Harphax is making his own fireseed, but it isn’t
good fireseed.” Kalvan laughed. “It only shoots half again as hard as
theirs, with half as much fouling.” “Ah, but there are devils in your fireseed. Of course, there
are devils in all fireseed—that’s what makes it explode—but the priests of
Styphon have secret rites that cause the devils to die as soon as they’ve done
their work. When yours explodes, the devils escape alive. I’ll bet East Hostigos is full of devils, now.” He laughed, then stopped when he saw that none of the others
were. Kalvan cursed; Ptosphes mentioned a name. “That story has appeared here,” Xentos said. “I hope none of
our people believe it. It comes from Sask Town.” “This Sthentros, a kinsman by marriage of mine,” Ptosphes
said. “He’s jealous of Kalvan’s greatness among us. I spoke to him, gave him a
good fright. He claimed he thought of it himself, but I know he’s lying.
Somebody from Sask’s been at him. Trouble is, if we tortured him, all the other
nobles would be around my ears like a swarm of hornets. We’re having him
watched.” “They move swiftly,” Xentos said, “and
they act as one. Their temples are everywhere, and each temple has its post
station, with relays of fast horses. Styphon’s Voice can speak today at Balph,
in Hos-Ktemnos, and in a moon-quarter his words are heard in every temple in
the Five Kingdoms. Their lies can travel so fast and far that the truth can
never overtake them.” “Yes, and see what’ll happen,” Kalvan said. “From now on, everything,
plague, famine, drought, floods, hailstones, forest-fires, hurricanes—will be
the work of devils out of our fireseed. Well, you got out of Glarth; what then?” “After that, I thought it better to travel by night. It took
me eight days to reach Zygros City. My wife, Dalla, met me there, as we’d
arranged when I started south from Ulthor. In Zygros City, we recruited five brass-founders—two
are cannon-founders, one’s a bell-founder, one’s an image-maker and knows the
wax-runoff method, and one’s a general foundry foreman. And three girls,
wood-carvers and pattern makers, and two mercenary sergeants I hired as guards. “I gave the fireseed secret to the gunmakers’ guild in Zygros City, in exchange for making up twelve long rifled fowling-pieces and rifling some
pistols. They’ll ship you rifled caliver barrels at the cost of smoothbore
barrels. They’d heard the devil story; none of them believe it. And I gave the
secret to merchants from my own country; they will spread it there.” “And by this time next year, Grefftscharr fireseed will be
traded down the Great River to Xiphion,” Kalvan said. “Good. Now, how soon can
this gang of yours start pouring cannon.” “Two moons; a special miracle for each day less.” He started to explain about the furnaces and moulding sand;
Kalvan understood. “Then we’ll have to fight this war with what we have. We’ll
be fighting in a moon-quarter, I think. We sent our Uncle Wolf off to Sask Town today with demands on Prince Sarrask. As soon as he hears them, they’ll have to
chain Sarrask up to keep him from biting people.” “Among other things, we’re demanding that Archpriest Zothnes
and the Sask Town high priest be sent here in chains, to be tried for plotting
Kalvan’s death and mine,” Ptosphes said. “If Zothnes has the influence over
Sarrask I think he has, that alone will do it.” “You’ll command the Mounted Rifles again, won’t you?” Kalvan
asked. “It’s carried on the Army List as a regiment, so you’ll be a colonel. We
have a hundred and twenty rifles, now.” Dalla wouldn’t approve. Well, that was too bad, but people
who didn’t help their friends fight weren’t well thought of around here. Dalla
would just have to adjust to it, the way she had to his beard. Ptosphes finished his wine. “Shall we go up to Rylla’s room?”
he asked. “I’m glad you brought your wife with you, Verkan. Charming girl, and
Rylla likes her. They made friends at once. She’ll be company for Rylla while
we’re away.” “Rylla’s sore at us,” Kalvan said. “She thinks we’re keeping
that bundle of splints on her leg to keep her from going to war with us.” He
grinned. “She’s right; we are. Maybe Dali will help keep her amused.” Vall didn’t doubt that. Rylla and Dalla would get along together,
all right; what he was worried about was what they’d get into together. Those
two girls were just two cute little sticks of the same brand of dynamite; what
one wouldn’t think of, the other would. THE common-room of the village inn was hot and stuffy in
spite of the open door; it smelled of woolens drying, of oil and sheep-tallow
smeared on armor against the rain, of wood smoke and tobacco and wine, unwashed
humanity and ancient cooking-odors. The village outside was jammed with the
Army of the Listra; the inn with officers, steaming and stinking and smoking,
drinking mugs of mulled wine or strong sassafras tea, crowding around the fire
at the long table where the map was unrolled, spooning stew from bowls or gnawing
meat impaled on dagger-points. Harmakros was saying, again and again, “Dralm
damn you, hold that dagger back; don’t drip grease on this!” And the priest of
Galzar, who had carried the ultimatum to Sask Town and gotten this far on his
return, and who had lately been out among the troops, sat in his shirt with his
back to the fire, his wolfskin hood and cape spread to dry and a couple of
village children wiping and oiling his mail. He had a mug in one hand, and with
the other stroked the head of a dog that squatted beside him. He was laughing
jovially. “So I read them your demands, and you should have heard
them! When I came to the part about dismissing the newly hired mercenaries, the
captain-general of free companies bawled like a branded calf. I took it on
myself to tell him you’d hire all of them with no loss of pay. Did I do right,
Prince?” “You did just right, Uncle Wolf,” Ptosphes told him. “When
we come to battle, along with ‘Down Styphon’ we’ll shout, ‘Quarter for
mercenaries.’ How about the demands touching on Styphon’s House?” “Ha! The Archpriest Zothnes was there, sitting next to
Sarrask, with the Chancellor of Sask shoved down one place to make room for
him, which shows you who rules in Sask now. He didn’t bawl like a calf; he
screamed like a panther. Wanted Sarrask to have me seized and my head off right
in the throne-room. Sarrask told him his own soldiers would shoot him dead on
the throne if he ordered it, which they would have. The mercenary captain-general
wanted Zothnes’s head off, and half drew his sword for it. There’s one with
small stomach to fight for Styphon’s House. And this Zothnes was screaming that
there was no god at all but Styphon; now what do you think of that?” Gasps of horror, and exclamations of shocked piety. One officer
was charitable enough to say that the fellow must be mad. “No. He’s just a—” A monotheist, Kalvan wanted to say, but
there was no word in the language for it. “One who respects no gods but his
own. We had that in my own country.” He caught himself just before saying, “in
my own time”; of those present, only Ptosphes was security-cleared for that
version of his story. “They are people who believe in only one god, and then
they believe that the god they worship is the only true one, and all others are
false, and finally they believe that the only true god must be worshiped in
only one way, and that those who worship otherwise are vile monsters who should
be killed.” The Inquisition; the wicked and bloody Albigensian Crusade; Saint
Bartholomew’s; Haarlem; Magdeburg. “We want none of that here.” “Lord Prince,” the priest of Galzar said, “you know how we
who serve the war god stand. The war god is the Judge of Princes, his courtroom
the battlefield. We take no sides. We minister to the wounded without looking
at their colors; our temples are havens for the war-maimed. We preach only
Galzar’s Way: be brave, be loyal, be comradely; obey your officers; respect
yourselves and your weapons and all other good soldiers; be true to your
company and to him who pays you. “But Lord Prince, this is no common war, of Hostigos against
Sask and Ptosphes against Sarrask. This is a war for all the true gods
against false Styphon and Styphon’s foul brood. Maybe there is some devil
called Styphon, I don’t know, but if there is, may the true gods trample him
under their holy feet as we must those who serve him.” A shout of “Down Styphon!” rose. So this was what he had
said they must have none of, and an old man in a dirty shirt, a mug of wine in
his hand and a black and brown mongrel thumping his tail on the floor beside
him, had spelled it out. A religious war, the vilest form an essentially vile
business can take. Priests of Dralm and Galzar preaching fire and sword against
Styphon’s House. Priests of Styphon rousing mobs against the infidel
devil-makers. Styphon wills it! Atrocities. Massacres. Holy Dralm and no quarter! And that was what he’d brought to here-and-now. Well, maybe
for the best; give Styphon’s House another century or so in power and there’d
be no gods, here-and-now, but Styphon. “And then?” “Well, Sarrask was in a fine rage, of course. By Styphon, he’d
meet Prince Ptosphes’s demands where they should be met, on the battlefield,
and the war’d start as soon as I took my back out of sight across the border.
That was just before noon. I almost killed a horse, and myself, getting here. I
haven’t done much hard riding, lately,” he parenthesized. “As soon as I got
here, Harmakros sent riders out.” They’d reached Tarr-Hostigos at cocktail time, another alien
rite introduced by Lord Kalvan, and found him and Ptosphes and Xentos and Rylla
and Dalla in Rylla’s room. Hasty arming and saddling, hastier good-bys, and
then a hard mud-splashing ride up Listra Valley, reaching this village after
dark. The war had already started; from Esdreth Gap they could hear the distant
dull thump of cannon. Outside, the Army of the Listra was still moving forward; an
infantry company marched past with a song: Roll another barrel out, the party’s just begun. We beat Prince Gormoth’s soldiers; you oughta seen them
run! And then we crossed the Athan, and didn’t we have fun, While we were marching through Nostor! Galloping hoofs; cries of “Way! Way! Courier!” The song
ended in shouted imprecations from mud-splashed infantrymen. The galloping horse
stopped outside. The march, and the song, was resumed: Hurrah! Hurrah! We burned the bastards out! Hurrah! Hurrah! We put them all to rout! We stole their pigs and cattle and we dumped their
sauerkraut, While we were marching through Nostor! A muddy cavalryman stumbled through the door, looked around
blinking, and then made for the long table, saluting as he came. “From Colonel Verkan, Mounted Rifles. He and his men have
Fyk; they beat off a counter-attack, and now the whole Saski army’s coming at
him. I found some Mobiles and a four-pounder on the way back; they’ve gone to
help him. “By Dralm, the whole Army of the Listra’s going to help him.
Where is this Fyk place?” Harmakros pointed on the map—beyond Esdreth Gap, on the main
road to Sask Town. There was a larger town, Gour, a little beyond. Kalvan
pulled on his quilted coif and fastened the throat-guard; while he was settling
his helmet on his head, somebody had gone to the door and was bawling into the
dripping night for horses. THE rain had stopped, an hour later, when they reached Fyk.
It was a small place, full of soldiers and lighted by bonfires. The civil
population had completely vanished; all fled when the shooting had started. A
four-pounder pointed up the road to the south, with the dim shape of an improvised
barricade stretching away in the darkness on either side. Off ahead, an
occasional shot banged, and he could distinguish the sharper reports of
Hostigos-made powder from the slower-burning stuff put out by Styphon’s House.
Maybe Uncle Wolf was right that this was a war between the true gods and false
Styphon; it was also a war between two makes of gunpowder. He found Verkan and a Mobile Force major in one of the village
cottages; Verkan wore a hooded smock of brown canvas, and a short chopping-sword
on his belt and a powder-horn and bullet-pouch slung from his shoulder. The
major’s cavalry armor was browned and smeared with tallow. They had one of the
pyrographed deerskin field-maps spread on the table in front of them. Paper,
invention of, he’d made that mental memo a thousand times already. “There were about fifty cavalry here when we arrived,” Verkan
was saying. “We killed them or ran them out. In half an hour there were a
couple of hundred back. We beat them off, and that was when I sent the riders
back. Then Major Leukestros came up with his men and a gun, just in time to
help beat off another attack. We have some cavalry and mounted arquebusiers out
in front and on the flanks; that’s the shooting you’re hearing. There are some
thousand cavalry at Gour, and probably all Sarrask’s army following.” “I’m afraid we’re going to have to make a wet night of it,”
Kalvan said. “We’ll have to get our battle-line formed now; we can’t take
chances on what they may do.” He shoved the map aside and began scribbling and diagramming
an order of battle on the white-scrubbed table top. Guns to the rear, in column
along a side road north of the village, four-pounders in front; horses to be
unhitched, but fed and rested in harness, ready to move out at once. Infantry in
a line to both sides of the road a thousand yards ahead of the village, Mobile
Force infantry in the middle. Cavalry on the flank; mounted infantry horses to
the rear. A battle-order that could be converted instantly into a march-order
if they had to move on in the morning. The army came stumbling in for the next hour or so, in bits
and scraps, got themselves sorted out, and took their positions astride of the
road on the slope south of the village. The air had grown noticeably warmer. He
didn’t like that; it presaged fog, and he wanted good visibility for the battle
tomorrow. Cavalry skirmishers began drifting back, reporting pressure of large
enemy forces in front. An hour after he had his line formed, the men lying in the
wet grass on blankets, or whatever bedding they could snatch from the village,
the Saski began coming up. There was a brief explosion of small-arms fire as
they ran into his skirmishers, then they pulled back and began forming their
own battle-line. Hell of a situation, he thought disgustedly, lying on a cornshuck
tick he and Ptosphes and Harmakros had stolen from some peasant’s abandoned
bed. Two blind armies, not a thousand yards apart, waiting for daylight, and
when daylight came ... A cannon went off in front and on his left, with a loud,
dull whump! A couple of heartbeats later, something whacked behind the line. He
rose on his hands and knees, counting seconds as he peered into the darkness.
Two minutes later, he glimpsed an orange glow on his left, and two seconds
after that heard the report. Call it eight hundred yards, give or take a
hundred. He hissed to a quartet of officers on a blanket next to him. “They’re overshooting us a little. Pass the word along the
line, both ways, to move forward three hundred paces. And not a sound; dagger
anybody who speaks above a whisper. Harmakros, get the cavalry and the mounted
infantry horses back on the other side of the village. Make a lot of noise
about five hundred yards behind us.” The officers moved off, two to a side. He and Ptosphes picked
up the mattress and carried it forward, counting three hundred paces before
dropping it. Men were moving up on both sides, with a gratifying minimum of
noise. The Saski guns kept on firing. At first there were yells of
simulated fright; Harmakros and his crowd. Finally, a gun fired almost in front
of him; the cannonball passed overhead and landed behind with a swish and whack
like a headsman’s sword coming down. The next shot was far on his left. Eight
guns, at two minute intervals—call it fifteen minutes to load. That wasn’t bad,
in the dark and with what the Saski had. He relaxed, lying prone with his chin
rested on his elbows. After awhile Harmakros returned and joined him and
Ptosphes on the shuck tick. The cannonade went on in slow procession from left
to right and left to right again. Once there was a bright flash instead of a
dim glow, and a much sharper crack. Fine! One of the guns had burst! After
that, there were only seven rounds to the salvo. Once there was a rending crash
behind, as though a round-shot had hit a tree. Every shot was a safe over. Finally, the firing stopped. The distant intermittent
dueling between the two Castles Esdreth had ceased, too. He let go of wakefulness
and dropped into sleep. PTOSPHES, stirring beside him, wakened him. His body ached
and his mouth tasted foul, as every body and mouth on both battle-lines must.
It was still dark, but the sky above was something less than black, and he made
out his companions as dim shapes. Fog. By Dralm that was all they needed! Fog, and the whole Saski
army not five hundred yards away, and all their advantages of mobility and
artillery superiority lost. Nowhere to move, no room to maneuver, visibility
down to less than pistol-shot, even the advantage of their hundred-odd rifled
calivers nullified. This looked like the start of a bad day for Hostigos. They
munched the hard bread and cold pork and cheese they had brought with them and
drank some surprisingly good wine from a canteen and talked in whispers, other
officers creeping in until a dozen and a half were huddled around the
headquarters mattress. “Couldn’t we draw back a little?” That was Mnestros, the mercenary
“captain”—approximately major-general—in command of the militia. “This is a
horrible position. We’re halfway down their throats.” “They’d hear us,” Ptosphes said, “and start with their guns
again, and this time they’d know where to shoot.” “Bring up our own guns and start shooting first,” somebody
suggested. “Same objection; they’d hear us and open fire before we
could. And for Dralm’s sake keep your voices down,” Kalvan snapped. “No,
Mnestros said it. We’re halfway down their throats. Let’s jump the rest of the
way and kick their guts out from the inside.” The mercenary was a book-soldier. He was briefly dubious,
then admitted: “We are in line to attack, and we know where they are and they
don’t know where we are. They must think we’re back at the village, from the
way they were firing last night. Cavalry on the flanks?” He deprecated that.
According to the here-and-now book, cavalry should be posted all along the
line, between blocks of infantry. “Yes, half the mercenaries in each end, and a solid line of
infantry, two ranks of pikes, and arquebuses and calivers to fire over the
pikemen’s shoulders,” Kalvan said. “Verkan, have your men pass the word along
the line. Everybody stay put and keep quiet till we can all go forward
together. I want every pan reprimed and every flint tight; we’ll all move off
together, and no shouting till the enemy sees us. I’ll take the extreme right.
Prince Ptosphes, you’d better take center; Westros, command the left.
Harmakros, you take the regular and Mobile Force cavalry and five hundred
Mobile Force infantry, and move back about five hundred yards. If they flank us
or break through, attend to it.” By now, the men around him were individually recognizable,
but everything beyond twenty yards was fog-swallowed. Their saddle-horses were
brought up. He reprimed the pistols in the holsters, got a second pair from a
saddlebag, renewed the priming, and slipped one down the top of each jackboot.
The line was stirring with a noise that stood his hair on end under his
helmet-coif, until he realized that the Saski were making too much noise to
hear it. He slipped back the cuff under his mail sleeve and looked at his
watch. Five forty-five; sunrise in half an hour. They all shook hands with one
another, and he started right along the line. Soldiers were rising, rolling and slinging cloaks and
blankets. There were quilts and ticks and things from the village lying on the
ground; mustn’t be a piece of bedding left in Fyk. A few were praying, to Dralm
or Galzar. Most of them seemed to take the attitude that the gods would do what
they wanted to without impertinent human suggestions. He stopped at the extreme end of the line, on the right of
five hundred regular infantry, like all the rest lined four deep, two ranks of
pikes and two of calivers. Behind and on the right, the mercenary cavalry were
coming up in a block of twenty ranks, fifty to the rank. The first few ranks
were heavy-armed, plate rerebraces and vambraces on their arms instead of mail
sleeves, heavy pauldrons protecting their shoulders, visored helmets, mounted
on huge chargers, real old style brewery-wagon horses. They came to a halt just
behind him. He passed the word of readiness left, then sat stroking his horse’s
neck and talking softly to him. After awhile the word came back with a moving stir along the
line through the fog. He lifted a long pistol from his right-hand holster,
readied it to fire, and shook his reins. The line slid forward beside him,
front rank pikes waist high, second rank pike-points a yard behind and breast
high, calivers behind at high port. The cavalry followed him with a slow fluviatile clop-clatter-clop. Things emerged from the fog in
front—seedling pines, clumps of tall weeds, a rotting cartwheel, a whitened cow’s
skull—but the gray nothingness marched just twenty yards in front. This, he recalled, was how Gustavus Adolphus had gotten
killed, riding forward into a fog like this at Lьtzen. An arquebus banged on his left; that was a charge of Styphon’s
Best. Half a dozen shots rattled in reply, most of them Kalvan’s Unconsecrated,
and he heard yells of “Down Styphon!” and “Sarrask of Sask!” The pikemen
stiffened; some of them lost step and had to hop to make it up. They all seemed
to crouch over their weapons, and the caliver muzzles poked forward. By this
time, the firing was like a slate roof endlessly sliding off a house, and then,
much farther to the left, there was a sudden ringing crash like sheet-steel
failing into a scrap-car. The Fyk corpse-factory was in full production. But in front,
there was only silence and the slowly receding curtain of fog, and pine-dotted
pastureland broken by small gullies in which last night’s rainwater ran
yellowly. Ran straight ahead of them—that wasn’t right. The Saski position was
up a slope from where they had lain under the midrange trajectory of the guns,
and now the noise of battle was not only to the left but behind them. He flung
up the hand holding the gold-mounted pistol. “Halt!” he called out. “Pass the word left to stand fast!”
He knew what had happened. Both battle-lines, formed in the dark, had
overlapped the other’s left. So he had flanked them, and Mnestros, on the
Hostigi left, was also flanked. “You two,” he told a pair of cavalry lieutenants. “Ride left
till you come to the fighting. Find a good pivot-point, and one of you stay
with it. The other will come back along the line, passing the word to swing
left. We’ll start swinging from this end. And find somebody to tell Harmakros
what’s happened, if he doesn’t know it already. He probably does. No orders;
just use his own judgment.” Everybody would have to use his own judgment, from here out.
He wondered what was happening to Mnestros. He hadn’t the liveliest confidence
in Mnestros’s judgment when he ran into something the book didn’t cover. Then
he sat, waiting for centuries, until one of the lieutenants came thudding back
behind the infantry line, and he gave the order to start the leftward swing. The level pikes and slanting calivers kept line on his left;
the cavalry clop-clattered behind him. The downward slope swung in front of
them, until they were going steeply uphill, and then the ground was level under
their feet, and he could feel a freshening breeze on his cheek. He was shouting a warning when the fog tore apart for a hundred
yards in front and two or three on either side, and out of it came a mob of
infantry, badged with Sarrask’s green and gold. He pulled his horse back, fired
his pistol into them, holstered it, and drew the other from his left holster.
The major commanding the regular infantry blew his whistle and screamed above
the din: “Action front! Fire by ranks, odd numbers only!” The front
rank pikemen squatted as though simultaneously stricken with diarrhea. The
second rank dropped to one knee, their pikes advanced. Over their shoulders,
half the third rank blasted with calivers, then dodged for the fourth rank to
fire over them. As soon as the second volley crashed, the pikemen were on their
feet and running at the disintegrating front of the Saski infantry, all
shouting, “Down Styphon!” He saw that much, then raked his horse with his spurs and
drove him forward shouting, “Charge!” The heavily armed mercenaries thundered
after him, swinging long swords, firing pistols almost as big as small
carbines, smashing into the Saski infantry from the flank before they could
form a new front. He pistoled a pikeman who was thrusting at his horse, then
drew his sword. Then the fog closed down again, and dim shapes were dodging
among the horses. A Saski cavalryman bulked in front of him, firing almost in
his face. The bullet missed him, but hot grains of powder stung his cheek. Get
a coalminer’s tattoo out of that, he thought, and then his wrist hurt as he
drove the point into the fellow’s throat-guard, spreading the links. Plate gorgets,
issue to mounted troops as soon as can be produced. He wrenched the point free,
and the Saski slid gently out of his saddle. “Keep moving!” he screamed at the cavalry with him. “Don’t
let them slow you down!” In a mess like this, stalled cavalry were all but helpless.
Their best weapon was the momentum of a galloping horse, and once lost, that
took at least thirty yards to regain. Cavalry horses ought to be crossed with
jackrabbits; but that was something he couldn’t do anything about at all. One
mass of cavalry, the lancers and musketoon-men who had ridden behind the
heavily armed men, had gotten hopelessly jammed in front of a bristle of pikes.
He backed his horse quickly out of that, then found himself at the end of a
line of Mobile Force infantry, with short arquebuses and cavalry lances for
pikes. He directed them to the aid of the stalled cavalry, and then realized
that he was riding across the road at right angles. That meant that he—and the
whole battle, since all the noise was either to his right or left along the
road—was now facing east instead of south. Of the heavily armed mercenary
cavalry who had been with him at the beginning, he could see nothing. A horseman came crashing at him out of the fog, shouting “Down
Styphon!” and thrusting at him with a sword. He had barely time to beat it
aside with his own and cry, “Ptosphes!” and a moment later: “Ptosphes, by Dralm!
How did you get here?” “Kalvan! I’m glad you parried that one. Where are we?” He told the Prince, briefly. “The whole Dralm-damned battle’s
turned at right angles; you know that?” “Well, no wonder. Our whole left wing’s gone. Mnestros is
dead—I heard that from an officer who saw his body. The regular infantry on our
extreme left are all but wiped out; what few are left, and what’s left of the
militia next to them, reformed on Harmakros, in what used to be our rear. That’s
our left wing, now.” “Well, their left wing’s in no better shape; I swung in on
that and smashed it up. What’s happened to the cavalry we had on the left?” “Dralm knows; I don’t. Took to their heels out of this, I suppose.”
Ptosphes drew one of his pistols and took a powder-flask from his belt. “Watch
over my shoulder, will you, Kalvan.” He drew one of his own holster-pair and poured a charge into
it. The battle seemed to have moved out of their immediate vicinity, though off
in the fog in both directions there was a bedlam of shooting, yelling and
steel-clashing. Then suddenly a cannon, the first of the morning, went off in
what Kalvan took to be the direction of the village. An eight-pounder, he
thought, and certainly loaded with Made-in-Hostigos. On its heels came another,
and another. “That,” Ptosphes said, “will be Harmakros.” “I hope he knows what he’s shooting at.” He primed the
pistol, bolstered it, and started on its mate. “Where do you think we could do
the most good?” Ptosphes had his saddle pair loaded, and was starting on one
from a boot-top. “Let’s see if we can find some of our own cavalry, and go
looking for Sarrask,” he said. “I’d like to kill or capture him, myself If I
did, it might give me some kind of a claim on the throne of Sask. If this
cursed fog would only clear.” From off to the right, south up the road, came noises like a
boiler-shop starting up. There wasn’t much shooting—everybody’s gun was empty
and no one had time to reload—just steel, and an indistinguishable
waw-wawwaw-ing of voices. The fog was blowing in wet rags, now, but as fast as
it blew away, more closed down. There was a limit to that, though; overhead the
sky was showing a faint sunlit yellow. “Come on, Lytris, come on!” he invoked the weather goddess. “Get
this stuff out of here! Whose side are you fighting on, anyhow?” Ptosphes finished the second of his spare pair, he had the
last one of his own four to prime. Ptosphes said, “Watch behind you!” and he
almost spilled the priming, then closed the pan and readied the pistol to fire.
It was some twenty of the heavy-armed cavalry who had gone in with him. Their
sergeant wanted to know where they were. He hadn’t any better idea than they had. Shoving the flint
away from the striker, he pushed the pistol into his boot and drew his sword;
they all started off toward the noise of fighting. He thought he was still
going east until he saw that he was riding, at right angles, onto a line of
mud-trampled quilts and bedspreads and mattresses, the things that had been
appropriated in the village the night before. He glanced left and right.
Ptosphes knew what they were, too, and swore. Now the battle had made a full 180-degree turn. Both armies
were facing in the direction from whence they had come; the route of either
would be in the direction of the enemy’s country. Galzar, he thought irreverently, must have overslept this
morning. But at least the fog was definitely clearing, gilded above by
sunlight, and the gray tatters around them were fewer and more threadbare,
visibility now better than a hundred yards. They found a line of battle
extending, apparently, due east of Fyk, and came up behind a hodgepodge of
militia, regulars and Mobiles, any semblance of unit organization completely
lost. Mobile Force cavalry were trotting back and forth behind them, looking
for soft spots where breakthroughs, in either direction, might happen. He
yelled to a Mobile Force captain who was fighting on foot: “Who’s in front of you?” “How should I know? Same mess of odds-and-sods we are. This
Dralm damned battle ...” Officially, he supposed, it would be the Battle of Fyk, but
nobody who’d been in it would ever call it anything but the Dralm-damned Battle. Before he could say anything, there was a crash on his left
like all the boiler-shops in creation together. He and Ptosphes looked at one
another. “Something new has been added,” he commented. “Well, let’s go see.” They started to the left with their picked up heavy cavalry,
not too rapidly, and with pistols drawn. There was a lot of shouting——“Down
Styphon!” of course, and “Ptosphes!” and “Sarrask of Sask!” There were also
shouts of “Balthames!” That would be the retinue Balthar’s brother, the prospective
Prince of Sashta, had brought to Sask Town—some two hundred and fifty, he’d
heard. Then there were cries of “Treason! Treason!” Now there was a hell of a thing to yell on any battlefield,
let alone in a fog. He was wondering who was supposed to be betraying whom when
he found the way blocked by the backs of Hostigi infantry at right angles to
the battle-line; not retreating, just being pushed out of the way of something.
Beyond them, through the thinning fog, he could see a rush of cavalry, some
wearing black and pale yellow surcoats over their armor. They’d be Balthames’s
Beshtans; they were filing and chopping indiscriminately at anything in front
of them, and, mixed with them, were green-and-gold Saski, fighting with them
and the Hostigi both. All he and Ptosphes and the mercenary men-at-arms could
do was sit on their horses and fire pistols at them over the heads of their own
infantry. Finally, the breakthrough, if that was what it had been, was
over. The Hostigi infantry closed in behind them, piking and shooting, and
there were cries of “Comrade, we yield!” and “Oath to Galzar!” and “Comrade,
spare mercenaries!” “Should we give them a chase?” Ptosphes asked, looking after
the Saski-Beshtan whatever-it-had-been. “I shouldn’t think so. They’re charging in the right
direction. What the Styphon do you think happened?” Ptosphes laughed. “How should I know? I wonder if it really
was treason.” “Well, let’s get through here.” He raised his voice. “Come
on—forward! Somebody’s punched a hole for us; let’s get through it!” SUDDENLY, the fog was gone. The sun shone from a cloudless
sky; the Mountainside, nearer than he thought, was gaudy with Autumn colors;
all the drifting puffs and hanging bands of white on the ground were
powder-smoke. The village of Fyk, on his left, was ringed with army wagons like
a Boer laager, guns pointing out between them. That was the strong point on
which Harmakros had rallied the wreckage of the left wing. In front of him, the Hostigi were moving forward, infantry
running beside the cavalry, and in front of them the Saski line was raveling
away, men singly and in little groups and by whole companies turning and taking
to their heels, trying to join two or three thousand of their comrades who had
made a porcupine. He knew it from otherwhen history as a Swiss hedgehog: a
hollow circle bristling pikes in all directions. Hostigi cavalry were already
riding around it, firing into it, and Verkan’s riflemen were sniping at it.
There seemed to be no Saski cavalry whatever; they must all have joined the
rush to the south at the time of the breakthrough. Then three four-pounders came out from the village at a
gallop, unlimbered at three hundred yards, and began firing case-shot. When two
eight-pounders followed more sedately, helmets began going up on pike-points
and caliver muzzles. Behind him, the fighting had ceased entirely. Hostigi
soldiers had scattered through the brush and trampled cornstalks, tending to
their wounded, securing prisoners, robbing corpses, collecting weapons, all the
routine after-battle chores, and the battle wasn’t over yet. He was worrying
about where all the Saski cavalry had gotten, and the possibility that they
might rally and counterattack, when he saw a large mounted column approaching
from the south. This is it, he thought, and we’re all scattered to Styphon’s
House and gone—He was shouting at the men nearest him to drop what they were
doing and start earning their pay when he saw blue and red colors on lances, saddle
pads, scarves. He trotted forward to meet them. Some were mercenaries, some were Hostigi regulars; with them
were a number of green-and-gold prisoners, their helmets hung on saddlebows. A
captain in front shouted a greeting as he came up. “Well, thank Galzar you’re still alive, Lord Kalvan! Where’s
the Prince?” “Back at the village, trying to get things sorted out. How
far did you go?” “Almost to Gour. Better than a thousand of them got away;
they won’t stop short of Sask Town. The ones we have are the ones with the slow
horses. Sarrask may have gotten away; we know Balthames did.” “Dralm and Galzar and all the true gods curse that Beshtan
bastard!” one of the prisoners cried. “Devils eat his soul forever! The
Dralm-damned lackwit cost us the battle, and only Galzar’s counted how many
dead and maimed.” “What happened? I heard cries of treason.” “Yes, that dumped the whole bagful of devils on us,” the
Saski said. “You want to know what happened? Well, in the darkness we formed
with our right wing far beyond your left; yours beyond ours, I suppose, from
the looks of things. On our right, we carried all before us, drove your cavalry
from the field and smashed your infantry. Then this boy-lover from Beshta—we
can fight our enemies, but Galzar guard us from our allies—took his own men and
near a thousand of our mercenary horse off on a rabbit-hunt after your fleeing
cavalry, almost to Esdreth. “Well, you know what happened in the meantime. Our right
drove in your left, and yours ours, and the whole battle turned like a wheel,
and we were all facing in the way we’d come, and then back comes this Balthames
of Beshta, smashing into our rear, thinking that he was saving the day. “And to make it worse, the silly fool doesn’t shout ‘Sarrask
of Sask,’ as he should have; no, he shouts ‘Balthames!’—he and all his, and the
mercenaries with him took it up to curry favor with him. Well, great Dralm, you
know how much anybody can trust anybody from Beshta; we thought the bugger’d turned
his coat, and somebody cried treason. I’ll not deny crying it myself, after I
was near spitted on a Beshtan lance, and me crying ‘Sarrask!’ at the top of my
lungs. So we were carried away in the rout, and I fell in with mercenaries from
Hos-Ktemnos. We got almost to Gour and tried to make a stand, and were ridden
over and taken.” “Did Sarrask get away? Galzar knows I want to spill his
blood badly enough, but I want to do it honestly.” The Saski didn’t know; none of Sarrask’s silver-armored personal
guard had been near him in the fighting. “Well, don’t blame Duke Balthames too much.” Looking around,
he saw over a score of Saski and mercenary prisoners within hearing. If we’re
going to have a religious war, let’s start it now. “It was,” he declared, “the work
of the true gods! Who do you think raised the fog, but Lytris the Weather
Goddess? Who confounded your captains in arraying your line, and caused your
gunners to overshoot, harming not one of us, but Galzar Wolfhead, the Judge of
Princes? And who but Great Dralm himself addled poor Balthames’s wits, leading
him on a fool’s chase and bringing him back to strike you from behind? At long
last,” he cried, “the true gods have raised their mighty hands against false
Styphon and the blasphemers of Styphon’s House!” There were muttered amens, some from the Saski prisoners.
Styphon’s stock had dropped quite a few points. He decided to let it go at
that, and put them in with the other prisoners and let them talk. PTOSPHES was shocked by the casualties. Well, they were
rather shocking—only forty-two hundred electives left out of fifty-eight
hundred infantry, and eighteen hundred of a trifle over three thousand cavalry.
The body count didn’t meet the latter figure, however, and he remembered what
the Saski officer had said about Balthames’s chase almost to Esdreth Gap. Most
of the mercenaries on the left wing had simply bugged out; by now, they’d be
fleeing into Listra Valley, spreading tales of a crushing Hostigi defeat. He
cursed; there wasn’t anything else he could do about it. Some cavalry arrived from Esdreth Gap: Chartiphon’s Army of
the Besh men. During the night, they reported, infantry from both the army of
the Besh and the Army of the Listra had gotten onto the mountain back of
Tarr-Esdreth-of-Sask, and taken it by storm just before daylight. Alkides had
moved his three treasured brass eighteen-pounders and some lighter pieces down
into the gap, and was holding it at both ends with a mixed force. As the fog
had started to blow away, a large body of Saski cavalry had tried to force a
way through; they had been driven off by gunfire. Perturbed by the presence of
enemy troops so far north, he had sent to find out what was going on. Riders
were sent to reassure him, and order him to come up in person and bring his
eighteens with him. There was no telling what they might have to break into
before the day was over. The long eighteen-pounders were excellent burglar-tools. Harmakros got off at ten, with the
Mobile Force and all the four-pounders, up the main road for Sask Town. All the captured mercenaries agreed to take Prince Ptosphes’s colors and were released
under oath and under arms. The Saski subjects were disarmed and put to work
digging trenches for mass graves and collecting salvageable equipment. Mytron
and his staff preempted the better cottages and several of the larger and more
sanitary barns for hospitals. Taking five hundred of the remaining cavalry,
Kalvan started out a little before noon, leaving Ptosphes to await the arrival
of Alkides and the eighteen-pounders. Gour was a market town of some five thousand. He found bodies,
already stripped of armor, in the square, and a mob of townsfolk and disarmed
Saski prisoners working to put out several fires, guarded by some lightly
wounded mounted arquebusiers. He dropped two squads to help them and rode on. He thought he knew this section; he’d been stationed in Blair County five otherwhen years ago. He hadn’t realized how much the Pennsylvania
Railroad Company had altered the face of Logan Valley. At about what ought to
be Allegheny Furnace, he was stopped by a picket-post of Mobile Force cavalry
and warned to swing right and come in on Sask Town from behind. Tarr-Sask was
being held, either by or for Prince Sarrask, and was cannonading the town.
While he talked with them, he could hear the occasional distant boom of a heavy
bombard. Tarr-Sask stood on the south end of Brush Mountain, Sarrask’s golden-rayed sun on green flying from the watchtower. The arrival of his
cavalry at the other side of the, town must have been observed; four bombards
let go with strain-everything charges of Styphon’s Best, hurling hundred and
fifty pound stone cannonballs among the houses. This, he thought, wouldn’t do
much to improve relations between Sarrask and his subjects. Harmakros, who had
nothing but four-pounders, which was to say nothing, was not replying. Wait, he
thought, till Alkides gets here. Battering-pieces, thirty-two-pounders, about six, get cast
as soon as Verkan’s gang gets foundry going. And cast shells, do something
about. There had been no fighting inside the town; Harmakros’s blitzkrieg
had hit it too fast, before resistance could be organized. There had been some
looting—that was to be expected—but no fires. Arson for arson’s sake, without a
valid strategic reason as in Nostor, was discountenanced in the Hostigos army.
Most of the civil population had either refugeed out or were down in the
cellar. The temple of Styphon had been taken first of all. It stood
on almost the exact site of the Hollidaysburg courthouse, a circular building
under a golden dome, with rectangular wings on either side. If, as he
suspected, that dome was really gold, it might go a long way toward paying the
cost of the war. A Mobile Force infantryman was up a ladder with a tarpot and a
brush, painting DOWN STYPHON over the door. Entering, the first thing he saw
was a twenty-foot image, its face newly spalled and pitted and lead-splashed.
The Puritans had been addicted to that sort of small-arms practice, he
recalled, and so had the Huguenots. There was a lot of gold ornamentation
around; guards had been posted. He found Harmakros in the Innermost Circle, his spurred
heels resting on the high priest’s desk. He sprang to his feet. “Kalvan! Did you bring any guns?” “No, only cavalry. Ptosphes is bringing Alkides’s three eighteens.
He’ll be here in about three hours. What happened here?” “Well, as you see, Balthames got here a little ahead of us
and shut himself up in Tarr-Sask. We sent the local Uncle Wolf up to parley
with him. He says he’s holding the castle in Sarrask’s name, and won’t
surrender without Sarrask’s orders as long as he has fireseed.” “Then he doesn’t know where Sarrask is, either.” Sarrask could be dead and his body stripped on the field by
common soldiers—it’d be worth stripping—and tumbled anonymously into one of
those mass graves. If so, they might never be sure, and then, every year for
the next thirty years, some fake Sarrask would be turning up somewhere in the
Five Kingdoms, conning suckers into financing a war to recover his throne. That
had happened occasionally in otherwhen history. “Did you get the priests along with this temple?” “Oh, yes, Zothnes and all. They were packing to leave when
we got here, and argued about what to take along. We have them in chains in the
town jail, now. Do you want to see them?” “Not particularly. We’ll have their heads off tomorrow or
the next day, when we find time for it. How about the fireseed mill?” Harmakros laughed. “Verkan’s surrounding it with his riflemen.
As soon as we get a dozen or so men dressed in priestly robes, about a hundred
more will chase them in, with a lot of yelling and shooting. If that gets the
gate open, we may be able to take the place before some fanatic blows it up.
You know, some of these under-priests and novices really believe in Styphon.” “Well, what did you get here?” Harmakros waved a hand about him. “All this gold and fancywork.
Then there’s gold and silver, specie and bullion, in the vaults, to about fifty
thousand gold ounces, I’d say.” That was a lot of money. Around a million US. dollars. He could believe it, though; besides making fireseed, Styphon’s House was in
the loan-shark business, at something like ten percent per lunar month,
compound interest. Anti-usury laws; do something about. Except for a few small-time
pawnbrokers, they were the only money-lenders in Sask. “Then,” Harmakros continued, “there’s a magazine and armory.
We haven’t taken inventory yet, but I’d say ten tons of fireseed, three or four
hundred stand of arquebuses and calivers, and a lot of armor. And one wing’s
packed full of general merchandise, probably taken in as offerings. We haven’t
even looked at that, yet; just put it under guard. A lot of barrels that could
be wine; we don’t want the troops getting at that yet.” The guns of Tarr-Sask kept on firing slowly, smashing a
house now and then. None of the round-shot came near the temple; Balthames was
evidently still in awe of Styphon’s House. The main army arrived about 1630;
Alkides got his brass eighteen-pounders and three twelves in position and began
shooting back. They didn’t throw the huge granite globes Balthames’s bombards
did, but they fired every five minutes instead of every half hour, and with
something approaching accuracy. A little later, Verkan rode in to report the
fireseed mill taken intact. He didn’t think much of the equipment—the mills
were all slave-powered—but there had been twenty tons of finished fireseed, and
over a hundred of sulfur and saltpeter. He had had some trouble preventing a massacre
of the priests when the slaves had been unshackled. At 1815, in the gathering dusk, riders came in from Esdreth,
reporting that Sarrask had been captured, in Listra Valley, while trying to
reach the Nostori border to place himself under the questionable protection of
Prince Gormoth. “He was captured,” the sergeant in command finished, “by the
Princess Rylla and Colonel Verkan’s wife, Dalla.” He and Ptosphes and Harmakros and Verkan all shouted at
once. A moment later, the roar of one of Alkides’s eighteens was almost an anticlimax.
Verkan was saying, “That’s the girl who wanted me to stay out of battles!” “But Rylla can’t get out of bed,” Ptosphes argued. “I wouldn’t know about that, Prince,” the sergeant said. “Maybe
the Princess calls a saddle a bed, because that’s what she was in when I saw
her.” “Well, did she have that cast—that leather thing—on her leg?”
Kalvan asked. “No, sir—just regular riding boots, with pistols in them.” He and Ptosphes cursed antiphonally. Well, at least they’d
kept her out of that blindfold slaughterhouse at Fyk. “Sound Cease Fire, and then Parley,” he ordered. “Send Uncle
Wolf up the hill again; tell Balthames we have his pa-in-law.” They got a truce arranged; Balthames sent out a group of neutrals,
merchants and envoys from other princedoms, to observe and report. Bonfires
were lit along the road up to the castle. It was full dark when Rylla and Dalla
arrived, with a mixed company of mounted Tarr-Hostigos garrison troops,
fugitive mercenaries rallied along the road south, and overage peasants on overage
horses. With them were nearly a hundred of Sarrask’s elite guard, in silvered
harness that looked more like table-service than armor, and Sarrask himself in
gilded armor. “Where’s that lying quack of a Mytron?” Rylla demanded, as
soon as she was within hearing. “I’ll doctor him when I catch him—a double orchidectomy!
You know what? Yes, of course you do; you put him up to it! Well, Dalla had a
look at my leg this morning, she’s forgotten more about doctoring than Mytron
ever learned, and she said that thing ought to have been off half a moon ago.” “Well, what’s the story?” Kalvan asked. “How did you pick
all this up?” He indicated Sarrask, glowering at them from his saddle, with his
silver-plated guardsmen behind him. “Oh, this band of heroes you took to a battle you tried to
keep me out of,” Rylla said bitterly. “About noon, they came clattering into
Tarr-Hostigos—that’s the ones with the fastest horses and the sharpest spurs—screaming
that all was lost, the army destroyed, you killed, father killed, Harmakros
killed, Verkan killed, Mnestros killed; why, they even had Chartiphon, down on
the Beshtan border, killed!” “Well, I’m sorry to say that Mnestros was killed,”
her father told her. “Well, I didn’t believe a tenth of it, but even at that something
bad could have happened, so I gathered up what men I could mount at the castle,
appointed Dalla my lieutenant—she was the best man around—and we started south,
gathering up what we could along the way. Just this side of Darax, we ran into
this crowd. We thought they were the cavalry screen for a Saski invasion, and
we gave them an argument. That was when Dalla captured Prince Sarrask.” “I did not,” Verkan’s wife denied. “I just shot his horse.
Some farmers captured him, and you owe them a lot of money, or somebody does.
We rode into this gang on the road, and there was a lot of shooting, and this
big man in gilded armor came at me swinging a sword as long as I am. I fired at
him, and as I did his horse reared and caught it in the chest and fell over
backward, and while he was trying to get clear some peasants with knives and
hatchets and things jumped on him, and he began screaming, ‘I am Prince Sarrask
of Sask; my ransom is a hundred thousand ounces of silver!’ Well, right away,
they lost interest in killing him.” “Who are they, do you know?” Ptosphes asked. “I’ll have to
make that good to them.” “Styphon will pay,” Kalvan said. “Styphon ought to; he got Sarrask into this mess in the
first place,” Ptosphes commented. He turned back to Rylla. “What then?” “Well, when Sarrask surrendered, the rest of them began pulling
off helmets and holding swords up by the blades and crying, ‘Oath to Galzar!’ They
all admitted they’d taken an awful beating at Fyk, and were trying to get into
Nostor. Now wouldn’t that have been nice?” “Our gold-plated friend here didn’t want to come along with
us,” Dalla said. “Rylla told him he didn’t need to; we could take his head
along easier than all of him. You know, Prince, your daughter doesn’t fool. At
least, Sarrask didn’t think so.” She hadn’t been fooling, and Sarrask had known it. “So,”
Rylla picked it up, “we put him on a horse one of his guards didn’t need any
more, and brought him along. We thought you might find a use for him. We
stopped at Esdreth Gap—I saw our flag on the Sask castle; that looked pretty,
but Sarrask didn’t think so ...” “Prince Ptosphes!” Sarrask burst out. “I am a Prince, as you
are. You have no right to let these—these girls—make sport of me!” “They’re as good soldiers as you are,” Ptosphes snapped. “They
captured you, didn’t they?” “It was the true gods who made sport of you, Prince Sarrask!”
Kalvan went into the same harangue he had given the captured officers at Fyk,
in his late father’s best denunciatory pulpit style. “I pray all the true gods,”
he finished, “that now that they have humbled you, they will forgive you.” Sarrask was no longer defiant; he was a badly scared Prince,
as badly scared as any sinner at whom the Rev. Alexander Morrison had thundered
hellfire and damnation. Now and then he looked uneasily upward, as though
wondering what the gods were going to hit him with next. It was almost midnight before Kalvan and Ptosphes could sit
down privately in a small room behind Sarrask’s gaudy presence chamber. There
had been the takeover of Tarr-Sask, and the quartering of troops, and the
surrendered mercenaries to swear into Ptosphes’s service, and the Saski troops
to disarm and confine to barracks. Riders had been coming and going with
messages. Chartiphon, on the Beshtan border, was patching up a field truce with
Balthar’s officers on the spot, and had sent cavalry to seize the lead mines in
Sinking Valley. As soon as things stabilized, he was turning the Army of the
Besh over to his second in command and coming to Sask Town. Ptosphes had let his pipe go out. Biting back a yawn, he
leaned forward to relight it from a candle. “We have a panther by the tail here, Kalvan; you know that?”
he asked. “What are we going to do now?” “Well, we clean Styphon’s House out of Sask, first of all.
We’ll have the heads off all those priests, from Zothnes down.” Counting the
lot that had been brought in from the different temple-farms, that would be
about fifty. They’d have to gather up some headsmen. “That will have to be
policy, from now on. We don’t leave any of that gang alive.” “Oh, of course,” Ptosphes agreed. “‘To be dealt with as
wolves are.’ But how about Sarrask and Balthames? If we behead them, the other
Princes would criticize us.” “No, we want both of them alive, as your vassals. Balthames
is going to marry that wench of Sarrask’s if I have to stand behind him with a
shotgun, and then we’ll make him Prince of Sashta, and occupy all that
territory Balthar agreed to cede him. In return, he’ll guarantee us the entire
output of those lead mines. Lead, I’m afraid, is going to be our chief
foreign-exchange monetary metal for a long time to come. “To make it a little tighter,” he continued, “we’ll add a
little of Hostigos, east of the mountains, say to the edge of the Barrens.” “Are you crazy, Kalvan? Give up Hostigi land? Not as long as
I’m Prince of Hostigos!” “Oh, I’m sorry. I must have forgotten to tell you. You’re
not Prince of Hostigos any more. I am.” Ptosphes’s face went blank, for an
instant, with shocked incredulity. Then he was on his feet with an oath, his
poignard half drawn. “No,” Kalvan continued, before his father-in-law-to-be
could say anything else. “You are now His Majesty, Ptosphes the First, Great
King of Hos-Hostigos. As Prince by betrothal of your Majesty’s domain of Old
Hostigos, let me be the first to do homage to your Majesty.” Ptosphes resumed his chair, solely by force of gravity. He
stared for a moment, then picked up his goblet and drained it. This was a Hos of another color. “If the people in that
section don’t want to live under the rule of Balthames, for which I shouldn’t
blame them, we’ll buy them out and settle them elsewhere. We’ll fill that
country with mercenaries we’ve had to take over and don’t want to carry on the
payroll. The officers can be barons, and the privates will all get forty acres
and a mule, and we’ll make sure they all have something to shoot with. That’ll
keep them out of worse mischief, and keep Prince Balthames’s hands full. If we
need them, we can always call them up again. Styphon, as usual, will pay. “I don’t know how long it’ll take us to get Beshta—a moon or
so. We’ll let Balthar find out how much gold and silver we’re getting, out of
this temple here. Balthar is fond of money. Then, after he’s broken with
Styphon’s House, he’ll find that he’ll have to join us.” “Armanes, too,” Ptosphes considered, toying with his golden
chain. “He owes Styphon’s House a lot of money. What do you think Kaiphranos
will do about this?” “Well, he won’t be happy about it, but who cares? He only
has some five thousand troops of his own; if he wants to fight us, he’ll either
have to raise a mercenary army—and there’s a limit to how many mercenaries
anybody, even financed by Styphon’s House, can hire—or he’ll have to levy on
his subject Princes. Half of them won’t send troops to help coerce a fellow
Prince—it might be their turn next—and the rest will all be too jealous of
their own dignities to take orders from him. And in any case, he won’t move
till spring.” Ptosphes had started to lift the chain from around his neck.
He replaced it. “No, Kalvan,” he said firmly. “I will remain Prince of Old
Hostigos. You must be Great King.” “Now, look here, Ptosphes; Dralm-dammit, you have to be
Great King!” For a moment, he was ten years old again, arguing who’d be cops
and who’d be robbers. “You have some standing; you’re a Prince. Nobody in
Hos-Harphax knows me from a hole in the ground.” Ptosphes slapped the table till the goblets jiggled. “That’s
just it, Kalvan! They know me all too well. I’m just a Prince, no better than
they are; every one of these other Princes would say he had as much right to be
Great King as I do. But they don’t know who you are; all they know is what you’ve
done. That and the story we told at the beginning, that you come from far
across the Western Ocean, around the Cold Lands. Why, that’s the Home of the
Gods! We can’t claim that you’re a god, yourself; the real gods wouldn’t like
that. But anybody can plainly see that you’ve been taught by the gods, and sent
by them. It would be nothing but plain blasphemy to deny it!” Ptosphes was right; none of these haughty Princes would
kneel to one of their own ilk. But Kalvan, Galzar-taught and Dralm-sent; that
was a Hos of another color, too. Rylla’s father had risen to kneel to him. “Oh, sit down; sit down! Save that nonsense for Sarrask and Balthames
to do. We’ll have to talk to some of our people tonight; best do that in the
presence chamber.” Harmakros was still up and more or less awake. He took the
announcement quite calmly; by this time he was beyond surprise at—anything. They
had to waken Rylla; she’d had a little too much, for her first day up. She
merely nodded drowsily. Then her eyes widened. “Hey, doesn’t this make me Great
Queen, or something?” Then she went back to sleep. Chartiphon, arriving from the Beshtan border, was informed.
He asked, “Why not Ptosphes?” then nodded agreement when the reasons were
explained. About the necessity for establishing a Great Kingdom he had no
doubt. “What else are we now? We’ll have Beshta next.” A score of others, Hostigi nobles and top army brass, were
gathered in the presence chamber. Among them was Sthentros; maybe he hadn’t
been at Fitra, but nobody could say he hadn’t been at Fyk. He might have envied
Lord Kalvan, but Great King Kalvan was completely beyond envy. They were all
half out on their feet—they’d only marched all day yesterday, tried to sleep in
a wet cow pasture with cannon firing over them, fought a “great murthering
battle” in the morning, marched fifteen more miles, and taken Sask Town and
Tarr-Sask—but they wanted to throw a party to celebrate. They were persuaded to
have one drink to their new sovereign and then go to bed. The rank-and-file weren’t in any better shape; half a den of
Cub Scouts could have taken Tarr-Sask and run the lot of them out. THE next morning Kalvan’s orderly, who didn’t seem to have
gotten much sleep, wakened him at nine-thirty. Should have done it earlier, but
he’d probably just gotten awake himself He bathed, put on clothes he’d never
seen before—have things brought from Tarr-Hostigos, soonest—and breakfasted
with Ptosphes, who had also been outfitted from some Saski nobleman’s wardrobe.
There were more messages: from Klestreus, in Beshta Town, who had bullied
Balthar into agreeing to a truce and pulling his troops back to the line agreed
on the treaty with Sarrask; and from Xentos, at Tarr-Hostigos. Xentos was
disturbed about reports of troop mobilization in Nostor; Gormoth, he knew, had
recently hired five hundred mercenary cavalry. Immediately, Ptosphes became
equally disturbed. He wanted to march at once down the Listra Valley. “No, for Dralm’s sake!” Kalvan protested. “We have a panther
by the tail, here. In a day or so, when we’re in control, we can march a lot of
these new mercenaries to Listra-Mouth, but right now we mustn’t let anybody know
we’re frightened or they’ll all jump us.” “But if Gormoth’s invading Hostigos—” “I don’t think he is. Just to make sure, we’ll send Phraines
off with half the Mobile Force and four four-pounders; they can hold anything
Gormoth’s moving against us for a few days.” He gave the necessary orders, saw to it that the troops left
Sask Town quietly, and tried to ignore the subject. He was glad, though, that
Rylla had gotten out of her splints and come to Sask Town; she might be safer
here. So they had Sarrask and Balthames brought in. Both seemed to be expecting to be handed over to the headsman,
and were trying to be nonchalant about it. Ptosphes informed them abruptly that
they were now subjects of the Great King of Hos-Hostigos. “Who’s he?” Sarrask demanded, with a truculence the circumstances
didn’t quite justify. “You?” “Oh, no. I am Prince of Old Hostigos. His Majesty, Kalvan
the First, is Great King.” They were both relieved. Ptosphes had been right; the sovereignty
of the mysterious and possibly supernatural Kalvan would be acceptable; that of
a self-elevated equal would not. When the conditions under which they would
reign as Princes, respectively, of Sashta and Sask were explained, Balthames
was delighted. He’d come out of this as well as if Sask had won the war.
Sarrask was somewhat less so, until informed that he was now free of all his
debts to Styphon’s House and would share in the loot of the temple and be given
the fireseed mill. “Well, Dralm save your Majesty!” he cried, and then loosed a
torrent of invective against Styphon’s House and all in it. “You’ll let me put
these thieving priests to death, won’t you, your Majesty?” “They are offenders against the Great King; his justice will
deal with them,” Ptosphes informed him. Then they had in the foreign envoys, representatives of
Prince Kestophes of Ulthor, on Lake Erie, and Armanes of Nyklos, and Tythanes
of Kyblos, and Balthar of Beshta, and other neighboring Princes. There had been
no such diplomatic corps at Tarr-Hostigos, because of the ban of Styphon’s
House. The Ulthori minister immediately wanted to know what the new Great Kingdom included. “Well, at the moment, the Princedom of Old Hostigos, the
Princedom of Sask, and the new Princedom of Sashta. Any other Princes who may
elect to join us will be made welcome under our rule and protection; those
which do not will be respected in their sovereignty as long as they respect us
in ours. Or what they may conceive to be their sovereignty as subjects of this
Great King of Hos-Harphax, Kaiphranos.” He shrugged Kaiphranos off as too trivial for consideration.
Several of them laughed. The Beshtan minister began to bristle: “This Princedom of Sashta, now; does that include territory
ruled by my master, Prince Balthar of Beshta?” “It includes territory your master ceded to our subject,
Prince Balthames, in a treaty with our subject Prince Sarrask, which we
recognized and confirm, and which we are prepared to enforce. As to how we are
prepared to enforce it, I trust I don’t have to remind you of what happened at
Fyk yesterday moming.” He turned to the others. “Now, if your respective Princes
don’t wish to acknowledge our sovereignty, we hope they will accept our
friendship and extend their own,” he said. “We also hope that mutually. satisfactory
arrangements for trade can be made. For example, before long we expect to be
producing fireseed in sufficient quantities for export, of better quality and
at lower price—than Styphon’s House.” “We know that,” the Nyklosi envoy said. “I can’t, of course,
commit my Prince to accepting the sovereignty of Hos-Hostigos, though I will
strongly advise it. We’ve been paying tribute to King Kaiphranos and getting
absolutely nothing in return for it. But in any case, we’ll be glad to get all
the fireseed you can send us.” “Well, look here,” the Beshtan began. “What’s all this about
devils? The priests of Styphon make the devils in fireseed die when it bums,
and yours lets them loose.” The Ulthori nodded. “We’ve heard about that, too,” he said. “We
have no use for King Kaiphranos; for all he does, we might as well not have a
Great King. But we don’t want Ulthor being filled with evil spirits.” “We’ve been using Hostigos fireseed in Nyklos, and we haven’t
had any trouble with devils,” the Nyklosi said. “There are no devils in fireseed,” Kalvan declared. “It’s
nothing but saltpeter and charcoal and sulfur, mixed without any prayers or
rites or magic whatever. You know how much of it we burned at Fitra and
Listra-Mouth. Nobody’s seen any devils there, since.” “Well, but you can’t see the devils,” the envoy from Kyblos
said. “They fill the air, and make bad weather, and make the seed rot in the
ground. You wait till spring, and see what kind of crops you have around Fitra.
And around Fyk.” The Beshtan was frankly hostile, the Ulthori unconvinced.
That devil story was going to have to be answered, and how could you prove the
nonexistence of something, especially an invisible something, that didn’t
exist? That was why he was an agnostic instead of an atheist. They got rid of the diplomatic corps, and had in the priests
and priestesses of all the regular, non-Styphon, pantheon. The one good thing
about monotheism, he thought, was that it reduced the priesthood problem. Hadn’t
the Romans handled that through a government-appointed pontifex maximus? Think
over, seriously. The good thing about polytheism was that the gods operated in
non-competitive fields, and their priests had a common basis of belief, and
mutual respect for each other’s deities. The high priest of Dralm seemed to be
the acknowledged dean of the sacred college. Assisted by all his colleagues, he
would make the invocation and proclaim Kalvan Great King in the name of all the
gods. Then they had in a lot of Sarrask’s court functionaries, who bickered endlessly
about protocol and precedence. And they made sure that each of the mercenary
captains swore a new oath of service to the Great King. After noon-meal, they assembled everybody in Prince Sarrask’s
throne room. In Korea, another sergeant in Calvin Morrison’s company had
seen the throne-room of Napoleon at Fontainebleau. “You know,” his comrade had said, “I never really understood
Napoleon till I saw that place. If Al Capone had ever seen it, he’d have gone
straight back to Chicago and ordered one for himself, twice as big, because he
couldn’t possibly have gotten one twice as flashy or in twice as bad taste.” That described Sarrask’s throne-room exactly. The high priest of Dralm proclaimed him Great King, chosen
by all the true gods; the other priests and priestesses ratified that on behalf
of their deities. Divine right of kings was another innovation, here-and-now.
He then seated Rylla on the throne beside him, and then invested her father
with the throne of Old Hostigos, emphasizing that he was First Prince of the Great Kingdom. Then he accepted the homage of Sarrask and Balthames, and invested them with
their Princedoms. The rest of the afternoon was consumed in oaths of fealty
from the more prominent nobles. When he left the throne, he was handed messages from Klestreus,
in Beshta Town, and Xentos. Klestreus reported that Prince Balthar had
surrounded the temple of Styphon with troops, to protect it from mobs incited
by priests of Dralm and Galzar. Xentos reported confused stories of internal
fighting in Nostor, and no incidents on the border, where Phrames was on watch. That evening, they had a feast. THE next morning, after assembling the court, the priests
and priestesses of all the regular deities, and all the merchants, itinerant
traders and other travelers in Sask Town, the priests of Styphon, from Zothnes
down, were hustled in. They were a sorry-looking lot, dungeon-soiled,
captivity-scuffed, and loaded with chains. Prodded with pike-butts, they were
formed into a line facing the throne, and booed enthusiastically by all. “Look at them!” Balthames jeered. “See how Styphon cares for
his priests!” “Throw their heads in Styphon’s face!” Sarrask shouted.
Other suggestions were forthcoming, most of which would have horrified the
Mau-Mau. A few, black-robe priests and white-robe under-priests, were defiant.
He remembered what Harmakros had said about some on the lower echelons really
believing in Styphon. Most of them didn’t, and were in no mood for martyrdom.
Zothnes, who should have been setting an example, was in a pitiable funk. Finally, he commanded silence. “These people,” he said, “are
criminals against all men and against all the true gods. They must be put to
death in a special manner, reserved for them and those like them. Let them be
blown from the muzzles of cannon!” Well, the British had done that during the Sepoy Mutiny, in
the reign of her enlightened Majesty, Victoria, and could you get any more
respectable than that? He was making a bad pun about cannonized martyrs. There
was a general shout of approval—original, effective, uncomplicated, and highly
appropriate. A yellow-robe upper priest fainted. Kalvan addressed his mercenary Chief of Artillery: “Alkides,
say we use the three eighteens and three twelve; how long would it take your
men to finish off this lot?” “Six at a time.” Alkides looked the job-lot over. “Why, if
we started right after noon-meal, we could be through in time for dinner.” He
thought for a moment. “Look, Lord Kal—pardon, your Majesty. Suppose we use the
big bombards, here. We could load the skinny ones all the way in, and the fat
ones up to the hips.” He pointed at Zothnes. “I think that one would go all the
way in a fifty-pounder, almost.” Kalvan frowned. “But I’d wanted to do it in the town square.
The people ought to watch it.” “But it would make an awful mess in the square,” Rylla objected.
“The people could come out from town to watch,” Sarrask suggested helpfully. “More
than could see it in the square. And vendors could come out and sell
honey-cakes and meat-pies.” Another priest fainted. Kalvan didn’t want too many of them
doing that, and nodded unobtrusively to Ptosphes. “Your Majesty,” the First Prince of the Great Kingdom said, “I understand this is a fate reserved only for the priests of the false god
Styphon. Now, suppose, before they can be executed, some of these criminals
abjure their false god, recant their errors, and profess faith in the true
gods. What then?” “Oh, in that case we’d have no right to put them to death at
all. If they make public abjuration of Styphon, renounce their priesthood,
profess faith in Dralm and Galzar and Yirtta Allmother and the other true gods,
and recant all their false teachings, we would have to set them free. To those
willing to enter our service, honorable employment, appropriate to their
condition, would be given. If Zothnes, say, were to do so, I’d think something
around five hundred ounces of gold a year—” A white-robe under-priest shouted that he would never deny
his god. A yellow-robe upper priest said, “Shut your fool’s mouth!” and hit him
across the face with the slack of his fetter-chain. Zothnes was giggling in
half-hysterical relief. “Dralm bless your Majesty; of course we will, all of us!” he
babbled. “Why, I spit in the face of Styphon! You think any true god would
suffer his priests to be treated as we’ve been?” XENTOS reached Sask Town that evening. The news from Nostor
was a little more definite: according to his sources there, Gormoth had started
mobilizing for a blitz attack on Hostigos on hearing the first, false, news of
a Hostigi disaster at Fyk. As soon as he had learned better, he had used his
troops to seize the Nostor Town temple of Styphon and the temple-farm up
Lycoming Creek. Now there was savage fighting all over Nostor, between Gormoth’s
new mercenaries and supporters of Styphon’s House, and the Nostori regular army
was split by mutiny and counter-mutiny. There had been an unsuccessful attack
on Tarr-Nostor. Gormoth still seemed to be in control. The Sask Town priestcraft all deferred to Xentos; it was evident
that he was Primate of the Great Kingdom, Archbishop of Canterbury or something
of the sort. Established Church of Hos-Hostigos; think over carefully. He
immediately called an ecclesiastical council and began working out a program
for the auto-da-fe Held the next day, it was a great success. Procession of the
penitents from Tarr-Sask to the Sask Town temple of Dralm, in sackcloth and
ashes, guarded by enough pikemen to keep the mob from pelting them with
anything more lethal than rotten cabbage and dead cats. Token flagellation.
Recantation of all heresies, special emphasis on fireseed, supernatural nature
and devil content of. He was pleased to observe the reactions of the diplomatic
corps—to this. Sermon of the Faith, preached by the Hostigos Uncle Wolf; as a
professional performance, at least, the Rev. Alexander Morrison would have
approved. And, finally, after profession of faith in the true gods and
absolution, a triumphant march through the streets, the new converts robed in
white and crowned with garlands. And free wine for everybody. This was even
more fun than shooting them out of cannons would have been. The public was
delighted. They had another feast that evening. The next day, Klestreus
reported that Balthar had seized the temple of Styphon and massacred the
priests; the mob was parading their heads on pike-points. He refused, however,
to renounce his sovereignty and accept the rule of Great King Kalvan. Evidently
he never considered his vassalage to Great King Kaiphranos, which wasn’t
surprising. Late in the afternoon, a troop of cavalry from Nyklos Town arrived, escorting one of Prince Armanes’s chief nobles with a petition that Nyklos
be annexed to the Great Kingdom of Hos-Hostigos, and also a pack-horse loaded
with severed heads. Prince Armanes was more interested in liquidating his debts
by liquidating the creditors than he was in winning converts for the true gods.
Prince Kestophes of Ulthor blew his priests of Styphon off the guns of his lakeside
fort; along with his allegiance he gave Hos-Hostigos a port on the Great Lakes. By that time the demolition of the Sask Town temple of Styphon had begun,
starting with the gold dome. It was real gold, twelve thousand ounces, of which
Sarrask, after his ransom was paid, received three thousand. When he returned to Tarr-Hostigos, Klestreus was there, seeking
instructions. Prince Balthar was now ready to accept the sovereignty of King
Kalvan. It seemed that, after seizing the temple, massacring the priests, and
incurring the ban of Styphon’s House, he discovered that there was no fireseed
mill at all in Beshta; all the fireseed the priests had furnished him had been
made in Sask. He was, in spite of the Sask Town auto-da-fe, still worried about
the possible devil content of Kalvan’s Unconsecrated. The ex-Archpriest
Zothnes, now with the Ministry of State at six thousand ounces, gold, a year,
was sent to reassure him. It took more reassurance to induce him to come to
Tarr-Hostigos to do homage; outside Tarr-Beshta, Balthar was violently
agoraphobic. He came, however, in a mail-curtained wagon, guarded by two
hundred of Harmakros’s cavalry. The news from Nostor was still confused. A civil war was raging,
that was definite, but exactly who against whom was less clear. It sounded a
little like France at the time of the War of the Three Henries. Netzigon, the
former chief-captain, and Krastokles, who had escaped the massacre when Gormoth
had taken the temple, were in open revolt, though relations between them were
said to be strained. Fighting continued in the streets of Nostor Town after the abortive attack on the castle. Count Pheblon, Gormoth’s cousin and Netzigon’s
successor, commanded about half the army; the other half adhered to their
former commander. The nobles, each with a formidable following, were split
about evenly. Then there were minor factions: anti-Gormoth-and-anti-Styphon,
pro-Styphon-and-pro-Gormoth, anti-Gormoth-and-pro-Pheblon. In addition, several
large mercenary companies had invaded Nostor on their own and were pillaging
indiscriminately, committing all the usual atrocities, while trying to auction
their services. Not liking all this anarchy next door, Kalvan wanted to intervene.
Chartiphon and Harmakros were in favor of that; so was Armanes of Nyklos, who
hoped to pick up a few bits of real estate on his southeast border. Xentos, of
course, wanted to wait and see, and, rather surprisingly, he was supported by
Ptosphes, Sarrask and Klestreus. Klestreus probably knew more about the
situation in Nostor than any of them. That persuaded Kalvan to wait and see. Tythanes of Kyblos arrived to do homage, attended by a large
retinue, and bringing with him twenty-odd priests of Styphon, yoked
neck-and-neck like a Guinea Coast slave-kaffle. Baron Zothnes talked to them;
there was an auto-da-fe and public recantation. Some went to work in the
fireseed mill and some became novices in the temple of Dralm, all under close
surveillance. Kestophes of Ulthor came in a few days later. Balthar of Beshta
was still at Tarr-Hostigos, which, by then, was crowded like a convention
hotel. Royal palace, get built. Something that could accommodate a mob of
subject Princes and their attendants, but not one of these castles. Castles,
once he began making cast-iron round-shot and hollow explosive shells and heavy
brass guns, would become scenic features, just as these big hooped iron
bombards would become war memorials. Something simple and homelike, he thought.
On the order of Versailles. When the Princes were all at Tarr-Hostigos, he and Rylla
were married, and there was a two-day feast, with an extra day for hangovers.
He’d never been married before. He liked it. It couldn’t possibly have happened
with anybody nicer than Rylla. Some time during the festivities, Prince Balthames and Sarrask’s
daughter Amnita were married. There was also a minor and carefully hushed
scandal about Balthames and a page boy. Then they had the Coronation. Xentos, who was shaping up
nicely as a prelate-statesman of the Richelieu type, crowned him and Rylla.
Then he crowned Ptosphes as First Prince of the Great Kingdom, and the other
Princes in order of their submission. Then the Proclamation of the Great Kingdom was read. Quite a few hands, lifting goblets between phrases, had labored on
that. His own contributions had been cribbed from The Declaration of Independence
and, touching Styphon’s House, from Martin Luther. Everybody cheered it
enthusiastically. Some of the Princes were less enthusiastic about the Great
Charter. It wasn’t anything like the one that Tammany Hall in chain mail had
extorted from King John at Runnymede; Louis XIV would have liked it much
better. For one thing, none of them liked having to renounce their right, fully
enjoyed under Great King Kaiphranos, of making war on one another, though they
did like the tightening of control over their subject lords and barons, most of
whom were an unruly and troublesome lot. The latter didn’t like the abolition
of serfdom and, in Beshta and Kyblos, outright slavery. But it gave everybody
security without having to hire expensive mercenaries or call out peasant levies
when they were most needed in the fields. The regular army of the Great Kingdom would take care of that. And everybody could see what was happening in Nostor at the
moment. He understood, now, why Xentos had opposed intervention; Nostor was too
good a horrible example to sacrifice. So they all signed and sealed it. Secret police, to make
sure they live up to it, think of somebody for chief. Then they feasted for a couple more days, and there were tournaments
and hunts. There was also a minor scandal, carefully hushed, about Princess
Amnita and one of Tythanes’s cavalry officers. Finally they all began taking
their leave and drifting back to their own Princedoms, each carrying the flag
of the Great Kingdom, dark green with a red keystone on it. Darken the green a little more and make the scarlet a dull maroon
and they’d be good combat uniform colors. THE weather stayed fine until what he estimated to be the
first week in November—calendar reform; get onto this now—and then turned cold,
with squalls of rain which finally turned to snow. Outside, it was blowing
against the window panes—clear glass; why can’t we do something about this?—and
candles had been lighted, but he was still at work. Petitions, to be granted or
denied. Reports. Verkan’s Zygrosi were going faster than anybody had expected
with the brass foundry; they’d be pouring the first heat in ten or so days, and
he’d have to go and watch that. The rifle shop was up to fifteen finished
barrels a day, which was a real miracle. Fireseed production up, too,
sufficient for military and civilian hunting demands in all the Princedoms of
the Great Kingdom, and soon they would be exporting in quantity. Verkan and his
wife were gone, now, returning to Grefftscharr to organize lake trade with
Ulthor; he and Rylla both missed them. And King Kaiphranos was trying to raise an army for the reconquest
of his lost Princedoms, and getting a very poor response from the Princes still
subject to him. There’d be trouble with him in the spring, but not before. And
Sesklos, Styphon’s Voice’ had summoned all his archpriests to meet in Harphax
city. Council of Trent, Kalvan thought, nodding; now the Counter Reformation
would be getting into high gear. And rioting in Kyblos; the emancipated slaves were beginning
to see what Samuel Johnson had meant when he defined freedom as the choice of
working or starving. And the Prince of Phaxos wanted to join the Great Kingdom, but he was making a lot of conditions he’d have to be talked out of. And pardons, and death-warrants. He’d have to be careful not
to sign too many of the former and too few of the latter; that was how a lot of
kings lost their thrones. A servant announced a rider from Vryllos Gap, who, ushered
in, informed him that a party from Nostor had just crossed the Athan. A priest
of Dralm, a priest of Galzar, twenty mercenary cavalry, and Duke Skranga, the
First Noble of Nostor. He received Duke Skranga in his private chambers, and remembered
how he had told the Agrysi horse-trader that Dralm, or somebody, would reward
him. Dralm, or somebody, with substantial help from Skranga, evidently had. He
was richly clad, his robe lined with mink-fur, a gold chain about his neck and
a gold-hilted poignard on a gold link belt. His beard was neatly trimmed. “Well, you’ve come up in the world,” he commented. “So, if
your Majesty will pardon me, has your Majesty.” Then he produced a signet-ring—the
one given as pledge token by Count Phebion when captured and released at
Tarr-Dombra, and returned to him when his ransom had been delivered. “So has
the owner of this. He is now Prince Phebion of Nostor, and he sends me to declare
for him his desire to submit himself and his realm to your Majesty’s
sovereignty and place himself, and it, under your Majesty’s protection.” “Well, your Grace, I’m most delighted. But what, if it’s a
fair question, has become of Prince Gormoth?” The ennobled horse-trader’s face was touched with a look of
deepest sorrow. “Prince Gormoth, Dralm receive his soul, is no longer with us,
your Majesty. He was most foully murdered.” “Ah. And who appears to have murdered him, if that’s a fair
question too?” Skranga shrugged. “The then Count Phebion, and the Nostor priest
of Dralm, and the Nostor Uncle Wolf were with me in my private apartments at
Tarr-Nostor when suddenly we heard a volley of shots from the direction of
Prince Gormoth’s apartments. Snatching weapons, we rushed thither, to find the
Princely rooms crowded with guardsmen who had entered just ahead of us, and, in
his bedchamber, our beloved Prince lay weltering in his gore, bleeding from a
dozen wounds. He was quite dead:’ Skranga said sadly. “Uncle Wolf and the high
priest of Dralm, whom your Majesty knows, will both testify that we were all
together in my rooms when the shots were fired, and that Prince Gormoth was dead
when we entered. Surely your Majesty will not doubt the word of such holy men.” “Surely not. And then?” “Well, by right of nearest kinship, Count Phebion at once declared
himself Prince of Nostor. We tortured a couple of servants lightly—we don’t do
so much of that in Nostor, since our beloved and gentle Prince ... Well, your
Majesty, they all agreed that a band of men in black cloaks and masks had
suddenly forced their way into Prince Gormoth’s chambers, shot him dead, and
then fled. In spite of the most diligent search, no trace of them could be
found.” “Most mysterious. Fanatical worshipers of false Styphon,
without doubt. Now, you say that Prince Phebion, whom we recognize as the
rightful Prince of Nostor, will do homage to us?” “On certain conditions, of course, the most important of
which your Majesty has already met. Then, he wishes to be confirmed in his
possession of the temple of Styphon in Nostor Town, and the fireseed mills,
nitriaries and sulfur springs which his predecessor confiscated from Styphon’s
House.” “Well, that’s granted. And also the act of his late
Highness, Prince Gormoth, in elevating you to the title of Duke and First Noble
of Nostor..” “Your Majesty is most gracious!” “Your Grace has earned it. Now, about these mercenary companies
in Nostor?” “Pure brigands, your Majesty! His highness begs your Majesty
to send troops to deal with them.” “That’ll be done; I’ll send Duke Chartiphon, our Grand Constable,
to attend to that. What’s happened to Krastokles, by the way?” “Oh, we have him, and Netzigon too, in the dungeons at
Tarr-Nostor. They were both captured a moon-quarter ago. If your Majesty
wishes, we’ll bring both of them to Tarr-Hostigos.” “Well, don’t bother about Netzigon; take his head off yourselves,
if you think he needs it. But we want that archpriest. I hope that our faithful
Baron Zothnes can spare us the mess of blowing him off a cannon by talking some
sense into him.” “I’m sure he can, your Majesty.” He wondered just who had arranged
the killing of Gormoth, Skranga or Pheblon, or both together. He didn’t care;
Nostor hadn’t been his jurisdiction then. It was now, though, and if either of
that pair had ideas about having the other killed, he’d do something about it
in a hurry. Court intrigues, he supposed, were something he’d have with him
always, but no murders, not inside the Great Kingdom. After he showed Skranga out, he returned to his desk, opened
a box, and got out a cigar—a stogie, rather, and a very crudely made stogie at
that. It was a beginning, however. He bit the end and lit it at one of the
candles, and picked up another report, a wax-covered wooden tablet. He still
hadn’t gotten anything done on paper-making. Maybe he’d better not invent
paper; if he did, some Dralm-damned bureaucrat would invent paper-work, and
then he’d have to spend all his time endlessly reading and annotating reports. He was happy about Nostor, of course; that meant they wouldn’t
have a little war to fight next door in the spring, when King Kaiphranos would
begin being a problem. And it was nice Pheblon had Krastokles and would turn
him over. Two archpriests, about equivalent to cardinals, defecting from
Styphon’s House was a serious blow. It weakened their religious hold on the
Great Kings and their Princes, which was the only hold they had left now that
they had lost the fireseed monopoly. Priests, and especially the top level of
the hierarchy, were supposed to believe in their gods. Xentos believed in Dralm, for instance. Maybe he’d have trouble
with the old man, some day, if Xentos found his duty to Dralm conflicting with
his duty to the Great Kingdom. But he hoped that would never happen. He’d have to find out more about what was going on in the
other Great Kingdoms. Spies—there was a job for Duke Skranga, one that would
keep him out of mischief in Nostori local politics. Chief of Secret Service.
Skranga was crooked enough to be good at that. And somebody to watch Skranga,
of course. That could be one of Klestreus’s jobs. And find out just what the situation was in Nostor. Go there
himself; Machiavelli always recommended that for securing a new domain. Make
the Nostori his friends—that wouldn’t be hard, after they’d lived under the
tyranny of Gormoth. And ... General Order, to all Troops: Effective immediately, it
shall be a court-martial offense for any member of the Armed Forces of the
Great Kingdom of Hos-Hostigos publicly to sing, recite, play, whistle, hum, or
otherwise utter the words and/or music of the song known as Marching through
Nostor. VERKAN Vall looked at his watch and wished Dalla would
hurry, but Dalla was making herself beautiful for the party. A waste of time,
he thought; Dalla had been born beautiful. But try and tell any woman that.
Across the low table, Tortha Karf also looked at his watch, and smiled happily.
He’d been doing that all through dinner and ever since, and each time had been
broader and happier as more minutes till midnight leaked away. He hoped Dallas preparations would still permit them to
reach Paratime Police Headquarters with an hour to spare before midnight. There’d
be a big crowd in the assembly room—everybody who was anybody on the Paracops
and the Paratime Commission, politicians, society people, and, by special
invitation, the Kalvan Project crowd from the University. He’d have to shake
hands with most of them, and have drinks with as many as possible, and then,
just before midnight, they’d all crowd into the Chief’s office, and Tortha Karf
would sit down at his desk, and, precisely at 2400, rise, and they’d shake
hands, and Tortha Karf would step aside and he’d sit down, and everybody would
start that Fourth Level barbarian chant they used on such occasions. And from then on, he’d be stuck there—Dralm-dammit! He must
have said that aloud. The soon-to-retire Chief grinned unsympathetically. “Still
swearing in Aryan-Transpacific Zarthani. When do you expect to get back there?” “Dralm knows, and he doesn’t operate on Home Time Line. I’m
going to have a lot to do here. One, I’m going to start a flap, and keep it
flapping, about this pickup business. Ten new cases in the last eight days. And
don’t tell me what you told Zarvan Tharg when he was retiring, or what Zarvan Tharg
told Hishan Galth when he was retiring. I’m going to do something about this,
by Dralm I am!” “Well, fortunately for the working cops, we’re a longevous
race. It’s a long time between new Chiefs.” “Well, we know what causes it. We’ll have to work on eliminating
the cause. I’m a hundred and four; I can took forward to another two centuries
in that chair of yours. If we don’t have enough men, and enough robots, and
enough computers to eliminate some of these interpenetrations, we might as well
throw it in and quit.” “It’ll cost like crazy.” “Look, I don’t make a practice of preaching moral ethics,
you know that. I just want you to think, for a moment, of the morality of
snatching people out of the only world they know and dumping them into an
entirely different world, just enough like their own.” “I’ve thought about it, now and then,” Tortha Karf said, in
mild understatement. “This fellow Morrison, Lord Kalvan, Great King Kalvan, is
one in a million. That was the best thing that could possibly have happened to
him, and he’d be the first to say so, if he dared talk about it. But for the
rest, the ones the conveyer operators ray down with their needlers are the
lucky ones. “But what are we going to do, Vall? We have a population of
ten billion, on a planet that was completely exhausted twelve thousand years
ago. I don’t think more than a billion and a half are on Home Time Line at any
one time; the rest are scattered all over Fifth Level, and out at
conveyer-heads all over Fourth, Third and Second. We can’t cut them loose;
there’s a slight moral issue involved there, too. And we can’t haul them all in
to starve after we stop paratiming. That little Aryan-Transpacific expression
you picked up fits. We have a panther by the tail.” “Well, we can do all we can. I saw to it that they did it on
the University Kalvan Operation. We checked all the conveyer-heads equivalent
with Hostigos Town on every Paratime penetrated time-line, and ours doesn’t
coincide with any of them.” “I’ll bet you had a time.” Tortha Karf sipped some more of
the after-dinner coffee they were dragging out, and lit another cigarette. “I’ll
bet they love you in Conveyer Registration Office, too. How many were there?” “A shade over three thousand, inside four square miles. I
don’t know what they’ll do about the conveyer-head for Agrys City when they go to put one in there. There’s a city on that river-mouth island on every
time-line that builds cities, and tribal villages on most of the rest.” “Then they aren’t just establishing a conveyer-head at Hostigos Town?” “Oh, no; they’re making a real operation out of it. We have
five police posts, here and there, including one at Greffa, the capital of
Grefftscharr, where Dalla and I are supposed to come from. The University will
have study teams, or at least observers, in the capital cities of all the Five
Great Kingdoms. Six Kingdoms, now, with Hos-Hostigos. They’ll have to be
careful; by spring, there’ll be a war that’ll make the Conquest of Sask look
like a schoolyard brawl.” They were both silent for awhile. Tortha Karf, smiling
contentedly, was thinking of his farm on Fifth Level Sicily; he’d be there this
time tomorrow, stuck with nothing to worry about but what the rabbits were doing
to his gardens. Verkan Vall was thinking about his friend, the Great King
Kalvan, and everything Kalvan had to worry about. Now there was a man who had a
panther by the tail. Then something else occurred to him; a disquieting thought
that had nagged him ever since a remark Dalla had made, the morning before they’d
made the drop as Verkan and his party. “Chief,” he said, and remembered that in a couple of hours
people would be calling him that. “This pickup problem is only one facet, and a
small one, of something big and serious, and fundamental. We’re supposed to
protect the Paratime Secret. Just how good a secret is it?” Tortha Karf looked up sharply, his cup halfway to his lips. “What’s
wrong with the Paratime Secret, Vall?” “How did we come to discover Paratime transposition?” Tortha Karf had to pause briefly. He had learned that long
ago, and there was considerable mental overlay. “Why, Ghaldron was working to
develop a spacewarp drive, to get us out to the stars, and Hesthor was working
on the possibility of linear time-travel, to get back to the past, before his
ancestors had worn the planet out. Things were pretty grim, on this time-line,
twelve thousand years ago. And a couple of centuries before, Rhogom had worked
up a theory of multidimensional time, to explain the phenomenon of precognition.
Dalla could tell you all about that; that’s her subject. “Well, science was pretty tightly compartmented, then, but
somehow Hesthor read some of Rhogom’s old papers, and he’d heard about what
Ghaldron was working on and got in touch with him. Between them, they
discovered paratemporal transposition. Why?” “As far as I know, nobody off Home Time Line has ever developed
any sort of time-machine, linear or lateral. There are Second Level
civilizations, and one on Third, that have over-light-speed drives for
interstellar ships. But the idea of multidimensional time and worlds of
alternate probability is all over Second and Third Levels, and you even find it
on Fourth—a mystical concept on Sino-Hindic, and a science-fiction idea on
Europo-American.” “And you’re thinking, suppose some Sino-Hindic mystic, or
some Europo-American science-fiction writer, gets picked up and dumped onto,
say, Second Level Interworld Empire?” “That could do it. It mightn’t even be needed. You know,
there is no such thing as a single-shot discovery; anything that’s been discovered
once can be discovered again. That’s why it always amuses me to see some
technological warfare office classifying a law of nature as top-secret.
Gunpowder was the secret of Styphon’s House, and look what’s happening to
Styphon’s House now. Of course, gunpowder is a simple little discovery; it’s
been made tens of thousands of times, all over paratime. Paratemporal transposition
is a big, complicated, discovery; it was made just once, twelve thousand years
ago, on one time-line. But no secret can be kept forever. One of the University
crowd said that, speaking of Styphon’s House. He became quite indignant when
Dalla mentioned the Paratime Secret in that connection.” “I’ll bet you didn’t. That’s a nice thought to give a
retiring Chief of Paratime Police. Now I’ll be having nightmares about—” He broke off, rising to his feet with a smile. A paratimer
could always produce a smile when one was needed. “Well, now, Dalla! That gown! And how did you achieve that
hairdo?” He rose and turned. Dalla had come out onto the terrace and was
pirouetting slowly in the light from the room behind her. It hadn’t been a
waste of time, after all. “But I kept you waiting ages! You’re both dears, to be so patient.
Do we go now?” “Yes, the party will have started; we’ll get there just at
the right time. Not too early, and not too late.” And in two hours, Verkan Vall, Chief of Paratime Police,
would begin to assume responsibility for guarding the Paratime Secret. A panther by the tail. And he was holding it. Lord Kalvan of OtherwhenH. Beam Piper v1.5. There were a fair number of small scanning errors. Spell-checked. TORTHA Karf, Chief of Paratime Police, told himself to stop
fretting. He was only three hundred years old, so by the barest life-expectancy
of his race he was good for another two centuries. Two hundred more days wouldn’t
matter. Then it would be Year-End Day, and precisely at midnight, he would rise
from this chair and Verkan Vall would sit down in it, and after that he would
be free to raise grapes and lemons and wage guerrilla war against the rabbits
on the island of Sicily, which he owned outright on one uninhabited Fifth Level
time-line. He wondered how long it would take Vall to become as tired of the
Chief’s seat as he was now. Actually, Karf knew, Verkan Vall had never wanted to be
Chief. Prestige and authority meant little to him, and freedom much. Vall liked
to work outtime. But it was a job somebody had to do, and it was the job for
which Vall had been trained, so he’d take it, and do it, Karf suspected, better
than he’d done it himself. The job of policing a near-infinity of worlds, each
of which was this same planet Earth, would be safe with Verkan Vall. Twelve thousand years ago, facing extinction on an exhausted
planet, the First Level race had discovered the existence of a second, lateral,
time dimension and a means of physical transposition to and from a
near-infinity of worlds of alternate probability parallel to their own. So the
conveyers had gone out by stealth, bringing back wealth to Home Time-Line a
little from this one, a little from that, never enough to be missed anywhen. It all had to be policed. Some paratimers were less than
scrupulous in dealing with outtime races he’d have retired ten years ago except
for the discovery of a huge paratemporal slave-trade, only recently smashed.
More often, somebody’s bad luck or indiscretion would endanger the Paratime
Secret, or some incident—nobody’s fault, something that just happened, would
have to be explained away. But, at all costs, the Paratime Secret must be
preserved. Not merely the actual technique of transposition—that went without
saying—but the very existence of a race possessing it. If for no other reason
(and there were many others), it would be utterly immoral to make any outtime
race live with the knowledge that there were among them aliens
indistinguishable from themselves, watching and exploiting. It was a big
police-beat. Second Level that had been civilized almost as long as the
First, but there had been dark-age interludes. Except for paratemporal
transposition, most of its sectors equaled First Level, and from many, Home
Time Line had learned much. The Third Level civilizations were more recent, but
still of respectable antiquity and advancement. Fourth Level had started late
and progressed slowly; some Fourth Level genius was first domesticating animals
long after the steam engine was obsolescent all over the Third. And Fifth Level
on a few sectors, subhuman brutes, speechless and fireless, were cracking nuts
and each other’s heads with stones, and on most of it nothing even vaguely humanoid
had appeared. Fourth Level was the big one. The others had devolved from
low-probability genetic accidents; it was the maximum probability. It was
divided into many sectors and subsectors, on most of which human civilization
had first appeared in the valleys of the Nile and Tigris-Euphrates, and on the Indus and Yangtze. Europo-American Sector they might have to pull out of that entirely, but
that would be for Chief Verkan to decide. Too many thermonuclear weapons and
too many competing national sovereignties. That had happened all over Third
Level at one time or another within Home Time Line experience.
Alexandrian-Roman off to a fine start with the pooling of Greek theory and
Roman engineering talent, and then, a thousand years ago, two half forgotten
religions had been rummaged out of the dustbin and fanatics had begun
massacring one another. They were still at it, with pikes and matchlocks, having
lost the ability to make anything better. Europo-American could come to that if
its rival political and economic sectarians kept on. Sino-Hindic—that wasn’t a
civilization; it was a bad case of cultural paralysis. And so was Indo-Turanian—about
where Europo-American had been ten centuries ago. And Aryan-Oriental—the Aryan migration of three thousand
years ago, instead of moving west and south, as on most sectors, had rolled
east into China. And Aryan-Transpacific, an offshoot on one sector, some of
them had built ships and sailed north and east along the Kuriles and the Aleutians and settled in North America, bringing with them horses and cattle and iron
working skills, exterminating the Amerinds, warring with one another, splitting
into diverse peoples and cultures. There was a civilization, now decadent, on
the Pacific coast, and nomads on the central plains herding bison and
crossbreeding them with Asian cattle, and a civilization around the Great Lakes
and one in the Mississippi Valley, and a new one, five or six centuries old,
along the Atlantic and in the Appalachians. Technological level premechanical,
water-and-animal power; a few subsectors had gotten as far as gunpowder. But Aryan-Transpacific was a sector to watch. They were going
forward; things were ripe to start happening soon. Let Chief Verkan watch it, for the next couple of centuries.
After Year-End Day, ex-Chief Tortha would have his vineyards and lemon-groves
to watch. RYLLA tried to close her mind to the voices around her in
the tapestried room, and stared at the map spread in front of her and her
father. There was Tarr-Hostigos overlooking the gap, only a tiny fleck of gold
on the parchment, but she could see it in her mind’s eye—the walled outer
bailey with the sheds and stables and workshops inside, the inner bailey and
the citadel and keep, the watchtower pointing a blunt finger skyward. Below,
the little Darro flowed north to join the Listra and, with it, the broad Athan
to the east. Hostigos Town, white walls and slate roofs and busy streets; the
checkerboard of fields to the west and south; the forest, broken by farms, to
the west. A voice, louder and harsher than the others, brought her
back to reality. Her cousin, Sthentros. “He’ll do nothing at all? Well, what in Dralm’s holy name is
a Great King for, but to keep the peace?” She looked along the table, from one to another. Phosg, the
speaker for the peasants, at the foot, uncomfortable in his feast-day clothes
and ill at ease seated among his betters. The speakers for the artisans’
guilds, and for the merchants and the townsfolk; the lesser family members and
marriagekin; the barons and landholders. Old Chartiphon, the chief-captain, his
golden beard streaked with gray like the lead splotches on his gilded
breastplate, his long sword on the table in front of him. Xentos, the cowl of his
priestly robe thrown back from his snowy head, his blue eyes troubled. And
beside her, at the table’s head, her father, Prince Ptosphes, his mouth tight
between pointed gray mustache and pointed gray beard. How long it had been
since she had seen her father smile! Xentos passed a hand negatively across his face. “King
Kaiphranos said that it was every Prince’s duty to guard his own realm; that it
was for Prince Ptosphes, not for him, to keep bandits out of Hostigos.” “Bandits? They’re Nostori soldiers!” Sthentros shouted. “Gormoth
of Nostor means to take all Hostigos, as his grandfather took Sevenhills Valley after the traitor we don’t name sold him Tarr-Dombra.” That was a part of the map her eyes had shunned the bowl valley
to the east, where Dombra Gap split the Mountains of Hostigos. It was from
thence that Gormoth’s mercenary cavalry raided into 14ostigos. “And what hope have we from Styphon’s House?” her father
asked. He knew the answer; he wanted the others to hear it at first hand. “The Archpriest wouldn’t talk to me; the priests of Styphon
hold no speech with priests of other gods,” Xentos said. “The Archpriest wouldn’t talk to me, either,” Chartiphon
said. “Only one of the upper-priests of the temple. He took our offerings and
said he would pray to Styphon for us. When I asked for fireseed, he would give
me none.” “None at all?” somebody down the table cried. “Then we are
indeed under the ban.” Her father rapped with the pommel of his poignard. “You’ve
heard the worst, now. What’s in your minds that we should do? You first, Phosg.” The peasant representative rose and cleared his throat. “Lord
Prince, this castle is no more dear to you than my cottage is to me. I’ll fight for mine as you would for yours.” There was a
quick mutter of approval along the table. “Well said, Phosg!” “An example for all of us!” The others spoke in turn; a few
tried to make speeches. Chartiphon said “Fight. What else.” “I am a priest of Dralm,” Xentos said, “and Dralm is a god
of peace, but I say, fight with Dralm’s blessing. Submission to evil men is the
worst of all sins.” “Rylla,” her father said. “Better die in armor than live in
chains,” she replied. “When the time comes, I will be in armor with the rest of
you.” Her father nodded. “I expected no less from any of you.” He rose, and all
with him. “I thank you. At sunset we will dine together; until then servants
will attend you. Now, if you please, leave me with my daughter. Chartiphon, you
and Xentos stay.” Chairs scraped and feet scuffed as they went out. The
closing door cut off the murmur of voices. Chartiphon had begun to fill his
stubby pipe. “I know there’s no use looking to Balthar of Beshta,” Rylla
said, “but wouldn’t Sarrask of Sask aid us? We’re better neighbors to him than
Gormoth would be.” “Sarrask of Sask’s a fool,” Chartiphon said shortly. “He
doesn’t know that once Gormoth has Hostigos, his turn will come next.” “He knows that,” Xentos differed. “He’ll try to strike
before Gormoth does, or catch Gormoth battered from having fought us. But even
if he wanted to help us, he dares not. Even King Kaiphranos dares not aid those
whom Styphon’s House would destroy.” “They want that land in Wolf Valley, for a temple-farm,” she
considered. “I know that would be bad, but... “ “Too late,” Xentos told her. “They have made a compact with
Gormoth, to famish him fireseed and money to hire mercenaries, and when he has
conquered Hostigos he will give them the land.” He paused and added “And it was
on my advice, Prince, that you refused them.” “I’d have refused against your advice, Xentos,” her father
said. “Long ago I vowed that Styphon’s House should never come into Hostigos
while I lived, and by Dralm and by Galzar neither shall they! They come into a
princedom, they build a temple, they make temple-farms and slaves of everybody
on them. They tax the Prince, and make him tax the people, till nobody has
anything left. Look at that temple-farm in Sevenhills Valley!” “Yes, you’d hardly believe it,” Chartiphon said. “Why, they
even make the peasants for miles around cart their manure in, till they have
none left for their own fields. Dralm only knows what they do with it.” He
puffed at his pipe. “I wonder why they want Sevenhills Valley.” “There’s something in the ground there that makes the water
of those springs taste and smell badly,” her father said. “Sulfur,” said Xentos, “But why do they want sulfur?” CORPORAL Calvin Morrison, Pennsylvania State Police,
squatted in the brush at the edge of the old field and looked across the small
brook at the farmhouse two hundred yards away. It was scabrous with peeling
yellow paint, and festooned with a sagging porch-roof. A few white chickens
pecked uninterestedly in the littered barnyard; there was no other sign of
life, but he knew that there was a man inside. A man with a rifle, who would
use it; a man who had murdered once, broken jail, would murder again. He looked at his watch; the minute-hand was squarely on the
nine. Jack French and Steve Kovac would be starting down on the road above,
where they had left the car. He rose, unsnapping the retaining-strap of his
holster. “Watch that middle upstairs window,” he said. “I’m starting
now.” “I’m watching it.” Behind him, a rifle-action clattered
softly as a cartridge went into the chamber. “Luck.” He started forward across
the seedling-dotted field. He was scared, as scared as he had been the first
time, back in ’51, in Korea, but there was nothing he could do about that. He
just told his legs to keep moving, knowing that in a few moments he wouldn’t
have time to be scared. He was within a few feet of the little brook, his hand close
to the butt of the Colt, when it happened. There was a blinding flash, followed by a moment’s darkness.
He thought he’d been shot; by pure reflex, the .38-special was in his hand.
Then, all around him, a flickering iridescence of many colors glowed, a perfect
hemisphere fifteen feet high and thirty across, and in front of him was an oval
desk with an instrument-panel over it, and a swivel-chair from which a man was
rising. Young, well-built; a white man but, he was sure, not an American. He
wore loose green, trousers and black ankle-boots and a pale green shirt. There
was a shoulder holster under his left arm, and a weapon in his right hand. He was sure it was a weapon, though it looked more like an
electric soldering-iron, with two slender rods instead of a barrel, joined, at
what should be the muzzle, by a blue ceramic or plastic knob. It was probably
something that made his own Colt Official Police look like a kid’s cap-pistol,
and it was coming up fast to line on him. He fired, held the trigger back to keep the hammer down on
the fired chamber, and flung himself to one side, coming down, on his left hand
and left hip, on a smooth, polished floor. Something, probably the chair, fell with a crash. He rolled, and kept on rolling until he was out of the nacreous dome
of light and bumped hard against something. For a moment he lay still, then
rose to his feet, letting out the trigger of the Colt. What he’d bumped into was a tree. For a moment he accepted
that, then realized that there should be no trees here, nothing but low brush.
And this tree, and the ones all around, were huge; great rough columns rising
to support a green roof through which only a few stray gleams of sunlight
leaked. Hemlocks; must have been growing here while Columbus was still conning
Isabella into hocking her jewelry. He looked at the little stream he had been
about to cross when this had happened. It was the one thing about this that
wasn’t completely crazy. Or maybe it was the craziest thing of all. He began wondering how he was going to explain this. “While
approaching the house,” he began, aloud and in a formal tone, “I was
intercepted by a flying saucer landing in front of me, the operator of which
threatened me with a ray-pistol. I defended myself with my revolver, firing one
round.. No. That wouldn’t do at all. He looked at the brook again,
and began to suspect that there might be nobody to explain to. Swinging out the
cylinder of his Colt, he replaced the fired round. Then he decided to junk the
regulation about carrying the hammer on an empty chamber, and put in another
one. VERKAN Vall watched the landscape outside the almost invisible
shimmer of the transposition-field; now he was in the forests of the Fifth
Level. The mountains, of course, were always the same, but the woods around
flickered and shifted. There was a great deal of randomness about which tree
grew where, from time-line to time-line. Now and then he would catch fleeting
glimpses of open country, and the buildings and airport installations of his
own people. The red light overhead went off and on, a buzzer sounding each
time. The conveyer dome became a solid iridescence, and then a mesh of cold
inert metal. The red light turned green. He picked up a sigma-ray needier from
the desk in front of him and bolstered it. As he did, the door slid open and
two men in Paratime Police green, a lieutenant and a patrolman, entered. When
they saw him, they relaxed, bolstering their own weapons. “Hello, Chief’s Assistant,” the lieutenant said. “Didn’t
pick anything up, did you?” In theory, the Ghaldron-Hesthor transposition-field was impenetrable;
in practice, especially when two paratemporal vehicles going in opposite “directions”
interpenetrated, the field would weaken briefly, and external objects,
sometimes alive and hostile, would intrude. That was why paratimers kept
weapons ready at hand, and why conveyers were checked immediately upon materializing.
It was also why some paratimers didn’t make it home. “Not this trip. Is my rocket ready?” “Yes, sir. Be a little delay about an aircar for the
rocket-port.” The patrolman had begun to take the transposition record-tapes
out of the cabinet. “They’ll call you when it’s ready.” He and the lieutenant strolled out into the noise and
colorful confusion of the conveyor-head rotunda. He got out his cigarette case
and offered it; the lieutenant flicked his lighter. They had only taken a few
puffs when another conveyer quietly materialized in a vacant circle a little to
their left. A couple of Paracops strolled over as the door opened,
drawing their needlers, and peeped inside. Immediately, one backed away,
snatching the hand-phone of his belt radio and speaking quickly into it. The
other went inside. Throwing away their cigarettes, he and the lieutenant
hastened to the conveyer. Inside, the chair at the desk was overturned. A Paracop lay
on the floor, his needier a few inches from his out flung hand. His tunic was
off and his shirt, pale green, was darkened by blood. The lieutenant, without
touching him, bent over him. “Still alive,” he said. “Bullet or sword-thrust?” “Bullet. I smell nitro powder.” Then he saw the hat lying on
the floor, and stepped around the fallen man. Two men were entering with an
antigrav stretcher; they got the wounded man onto it and floated him out. “Look
at this, Lieutenant.” The lieutenant looked at the hat—gray felt, wide-brimmed,
the crown peaked by four indentations. “Fourth Level,” he said. “Europo-American, Hispano-Colombian
Subsector.” He picked up the hat and glanced inside. The lieutenant was
right. The sweat-band was stamped in golden Roman-alphabet letters, JOHN B.
STETSON COMPANY. PHILADELPHIA, PA., and, hand-inked, Cpl. Calvin Morrison, Pennsylvania
State Police, and a number. “I know that crowd,” the lieutenant said. “Good men, every
bit as good as ours. “One was a split second better than one of ours.” He got out
his cigarette case. “Lieutenant, this is going to be a real badie. This pickup’s
going to be missed, and the people who’ll miss him will be one of the ten best
constabulary organizations in the world, on their time-line. We won’t satisfy
them with the kind of lame-brained explanations that usually get by in that
sector. And we’ll have to find out where he emerged, and what he’s doing. A man
who can beat a Paracop to the draw after being sucked into a conveyer won’t
just sink into obscurity on any time-line. By the time we get to him, he’ll be
kicking up a small fuss.” “I hope he got dragged out of his own Subsector. Suppose he
comes out on a next-door time-line, and reports to his police post, where a
duplicate of himself, with duplicate fingerprints, is on duty.” “Yes. Wouldn’t that be dandy, now?” He lit a cigarette. “When
the aircar comes, send it back. I’m going over the photo-records myself. Have
the rocket held; I’ll need it in a few hours. I’m making this case my own
personal baby.” CALVIN Morrison dangled his black-booted legs over the edge
of the low cliff and wished, again, that he hadn’t lost his hat. He knew
exactly where he was he was right at the same place he had been, sitting on the
little cliff above the road where he and Larry Stacey and Jack French and Steve
Kovac had left the car, only there was no road there now, and never had been
one. There was a hemlock, four feet thick at the butt, growing where the farmhouse
should have been, and no trace of the stonework of the foundations of house or
barn. But the really permanent features, like the Bald Eagles to the north and Nittany Mountain to the south, were exactly as they should be. That flash and momentary darkness could have been subjective;
put that in the unproven column. He was sure the strangely beautiful dome of
shimmering light had been real, and so had the desk and the instrument-panel,
and the man with the odd weapon. And there was nothing at all subjective about
all this virgin timber where farmlands should have been. So he puffed slowly on
his pipe and tried to remember and to analyze what had happened to him. He hadn’t been shot and taken to a hospital where he was now
lying delirious, he was sure of that. This wasn’t delirium. Nor did he consider
for an instant questioning either his sanity or his senses, nor did he indulge
in dirty language like “incredible” or “impossible.” Extraordinary—now there
was a good word. He was quite sure that something extraordinary had happened to
him. It seemed to break into two parts one, blundering into that dome of pearly
light, what had happened inside of it, and rolling out of it; and two, this
same-but-different place in which he now found himself. What was wrong with both was anachronism, and the anachronisms
were mutually contradictory. None of the first part belonged in 1964 or, he
suspected, for many centuries to come; portable energy-weapons, for instance.
None of the second part belonged in 1964, either, or for at least a century in
the past. His pipe had gone out. For awhile he forgot to relight it,
while he tossed those two facts back and forth in his mind. He still didn’t use
those dirty words. He used one small boys like to scribble on privy, walls. In spite—no, because—of his clergyman father’s insistence
that he study for and enter the Presbyterian ministry, he was an agnostic.
Agnosticism, for him, was refusal to accept or to deny without proof. A good
philosophy for a cop, by the way. Well, he wasn’t going to reject the
possibility of time machines; not after having been shanghaied aboard one and
having to shoot his way out of it. That thing had been a time-machine, and
whenever he was now, it wasn’t the twentieth century, and he was never going to
get back to it. He settled that point in his mind and accepted it once and for
all. His pipe was out; he started to knock out the heel, then
stirred it with a twig and relit it. He couldn’t afford to waste anything now.
Sixteen rounds of ammunition; he couldn’t do a hell of a lot of Indian-fighting
on that. The blackjack might be some good at close quarters. The value of the
handcuffs and the whistle was problematical. When he had smoked the contents of
his pipe down to ash, he emptied and pocketed it and climbed down from the little
cliff, going to the brook and following it down to where it joined a larger
stream. A bluejay made a fuss at his approach. Two deer ran in front
of him. A small black bear regarded him suspiciously and hastened away. Now, if
he could only find some Indians who wouldn’t throw tomahawks first and ask
questions afterward.... A road dipped in front of him to cross the stream. For an instant
he accepted that calmly, then caught his breath. A real, wheel-rutted road. And
brown horse-droppings in it—they were the most beautiful things he had ever
seen. They meant he hadn’t beaten Columbus here, after all. Maybe he might have
trouble giving a plausible account of himself, but at least he could do it in
English. He waded through the little ford and started down the road, toward
where he thought Bellefonte ought to be. Maybe he was in time to get into the
Civil War. That would be more fun than Korea had been. The sun went down in front of him. By now he was out of the
big hemlocks; they’d been lumbered off on both sides of the road, and there was
a respectable second growth, mostly hardwoods. Finally, in the dusk, he smelled
freshly turned earth. It was full dark when he saw a light ahead. The house was only a dim shape; the light came from one window
on the end and two in front, horizontal slits under the roof overhang. Behind,
he thought, were stables. And a pigpen—his nose told him that. Two dogs,
outside, began whauff whauffing in the road in front of him. “Hello, in there!” he called. Through the open windows, too
high to see into, he heard voices a man’s, a woman’s, another man’s. He called
again, and came closer. A bar scraped, and the door swung open. For a moment a
heavy-bodied woman in a sleeveless dark dress stood in it. Then she spoke to
him and stepped inside. He entered. It was a big room, lighted by two candles, one on a table
spread with a meal and the other on the mantel, and by the fire on the hearth.
Double-deck bunks along one wall, fireplace with things stacked against it.
There were three men and another, younger, woman, besides the one who had
admitted the comer of his eye he could see children peering around a door that
seemed to open into a shed-annex. One of the men, big and blonde-bearded, stood
with his back to the fireplace, holding what looked like a short gun. No, it wasn’t, either. It was a crossbow, bent, with a
quarrel in the groove. The other two men were younger—probably his sons, Both
were bearded, though one’s beard was only a blonde fuzz. He held an axe; his
older brother had a halberd. All three wore sleeveless leather jerkins,
short-sleeved shirts, and cross-gartered hose. The older woman spoke in a
whisper to the younger woman, who went through the door at the side, hustling
the children ahead of her. He had raised his hands pacifically as he entered. “I’m a
friend,” he said. “I’m going to Bellefonte; how far is it?” The man with the crossbow said something. The woman replied.
The youth with the axe said something, and they all laughed. “My name’s Morrison. Corporal, Pennsylvania State Police.” Hell, they wouldn’t know the State Police from the Swiss Marines. “Am I on the
road to Bellefonte?” They ought to know where that was, it had been settled in
1770, and this couldn’t be any earlier than that. More back-and-forth. They weren’t talking Pennsylvania Dutch—he
knew a little of it. Maybe Polish. no, he’d heard enough of that in the
hard-coal country to recognize it, at least. He looked around while they
argued, and noticed, on a shelf in the far corner, three images. He meant to
get a closer look at them. Roman Catholics used images, so did Greek Catholics,
and he knew the difference. The man with the crossbow laid the weapon down, but kept it
bent with the quarrel in place, and spoke slowly and distinctly. It was no
language he had ever heard before. He replied, just as distinctly, in English.
They looked at one another, and passed their hands back and forth across their
faces. On a thousand-to-one chance, he tried Japanese. It didn’t pay off. By
signs, they invited him to sit and eat with them, and the children, six of
them, trooped in. The meal was ham, potatoes and succotash. The eating tools
were knives and a few horn spoons; the plates were stabs of corn-bread. The men
used their belt-knives. He took out his jackknife, a big switchblade he’d taken
off a j d. arrest, and caused a sensation with it. He had to demonstrate
several times. There was also elderberry wine, strong but not particularly
good. When they left the table for the women to clear, the men filled pipes
from a tobacco-jar on the mantel, offering it to him. He filled his own,
lighting it, as they had, with a twig from the hearth. Stepping back, he got a
look at the images. The central figure was an elderly man in a white robe with a
blue eight pointed star on his breast. Flanking him, on the left, was a seated
female figure, nude and exaggeratedly pregnant, crowned with wheat and holding
a cornstalk; and on the right a masculine figure in a mail shirt, holding a
spiked mace. The only really odd thing about him was that he had the head of a
wolf. Father god, fertility goddess, war god. No, this crowd weren’t Catholics
Greek, Roman or any other kind. He bowed to the central figure, touching his forehead, and repeated
the gesture to the other two. There was a gratified murmur behind him; anybody
could see he wasn’t any heathen. Then he sat down on a chest with his back to
the wall. They hadn’t re-barred the door. The children had been herded
back into the annex by the younger woman. Now that he recalled, there’d been a
vacant place, which he had taken, at the table. Somebody had gone off somewhere
with a message. As soon as he finished his pipe, he pocketed it, managing,
unobtrusively, to unsnap the strap of his holster. Some half an hour later, he caught the galloping thud of
hooves down the road—at least six horses. He pretended not to hear it; so did
the others. The father moved to where he had put down the crossbow; the older
son got hold of the halberd, and the fuzz-chinned youth moved to the door. The
horses stopped outside; the dogs began barking frantically. There was a clatter
of accoutrements as men dismounted. He slipped the. 38 out and cocked it. The youth went to the door, but before he could open it, it
flew back in his face, knocking him backward, and a man—bearded face under a
high combed helmet, steel long sword in front of him—entered. There was another
helmeted head behind, and the muzzle of a musket. Everybody in the room shouted
in alarm; this wasn’t what they’d been expecting, at all. Outside, a pistol
banged, and a dog howled briefly. Rising from the chest, he shot the man with the sword.
Half-cocking with the double-action and thumbing the hammer back the rest of
the way, he shot the man with the musket, which went off into the. ceiling. A
man behind him caught a crossbow quarrel in the forehead and pitched forward,
dropping a long pistol unfired. Shifting the Colt to his left hand, he caught up the sword
the first man had dropped. Double-edged, with a swept guard, it was lighter
than it looked, and beautifully balanced. He stepped over the body of the first
man he had shot, to be confronted by a swordsman from outside, trying to get
over the other two. For a few moments they cut and parried, and then he drove
the point into his opponent’s unarmored face, then tugged his blade free as the
man went down. The boy, who had gotten hold of the dropped pistol, fired past
him and hit a man holding a clump of horses in the road. Then he was outside,
and the man with the halberd along with him, chopping down another of the
party. The father followed; he’d gotten the musket and powder-flask, and was
reloading it. Driving the point of the sword into the ground, he bolstered
his Colt and as one of the loose horses passed, caught the reins, throwing
himself into the saddle. Then, when his feet had found the stirrups, he stooped
and retrieved the sword, thankful that even in a motorized age the state police
taught their men to ride. The fight was over, at least here. Six attackers were down,
presumably dead; two more were galloping away. Five loose horses milled about,
and the two young men were trying to catch them. Their father had charged the
short musket, and was priming the pan. This had only been a sideshow fight, though. The main event
was a half mile down the road; he could hear shots, yells and screams, and a
sudden orange glare mounted into the night. While he was quieting the horse and
trying to accustom him to the change of ownership, a couple more fires blazed
up. He was wondering just what he had cut himself in on when the fugitives
began streaming up the road. He had no trouble identifying them as such; he’d
seen enough of that in Korea. There were more than fifty of them—men, women and children.
Some of the men had weapons spears, axes, a few bows, one musket almost six
feet long. His bearded host shouted at them, and they paused.
“What’s going on down there?” he demanded. Babble answered
him. One or two tried to push past; he cursed them luridly and slapped at them
with his flat. The words meant nothing, but the tone did. That had worked for
him in Korea, too. They all stopped in a clump, while the bearded man spoke to
them. A few cheered. He looked them over; call it twenty electives. The bodies
in the road were stripped of weapons; out of the comer of his eye he saw the
two women passing things out the cottage door. Four of the riderless horses had
been caught and mounted. More fugitives came up, saw what was going on, and
joined. “All right, you guys! You want to live forever?” He swung
his sword to include all of them, then pointed down the road to where a whole
village must now be burning. “Come on, let’s go get them!” A general cheer went up as he started his horse forward, and
the whole mob poured after him, shouting. They met more and more fugitives, who
saw that a counter-attack had been organized, if that was the word for it. The
shooting ahead had stopped. Nothing left in the village to shoot at, he
supposed. Then, when they were within four or five hundred yards of
the burning houses, there was a blast of forty or fifty shots in less than ten
seconds, and loud yells, some in alarm. More shots, and then mounted men came
pelting toward them. This wasn’t an attack; it was a rout. Whoever had raided
that village had been hit from behind. Everybody with guns or bows let fly at
once. A horse went down, and a saddle was emptied. Remembering how many shots
it had taken for one casualty in Korea, that wasn’t bad. He stood up in his
stirrups, which were an inch or so too short for him to begin with, waved his
sword, and shouted, “Chaaarge! “ Then he and the others who were mounted kicked
their horses into a gallop, and the infantry—axes, scythes, pitchforks and all—ran
after them. A horseman coming in the opposite direction aimed a
sword-cut at his bare head. He parried and thrust, the point glancing from a
breastplate. Before either could recover, the other man’s horse had carried him
on past and among the spears and pitchforks behind. Then he was trading thrusts
for cuts with another rider, wondering if none of these imbeciles had ever
heard that a sword had a point. By this time the road for a hundred yards in
front, and the fields on either side, were full of horsemen, chopping and
shooting at one another in the firelight. He got his point in under his opponent’s arm, the
memory-voice of a history professor of long ago reminded him of the gap in a
cuirass there, and almost had the sword wrenched from his hand before he
cleared it. Then another rider was coming at him, unarmored, wearing a cloak
and a broad hat, aiming a pistol almost as long as the arm that held it. He
swung back for a cut, urging his horse forward, and knew he’d never make it.
A11 right, Cal, your luck’s run out! There was an up flash from the pan, a belch off flame from
the muzzle, and something hammered him in the chest. He hung onto consciousness
long enough to kick his feet free of the stirrups. In that last moment, he
realized that the rider who had shot him had been a girl. RYLLA sat with her father at the table in the small study.
Chartiphon was at one end and Xentos at the other, and Harmakros, the cavalry
captain, in a chair by the hearth, his helmet on the floor beside him. Vurth,
the peasant, stood facing them, a short horseman’s musketoon slung from his
shoulder and a horn flask and bullet-bag on his belt. “You did well, Vurth,” her father commended. “By sending the
message, and in the fighting, and by telling Princess Rylla that the stranger
was a friend. I’ll see you’re rewarded.” Vurth smiled. “But, Prince, I have this gun, and fireseed
for it,” he replied. “And my son caught a horse, with all its gear, even pistols
in the holsters, and the Princess says we may keep it all.” “Fair battle-spoil, yours by right. But I’ll see that
something is sent to your farm tomorrow. Just don’t waste that fireseed on
deer. You’ll need it to kill more Nostori before long.” He nodded in dismissal, and Vurth grinned and bowed, and
backed out, stammering thanks. Chartiphon looked after him, remarking that
there went a man Gormoth of Nostor would find costly to kill. “He didn’t pay cheaply for anything tonight,” Harmakros
said. “Eight houses burned, a dozen peasants butchered, four of our troopers
killed and six wounded, and we counted better than thirty of his dead in the village
on the road, and six more at Vurth’s farm. And the horses we caught, and the
weapons.” He thought briefly. “I’d question if a dozen of them got away alive
and hale.” Her father gave a mirthless chuckle. “I’m glad some did.
They’ll have a fine tale to carry back. I’d like to see Gormoth’s face at the
telling.” “We owe the stranger for most of it,” she said. “If he hadn’t
rallied those people at Vurth’s farm and led them back, most of the Nostori
would have gotten away. And then I had to shoot him myself” . “You couldn’t know, kitten,” Chartiphon told her. “I’ve
been near killed by friends myself, in fights like that.” He turned to Xentos. “How
is he?” “He’ll live to hear our thanks,” the old priest said. “The
ornament on his breast broke the force of the bullet. He has a broken rib, and
a nasty hole in him—our Rylla doesn’t load her pistols lightly. He’s lost more
blood than I’d want to, but he’s young and strong, and Brother Mytron has much
skill. We’ll have him on his feet again in a half-moon.” She smiled happily. It would be terrible for him to die, and
at her hand, a stranger who had fought so well for them. And such a handsome
and valiant stranger, too. She wondered who he was. Some noble, or some great
captain, of course. “We owe much to Princess Rylla,” Harmakros insisted. “When
this man from the village overtook us, I was for riding back with three or four
to see about this stranger of Vurth’s, but the Princess said, ‘We’ve only Vurth’s
word there’s but one; there may be a hundred Vurth hasn’t seen.’ So back we all
went, and you know the rest.” “We owe most of all to Dram.” Old Xentos’s face lit with a
calm joy. “And Galzar Wolfhead, of course,” he added. “it is a sign that the
gods will not turn their backs upon Hostigos. This stranger, whoever he may be,
was sent by the gods to be our aid.” VERKAN Vall put the lighter back on the desk and took the
cigarette from his mouth, blowing a streamer of smoke. “Chief, it’s what I’ve been saying all along. We’ll have to
do something.” After Year-End Day, he added mentally, I’ll do something. “We
know what causes this conveyers interpenetrating in transposition. It’ll have
to be sorted.” Tortha Karf laughed. “The reason I’m laughing he explained, “is
that I said just that, about a hundred and fifty years ago, to old Zarvan
Tharg, when I was taking over from him, and he laughed at me just as I’m
laughing at you, because he’d said the same thing to the retiring Chief when he
was taking over. Have you ever seen an all-time-line conveyer-head map?” No. He couldn’t recall. He blanked his mind to everything
else and concentrated with all his mental power. “No, I haven’t—” “I should guess not. With the finest dots, on the biggest
map, all the inhabited areas would be indistinguishable blotches. There must be
a couple of conveyers interpenetrating every second of every minute of every
day. You know,” he added gently, “we’re rather extensively spread out.” “We can cut it down.” There had to be something that could
be done. “Better scheduling, maybe.” “Maybe. How about this case you’re taking an interest in?” “Well, we had one piece of luck. The pickup time-line is one
we’re on already. One of our people, in a newspaper office in Philadelphia,
messaged us that same evening. He says the press associations have the story, and
there’s nothing we can do about that.” “Well, just what did happen?” “This man Morrison and three other state police officers
were closing in on a house in which a wanted criminal was hiding. He must have
been a dangerous man—they don’t go out in force like that for chicken-thieves.
Morrison and another man were in front; the other two were coming in from
behind. Morrison started forward, with his companion covering for him with a
rifle. This other man is the nearest thing to a witness there is, but he was
watching the front of the house and only marginally aware of Morrison. He says
he heard the other two officers pounding on the back door and demanding
admittance, and then the man they were after burst out the front door with a
rifle in his hands. This officer—Stacey’s his name—shouted to him to drop the
rifle and put up his hands. Instead, the criminal tried to raise it to his
shoulder; Stacey fired, killing him instantly. Then, he says, he realized that
Morrison was nowhere in sight. “He called, needless to say’ without response, and then he
and the other two hunted about for some time. They found nothing, of course.
They took this body in to the county seat and had to go through a lot of
formalities; it was evening before they were back at the substation, and it
happened that a reporter was there, got the story, and phoned it to his paper.
The press association actions then got hold of it. Now the state police refuse
to discuss the disappearance, and they’re even trying to deny it.” “They think their man’s nerve snapped, he ran away in a
panic, and is ashamed to come back. They wouldn’t want a story like that
getting around; they’ll try to cover up.” “Yes. This hat he lost in the conveyer, with his name in it—we’ll
plant it about a mile from the scene, and then get hold of some local,
preferably a boy of twelve or so, give him narco-hyp instructions to find the
hat and take it to the state police substation, and then inform the reporter
responsible for the original news-break by an anonymous phone call. After that,
there will be the usual spate of rumors of Morrison being seen in widely
separated localities.” “How about his family?” “We’re in luck there, too. Unmarried, parents both dead, no
near relatives.” The Chief nodded. “That’s good. Usually there are a lot of
relatives yelling their heads off. Particularly on sectors where they have
inheritance laws. Have you located the exit time-line?” “Approximated it; somewhere on Aryan-Transpacific. We can’t
determine the exact moment at which he broke free of the field. We have one
positive indication to look for at the scene.” The Chief grinned. “Let me guess’ The empty revolver cartridge.” “That’s right. The things the state police use don’t eject
automatically; he’d have to open it and take the empty out by hand. And as soon
as he was outside the conveyer and no longer immediately threatened, that’s
precisely what he’d do open his revolver, eject the empty, and replace it with
a live round. I’m as sure of that as though I watched him do it. We may not be
able to find it, but if we do it’ll be positive proof.” MORRISON woke, stiff and aching, under soft covers, and for
a moment lay with his eyes closed. Near him, something clicked with soft and
monotonous regularity; from somewhere an anvil rang, and there was shouting.
Then he opened his eyes. It was daylight, and he was on a bed in a fairly large
room with paneled walls and a white plaster ceiling. There were two windows at
one side, both open, and under one of them a woman, stout and gray-haired, in a
green dress, sat knitting. It had been her needles that he had heard. Nothing
but blue sky was visible through the windows. There was a table, with things on
it, and chairs, and, across the room, a chest on the top of which his clothes
were neatly piled, his belt and revolver on top. His boots, neatly cleaned,
stood by the chest, and a long unsheathed sword with a swept guard and a copper
pommel leaned against the wall. The woman looked up quickly as he stirred, then put her knitting
on the floor and rose. She looked at him, and went to the table, pouring a cup
of water and bringing it to him. He thanked her, drank, and gave it back. The
cup and pitcher were of heavy silver, elaborately chased. This wasn’t any
peasant cottage. Replacing the cup on the table, she went out. He ran a hand over his chin. About three days’ stubble. The
growth of his fingernails checked with that. The whole upper part of his torso
was tightly bandaged. Broken rib, or ribs, and probably a nasty hole in him. He
was still alive after three days. Estimating the here-and-now medical art from
the general technological level as he’d seen it so far, that probably meant
that he had a fair chance of continuing so. At least he was among friends and
not a prisoner. The presence of the sword and the revolver proved that. The woman returned, accompanied by a man in a blue robe with
an eight pointed white star on the breast, the colors of the central image on
the peasants’ god-shelf reversed. A priest, doubling as doctor. He was short
and chubby, with a pleasant round face; advancing, he laid a hand on Morrison’s
brow, took his pulse, and spoke in a cheerfully optimistic tone. The bedside
manner seemed to be a universal constant. With the woman’s help, he got the bandages,
yards of them, off. He did have a nasty wound, uncomfortably close to his
heart, and his whole left side was black and blue. The woman brought a pot from
the table; the doctor-priest smeared the wound with some dirty looking unguent,
they put on fresh bandages, and the woman took out the old ones. The
doctor-priest tried to talk to him; he tried to talk to the doctor-priest. The
woman came back with a bowl of turkey-broth, full of finely minced meat, and a
spoon. While he was finishing it, two more visitors arrived. One was a man, robed like the doctor, his cowl thrown back
from his head, revealing snow-white hair. He had a gentle, kindly face, and was
smiling. For a moment Morrison wondered if this place might be a monastery of
some sort, and then saw the old priest’s definitely unmonastic companion. She was a girl, twenty, give or take a year or so, with
blonde hair cut in what he knew as a page-boy bob. She had blue eyes and red
lips and an impudent tilty little nose dusted with golden freckles. She wore a
jerkin of something like brown suede, sewn with gold thread, and a yellow
under-tunic with a high neck and long sleeves, and brown knit hose and
thigh-length jackboots. There was a gold chain around her neck, and a
gold-hilted dagger on a belt of gold links. No, this wasn’t any monastery, and
it wasn’t any peasant hovel, either. As soon as he saw her, he began to laugh. He’d met that
young lady before. “You shot me!” he accused, aiming an imaginary pistol and
saying “Bang!” and then touching his chest. She said something to the older priest, he replied, and she
said something to Morrison, pantomiming sorrow and shame, covering her face
with one hand, and winking at him over it. Then they both laughed. Perfectly
natural mistake—how could she have known which side he’d been on? The two priests held a colloquy, and then the younger
brought him about four ounces of something dark brown in a glass tumbler. It
tasted alcoholic and medicinally bitter. They told him, by signs, to go back to
sleep, and left him, the girt looking back over her shoulder as she went out. He squirmed a little, decided that he was going to like it,
here-and-now, and dozed off. LATE in the afternoon he woke again. A different woman,
thin, with mouse brown hair, sat in the chair under the window, stitching on
something that looked like a shirt. Outside, a dark was barking, and farther
off somebody was drilling troops—a couple of hundred, from the amount of noise
they were making. A voice was counting cadence Heep, heep, heep, heep! Another
universal constant. He smiled contentedly. Once he got on his feet again, he
didn’t think he was going to be on unemployment very long. A soldier was all he’d
ever been, since he’d stopped being a theological student at Princeton between
sophomore and junior years. He’d owed a lot of thanks to the North Korean
Communists for starting that war; without it, he might never have found the
moral courage to free himself from the career into which his father had been
forcing him. His enlisting in the Army had probably killed his father; the Rev.
Alexander Morrison simply couldn’t endure not having his own way. At least, he
died while his son was in Korea. Then there had been the year and a half, after he came home,
when he’d worked as a bank guard, until his mother died. That had been
soldiering of a sort; he’d worked armed and in uniform, at least. And then,
when he no longer had his mother to support, he’d gone into the state police.
That had really been soldiering, the nearest anybody could come to it in
peacetime. And then he’d blundered into that dome of pearly light, that
time-machine, and come out of it into—into here-and-now, that was all he could
call it. When here was, was fairly easy. It had to be somewhere
within, say, ten or fifteen miles of where he had been time-shifted, which was
just over the Clinton County line, in Nittany Valley. They didn’t use
helicopters to evacuate the wounded here-and-now, that was sure. When now was was something else. He lay on his back, looking
up at the white ceiling, not wanting to attract the attention of the woman
sewing by the window. It wasn’t the past. Even if he hadn’t studied history—it
was about the only thing at college he had studied—he’d have known that Penn’s
Colony had never been anything like this. It was more like sixteenth century
Europe, though any sixteenth-century French or German cavalryman who was as
incompetent a swordsman as that gang he’d been fighting wouldn’t have lived to
wear out his first pair of issue boots. And enough Comparative Religion had
rubbed off on him to know that those three images on that peasant’s shelf didn’t
belong in any mythology back to Egypt and Sumeria. So it had to be the future. A far future, long after the
world had been devastated by atomic war, and man, self-blasted back to the
Stone Age, had bootstrap-lifted himself back this far. A thousand years, ten
thousand years; ten dollars if you guess how many beans in the jar. The
important thing was that here-and-now was when-where he would stay, and he’d
have to make a place for himself. He thought he was going to like it. That lovely, lovely blonde! He fell asleep thinking about
her. BREAKFAST the next morning was cornmeal mush cooked with
meat broth and tasting rather like scrapple, and a mug of sassafras tea.
Coffee, it seemed, didn’t exist here-and-now, and that he was going to miss. He
sign talked for his tunic to be brought, and got his pipe, tobacco and lighter
out of it. The woman brought a stool and set it beside the bed to put things
on. The lighter opened her eyes a trifle, and she said something, and he said
something in a polite voice, and she went back to her knitting. He looked at
the tunic; it was tom and blood-soaked on the left side, and the badge was
leadsplashed and twisted. That was why he was still alive. The old priest and the girl were in about an hour later.
This time she was wearing a red and gray knit frock that could have gone into
Bergdorf Goodman’s window with a $200 price-tag any day, though the dagger on
her belt wasn’t exactly Fifth Avenue. They had slates and soapstone sticks with
them; paper evidently hadn’t been rediscovered yet. They greeted him, then
pulled up chairs and got down to business. First, they taught him the words for you and me and he and
she, and, when he had that, names. The girl was Rylla. The old priest was Xentos.
The younger priest, who dropped in for a look at the patient, was Mytron. The
names, he thought, sounded Greek; it was the only point of resemblance in the
language. Calvin Morrison puzzled them. Evidently they didn’t have surnames,
here and now. They settled on calling him Kalvan. There was a lot of picture
drawing on the slates, and play-acting for verbs, which was fun. Both Rylla and
Xentos smoked; Rylla’s pipe, which she carried on her belt with her dagger, had
a silver-inlaid redstone bowl and a cane stem. She was intrigued by his Zippo,
and showed him her own lighter. It was a tinderbox, with a flint held down by a
spring against a quarter-circular striker pushed by hand and returned by
another spring for another push. With a spring to drive instead of return the
striker it would have done for a gunlock. By noon, they were able to tell him
that he was their fiend because he had killed their enemies, which seemed to be
the definitive test of friendship, here-and-now, and he was able to assure
Rylla that he didn’t blame her for shooting him in the skirmish on the road. They were back in the afternoon, accompanied by a gentleman
with a gray imperial, wearing a garment like a fur-collared bathrobe and a
sword-belt over it. He had a most impressive gold chain around his neck. His
name was Ptosphes, and after much sign-talk and picture-making, it emerged that
he was Rylla’s father, and also Prince of this place. This place, it seemed,
was Hostigos. The raiders with whom he had fought had come from a place called
Nostor, to the north and east. Their Prince was named Gormoth, and Gormoth was
not well thought of in Hostigos. The next day, he was up in a chair, and they began giving
him solid food, and wine to drink. The wine was excellent; so was the local tobacco.
Maybe he’d get used to sassafras tea instead of coffee. The food was good,
though sometimes odd. Bacon and eggs, for instance; the eggs were turkey eggs.
Evidently they didn’t have chickens, here-and-now. They had plenty of game,
though. The game must have come back nicely after the atomic wars. Rylla was in to see him twice a day, sometimes alone and
sometimes with Xentos, or with a big man with a graying beard, Chartiphon, who
seemed to be Ptosphe’s top soldier. He always wore a sword, long and heavy,
with a two hand grip; not a real two-hander, but what he’d known as a
hand-and-a-half, or bastard, sword. Often he wore a gilded back-and-breast,
ornately wrought but nicked and battered. Sometimes, too, he visited alone, or
with a young cavalry officer, Harmakros. Harmakros wore a beard, too, obviously copied after Prince
Ptosphes’s. He decided to stop worrying about getting a shave; you could wear a
beard, here-and-now, and nobody’d think you were either an Amishman or a
beatnik. Harmakros had been on the patrol that had hit the Nostori raiders from
behind at the village, but, it appeared, Rylla had been in command. “The gods,” Chartiphon explained, “did not give our Prince a
son. A Prince should have a son, to rule after him, so our little Rylla must be
as a son to her father.” The gods, he thought, ought to provide Prince Ptosphes with
a son-in-law, name of Calvin Morrison. or just Kalvan. He made up his mind to
give the gods some help on that. There was another priest in to see him occasionally a red-nosed,
graybearded character named Tharses, who had a slight limp and a scarred face.
One look was enough to tell which god he served; he wore a light shirt of
finely linked mail and a dagger and a spiked mace on his belt, and a wolfskin
hood topped with a jewel-eyed wolf head. As soon as he came in, he would toss
that aside, and as soon as he sat down somebody would provide him with a drink.
He almost always had a cat or a dog trailing him. Everybody called him Uncle
Wolf. Chartiphon showed him a map, elaborately illuminated on
parchment. Hostigos was all Center County, the southern comer of Clinton, and all Lycoming south of the Bald Eagles. Hostigos Town was exactly on the site
of other when Bellefonte; they were at Tarr-Hostigos, or Hostigos Castle, overlooking it from the end of the mountain east of the gap. To the south, the valley
of the Juniata, the Besh, was the Princedom of Beshta, ruled by a Prince
Balthar. Nostor was Lycoming County north of the Bald Eagles, Tioga County to the north, and parts of Northumberland and Montour Counties, to the forks of
the Susquehanna. Nostor Town would be about Hughesville. Potter and McKean Counties were Nyklos, ruled by a Prince Armanes. Blair and parts of Clearfield, Huntington and Bedford Counties made up Sask, whose prince was called
Sarrask. Prince Gormoth of Nostor was a deadly enemy. Armanes was a
friendly neutral. Sarrask of Sask was no friend of Hostigos; Balthar of Beshta
was no friend of anybody’s. On a bigger map, he saw that all this was part of the Great
Kingdom of Hos-Harphax—all of Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and southern New Jersey—ruled by a King Kaiphranos at Harphax City, at the mouth of the Susquehanna, the
Harph. No, he substituted—just reigned over lightly. To judge from what he’d
seen on the night of his arrival, King Kaiphranos’s authority would be enforced
for about a day’s infantry march around his capital and ignored elsewhere. He had a suspicion that Hostigos was in a bad squeeze
between Nostor and Sask. He could hear the sounds of drilling soldiers every
day, and something was worrying these people. Too often, while Rylla was
laughing with him—she was teaching him to read, now, and that was fun—she would
remember something she wanted to forget, and then her laughter would be
strained. Chartiphon seemed always preoccupied; at times he’d forget, for a moment,
what he’d been talking about. And he never saw Ptosphes smile. Xentos showed him a map of the world. The world, it seemed,
was round, but flat like a pancake. Hudson’s Bay was in the exact center, North America was shaped rather like India, Florida ran almost due east, and Cuba north and south. Asia was attached to North America, but it was all blankly unknown.
An illimitable ocean surrounded everything. Europe, Africa and South America simply weren’t. Xentos wanted him to show the country from whence he had
come. there’d been expecting that to come up, sooner or later, and it had
worried him. He couldn’t risk lying, since he didn’t know on what point he
might be slipped up, so he had decided to tell the truth, tailored to local
beliefs and preconceptions. Fortunately, he and the old priest were alone at
the time. He put his finger down on central Pennsylvania. Xentos
thought he misunderstood. “No, Kalvan. This is your home now, and we want you to stay
with us always. But from what place did you come?” “Here,” he insisted. “But from another time, a thousand
years in the future. I had an enemy, an evil sorcerer, of great power. Another
sorcerer, who was not my friend but was my enemy’s enemy, put a protection
about me, so that I might not be sorcerously slain. So my enemy twisted time
for me, and hurled me far back into the past, before my first known ancestor
had been born, and now here I am and here I must stay.” Xentos’s hand described a quick circle around the white star
on his breast, and he muttered rapidly. Another universal constant. “How terrible! Why, you have been banished as no man ever
was!” “Yes. I do not like to speak, or even think, of it, but it
is right that you should know. Tell Prince Ptosphes, and Princess Rylla, and
Chartiphon, pledging them to secrecy, and beg them not to speak of it to me. I
must forget my old life, and make a new one here and now. For all others, it
may be said that I am from a far country. From here,.” He indicated what ought
to be the location of Korea on the blankness of Asia. “I was there, once,
fighting in a great war.” “Ah! I knew you had been a warrior.” Xentos hesitated, then
asked “Do you also know sorcery9” “No. My father was a priest, as you are, and our priests
hated sorcery.” Xentos nodded in agreement with that. “He wished me also to
become a priest, but I knew that I would not be a good one, so when this war
came, I left my studies and joined the army of my Great King, Truman, and went
away to fight. After the war, I was a warrior to keep the peace in my own
country.” Xentos nodded again, “If one cannot be a good priest, one
should not be a priest at all, and to be a good warrior is the next best thing.
What gods did your people worship?” “Oh, my people had many gods. There was Conformity, and
Authority, and Expense Account, and Opinion. And there was Status, whose
symbols were many, and who rode in the great chariot Cadillac, which was almost
a god itself And there was Atom-bomb, the dread destroyer, who would some day
come to end the world. None were very good gods, and I worshiped none of them.
Tell me about your gods, Xentos.” Then he filled his pipe and lit it with the tinderbox that replaced
his now fuelless Zippo. He didn’t need to talk any more; Xentos was telling him
about his gods. There was Dram, to whom all men and all other gods bowed; he
was a priest of Dralm himself. Yirtta Allmother, the source of all life. Galzar
the war god all of whose priests were called Uncle Wolf; lame Tranth, the
craft-man god; fickle Lytris, the weather goddess; all the others. “And Styphon,” he added grudgingly. “Styphon is an evil god
and evil men serve him, but to them he gives wealth and great power.” AFTER that, he began noticing a subtle change in manner toward
him. Occasionally he caught Rylla regarding him in awe tinged with compassion.
Chartiphon merely clasped his hand and said, “You’ll like it here, Lord Kalvan.”
It amused him that he had accepted the title as though born to it. Prince Ptosphes
said casually, “Xentos tells me there are things you don’t want to talk about.
Nobody will speak of them to you. We’re all happy that you’re with us; we’d
like you to make this your home always.” The others treated him with profound respect; the story for
public consumption was that he was a Prince from a distant country, beyond the Western Ocean and around the Cold Lands, driven from his throne by treason. That was the
ancient and forgotten land of wonder; that was the Home of the Gods. And Xentos
had told Mytron, and Mytron told everybody else, that the Lord Kalvan had been
sent to Hostigos by Dralm. As soon as he was on his feet again, they moved him to a
suite of larger rooms, and gave him personal servants. There were clothes for
him, more than he had ever owned at one time in his life, and fine weapons.
Rylla contributed a pair of her own pistols, all of two feet long but no
heavier than his Colt .38-special, the barrels tapering to almost paper
thinness at the muzzles. The locks worked with the tinderboxes, flint held
tightly against moving striker, like wheel-locks but with a simpler and more
efficient mechanism. “I shot you with one of them,” she said. “If you hadn’t,” he said, “I’d have ridden on, after the
fight, and never come to Tarr-Hostigos.” “Maybe it would have been better for you if you had.” “No, Rylla. This is the most wonderful thing that ever happened
to me.” As soon as he could walk unaided, he went down and outside to watch the
soldiers drilling. They had nothing like uniforms, except blue and red scarves
or sashes, Prince Ptosphes’ colors. The flag of Hostigos was a blue halberd
head on a red field. The infantry wore canvas jacks sewn with metal plates, or
brigantines, and a few had mail shirts; their helmets weren’t unlike the one he
had worn in Korea. A few looked like regulars; most of them were peasant levies.
Some had long pikes; more had halberds or hunting-spears or scythe-blades with
the tangs straightened and fitted to eight-foot staves, or woodcutters’ axes
with four-foot halves. There was about one firearm to three polearms. Some were
huge muskets, five to six feet long, 8- to 6-bore, aimed and fired from rests.
There were arquebuses, about the size and weight of an M1 Garrand, 16- to
20-bore, and calivers about the size of the Brown Bess musket of the Revolution
and the Napoleonic Wars. All were fitted with the odd back-acting flintlocks;
he wondered which had been adapted from which, the gunlock or the tinderbox.
There were also quite a few crossbowmen. The cavalry wore high-combed helmets and cuirasses; they
were armed with swords and pistols, a pair in saddle-holsters and, frequently,
a second pair down the boot-tops. Most of them also carried short musketoons or
lances. They all seemed to be regulars. One thing puzzled him while the
crossbowmen practiced constantly, he never saw a firearm discharged at a
target. Maybe a powder-shortage was one of the things that was worrying the people
here. The artillery was laughable; it would have been long out of
date in the sixteenth century of his own time. The guns were all wrought-iron,
built up by welding bars together and strengthened with shrunk-on iron rings.
They didn’t have trunnions; evidently nobody here-and-now had ever thought of
that. What passed for field-pieces were mounted on great timbers, like
oversized gunstocks, and hauled on four-wheel carts. They ran from four to
twelve pound bore. The fixed guns on the castle walls were bigger, some huge
bombards firing fifty, one hundred, and even two-hundred pound stone balls. Fifteenth century stuff; Henry V had taken Harfleur with
just as good, and John of Bedford had probably bombarded Orleans with better.
He decided to speak to Chartiphon about this. He took the broadsword he had captured on the night of his advent
here-and-now to the castle blacksmith, to have it ground down into a rapier..
The blacksmith thought he was crazy. He found a pair of wooden practice swords
and went outside with a cavalry lieutenant to demonstrate. Immediately, the
lieutenant wanted a rapier, too. The blacksmith promised to make real ones, to
his specifications, for both of them. His was finished the next evening, and by
that time the blacksmith was swamped with orders for rapiers. Almost everything these people used could be made in the
workshops inside the walls of Tarr-Hostigos, or in Hostigos Town, and he seemed to have an unlimited expense-account with them. He began to wonder what,
besides being the guest from the Land of the Gods, he was supposed to do to
earn it. Nobody mentioned that; maybe they were waiting for him to mention it. He brought the subject up, one evening, in Prince Ptosphes’s
study, where he and the Prince and Rylla and Xentos and Chartiphon were smoking
over a flagon of after-dinner wine. “You have enemies on both sides—Gormoth of Nostor and
Sarrask of Sask—and that’s not good. You have taken me in and made me one of
you. What can I do to help against them?” “Well, Kalvan,” Ptosphes said, “perhaps you could better
tell us that. We don’t want to talk of what distresses you, but you must come
of a very wise people. You’ve already taught us new things, like the
thrusting-sword”—he looked admiringly at the new rapier he had laid aside and
what you’ve told Chartiphon about mounting cannon. What else can you teach us?” Quite a lot, he thought. There had been one professor at Princeton whose favorite pupil he had been, and who had been his favorite teacher. A
history prof, and an unusual one. Most academic people at the middle of the
twentieth century took the same attitude toward war that their Victorian
opposite numbers had toward sex one of those deplorable facts nice people don’t
talk about, and maybe if you don’t look at the horrid thing it’ll go away. This
man had been different. What happened in the cloisters and the guild-halls and
the parliaments and council-chambers was important, but none of them went into
effect until ratified on the battlefield. So he had emphasized the military
aspect of history in a freshman from Pennsylvania named Morrison, a divinity
student, of all unlikely things. So, while he should have been studying
homiletics and scriptural exegesis and youth-organization methods, that
freshman, and a year later that sophomore, had been reading Sir Charles Oman’s
4rt of War. “Well, I can’t tell you how to make weapons like that
six-shooter of mine, or ammunition for it,” he began, and then tried, as simply
as possible, to ex plain about mass production and machine industry. They only
stared in incomprehension and wonder. “I can show you a few things you can do
with the things you have. For instance, we cut spiral grooves inside the bores
of our guns, to make the bullet spin. Such guns shoot harder, straighter and
farther than smoothbores. I can show you how to build cannon that can be moved
rapidly and loaded and fired much more rapidly than what you have. And another
thing.” He mentioned never having seen any practice firing. “You have very
little powder—fireseed, you call it. Is that it?” “There isn’t enough fireseed in all Hostigos to load all the
cannon of this castle for one shot,” Chartiphon told him. “And we can get no
more. The priests of Styphon have put us under the ban and will let us have
none, and they send cartload after cartload to Nostor.” “You mean you get your fireseed from the priests of Styphon?
Can’t you make your own?” They all looked at him as though he was a cretin. “Nobody
can make fireseed but the priests of Styphon,” Xentos told him. “That was what
I meant when I told you that Styphon’s House has great power. With Styphon’s
aid, they alone can make it, and so they have great power, even over the Great
Kings.” “Well I’ll be Dralm-damned!” He gave Styphon’s House that
grudging respect any good cop gives a really smart crook. Brother, what a
racket! No wonder this country, here-and-now, was divided into five Great
Kingdoms, and each split into a snakepit of warring Princes and petty barons.
Styphon’s House wanted it that way; it was good for business. A lot of things
became clear. For instance, if Styphon’s House did the weaponeering as well as
the powder-making, it would explain why small-arms were so good; they’d see to
it that nobody without fireseed stood an outside chance against anybody with
it. But they’d keep the brakes on artillery development. Styphon House wouldn’t
want bloody or destructive wars—they’d be bad for business. Just wars that
burned lots of fireseed; that would be why there were all these great
powder-hogs of bombards around. And no wonder everybody in Hostigos had monkeys on their
backs. They knew they were facing the short end of a war of extermination. He
set down his goblet and laughed. “You think nobody but those priests of Styphon can make fireseed?”
There was nobody here that wasn’t security-cleared for the inside version of
his cover-story. “Why, in my time, everybody, even the children, could do that.”
(Well, children who’d gotten as far as high school chemistry; he’d almost been
expelled, once) “I can make fireseed right here on this table.” He refilled his
goblet. “But it is a miracle; only by the power of Styphon...” Xentos
began. “Styphon’s a big fake!” he declared. “A false god; his
priests are lying swindlers.” That shocked Xentos; good or bad, a god was a god
and shouldn’t be talked about like that. “You want to see me do it? Mytron has
everything in his dispensary I’ll need. I’ll want sulfur, and saltpeter.”
Mytron prescribed sulfur and honey (they had no molasses here-and-now), and
saltpeter was supposed to cool the blood. “And charcoal, and a brass mortar and
pestle, and a flour-sieve and something to sift into, and a pair of
balance-scales.” He picked up an unused goblet. “This’ll do to mix it in.” Now they were all staring at him as though he—had three
heads, and a golden crown on each one. “Go on, man! Hurry!” Ptosphes told Xentos. “Have everything
brought here at once.” Then the Prince threw back his head and laughed—maybe a trifle
hysterically, but it was the first time Morrison had heard Ptosphes laugh at
all. Chartiphon banged his fist on the table. “Ha, Gormoth!” he cried. “Now see whose head goes up over whose
gate!” Xentos went out. Morrison asked for a pistol, and Ptosphes brought him one
from a cabinet behind him. It was loaded; opening the pan, he spilled out the
priming on a sheet of parchment and touched a lighted splinter to it. It
scorched the parchment, which it shouldn’t have done, and left too much black
residue. Styphon wasn’t a very honest powder maker; he cheapened his product
with too much charcoal and not enough saltpeter. Morrison sipped from his
goblet. Saltpeter was seventy-five percent, charcoal fifteen, sulfur ten. After a while Xentos returned, accompanied by Mytron, bringing
a bucket of charcoal, a couple of earthen jars, and the other things. Xentos
seemed slightly dazed; Mytron was frightened and making a good game try at not
showing it. He put Mytron to work grinding saltpeter in the mortar. The sulfur
was already pulverized. Finally, he had about a half pint of it mixed. “But it’s just dust,” Chartiphon objected. “Yes. It has to
be moistened, worked into dough, pressed into cakes, dried, and ground. We can’t
do all that here. But this will flash.” Up to about 1500, all gunpowder had
been like that—meal powder, they had called it. It had been used in cannon for
a long time after grain powder was being used in small arms. Why, in 1588, the
Duke of Medina-Sidonia had been very happy that all the powder for the Armada
was coined arquebus powder, and not meal powder. He primed the pistol with a
pinch from the mixing goblet, aimed at a half-burned log in the fireplace, and
squeezed. Outside somebody shouted, feet pounded up the hall, and a guard with
a halberd burst into the room. “The Lord Kalvan is showing us something about a pistol,”
Ptosphes told him. “There may be more shots; nobody is to be alarmed.” “All right,” he said, when the guard had gone out and closed
the door. “Now let’s see how it’ll fire.” He loaded with a blank charge,
wadding it with a bit of rag, and handed it to Rylla. “You fire the first shot.
This is a great moment in the history of Hostigos. I hope.” She pushed down the striker, set the flint down, aimed at
the fireplace, and squeezed. The report wasn’t quite as loud, but it did fire.
Then they tried it with a ball, which went a half inch into the log. Everybody
thought that was very good. The room was full of smoke, and they were all
coughing, but nobody cared. Chartiphon went to the door and shouted into the
hall for more wine. Rylla had her arms around him. “Kalvan! You really did it!”
she was saying. “But you said no prayers,” Mytron faltered. “You just made
fireseed.” “That’s right. And before long, everybody’ll be just making
fireseed. Easy as cooking soup.” And when that day comes, he thought, the
priests of Styphon will be out on the sidewalk, beating a drum for pennies. Chartiphon wanted to know how soon they could march against
Nostor. “It will take more fireseed than Kalvan can make on this table,”
Ptosphes told him. “We will need saltpeter, and sulfur, and charcoal. We will
have to teach people how to get the sulfur and the saltpeter for us, and how to
grind and mix them. We will need many things we don’t have now, and tools to
make them. And nobody knows all about this but Kalvan, and there is only one of
him.” Well, glory be! Somebody had gotten something from his lecture
on production, anyhow. “Mytron knows a few things, I think.” He pointed to the jars
of sulfur and saltpeter. “Where did you get these?” he asked. Mytron had gulped his first goblet of wine without taking it
from his lips. He had taken three gulps to the second. Now he was working on
his third, and coming out of shock nicely. It was about as he thought. The
saltpeter was found in crude lumps under manure-piles, then refined; the sulfur
was evaporated out of water from the sulfur springs in Wolf Valley. When that was mentioned, Ptosphes began cursing Styphon’s House bitterly. Mytron knew
both processes, on a quart-jar scale. He explained how much of both they would
need. “But that’ll take time.” Chartiphon objected. “And as soon
as Gormoth hears that we’re making our own fireseed, he’ll attack at once.” “Don’t let him hear about it. Clamp down the security.” He
had to explain about that. Counter-intelligence seemed to be unheard of,
here-and-now. “Have cavalry patrols on all the roads out of Hostigos. Let
anybody in, but let nobody out. Not just to Nostor; to Sask and Beshta, too.”
He thought for a moment. “And another thing. I’ll have to give orders people
aren’t going to like. Will I be obeyed?” “By anybody who wants to keep his head on his shoulders,”
Ptosphes said. “You speak with my voice.” “And mine, too!” Chartiphon cried, reaching his sword across
the table for him to touch the hilt. “Command me and I will obey, Lord Kalvan.” He established himself, the next morning, in a room inside
the main gateway to the citadel, across from the guardroom, a big flagstone-floored
place with the indefinable but unmistakable flavor of a police-court. The walls
were white plaster; he could write and draw diagrams on them with charcoal.
Nobody, here-and-now, knew anything about paper. He made a mental note to do
something about that, but no time for it now. Rylla appointed herself his
adjutant and general Girl Friday. He collected Mytron, the priest of Tranth,
all the master-craftsmen in Tarr-Hostigos, some of the craftsmen’s guild people
from Hostigos Town, a couple of Chartiphon’s officers, and a half dozen
cavalrymen to carry messages. Charcoal would be no problem—there was plenty of that,
burned exclusively in the iron-works in the Listra Valley and extensively
elsewhere. There was coal, from surface outcroppings to the north and west, and
it was used for a number of purposes, but the sulfur content made it unsuitable
for iron furnaces. He’d have to do something about coke some time. Charcoal for
gunpowder, he knew, ought to be willow or alder or something like that. He’d do
something about that, too, but at present he’d have to use what he had
available. For quantity evaporation of sulfur he’d need big iron pans,
and sheet metal larger than skillets and breastplates didn’t seem to exist. The
ironworks were forges, not rolling mills. So they’d have to beat the sheet-iron
in two-foot squares and weld them together like patch quilts. He and Mytron got
to work on planning the evaporation works. Unfortunately, Mytron was not
pictorial-minded, and made little or no sense of the diagrams he drew. Saltpeter could be accumulated all over. Manure-piles would
be the best source, and cellars and stables and underground drains. He set up a
saltpeter commission, headed by one of Chartiphon’s officers, with authority to
go any where and enter any place, and orders to behead any subordinate who
misused his powders and to deal just as summarily with anybody who tried to
obstruct or resist. Mobile units, wagons and oxcarts loaded with caldrons,
tubs, tools and the like, to go from farm to farm. Peasant women to be collected
and taught to leech nitrated soil and purify nitrates. Equipment, manufacture
of. Grinding mills there was plenty of water-power, and by good
fortune he didn’t have to invent the waterwheel. That was already in use, and
the master millwright understood what was needed in the way of converting a
gristmill to a fireseed mill almost at once. Special grinding equipment,
invention of Sifting screens, cloth. Mixing machines; these would be big
wine-casks, with counter-revolving paddlewheels inside. Presses to squeeze
dough into cakes. Mills to grind caked powder; he spent considerable thought on
regulations to prevent anything from striking a spark around them, with
bloodthirsty enforcement threats. During the morning he managed to grind up the cake he’d made
the evening before from what was left of the first experimental batch, running
it through a sieve to about FFFG fineness. A hundred grains of that drove a
ball from an 8-bore musket an inch deeper into a hemlock log than an equal
charge of Styphon’s best. By noon he was almost sure that almost all of his War Production
Board understood most of what he’d told them. In the afternoon there was a
meeting, in the outer bailey, of as many people who would be working on fireseed
production as could be gathered. There was an invocation of Dralm by Xentos,
and an invocation of Galzar by Uncle Wolf, and an invocation of Tranth by his
priest. Ptosphes spoke, emphasizing that the Lord Kalvan had full authority to
do anything, and would be backed to the limit, by the headsman if necessary.
Chartiphon made a speech, picturing the howling wilderness they would shortly
make of Nostor. (Prolonged cheering.) He made a speech, himself, emphasizing
that there was nothing of a supernatural nature whatever about fireseed,
detailing the steps of manufacture, and trying to give some explanation of what
made it explode. The meeting then broke up into small groups, everybody having
his own job explained to him. He was kept running back and forth, explaining to
the explainers. In the evening they had a feast. By that time he and Rylla
had gotten a rough table of organization charcoal onto the wall of his
headquarters. Of the next four days, he spent eighteen hours each in that
room, talking to six or eight hundred people. Some of them he suffered
patiently if not gladly; they were trying to do their best at something they’d
never been expected to do before. Some he had trouble with. The artisans’
guilds bickered with one another about jurisdiction, and they all complained
about peasants invading their crafts. The masters complained that the
journeymen and apprentices were becoming intractable, meaning that they’d
started thinking for themselves. The peasants objected to having their byres invaded
and their dunghills forked down, and to being put to unfamiliar work. The
landlords objected to having their peasants taken out of the fields, predicting
that the year’s crop would be lost. “Don’t worry about that,” he told them. “If we win, we’ll
eat Gormoth’s crops. If we lose, we’ll all be too dead to eat.” And the Iron Curtain went down. Within a few days, indignant
packtraders and wagoners were being collected in Hostigos Town, trapped for the
duration, protesting vehemently but unavailingly. Sooner or later, Gormoth and
Sarrask would begin to wonder why nobody was coming out of Hostigos, and would
send spies slipping through the woods to find out. Counterespionage; organize
soonest. And a few of his own spies in Sask and Nostor. And an anti-Styphon fifth
column in both princedoms. Discuss with Xentos. By the fifth day, the Wolf Valley sulfur-evaporation plant
was ready to go into operation, and saltpeter production was up to some ten
pounds a day. He put Mytron in charge at Tarr-Hostigos, hoping for something
better than the worst, and got into his new armor. He and Rylla and a half
dozen of Harmakros’s cavalrymen trotted out the gate and down the road from the
castle into Hostigos Gap. It was the first time he’d been outside the castle
since he had been brought there unconscious, tied onto a horse-litter. It was not until they were out of the gap and riding toward
the town, spread around the low hill above the big spring, that he turned in
his saddle to look back at the castle. For a moment he couldn’t be certain what
was wrong, but he knew something was. Then it struck him. There was no trace whatever of the great stone-quarries.
There should have been. No matter how many thousands of years had passed since
he had been in and out of that dome of shifting light that had carried him out
of his normal time, there would have been some evidence of quarrying there.
Normal erosion would have taken not thousands but hundreds of thousands’ of
years to obliterate those stark man-made cliffs, and enough erosion to have
done that would have reduced the whole mountain by half. I remembered how
unchanged the little cliff, under which he and Larry and Jack and Steve had
parked the car, had been when he had. emerged. No. That mountain had never been
quarried, at any time in the past. So he wasn’t in the future; that was sure. And he wasn’t in
the past, unless every scrap of history everybody had ever written or taught
was an organized lie, and that he couldn’t swallow. Then when the hell was he? Rylla had reined in her horse and stopped beside him. The
six troopers came to an unquestioning halt. “What is it, Kalvan?” “I was just. just thinking of the last time I saw this
place.” “You mustn’t think about that, any more.” Then, after a moment
“Was there somebody. somebody you didn’t want to leave?” He laughed. “No, Rylla. The only somebody like that is right
beside me now.” They shook their reins and started off again, the six
troopers clattering behind them. VERKAN Vall watched Tortha Karf spin the empty revolver
cartridge on his desk. It was a very valuable empty cartridge; it had taken
over forty days and cost ten thousand man-hours of crawling on hands and knees
and pawing among dead hemlock needles to find it. “That was a small miracle, Vall,” the Chief said. “Aryan-Transpacific?” “Oh, yes; we were sure of that from the beginning. Styphon’s
House Sub sector.” He gave the exact numerical designation of the time-line. “They’re
all basically alike; the language, culture, taboo and situation-response tapes
we have will do.” The Chief was fiddling with the selector for the map screen;
when he had gotten geographical area and run through level and sector, he lit
it with a map of eastern North America, divided into five Great Kingdoms.
First, Hos-Zygros—he chose to identify it in the terms the man he was hunting
would use—its capital equivalent with Quebec, taking in New England and
southeastern Canada to Lake Ontario. Second, Hos-Agrys New York, western Quebec Province and northern New Jersey. Third, Hos-Harphax, where the pickup incident had
occurred. Fourth, Hos-Ktenmos Virginia and North Carolina. Finally, Hos-Bletha,
south from there to the tip of Florida and west along the Gulf to Mobile Bay. And also Trygath, which was not Hos-, or great, in the Ohio Valley. Glancing at a note in front of him, Tortha Karf made a dot of light in the middle of
Hos-Harphax. “That’s it. Of course, that was over forty days ago. A man
can go a long way, even on foot, in that time.” The Chief knew that. “Styphon’s House,” he said. “That’s
that gunpowder theocracy, isn’t it. It was. He’d seen theocracies all over paratime, and liked
none of them; priests in political power usually made themselves insufferable,
worse than any secular despotism. Styphon’s House was a particularly nasty case
in point. About five centuries ago, Styphon had been a minor healer-god; still
was on most of Aryan-Transpacific. Some deified ancient physician, he supposed.
Then, on one time-line, some priest experimenting with remedies had mixed a
batch of saltpeter, sulfur and charcoals small batch, or he wouldn’t have
survived it. For a century or so, it had merely been a temple miracle,
and then the propellant properties had been discovered, and Styphon had gone
out of medical practice and into the munitions business. Priestly researchers
had improved the powder and designed and perfected weapons to use it. Nobody
had discovered fulminating powder and invented the percussion-cap, but they had
everything short of that. Now, through their monopoly on this essential tool
for maintaining or altering the political status quo, Styphon’s House ruled the
whole Atlantic seaboard, while the secular sovereigns merely reined. He wondered if Calvin Morrison knew how to make gunpowder,
and while he was wondering silently, the Chief did so aloud, adding “If he does, we won’t have any trouble locating him. We may
afterward, though.” That was how pickup jobs usually were, on the exit end; the
pickup either made things easy or impossibly difficult. Many of these
paratemporal DP’s, suddenly hurled into an unfamiliar world, went hopelessly
insane, their minds refusing to cope with what common sense told them was
impossible. Others were quickly killed through ignorance. Others would be
caught by the locals, and committed to mental hospitals, imprisoned, sold as
slaves, executed as spies, burned as sorcerers, or merely lynched, depending on
local mores. Many accepted and blended into their new environment and sank into
traceless obscurity. A few created commotions and had to be dealt with. “Well,
we’ll find out. I’m going outtime myself to look into it.” “You don’t need to, Vall. You have plenty of detectives who
can do that.” He shook his head obstinately. “On Year-End Day, that’ll be
a hundred and seventy-four days, I’m going to be handcuffed to that chair you’re sitting in. Until then, I’m going to do as much outtime work as I possibly can.” He
leaned over and turned a dial on the map-selector, got a large-scale map of
Hos-Harphax and increased the magnification and limited the field. He pointed. “I’m
going in about there. In the mountains in Sask, next door. I’ll be a
pack-trader—they go everywhere and don’t have to account for themselves to
anybody. I’ll have a saddle-horse and three pack-horses loaded with wares. It’ll
take about five or six days to collect and verify what I’ll take with me. I’ll
travel slowly, to let word seep ahead of me. It may be that I’ll hear something
about this Morrison before I enter Hostigos.” “What’ll you do about him when you find him?” That would
depend. Sometimes a pickup could be taken alive, moved to Police Terminal on
the Fifth Level, given a complete memory obliteration, and then returned to his
own time-line. An amnesia case; that was always a credible explanation. Or he
would be killed with a sigma-ray needier, which left no traceable effects.
Heart failure or “He just died.” Amnesia and heart failure were wonderful
things, from the Paratime Police viewpoint. Anybody with any common sense would
accept either. Common sense was a wonderful thing, too. “Well, I don’t want to kill the fellow; after all, he’s a
police officer, too. But with the explanation we’re cobbling up for his disappearance,
returning him to his own time-line wouldn’t be any favor to him.” He paused,
thinking. “We’ll have to kill him, I’m afraid. He knows too much.” “What does he know, Vall?” “One, he’s seen the inside of a conveyer,, something completely
alien to his own culture’s science. Two, he knows he’s been shifted in time,
and time travel is a common science-fiction concept in his own world. If he can
disregard verbalisms about fantasies and impossibilities, he will deduce a race
of time-travelers. &’Only a moron, which no Pennsylvania State Police
officer is, would be so ignorant of his own world’s history as to think for a
moment that he’d been shifted into the past. And he’ll know he hasn’t been
shifted into the future, because that area, on all of Europo-American, is
covered with truly permanent engineering works of which he’ll find no trace. So
what does that leave?” “A lateral shift in time, and a race of lateral time
travelers,” the Chief said. “Why, that’s the Paratime Secret itself” THEY were feasting at Tarr-Hostigos that evening. All morning,
pigs and cattle had been driven in, lowing and squealing, to be slaughtered in
the outer bailey. Axes thudded for firewood; the roasting-pits were being
cleaned out from the last feast; casks of wine were coming up from the cellars.
Morrison wished the fireseed mills were as busy as the castle bakery and
kitchen. A whole day’s production shot to hell. He said as much to
Rylla. “But, Kalvan, they’re all so happy.” She was pretty happy, herself. “And
they’ve worked so hard.” He had to grant that, and maybe the morale gain would
offset the production loss. And they did have something to celebrate a Ml hundredweight
of fireseed, fifty percent better than Styphon’s Best, and half of it made in
the last two days. “It’s been so long since any of us had anything to be really
happy about,” she was saying. “When we’d have a feast, everybody’d try to get
drunk as soon as they could, to keep from thinking about what was coming. And
now maybe it won’t come at all.” And now, they were all drunk on a hundred pounds of black
powder. Five thousand caliver or arquebus rounds at most. They’d have to do
better than twenty-five pounds a day—get it up above a hundred at least.
Saltpeter production was satisfactory, and Mytron had figured a couple of
angles at the evaporation plant that practically gave them sulfur running out
their ears. The bottleneck was mixing and caking, and grinding the cakes. That
meant more machinery, and there weren’t enough men competent to build it. It
would mean stopping work on the other things. The carriages for the new light four-pounders. The
iron-works had turned out four of them, so far—welded wrought-iron, of course,
since nobody knew how to cast iron, here-and-now, and neither did he, but made
with trunnions. They only weighed four hundred pounds, the same as Gustavus
Adolphus’s, and with four horses the one prototype already completed could keep
up with cavalry on any kind of decent ground. He was happier about that little
gun than anything else—except Rylla, of course. And they were putting trunnions on some old stuff, big
things, close to a ton metal-weight but only six and eight pounders, and he
hoped to get field carriages under them, too. They’d take eight horses apiece,
and they would never keep up with cavalry. And rifling-benches—long wooden frames in which the barrel
would be clamped, with grooved wooden cylinders to slide in guides to rotate
the cutting-heads. One turn in four feet—that, he remembered, had been the
usual pitch for the Kentucky rifles. So far, he had one in the Tarr-Hostigos
gunshop. And drilling troops—he had to do most of that himself, too,
till he could train some officers. Nobody knew anything about foot-drill by
squads; here-and-now troops maneuvered in columns of droves. It would take a year to build the sort of an army he wanted.
And Gormoth of Nostor would give him a month, at most. He brought that up at the General Staff meeting that
afternoon. Like rifled firearms and trunnions on cannon, General Staffs hadn’t
been invented here-and-now, either. You just hauled a lot of peasants together
and armed them; that was Mobilization. You picked a reasonably passable march-route;
that was Strategy. You lined up your men and shot or hit anything in front of
you; that was Tactics. And Intelligence was what mounted scouts, if any,
brought in at the last minute from a mile ahead. It cheered him to recall that
that would probably be Prince Gormoth’s notion of the Art of War. Why, with
twenty thousand men, Gustavus Adolphus, or the Duke of Parma, or Gonzalo de
C6rdoba could have gone through all five of these Great Kingdoms like a dose of
croton oil. And what Turenne could have done! Ptosphes and Rylla were present as Prince and
Heiress-Apparent. The Lord Kalvan was Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of
Hostigos. Chartiphon, gratifyingly unresentful at seeing an outlander promoted
over his head, was Field Marshal and Chief of Operations. An elderly “captain”—actual
functioning rank about brigadier-general—was quartermaster, paymaster, drillmaster,
inspector-general and head of the draft board. A civilian merchant, who wasn’t
losing any money at it, had charge of procurement and supply. Mytron was
surgeon-general, and the priest of Tranth had charge of production. Uncle Wolf
Tharses was Chief of Chaplains. Harmakros was G2, mainly because his cavalry
were patrolling the borders and keeping the Iron Curtain tight, but he’d have to
be moved out of that. He was too good a combat man to be stuck with a Pentagon
Job, and Xentos was now doing most of the Intelligence work. Besides his
ecclesiastical role as high priest of Dralm, and his political function as
Ptosphes’ Chancellor, he was in contact with his co-religionists in Nostor, all
of whom hated Styphon’s House inexpressibly and were organizing an active Fifth
Column. Like Iron Curtain, Fifth Column was now part of the local lexicon. The first blaze of optimism, he was pleased to observe, had
died down on the upper echelon. “Dralm-damn fools!” Chartiphon was growling. “One keg of
fireseed—they’ll want to shoot that all away tonight celebrating—and they think
we’re saved. Making our own fireseed’s given us a chance, and that’s all.” He
swore again, this time an oath that made Xentos frown. “We have three thousand
under arms; if we take all the boys with bows and arrows and all the old
peasants with pitchforks, we might get that up to five thousand, but not
another child or dotard more. And Gormoth’ll have ten thousand four thousand of
his own people and those six thousand mercenaries he has.” “I’d call it eight thousand,” Harmakros said. “He won’t take
the peasants out of the fields; he needs them there.” “Then he won’t wait till the harvest’s in; he’ll invade
sooner,” Ptosphes said. He looked at the relief-map on the long table. The idea that
maps were important weapons of war was something else he’d had to introduce.
This one was only partly finished; he and Rylla had done most of the work on
it, in time snatched from everything else that ought to have been done last
week at the latest. It was based on what he remembered from the US. Geological Survey quadrangle sheets he’d used on the State Police, on interviews with
hundreds of soldiers, woodsmen, peasants and landlords, and on a good bit of
personal horseback reconnaissance. Gormoth could invade up the Li star Valley, crossing the
river at the equivalent of Lock Haven, but that wouldn’t give him a third of
Hostigos. The whole line of the Bald Eagles was strongly defended everywhere.
but at Dombra Gap. Tarr-Dombra guarding it, had been betrayed seventy-five
years ago to Prince Gormoth’s grandfather, and Sevenhills Valley with it. “Then we’ll have to do something to delay him. This Tarr-Dombra.
say we take that, and occupy Sevenhills Valley. That’ll cut off his best
invasion route.” They all stared at him, just as he’d been stared at when he’d
first spoken of making fireseed. It was Chartiphon who first found his voice “Man! You never saw Tarr-Dombra or you wouldn’t talk like
that! Nobody can take Tarr-Dombra unless they buy it, like Prince Galtrath did,
and we haven’t enough money for that.” “That’s right,” said the retread “captain” who was GI and
part of G4. “It’s smaller than Tarr-Hostigos, of course, but it’s twice as
strong.” “Do the Nostori think it can’t be taken, too? Then it can
be. Prince, are there any plans of that castle here?” “Well, yes. On a big scroll, in one of my coffers. It was my
grandfather’s, and we’ve always hoped that some time. “ “I’ll want to see that. Later will do. Do you know if any
changes have been made since the Nostori got it?” None on the outside, at least. He asked about the garrison;
five hundred, Harmakros thought. A hundred of Gormoth’s regulars, and four
hundred mercenary cavalry to patrol Sevenhills Valley and raid into Hostigos. “Then we stop killing raiders who can be taken alive.
Prisoners can be made to talk.” He turned to Xentos. “Is there a priest of
Dralm in Sevenhills Valley? Can you get in touch with him, and will he help us?
Explain to him that this is not a war against Prince Gormoth, but against
Styphon’s House.” “He knows that, and he will help as much as he can, but he
can’t get into Tarr-Dombra. There is a priest of Galzar there for the
mercenaries, and a priest of Styphon for the lord of the castle and his
gentlemen, but among the Nostori, Dralm is but a god for the peasants.” Yes, and that rankled, too. The priests of Dralm would help,
all right. “Good enough. He can talk to people who can get inside, can’t he?
And he can send messages, and organize an espionage apparatus. I want to know
everything that can be found out about Tarr-Dombra, no matter how trivial.
Particularly, I want to know the guard-routine, and I want to know how the castle
is supplied. And I want it observed at all times. Harmakros, you find men to do
that. I take it we can’t storm the place. Then we’ll have to get in by
trickery.” VERKAN the pack-trader went up the road, his horse plodding
unhurriedly and the three pack-horses on the lead-line trailing behind. He was
hot and sticky under his steel back-and-breast, and sweat ran down his cheeks
from under his helmet into his new beard, but nobody ever saw an unarmed
packtrader, so he had to endure it. A paratimer had to be adaptable, if nothing
else. The armor was from an adjoining, nearly identical time-line, and so were
his clothes, the short carbine in the saddle-sheath, his sword and dagger, the
horse-gear, and the loads of merchandise—all except the bronze coffer on one
pack-load. Reaching the brow of the hill, he started slowly down the
other side, and saw a stir in front of a whitewashed and thatch-roofed roadside
cottage. Men mounting horses, sun-glints on armor, and the red and blue colors
of Hostigos. Another cavalry post, the third since he’d crossed the border from
Sask. The other two had ignored him, but this crowd meant to stop him. Two
had lances, and a third a musketoon, and a fourth, who seemed to be in command,
had his holsters open and his right hand on his horse’s neck. Two more, at the
cottage, were getting into the road on foot with musketoons. He pulled up; the pack-horses, behind, came to a
well-trained stop. “Good cheer, soldiers,” he greeted. “Good cheer, trader,” the man with his hand close to his
pistol-butt replied. “From Sask?” “Sask latest. From Ulthor, this trip; Grefftscharr by birth.”
Ulthor was the lake port in the north; Grefftscharr was the kingdom around the Great Lakes. “I’m for Agrys City.” One of the troopers chuckled. The sergeant asked “Have you
fireseed?” He touched the flask on his belt. “About twenty charges. I was going
to buy some in Sask Town, but when the priests heard I was passing through
Hostigos they’d sell me none. Doesn’t Styphon’s House like you Hostigi?” “We’re under the ban.” The sergeant didn’t seem greatly distressed
about it. “But I’m afraid you’ll not get out of here soon. We’re on the edge of
war with Nostor, and Lord Kalvan wants no tales carried to him, so he’s ordered
that none may leave Hostigos.” He cursed; that was expected of him. The Lord Kalvan, now? “I’d
feel ill-used, too, in your place, but you know how it is,” the sergeant
sympathized. “When lords command, common folk obey, if they want to keep their
heads on. You’ll make out all right, though. You’ll find ready sale for all
your wares at good price, and then if you’re skilled at any craft, work for
good pay. Or you might take the colors. You’re well horsed and armed, and Lord
Kalvan welcomes all such.” “Lord Kalvan? I thought Ptosphes was Prince of Hostigos. Or
have there been changes?” “No; Dralm bless him, Ptosphes is still our Prince. But the
Lord Kalvan, Dralm bless him, too, is our new war leader. It’s said he’s a
Prince himself, from a far land, which he well could be. It’s also said he’s a
sorcerer, but that I doubt.” “Yes. Sorcerers are more heard of than seen,” Vall
commented. “Are there many more traders caught here as I am?” “Oh, the Styphon’s own lot of them; the town’s full of them.
You’d best go to the Sign of the Red-Halberd; the better sort of them all stay
there. Give the landlord my name”—he repeated it several times to make sure it
would be remembered——“and you’ll fare well.” He chatted pleasantly with the sergeant and his troopers,
about the quality of local wine and the availability of girls and the prices
things fetched at sale, and then bade them good luck and rode on. The Lord Kalvan, indeed! Deliberately, he willed himself no
longer to think of the man in any other way. And a Prince from a far country,
no less. He passed other farmhouses; around them some work was going on. Men
were forking down dunghills and digging under them, and caldrons steamed over
fires. He added that to the cheerfulness with which the cavalrymen had accepted
the ban of Styphon’s House. Styphon, it appeared, had acquired a competitor.. Hostigos Town, he saw, was busier and more crowded than Sask Town had been. There were no
mercenaries around, but many local troops. The streets were full of carts and
wagons, and the artisans’ quarter was noisy with the work of smiths and joiners.
He found the inn to which the sergeant had directed him, mentioning his name to
make sure he got his rake-off, put up his horses, safe-stowed his packs and had
his saddlebags, valise and carbine carried to his room. He followed the inn-servant
with the bronze coffer on his shoulder. He didn’t want anybody else handling
that and finding out how light it was. When he was alone, he went to the coffer, an almost
featureless rectangular block without visible lock or hinges, and pressed his thumbs
on two bright steel ovals on the top. The photoelectric lock inside responded
to his thumbprint patterns with a click, and the lid rose slowly. Inside were
four globes of gleaming coppery mesh, a few instruments with dials and knobs,
and a little sigma-ray needier, a ladies’ model, small enough to be covered by
his hand but as deadly as the big one he usually carried. There was also an antigrav unit attached to the bottom of
the coffer; it was on, with a tiny red light glowing. When he switched it off,
the floorboards under the coffer creaked. Lined with collapsed metal, it now
weighed over half a ton. He pushed down the lid which only his thumbprints
could open, and heard the lock click. The command-room downstairs was crowded and noisy. He found
a vacant place at one of the long tables, across from a man with a bald head
and a straggling red beard, who grinned at him. “New fish in the net?” he asked. “Welcome, brother. Where
from?” “Ulthor, with three horse-loads of Grefftscharr wares. My
name’s Verkan.” “Mine’s Skranga.” The bald man was from Agrys City, on the island at the mouth of the Hudson. He had been trading for horses in the
Trygath country. “These people here took the lot, fifty of them. Paid me less
than I asked, but more than I expected, so I guess I got a fair price. I had
four Trygathi herders—they all took the colors in the cavalry. I’m working in
the fireseed mill, till they let me leave here’ “The what?” He made his voice sound incredulous. “You mean
they’re making their own fireseed? But only the priests of Styphon can do that.” Skranga laughed. “That’s what I used to think, too, but anybody
can do it. It’s easy as boiling maple-sugar. See, they get saltpeter from under
dunghills... “ He detailed the process step by step. The man—next to him
joined the conversation; he even understood, roughly, the theory the charcoal
was what burned, the sulfur was the kindling, and the saltpeter made the air to
blow up the fire and blow the bullet out of the gun. And there was no secrecy
about it, Vall mused as he listened. If a man who had been a constabulary
corporal, and a combat soldier before that, wasn’t keeping any better security
it was because he didn’t care. Lord Kalvan just didn’t want word getting into
Nostor till he had enough fireseed to fight a war with. “I bless Dralm for bringing me here,” Skranga was saying. “When
I can leave here, I’m going somewhere and set up making fireseed myself. Hos-Ktemnos—no,
I don’t want too close to Styphon’s House Upon Earth. Maybe Hos-Bletha, or
Hos-Zygros. But I’ll make myself rich at it. So can you, if you keep your eyes
and ears open.” The Agrysi finished his meal, said he had to go back to
work, and left. A cavalry officer, a few places down, promptly picked up his
goblet and flagon and moved into the vacated seat. “You just got in?” he asked. “From Nostor?” “No, from Sask.” The answer seemed to disappoint the cavalryman;
he went into the Ulthor-Grefftscharr routine again. “How long will I have to
stay here?” The officer shrugged. “Dralm and Galzar only know. Till we
fight the Nostori and beat them. What do the Saski think we’re doing here?” “Waiting for Gormoth to cut your throats. They don’t know
you’re making your own fireseed.” The officer laughed. “Ha! Some of those buggers’ll get
theirs cut, if Prince Sarrask doesn’t mind his step. You say you have three
pack-loads of Grefftscharr wares. Any sword-blades?” “About a dozen; I sold a few in Sask Town. Some daggers, a
dozen gunlocks, four good shirts of rivet-link mail, a lot of bullet-moulds.
And jewelry, and tools, and brassware.” “Well, take your stuff up to Tarr-Hostigos. They have a
little fair in the outer bailey each evening; you can get better prices from
the castle-folk than here in town. Go early. Use my name.” He gave it, and his
cavalry unit. “See Captain Harmakros; he’ll be glad of any news you can give
him.” Late in the afternoon, he re-packed his horses and went up
the road to the castle on the mountain above the gap. The workshops along the
wall of the outer bailey were all busy. Among other things, he saw a new
carriage for a field-piece being put together—not a four-wheel cart, but two
big wheels and a trail, to be hauled with a limber, which was also being built.
The gun was a welded iron four-pounder, which was normal for Styphon’s House
Subsector, but it had trunnions, which was not. Lord Kalvan, again. Like all the local gentry, Harmakros had a small neat beard.
His armor was rich but commendably well battered; his sword, instead of the
customary cut-and-thrust (mostly cut) broadsword, was a long rapier, quite new.
Kalvan had evidently introduced the revolutionary concept that swords had
points, which should be used. He asked a few exploratory questions, then
listened to a detailed account of what the Grefftscharr trader had seen in Sask, including mercenary companies Prince Sarrask had lately hired, with the names of the
captains. “You’ve kept your eyes and ears open,” he commended, “and
you know what’s worth telling about. I wish you’d come through Nostor instead.
Were you ever a soldier?” “All free-traders are soldiers, in their own service.” “Yes; that’s so. Well, when you’ve sold your loads, you’ll
be welcome in ours. Not as a common trooper—I know you traders too well for
that. As a scout. You want to sell your pack-horses, too? We’ll give you a good
price for them.” “If I can sell my loads, yes.” “You’ll have no trouble doing that. We’ll buy the mail, the
gunlocks, the sword-blades and that sort of thing ourselves. Stay about; have
your meals with the officers here. We’ll find something for you.” He had some tools, both for wood and metal work. He peddled
them among the artisans in the shops along the outer wall, for a good price in
silver and a better one in information. Besides rapiers and cannon with
trunnions, Lord Kalvan had introduced rifling in firearms. Nobody knew whence he
had come, except that it was far beyond the Western Ocean. The more pious were
positive that he had been guided to Hostigos by the very hand of Dralm. The officers
with whom he ate listened avidly to what he had picked up in Sask Town. Nostor first and then Sask seemed to be the schedule. When they talked about Lord
Kalvan, the coldest expressions were of deep respect, shading from there up to
hero-worship. But they knew nothing about him before the night he had appeared
to rally some fleeing peasants for a counter-attack on Nostori raiders and had
been shot, by mistake, by Princess Rylla herself. Vall sold the mail and sword-blades and gunlocks as a lot,
and spread his other wares for sale in the bailey. There was a crowd, and the
stuff sold well. He saw Lord Kalvan, strolling about from display to display,
in full armor probably wearing it all the time to accustom himself to the
weight, Vall decided. Kalvan was carrying a .38 Colt on his belt along with his
rapier and dagger, and clinging to his arm was a beautiful blonde girl in male riding
dress. That would be Prince Ptosphes’s daughter, Rylla. The happy possessiveness
with which she clung to him, and the tenderness with which he looked at her,
made him smile. Then the thought of his mission froze the smile on his lips. He
didn’t want to kill that man, and break that girl’s heart, but. They came over to his display, and Lord Kalvan picked up a
brass mortar and pestle. “Where did you get this?” he asked. “Where did it come from?” “it was made in Grefftscharr, Lord; shipped down the lakes
by boat to Ulthor.” “It’s cast. Are there no brass foundries nearer than
Grefftscharr?” “Oh, yes, Lord. In Zygros City there are many.” Lord Kalvan
put down the mortar. “I see. Thank you. Captain Harmakros tells me he’s been
talking to you. I’d like to talk to you, myself I think I’ll be around the
castle all miming, tomorrow; ask for me, if you’re here.” Returning to the Red Halberd, Val] spent some time and a
little money in the common-room. Everybody, as far as he could learn, seemed
satisfied that the mysterious Lord Kalvan had come to Hostigos in a perfectly
normal manner, with or without divine guidance. Finally, he went up to his
room. Opening the coffer, he got out one of the copper-mesh
globes, and from it drew a mouthpiece on a small wire, into which he spoke for
a long time. “So far,” he concluded “there seems to be no suspicion of anything
paranormal about the man in anybody’s mind. I have been offered an opportunity to
take service with his army as a scout. I intend doing this; assistance can be
given me in performing this work. I will find a location for an antigrav
conveyer to land, somewhere in the woods near Hostigos Town; when I do, I will
send a message-ball through from there.” Then he replaced the mouthpiece, set the timer for the
transposition-field generator, and switched on the antigrav. Carrying the ball
to an open window, he tossed it outside, and then looked up as it vanished in
the night. After a few seconds, high above, there was an instant’s flash among
the many visible stars. It looked like a meteor; a Hostigi, seeing it, would
have made a wish. KALVAN sat on a rock under a tree, wishing he could smoke,
and knowing that he was getting scared again. He cursed mentally. It didn’t
mean anything—as soon as things started happening held forget about it but it
always happened, and he hated it. That sort of thing was all right for a buck
private, or a platoon-sergeant, or a cop going to arrest some hillbilly killer,
but, for Dralm’s sake, a five-star general, now! And that made him think of what Churchill had called Hitter
the lance corporal who had promoted himself to commander-in-chief at one jump.
Corporal Morrison had done that, cut Hitler’s time by quite a few years, and
gotten into the peerage, which Hitler hadn’t. It was quiet on the mountain top, even though there were two
hundred men squatting or lying around him, and another five hundred, under
Chartiphon and Prince Ptosphes, five hundred yards behind. And, in front, at
the edge of the woods, a skirmish line of thirty riflemen, commanded by Verkan,
the Grefftscharr trader. There had been some objections to giving so important a command
to an outlander; he had informed the objectors rather stiffly that until
recently he had been an outlander and a stranger himself. Verkan was the best
man for it. Since joining Harmakros’s scouts, he had managed to get closer to Tarr-Dombra
than anybody else, and knew the ground ahead better than any. He wished he
could talk the Grefftscharrer into staying in Hostigos. He’d fought bandits all
over, as any trader must, and Trygathi, and nomads on the western plains, and
he was a natural rifle-shot and a born guerrilla. Officer type, too. But
free-traders didn’t stay anywhere; they all had advanced cases of foot-itch and
horizon-fever. And out in front of Verkan and his twenty rifled calivers at
the edge of the woods, the first on any battlefield in here-and-now history,
were a dozen men with rifled 8-bore muskets, fitted with peep-sights and
carefully zeroed in, in what was supposed to be cleared ground in front of the
castle gate. The condition of that approach ground was the most promising thing
about the whole operation. It had been cleared, all right—at least, the trees had been
felled and the stumps rooted out. But the Nostori thought Tarr-Dombra couldn’t
be taken and they’d gone slack the ground hadn’t been brushed for a couple of
years. There were bushes all over it as high as a man’s waist, and not a few
that a man could hide behind standing up. And his men would have been hard
enough to see even if it had been kept like a golf-course. _ The helmets and body-armor had all been carefully rusted;
there’d been anguished howls about that. So had every gun-barrel and spearhead.
Nobody wore anything but green or brown, and most of them had bits of greenery
fastened to helmets and clothing. The whole operation had been rehearsed four
times back of Tarr-Hostigos, starting with twelve hundred men and eliminating
down to the eight hundred best. There was a noise, about what a wild-turkey would make feeding,
and a soft voice called, “Lord Kalvan!” It was Verkan; he carried a rifle and
wore a dirty gray-green smock with a hood; his sword and belt were covered with
green and brown rags. “I never saw you till you spoke,” Morrison commended him. “The
wagons are coming up. They’re at the top switchback now.” He nodded. “We start, then.” His mouth was dry. What was
that thing in For Whom the Bell Tolls about spitting to show you weren’t afraid?
He couldn’t have done that now. He nodded to the boy squatting beside him; the
boy picked up his arquebus and started back to where Ptosphes and Chartiphon
were waiting. And Rylla. He cursed vilely—in English, since he still
couldn’t get much satisfaction out of taking the names of these local gods in
vain. She’d announced that she was coming along. He’d told her she’d do nothing
of the sort; so had her father and Chartiphon. She’d thrown a tantrum, and
thrown other things as well. She had come along. He was going to have his hands
full with that girl, after they were married. “All right,” he said softly to the men around him. “Let’s
start earning our pay.’ The men around and behind him rose quietly, two spears or
halberds or long-handled scythe-blades to every caliver or arquebus, though
some of the spearmen had pistols in their belts. He and Verkan advanced to the
edge of the woods, where riflemen crouched in pairs behind trees. Across four
hundred yards of clearing rose the limestone walls of Tarr-Dombra, the castle
that couldn’t be taken, above the chasm that had been quarried straight across
the mountain top. The drawbridge was down and the portcullis up, and a few
soldiers with black and orange scarves and sashes—his old college colors; he
ought to be ashamed to shoot them—loitered in the gateway or kept perfunctory
watch from the battlements. Ptosphes and Chartiphon—and Rylla, damn it!—came up with the
rest of the force, with a frightful clatter and brush-crashing which nobody at
the castle seemed to hear. There was one pike or spear or halberd or something—too
often something—to every two arquebuses or calivers. Chartiphon wore a long
brown sack with arm and neck holes over his armor. Ptosphes wore brown, and
browned armor; so did Rylla. They nodded greetings, and peered through the
bushes to where the road from Sevenhills Valley came up to the summit of the
mountain. Finally, four cavalrymen, with black and orange pennons and
scarves, came into view. They were only fake Princeton men; he hoped they’d get
rid of that stuff before some other Hostigi shot them by mistake. A long ox
wagon, piled high with hay which covered eight Hostigi infantrymen, followed.
Then a few false-color cavalry, another big hay wagon, more cavalry, two more
wagons, and a dozen cavalry behind. The first four clattered over the drawbridge, spoke to the
guards, and rode through the gate. Two wagons followed vanishing through the
gate. Great Galzar, if anybody noticed anything now! The third rumbled onto the
drawbridge and stopped directly below the portcullis; that was the one with the
log framework under the hay, and the log slung underneath; the driver must have
cut the strap to let it drop, jamming the wagon. The fourth, the one loaded
with rocks to the top of the bed, stopped on the end of the drawbridge,
weighting it down. Then a pistol banged inside, and another; there were shouts
of “Hostigos!” and “Ptosphes!” He blew his State Police whistle, and six of the
big elephant-size muskets went off in front, from places where he’d have sworn
there’d been nobody at all. The rest of Verkan’s rifle-platoon began firing,
sharp whipcrack reports entirely different from the smoothbores. He hoped they’d
remember to patch their bullets when they reloaded; that was something new for
them. He blew his whistle twice and started running forward. The men who had been showing themselves on the walls were
gone now, but a musket-shot or so showed that the snipers in front hadn’t
gotten all of them. He ran past a man with fishnet over his helmet stuck full
of twigs, ramming a ball into his musket; another, near him, who had been
waiting till he was half through, fired. Gray powder smoke hung in the gateway;
all the Hostigi were inside now, and there was an uproar of shouting——“Hostigos!”,
“Nostor!”—and shots and blade-clashing. He broke step to look behind him; his
two hundred were pouring in after him and Ptosphes’s spearmen; the arquebusiers
and calivermen had advanced to two hundred yards and were plastering the
battlements as fast as they could load and fire, without bothering to aim.
Aimed smoothbore fire at that range was useless; they were just trying to throw
as much lead as they could. A cannon went off above him when he was almost to the end of
the drawbridge, and then, belatedly, the portcullis slammed down and stopped
eight feet from the ground on the iron framework hidden
under the hay of the third wagon. They’d tested that a couple of times with the
portcullis at Tarr-Hostigos, first. All six of the oxen on the last wagon were
a ; and the infantrymen inside had been furnished short broadaxes to make sure
of that. The oxen of the portcullis wagon had been cut loose and driven inside.
There were a lot of ripped-off black and orange scarves on the ground, and more
on corpses. The gate, and the two gate-towers, had been secured. But shots were coming from the citadel, across the bailey,
and a mob of Nostori was pouring out the gate from it. This, he thought, was
the time to expend some .38-specials. Standing with his feet apart and his left
hand on his hip, he drew the Colt and began shooting, timed-fire rate. He
killed six men with six shots (he’d done that well on silhouette targets often
enough), and they were the front six men. The rest stopped, just long enough
for the men behind him to come up and sweep forward, arquebuses banging. Then
he holstered the empty Colt—he had only eight rounds left for it—and drew his
rapier and poignard. Another cannon thundered from the outside wall; he hoped
Rylla and Chartiphon hadn’t been in front of it. Then he was fighting his way
through the citadel gate, shoulder to shoulder with Prince Ptosphes. Behind, in the bailey, something else besides “Ptosphes!”
and “Gormoth!” and “Hostigos!” was being shouted. It was “Mercy, comrade! Mercy; I yield! Oath to Galzar!” There was
much more of that as the morning passed; before noon, all the garrison had
either cried for mercy or hadn’t needed it. There had only been those two
cannon-shots, though between them they had killed or wounded fifty men. Nobody
would be crazy enough to attack Tarr-Dombra, so the cannon had been left empty,
and they’d only had time to load and fire two. The hardest fighting was inside the citadel. He ran into Rylla
there, with Chartiphon hurrying to keep up with her. There was a bright sword-nick
on her brown helmet, and blood on her light rapier; she was laughing happily.
Then the melee swept them apart. He had expected that taking the keep would be
even grimmer work, but as soon as they had the citadel, it surrendered. By that
time, he had used the last of his irreplaceable cartridges. Muzzle-loaders for
him, from now on. They hauled down Gormoth’s black Rag with the orange lily
and ran up the halberd-head of Hostigos. They found four huge bombards,
throwing hundred-pound stone balls, loaded them, hand-spiked them around, and
sent the huge gun-stones crashing into the roofs of the town of Dyssa, at the
mouth of Gorge River, to announce that Tarr-Dombra was under new management. They
set the castle cooks to work skinning and cutting up the dead wagon oxen for a
barbecue. Then they turned their attention to the prisoners, herded into the
inner bailey. First, there were the mercenaries. They all agreed to enter
Prince Ptosphes’s service. They couldn’t be used against Gormoth until the term
of their contract with him expired; they would be sent to patrol the Sask border. Then there were Gormoth’s own subject troops. They couldn’t be made to bear
arms at all, but they could be put to work, as long as they were given soldiers’
pay and soldierly treatment. Then there was the governor of the castle, a Count
Phebion, cousin to Gormoth, and his officers. They would be released on oath to
send their ransoms to Hostigos. The castle priest of Galzar, after
administering the oaths, elected to go to Hostigos with his parishioners. As for the priest of Styphon, Chartiphon wanted to question
him under torture, and Ptosphes thought he should be beheaded out of hand. “Send him to Nostor with Phebion,” Morrison said. “No, send
him to Balph, in Hos-Ktemnos, with a letter to the Supreme Priest, Styphon’s
Voice, telling him that we make our own fireseed, that we will teach everybody
else to make it, and that we are the enemies of Styphon’s House until Styphon’s
House is destroyed.” Everybody, including those who had been suggesting novel and
interesting ways of putting the priest to death, shouted approval. “And a letter to Gormoth,” he continued, “offering him peace
and friendship. Tell him we’ll put his soldiers to work in the fireseed mill
and teach them the whole art, and when we release them, they can teach it in
Nostor.” Ptosphes was horrified. “Kalvan! What god has addled your
wits, man? Gormoth’s our enemy by birth, and he’ll be our enemy as long as he
lives.” “Well, if he tries to make his own fireseed without joining
us, that won’t be long. Styphon’s House will see to that.” VERKAN the Grefftscharrer led the party that galloped back
to Hostigos Town in the late afternoon with the good news—Tarr-Dombra taken,
with over two hundred prisoners, a hundred and fifty horses, four tons of
fireseed, twenty cannon, and rich booty of small arms, armor and treasure. And Sevenhills Valley was part of Hostigos again. Harmakros had defeated a large company of mercenary
cavalry, killing over twenty of them and capturing the rest. And he had taken
the Styphon temple-farm, a nitriary, freeing the slaves and putting the priests
to death. And the long-despised priest of Dralm had gathered his peasant flock
and was preaching to them that the Hostigi had come not as conquerors but as
liberators. That sounded familiar to Verkan Vall; he’d heard the like on
quite a few time-lines, including Morrison/Kalvan’s own. Come to think of it,
in the war in which Morrison had fought, both sides had made that claim. He also brought copies of the letters Prince Ptosphes had
written—more likely, that Kalvan had written and Ptosphes had signed—to Gormoth
and to Sesklos, Styphon’s Voice. The man was clever; those letters would do a
lot of harm, where harm would do the most good. Dropping a couple of troopers to spread the news in the
town, he rode up to the castle; as he approached the gate, the great bell of
the town hall began pealing. It took some time to tell the whole story to
Xentos, counting interruptions while the old priest-chancellor told Dralm about
it. When he got away from Xentos, he was dragged bodily into the officers’
mess, where a barrel of wine had already been broached. Fortunately, he had some
First Level alcodote-vitamin pills with him. By the time he got down to Hostigos
Town it was dark, everybody was roaring drunk, the bell was still ringing, and
somebody was wasting fireseed in the square with a little two-pounder. He was mobbed there, too; the troopers who had come in with
him betrayed him as one of the heroes of Tarr-Dombra. Finally he managed to get
into the inn and up to his room. Getting another message-ball and a small
radioactive beacon from his coffer, he hid them under his cloak, got his horse,
and managed to get out of town, riding to a little clearing two miles away. Pulling out the mouthpiece, he recorded a message, concluding:
“I wish especially to thank Skordran Kirv and the people with him for the
reconnaissance work at Tarr-Dombra, on this and adjoining time-lines. The
information so secured, and the success this morning resulting from it, places
me in an excellent position to carry out my mission. “I will need the assistants, and the equipment, at once. The
people should come in immediately; there is a big victory celebration in the
town, everybody’s drunk, and they could easily slip in unnoticed. There will be
a formal thanksgiving ceremony in the temple of Dralm, followed by a great
feast, three days from now. At this time the betrothal of Lord Kalvan to the
Princess Rylla will be announced.” Then he set the transposition timer, put the ball on
antigrav, and tossed it up with a gesture like a falconer releasing his hawk.
There was a slight overcast, and it flashed just below the ceiling, but that
didn’t matter. On this night, nobody would be surprised at portents in the sky
over Hostigos. Then, after stripping the shielding from the beacon and planting
it to guide the conveyer in, he sat down with his back to a tree and lit his
pipe. Half an hour transposition time to Police Terminal, maybe an hour to get
the men and equipment together, and another half hour to transpose in. He wouldn’t be bored waiting. First Level people never were.
He had too many interesting things in his memory, all of which were available
to total recall. INVITED to sit, the Agrysi horse-trader took the chair facing the desk in the room that had been fitted up as Lord Kalvan’s private office. He
was partly bald, with a sparse red beard; about fifty, five-eight, a hundred
and forty-five. The sort of character Corporal Calvin Morrison would have taken
a professional interest in: he’d have a record, was probably wanted somewhere,
for horse-theft at a guess. Shave off that beard and he’d double for a
stolen-car fence he had arrested a year ago. A year before he’d gone elsewhen,
anyhow. The horse-trader, Skranga, sat silently, wondering why he’d been
brought in, and trying to think of something they might have on him. Another
universal constant, he thought. “Those were excellent horses we got from you,” he began. “The
officers snapped most of them up before they could get to the remount corrals.” “I’m glad to hear you say so, Lord Kalvan,” Skranga said cautiously.
“I try to deal only in the best.” “You’ve been working in the fireseed mill since. I’m told
you’ve learned all about making fireseed.” “Well, Lord, I try to learn what I’m doing, when I’m
supposed to do some thing.” “Most commendable. Now, we’re going to open the frontiers.
There’s no point in keeping them closed since we took Tarr-Dombra. Where had
you thought of going?” Skranga shrugged. “Back to the Trygath country for more
horses, I suppose.” “If I were you, I’d go to Nostor, before Gormoth closes his
frontiers. Speak to Prince Gormoth privately, and be sure the priests of
Styphon don’t find out about it. Tell him you can make fireseed, and offer to
make it for him. You’ll be making your fortune if you do.” That was the last thing Skranga had expected. He was almost successful
in concealing his surprise. “But, Lord Kalvan! Prince Gormoth is your enemy.” Then he
stopped, scenting some kind of top-level double-crossing. “At least, he’s
Prince Ptosphes’s enemy.” “And Prince Ptosphes’s enemies are mine. But I like my enemies
to have all the other enemies possible, and if Styphon’s House find out that
Gormoth is making his own fireseed, they’ll be his. You worship Dralm? Then,
before you speak to Prince Gormoth, go to the Nostor temple of Dralm, speak secretly to the high priest there, tell him I sent you, and ask his advice. You
mustn’t let Gormoth know about that. Dralm, or somebody, will reward you well.” Skranga’s eyes widened for a moment, then narrowed craftily. “Ah. I understand, Lord Kalvan. And if I get into Gormoth’s
palace, I’ll find means of sending word to the priests of Dralm, now and then.
Is that it, Lord Kalvan?” “You understand perfectly, Skranga. I suppose you’d like to
stay for the great feast, but if I were you, I’d not. Go the first thing in the
morning, tomorrow. And before you go, speak to High Priest Xentos; ask the blessing
of Dralm before you depart.” He’d have to get somebody into Sask and start Prince Sarrask
up in fireseed production, too, he thought. That might be a little harder. And
after the feast, all these traders and wagoners who’d been caught in the Iron
Curtain would be leaving, fanning out all over the five Great Kingdoms. He
watched Skranga go out, and then filled and lit a pipe—not the otherwhen
Dunhill, but a local corncob, regular Douglas MacArthur model—and lit it at the
candle on his desk. Styphon’s House was the real enemy. Beat Gormoth properly,
on his own territory, and he’d stay beaten. Sarrask of Sask was only a
Mussolini to Gormoth’s Hitler; a decisive defeat of Nostor would overawe him.
But Styphon’s House wouldn’t stop till Hostigos was destroyed; their prestige,
which was their biggest asset, demanded it. And Styphon’s House was big; it
spread over all the Great Kingdoms, from the St. Lawrence to the Gulf. Big but vulnerable, and he knew, by now, the vulnerable
point. Styphon wasn’t a popular god, like Dralm or Galzar or Yirtta Allmother. The
priests of Styphon never tried for a following among the people, or even the
minor nobility and landed gentry who were the backbone of here-and-now society.
They ruled by pressure on the Great Kings and the Princes, and as soon as the
pressure was relieved, as soon as the fireseed monopoly was broken, those
rulers and their people with them would turn on Styphon’s House. The war
against Styphon’s House was going to be won in little independent powder mills
all over the Five Kingdoms. But beating Gormoth was the immediate job. He didn’t know
how much good Skranga would be able to do, or Xentos’s Dralm-temple Fifth
Column. You couldn’t trust that kind of thing. Gormoth would have to be beaten
on the battlefield. Taking Tarr-Dombra had been a good start. The next morning,
two thousand Nostori troops, mostly mercenaries, had tried to force a crossing
at Dyssa Ford, at the mouth of Pine Creek; they’d been stopped by artillery
fire. That night, Harmakros had taken five hundred cavalry across the West
Branch at Vryllos Gap, and raided western Nostor, firing thatches, running off
cattle, and committing all the usual atrocities. He frowned slightly. Harmakros was a fine cavalry leader,
and a nice guy to sit down and drink with, but Harmakros was just a trifle
atrocity-prone. That massacre at the Sevenhills temple-farm, for instance.
Well, if that was the way they made war, here-and-now, that would be the way to
make it. Then he sat for a while longer, thinking about the Art of
War, here-and-now. He hoped taking Tarr-Dombra would hold Gormoth off for the
rest of this year, and give him a chance to organize a real army, trained in
the tactics he could remember from the history of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries of his own time. Light cannon, the sort Gustavus Adolphus had smashed Tilly’s
unwieldy tercios at Breitenfeld with. And plenty of rifles, and men trained to
use them. There was a lot of forest country, here-and-now, and oddly, no game
laws to speak of, everybody was a hunter. And bore-standardization, so that
bullets could be issued, instead of every soldier having to carry his own
bullet-mould and make his own bullets. He wondered how soon he could get socket
bayonets, unknown here-and-now, produced. Not by the end of this year, not
along with everything else. But if he could get rid of all these bear spears,
and these scythe-blade things, whatever they were called, and get the spearmen
armed with eighteen-foot Swiss pikes, then they’d keep the cavalry off his
arquebusiers and calivermen. He dug the heel out of his pipe and put it down, rising and
looking at his watch (the only one in the world, and what would he do if he
broke it?). It was 1700; dinner in an hour and a half. He went out, returning
the salute of the halberdier at the door, and up the stairway. His servant had the things piled on a table in his parlor,
on a white sheet. The tunic with the battered badge that had saved his life;
the gray shirt, tom and blood-stained. The breeches; he left the billfold in
the hip pocket. He couldn’t spend the paper currency of a nonexistent United States, and the identification cards belonged to a man similarly nonexistent
here-and-now. He didn’t want the boots, either; the castle cordwainer did
better work, now that he had learned to make right and left feet. The Sam
Browne belt, with the empty cartridge-loops and the holster and the
handcuff-pouch. Anybody you needed handcuffs for, here-and-now, you knocked on
the head or shot. He tossed the blackjack down contemptuously; blackjacks didn’t
belong here-and-now. Rapiers and poignards did. He picked up the .38 Colt Official Police, swung out the
cylinder and checked it by habit-reflex, and dry-practiced a few rounds at a
knot-hole in the paneling. He didn’t want to part with that, even if there were
no more cartridges for it, but the rest of this stuff would be rather
meaningless without it. He slipped it into the holster and buttoned down the
retaining-strap. “That’s the lot,” he told the servant. “Take them to High
Priest Xentos.” The servant put them compactly together, one boot on either
side, and wrapped them in the sheet. Tomorrow, at the thanksgiving ceremony,
they would be deposited as votive offerings in the temple of Dralm. He didn’t believe in Dralm, or any other god, but now, besides being a general and an
ordnance engineer and an industrialist, he had to be a politician and no
politician can afford to slight his constituents’ religion. If nothing else, a
parsonage childhood had given him a talent for hypocritical lip-service. He watched the servant carry the bundle out. There goes Corporal
Calvin Morrison, he thought. Long live Lord Kalvan of Hostigos. VERKAN Vall, his story finished, relaxed in his chair and sipped his tall drink. There was no direct light on the terrace, only a sky-reflection
of the city lights below, dim enough. that the tip of Tortha Karf’s cigarette
glowed visibly. There were four of them around the low table: the Chief of
Paratime Police; the Director of the Paratime Commission, who acted only on the
Chief’s suggestion; the Chairman of the Paratemporal Trade Board, who did as
the Commission Director told him; and himself, who, in a hundred and twenty-odd
days, would have all Tortha Karf’s power and authority—and all his headaches. “You took no action?” the Paratime Commission Director was
asking. “None whatever. None was needed. The man knows he was in some kind of a
time-machine, which shifted him not into the past or future of his own world
but laterally, in another time-dimension, and from that he can deduce the
existence, somewhen, of a race of lateral time-travelers. That, in essence, is
the Paratime Secret, but this Calvin Morrison—Lord Kalvan, now—is no threat to
it. He’s doing a better job of protecting it in his own case than we could. He
has good reason to. “Look what he has, on his new time-line, that his old one
could never have given him. He’s a great nobleman; they’ve gone out of fashion
on Europo-America, where the Common Man is the ideal. He’s going to marry a
beautiful princess, and they’ve even gone out of fashion for children’s fairy-tales.
He’s a sword-swinging soldier of fortune, and they’ve vanished from a
nuclear-weapons world. He’s commanding a good little army, and making a better
one of it, the work he loves. And he has a cause worth fighting for, and an
enemy worth beating. He’s not going to jeopardize his position with those
people. “You know what he did? He told Xentos, under pledge of secrecy,
that he had been banished by sorcery from his own time, a thousand years in the
future. Sorcery, on that time-line, is a perfectly valid explanation for
anything. With his permission, Xentos gave that story to Rylla, Ptosphes and
Chartiphon; they handed it out that he is an exiled Prince from a country
completely outside local geographical knowledge. See what he has? Regular
defense in depth; we couldn’t have done nearly as well ourselves.” “Well, how’d it leak to you?” the Board Chairman wanted to
know. “From Xentos, at the big victory feast. I got him off to one side, got
him into a theological discussion, and spiked his drink with some hypno truth-drug.
He doesn’t even remember, now, that he told me.” “Nobody on that time-line’ll get it that way,” the Board
Chairman agreed. “But didn’t you take a chance on getting that stuff of his out
of the temple?” He shook his head. “We ran a conveyer in the night of the
feast, when it was empty. The next morning, when the priests discovered that
the uniform and the revolver and the other things had vanished, they cried, ‘Lo!
Dralm has accepted the offering! A miracle! I was there, and saw it. Kalvan doesn’t
believe in any miracles; he thinks some of these transients that left Hostigos
that day when the borders were opened stole the stuff. I know Harmakros’s
cavalry were stopping people at all the exit roads and searching wagons and
packs. Publicly, of course, Kalvan had to give thanks to Dralm for accepting
the offering.” “Well, was it necessary?” “Not on that time-line. On the pickup line, yes. The stuff
will be found ... first the clothing and the badge with his number on it. Not
too far from where he vanished; I think at Altoona. We have a man planted on
the city police force there. Later, maybe in a year, the revolver will turn up,
in connection with a homicide we will arrange. The Sector Regional Subchief can
take care of that. There are always plenty of prominent people on any time-line
who wouldn’t be any great loss.” “But that won’t explain anything,” the Commission Director
objected. “No; it’ll be an unsolved mystery. Unsolved mysteries are just as
good as explanations, as long as they’re mysterious within a normal framework.” “Well, gentlemen, all this is very interesting, but how does
it concern me officially?” the Paratemporal Trade Board Chairman asked. The Commission Director laughed. “You disappoint me! This
Styphon’s House racket is perfect for penetration of that subsector, and in a
couple of centuries, long before either of us retire, it’ll be a good area to
have penetrated. We’ll just move in on Styphon’s House and take over the same
way we did the Yat-Zar temples on the Hulgun Sector, and build that up to
general political and economic control.” “You’ll have to stay off Morrison’s—Kalvan’s—time-line,”
Tortha Karf said. “I should say they will! You know what’s going to be done
with that? We’re going to turn that over to the University of Dhergabar as a study-area, and five adjoining time-lines for controls. You know what we have
here?” He was becoming excited about it. “We have the start of an entirely new
subsector, identified from the exact point of divarication, something we’ve
never been able to do before, except from history. I’m already established on
that time-line as Verkan the Grefftscharr trader; Kalvan thinks that I’m traveling
on horseback to Zygros City to recruit brass-founders for him, to teach his
people how to cast brass cannon. In about forty or so days, I can return with
them. They will, of course, be the University study-team. And I will be back,
every so often, as often as horse-travel rates would plausibly permit. I’ll put
in a trade depot, which can mask the conveyer-head ...” Tortha Karf began laughing. “I knew you’d figure yourself
some way! And, of course, it’s such a scientifically important project that the
Chief of Paratime Police would have to give it his personal attention, so you’ll
be getting outtime even after I retire and you take over.” “Well, all right. We all have our hobbies; you’ve been going
to that farm of yours on Fifth Level Sicily for as long as I’ve been on the
Paracops. Well, my hobby farm’s going to be Kalvan Subsector, Fourth Level
Aryan Transpacific. I’m only a hundred and thirty; by the time I’m ready to
retire ...” IN the quiet of the Innermost Circle, in Styphon’s House
Upon Earth, at Balph, the great image looked down, and Sesklos, Supreme Priest
and Styphon’s Voice, returned the carven stare almost as stonily. Sesklos did
not believe in Styphon or in any other god; if he had, he would not be sitting
here. The policies of Styphon’s House were too important to entrust to
believers, and such could never hope to rise above the white robed outer
circle, or at most don the black robes of under-priests. None might wear the
yellow robe, let alone the flame-colored robe of primacy. The image, he knew,
was of a man—the old high priest who had, by discovering the application of a
minor temple secret, taken the cult of a minor healer-god out of its mean
back-street shrines and made it the power that ruled the rulers of all the Five
Kingdoms. If it had been in Sesklos to worship anything, he would have
worshiped the memory of that man. And now, the first Supreme Priest looked down upon the last
one. Sesklos lowered his eyes to the sheets of parchment in front of him,
flattening one with his hands to read again. PTOSPHES, Prince of Hostigos, to SESKLOS, calling himself
Styphon’s Voice, these: False priest of a false god, impudent swindler, liar
and cheat! Know that we in Hostigos, by simple mechanic arts, now make
for ourselves that fireseed which you pretend to be the miracle of your fraudulent
god, and that we propose teaching these arts to all, that hereafter Kings and
Princes minded to make war may do so for their own defense and advancement, and
not to the enrichment of Styphon’s House of Iniquities. In proof thereof, we send fireseed of our own make, enough
for twenty musket charges, and set forth how it is made, thus: To three parts of refined saltpeter and three fifths of one
part of charcoal and two fifths of one part of sulfur, all ground to the fineness
of bolted wheat flour. Mix thoroughly, moisten the mixture, and work it to a
heavy dough, then press into cakes and dry them, and when they are fully dry,
grind and sieve them. And know that we hold you and all in Styphon’s House of Iniquities
our deadly enemies, and the enemies general of all men, to be dealt with as
wolves are, and that we will not rest content until Styphon’s House of
Iniquities is utterly cast down and destroyed. PTOSPHES, Prince of and for the nobles and people of Hostigos. ing Gormoth’s best route of invasion
into Hostigos, and a black-robe priest who had been there had been released to
bear this letter to him. Vybios had sent the letter on by swift couriers; the
priest was following more slowly to tell his tale in person. It had, of course, been this Kalvan who had given Ptosphes
the fireseed secret. He wondered briefly if this Kalvan might be some renegade
from Styphon’s House, then shook his head. No; the full secret, as Ptosphes had
set it down, was known only to yellow-robe priests of the Inner Circle, upper
priests, high priests and archpriests. If one of these had absconded, the news
would have reached him as fast as relays of galloping horses could bring it.
Some Inner Circle priest might have written it down, a thing utterly forbidden,
and the writing might have fallen into unconsecrated hands, but he doubted
that. The proportions were different: more saltpeter and less charcoal. He
would have Ptosphes’s sample tried; he suspected that it might be better than
their own. A man, then, who had rediscovered the secret for himself. That could
be, though it had taken many years and the work of many priests to perfect the
process, especially the caking and grinding. He shrugged. That was not
important. The important thing was that the secret was out. Soon everybody
would be making fireseed, and then Styphon’s House would be only a name, and a
name of mockery at that. He might, however, postpone that day for as long as mattered
to him. He was near his ninetieth year; he would not live to see many more, and
for each man the world ends when he dies. Letters of urgency to the archpriests of the five Great Temples,
plainly telling them all, each to tell those under him as much as he saw fit. A
story to be circulated among the secular rulers that fireseed stolen by bandits
was being smuggled and sold. Prompt investigation of reports of anyone
gathering sulfur or saltpeter, or building or altering grinding-mills. Death by
assassination of anyone suspected of knowing the secret. That would only do for the moment; he knew that. Something
better must be devised, and quickly. And care must be taken not to spread,
while trying to suppress, the news that someone outside Styphon’s House was
making fireseed. A Great Council of all the archpriests, but that later. And, of course, immediate destruction of Hostigos, and all
in it, not one to be spared even for slavery. Gormoth had been waiting until
his own people could harvest their crops; he must be made to move at once. An
archpriest of Styphon’s House Upon Earth to be sent to Nostor, since this was
entirely beyond poor Vyblos’s capacities. Krastokles, he thought. Lavish gifts
of fireseed and silver and arms for Gormoth. He glanced again at Vyblos’s letter. A copy of Ptosphes’s
letter to himself had gone to Gormoth, by the hand of the castellan of
Tarr-Dombra, released on ransom-oath. Why, Ptosphes had given his enemy the
fireseed secret! He rebuked himself for not having noticed that before. That
had been a daring, and a fiendishly clever, thing to do. So, with Krastokles would go fifty mounted Guardsmen of the Temple, their captain to be an upper priest without robe. And more silver, to corrupt
Gormoth’s courtiers and mercenary captains. And a special letter to the high priest of the Sask Town temple. It had been planned to use Prince Sarrask as a counterpoise to Gormoth,
when the latter had grown too great by the conquest of Hostigos. Well, the time
for that was now. Gormoth was needed to destroy Hostigos; as soon as that was
accomplished, he, too, must be destroyed. Sesklos struck the gong thrice, and as he did, he thought
again of this mysterious Kalvan. That was nothing to shrug off. It was
important to learn who he was, and whence he had come, and with whom he had
been in contact before he had appeared—he was intrigued by Vyblos’s choice of
the word—in Hostigos. He could have come from some far country where the making
of fireseed was commonly known. He knew of none such, but the world might well
be larger than he thought. Or could there be other worlds? The idea had occurred to
him, now and then, as an idle speculation. THE man called Lord Kalvan—except in retrospect, he never
thought of himself as anything else now—sipped from the goblet and set it on
the stand beside his chair. It was what they called winter-wine: set out in
tubs to freeze, and the ice thrown off until it was sixty to seventy proof, the
nearest they had to spirits, here-and-now. Distillation, he added to the long
list of mental memos; invent and introduce. Bourbon, he thought; they grew
plenty of com. It was past midnight; a cool breeze fluttered the curtains
at the open windows, and flickered the candies. He was tired, and he knew that
he would have to rise at dawn tomorrow, but he knew that he would lie awake a
long while if he went to bed now. There was too much to think about. Troop strengths: better than two to one against Hostigos. If
Gormoth waited till his harvests were in and used all his peasant levies, more
than that. Of course, if he waited, they’d be a little better prepared in
training and materiel, but not much. Three thousand regular infantry, meaning
they had been organized into companies and given a modicum of drill. Two
thousand were pikemen and halberdiers, and too many of the pikes were short
huntingspears, and too many of the halberds were those scythe-blade things (he
still didn’t know what else to call them), and a thousand calivermen,
arquebusiers and musketeers. And fifty riflemen, though in another thirty days
there would be a hundred more. And eight hundred cavalry, all of whom could be
called regulars—nobles and gentlemen-farmers, and their attendants. Artillery—there was the real bright spot. Four of the light
four-pounders were finished and in service, gun-crews training with them, and
two more would be finished in another eight or ten days. And the old guns had
been remounted; they were at least three hundred percent better than anything
Gormoth would have. All right, they couldn’t do anything about numbers; then cut
the odds by concentrating on mobility and firepower. It didn’t really matter
who had the mostest; just git th’ar fustest and fire the most shots and score
the most hits with them. But he didn’t want to think about that right now. He emptied the goblet and debated pouring himself more, lighting
his pipe. Instead, he turned to something he hadn’t had time to think about
lately: the question of just when now was. He wasn’t at any time in the past or the future of May 19,
1964, when he’d walked into that dome of light. He’d settled that in his mind
definitely. So what did that leave? Another time-dimension. Say time was a plane, like a sheet of paper. Paper, experiment
with manufacture of, that mental memo popped up automatically, and was promptly
shoved down again. He wished he’d read more science fiction; time dimensions
were a regular science-fiction theme, and a lot of it carefully thought out. Well,
say he was an insect, capable of moving only in one direction, crawling along a
line on the paper, and say somebody picked him up and set him down on another
line. That figured. And say, long ago, one of these lines of time
had forked, maybe before the beginning of recorded history. Or say these lines
had always existed, an infinite number of them, and on each one, things
happened differently. That could be it. He was beginning to be excited;
Dralm-dammit, now he’d be awake half the night, thinking about this. He got up
and filled the goblet with almost-brandy. He’d found out a little about these people’s history. Their
ancestors had been living on the Atlantic coast for over five hundred years;
they all spoke the same language, and were of the same stock: Zarthani. They
hadn’t come from across the Atlantic, but from the west, across the continent.
Some of that was recorded history he had read, and some was legend; all of it
was supported by the maps, which showed all the important seacoast cities at
the mouths of rivers. There were no cities on the sites of such excellent
harbors as Boston, Baltimore or Charleston. There was the Grefftscharr Kingdom, at the west end of the Great Lakes, and Dorg at the confluence of the Mississippi and Missouri, and XipWon at the site of New Orleans. But there was nothing but
a trading town at the mouth of the Ohio, and the Ohio valley was full of
semi-savages. Rivers flowing east and south had been the pathway. So these people had come from across the Pacific. But they
weren’t Asiatics, as he used the word; they were blond Caucasians. Aryans! Of
course; the Aryans had come out of Central Asia, thousands of years ago,
sweeping west and south into India and the Mediterranean basin, and west and
north to Scandinavia. On this line of events, they’d gone the other way. The names sounded Greek—all those -os and -es and -on endings—but
the language wasn’t even the most corrupt Greek. It wasn’t even grammatically
the same. He’d had a little Greek in college, dodging it as fast as it was
thrown at him, but he knew that. Wait a minute. The words for “father” and “mother.” German,
vater; Spanish, padre; Latin, pater; Greek, as near that as didn’t matter;
Sanskrit, pitr. German, mutter; Spanish, madre; Latin, mater; Greek, meter; Sanskrit,
matr. In Zarthani, they were phadros and mavra. IT was one of those small late-afternoon gatherings, nobody
seeming to have a care in the world, lounging indolently, sipping tall drinks,
nibbling canapйs, talking and laughing. Verkan Vall held his lighter for his
wife, Hadron Dalia, then applied it to his own cigarette. Across the low table,
Tortha Karf was mixing himself a drink, with the concentrated care of an
alchemist compounding the Elixir of Life. The Dhergabar University people—the
elderly professor of Paratemporal Theory, the lady professor of Outtime History
(M, and the young man who was director of outtime study operations—were all
smiling like three pussy-cats at a puddle of spilled cream. “You’ll have it all to yourselves,” Vall told them. “The Paratime
Commission has declared that time-line a study-area, and it’s absolutely
quarantined to everybody but University personnel and accredited students. I’m
making it my personal business to see that the quarantine is enforced.” Tortha Karf looked up. “After I retire, I’m taking a seat on
the Paratime Commission,” he said. “I’ll see to it that the quarantine isn’t
revoked or modified.” “I wish we could account for those four hours from the time
he got out of that transposition field until he stopped at that peasant’s
cottage,” the paratemporal theorist said. “We have no idea what he was doing.” “Wandering in the woods, trying to orient himself,” Dalla
said. “Sitting and thinking, most of the time, I’d say. Getting caught in a
conveyer field must be a pretty shattering experience if you don’t know what it
is, and he seems to have adjusted very nicely by the time he had those Nostori
to fight. I don’t believe he Was changing history all by himself.” “You can’t say that,” the old professor chided. “He could
have shot a rattlesnake which would otherwise have bitten and killed a child
who would otherwise have grown up to be an important personage. That sounds
far-fetched and trivial, but paratemporal alternate probability is built on
different trivialities. Who knows what started the Aryan migration eastward on
that sector instead of westward, as on all the others? Some tribal chief’s
hangover; some wizard’s nightmare.” “Well, that’s why you’re getting those five adjoining
time-lines for controls,” the outtime study operations director said. “And I’d
keep out of Hostigos on all of them. We don’t want our people massacred along
with the resident population by Gormoth’s gang, or forced to defend themselves
with Home Time-Line weapons.” “What bothers me,” the lady professor of history said, “is
Vall’s beard.” “It bothers me, too,” Dalla said, “but I’m getting used to
it.” “He hasn’t shaved it off since he came back from Kalvan’s
time-line, and it begins to look like a permanent fixture. And I notice that
Dalla’s a blonde, now. Blondes are less conspicuous on Aryan-Transpacific. They’re
both going to be on and off that time-line all the time.” “Well, nobody’s exclusive rights to anything outtime
excludes the Paratime Police. I told you I was going to give that time-line my
personal attention. And Dalla is officially Special Chief’s Assistant’s Special
Assistant, now; she’ll be promoted automatically along with me.” “Well, you won’t introduce a lot of probability
contamination, will you?” the elderly theorist asked anxiously. “We want to observe
the effect of this man’s appearance on that time-line .. “You know any kind of observation that doesn’t contaminate
the thing observed, professor?” Tortha Karf, who had gotten the drink mixed,
asked. “If anything, I’ll be able to minimize the amount of
contamination his study-teams introduce. I’m already well established with
these people as Verkan the Grefftscharr trader. Why, Lord Kalvan offered me a
commission in his army, commanding a rifle regiment he’s raising, and right now
I’m supposed to be recruiting brass-founders for him in Zygros.” Vall turned to
the operations director. “I can’t plausibly get back to Hostigos for another
thirty days. Can you have your first team ready by then? They’ll have to know
their trade; if they cast cannon that blow up on the first shot, I know where
their heads will go, and I won’t try to intervene for them.” “Oh, yes. They have everything now but local foundry techniques
and correct Zygrosi accent. Thirty days will be plenty.” “But that’s contamination!” the professor of Paratemporal
Theory objected. “You’re teaching his people to make cannon, and...” “Just to make better cannon, and if I didn’t bring in fake Zygrosi
founders, Kalvan would send somebody else to bring in real ones. I will help
him in any other way a wandering pack-trader could; information and things like
that. I may even go into battle with him again—with one of those back-acting
flintlocks. But I want him to win. I admire the man too much to want to hand
him an unearned victory on a platter.” “He sounds like a lot of man to me,” the lady historian
said. “I’d like to meet him, myself.” “Better not, Eldra,” Dalla warned. “That princess of his is
handy with a pistol, and I don’t think she cares much who she shoots.” THE general staff had a big room of their own to meet in,
just inside the door of the keep, and the relief map was finished and set up.
The General Staff were all new at it. So was he, but he had some vague idea of
what a General Staff was supposed to do, which put him several up on any of the
rest of them. Xentos was reporting what he had gotten from the Nostori Fifth
Column. “The bakeries work night and day,” he said. “And milk cannot
be bought at any price—it is all being made into cheese. And most of the meat
is being made into smoked sausages.” Stuff a soldier could carry in a haversack and eat uncooked:
field-rations. That stuff, even the bread, could be stored, Kalvan thought, but
Xentos was also reporting that wagons and oxen were being commandeered, and
peasants impressed as drivers. They wouldn’t do that too long in advance. “Then Gormoth isn’t waiting to get his harvests in,”
Ptosphes said. “He’ll strike soon, and taking Tarr-Dombra didn’t stop him at
all.” “It delayed him, Prince,” Chartiphon said. “He’d be pouring
mercenaries into Nostor now through Sevenhills Valley if we hadn’t.” “I grant that.” There was a smile on Ptosphes’s lips. He’d
been learning to smile again, since the powder mills had gone into operation,
and especially since Tarr-Dombra had fallen. “We’ll have to be ready for him a
little sooner than I’d expected, that’s all.” “We’ll have to be ready for him yesterday at the latest,” Rylla
said. She’d picked that expression up from him. “What do you think he’ll hit us
with?” “Well, he’s been shifting troops around,” Harmakros said. “He
seems to be moving all his mercenaries east, and all his own soldiers west.” “Marax Ford,” Ptosphes guessed. “He’ll throw the mercenaries
at us first.” “Oh, no, Prince!” Chartiphon dissented. “Go all the way
around the mountains and all the way up through East Hostigos? He wouldn’t do
that. Here’s how he’ll come in.” He drew his big hand-and-a-half sword—none of these newfangled
pokers for him—and gave it a little toss in his hand to get the right grip on
it, then pointed on the map to where the Listra flowed into the Athan.
“There—Listra-Mouth. He can move his whole army up the river
in his own country, force a crossing here—if we let him—and take all Listra Valley to the Saski border. That’s where all our iron-works are.” Now that was something. Not so long ago, to Chartiphon,
weapons had been just something you fought with; he’d taken them for granted.
Now he was realizing that they had to be produced. That started an argument. Somebody thought Gormoth would try
to force one of the gaps. Not Dombra; that was too strong. Maybe Vryllos Gap. “He’ll attack where we don’t expect him, that’s where,” Rylla
declared. “Well, that means we have to expect him everywhere. “Great Galzar!”
Ptosphes exploded, drawing his rapier. “That means we have to expect him
everywhere from here”—he touched the point to the map to the mouth of the
Listra——“to here,” which was about where Lewisburg had been in Calvin Morrison’s
world. “That means that with half Gormoth’s strength, we’ll have to be stronger
than he is at every point.” “Then we’ll have to move what men we have around faster,”
his daughter told him. Well, good girl! She’d seen what none of the others had,
what he’d been thinking about last night, that mobility could make up for lack
of numbers. “Yes,” he said. “Harmakros, how many infantrymen could you
put horses under? They don’t have to be good horses, just good enough to take
them where they’ll fight on foot.” Harmakros was scandalized. Mounted soldiers were cavalry,
everybody knew it took years to train a cavalryman; he had to be practically born
at it. Chartiphon was scandalized, too. Infantrymen were foot soldiers;
they had no business on horses. “It’ll mean,” he continued, “that in action about one out of
four will have to hold horses for the others, but they’ll get into action
before the battle’s over, and they can wear heavier armor. Now, how many
infantry can you find mounts for?” Harmakros looked at him, decided that he was serious,
thought for a moment, then grinned. It always took Harmakros a moment or so to
recover from the shock of a new idea, but he always came up punching before the
count was over. “Just a minute; I’ll see.” He pulled the remount officer
aside; Rylla joined them with a slate and soapstone. Among other things, Rylla
was the mathematician. She’d learned Arabic numerals, even the reason for
having a symbol for nothing at all. Very high on the I love Rylla, reasons why
list was the fact that the girt had a brain and wasn’t afraid to use it. He turned to Chartiphon and began talking about the defense
of Listra-Mouth. They were still discussing it when Rylla and Harmakros came
over and joined them. “Two thousand:’ Rylla said. “They all have four legs, and we
think they were all alive last evening.” “Eighteen hundred,” Harmakros cut it. “We’ll need some for
pack-train and replacements.” “Sixteen hundred:’ Kalvan decided. “Eight hundred pikemen,
with pikes and not hunting-spears or those scythe-blade things, and eight
hundred arquebusiers, with arquebuses and not rabbit-guns. Can you do that,
Chartiphon?” Chartiphon could. All men who wouldn’t fall off their
horses, too. “It’ll make a Styphon’s own hole in the army, though,” he added. Aside from the Mobile Force, that would leave twelve hundred
pikemen and two hundred with firearms. Of course, there was the militia: two
thousand peasant levies, anybody who could do an hour’s foot-drill without
dropping dead, armed with anything at all. They would fight bravely if
unskillfully. A lot of them were going to get killed. And, according to best intelligence estimates, Corinth had six thousand mercenaries, of whom four thousand were cavalry, and four
thousand of his own subjects, including neither the senile nor the adolescent
and none of them armed with agricultural implements or crossbows. He looked at
the map again. Gormoth would attack where he could use his cavalry superiority
to best advantage. Either Listra-Mouth or Marax Ford. “Good. And all the riflemen.” All fifty of them. “Put them
on the best horses, they’ll have to be everywhere at once. And five hundred
regular cavalry.” Everybody howled at that. There weren’t that many, not uncommitted.
Swords flashed over the map, indicating places where they only had half enough
now. Contradictions were shouted. One of these days somebody was going to use a
sword for something besides map-pointing in one of these arguments. Finally, by
robbing Peter and Paul both, they scraped up five hundred for the Mobile Force. “And I want all those musketoons and lances turned in,” he
said. “The lances are better pikes than half our pikemen have, and the
musketoons are almost as good as arquebuses. We won’t have cavalrymen burdened
with infantry weapons when the infantry need them as desperately as they do.” Harmakros wanted to know what the cavalry would fight with. “Swords
and pistols. The purpose of cavalry is to scout and collect information,
neutralize enemy cavalry, harass enemy movement and communications, and pursue
fugitives. It is not to fight on foot—that’s why we’re organizing mounted
infantry—and it is not to commit suicide by making attacks on massed pikemen—that’s
why we’re building these light four-pounders. The lances and musketoons will go
to the infantry, and the fowling-pieces and scythe-blade things they replace
can go to the militia. “Now, you’ll command this Mobile Force, Harmakros. Turn all
your intelligence work over to Xentos; Prince Ptosphes and I will help him. You’ll
have all four of the four-pounders, and the two being built as soon as they’re
finished, and pick out the lightest four of the old eight-pounders. You’ll be
based in Sevenhills Valley; be prepared to move either east or west as soon as
you have orders. “And another thing: battle-cries.” They had to be shouted constantly,
to keep friend from killing friend. “Besides ‘Ptosphes!’ and ‘Hostigos!’ we
will shout ‘Down Styphon!” That met with general approval. They all knew who the real
enemy was. GORMOTH, Prince of Nostor, set down the goblet, wiping his
bearded lips on the back of his hand. The candies in front of him and down the
long tables at the sides flickered. Tableware clattered, and voices were loud. “Lost everything!” The speaker was a baron driven from Sevenhills Valley when Tarr-Dombra had fallen almost a moon ago. “My house, a score of
farms, a village ...” “You think we’ve lost nothing?” another noble demanded. “They
crossed the river the night after they chased you out, and burned everything on
my land. It was Styphon’s own miracle I got out with my own blood unspilled.” “For shame!” cried Vyblos, the high priest of the temple of Styphon, sitting with him at the high table. “You speak of cow-byres and
peasant-huts; what of the temple-farm of Sevenhills, a holy place pillaged and
desecrated? What of fifteen consecrated priests and novices, and a score of lay
guards, all cruelly murdered? ‘Dealt with as wolves are’,” he quoted. “That’s Styphon’s business; let him took to his own,” the
lord from western Nostor said. “I want to know why our Prince isn’t looking to
the protection of Nostor.” “It can be stopped, Prince.” That was the mayor, and
wealthiest merchant, of Nostor Town. “Prince Ptosphes has offered peace, now
that Hostigos has Tarr-Dombra again. He’s a man of his word.” “Peace tossed like a bone to a cur?” yelled Netzigon, the
chief captain of Nostor. “Friendship shot at us out of cannon?” “Peace with a desecrator of holy places, and a butcher of Styphon’s
priests?” Vyblos fairly screamed. “Peace with a blasphemer who pretends, with
his mortal hands, to work Styphon’s own miracle, and make fireseed without
Styphon’s aid?” “More than pretends!” That was Gormoth’s cousin, Count
Phebion. He still hadn’t taken Pheblon back into his favor after losing
Tarr-Dombra, but for those words he was close to it. “By Dralm, the Hostigi
burned more fireseed taking Tarr-Dombra than we thought they had in all
Hostigos. I was there, which you weren’t. And when they opened the magazines,
they only sneered and said, ‘That filthy trash; don’t get it mixed with ours’.” “That’s all aside,” the baron from Listra-Mouth said. “I
want to know what’s being done to keep their raiders out of Nostor. Why, they’ve
harried all the strip between the mountains and the river; there isn’t a house
standing there now.” Weapons clattered at the door. Somebody else sneered: “That’s
Ptosphes, now! Under the tables, everybody!” A man in mail and black leather
strode in, advancing and saluting; the captain of the dungeons. “Lord Prince, the special prisoner has been made to talk. He
will tell all.” “Ha!” Gormoth knew what that meant., Then he laughed at the
looks of concern on faces down the side tables. Not a few at his court had
cause to dread somebody telling all about something. He drew his poignard and
cut a line across the candle in front of him, a thumb’s breadth from the top. “You bring good news. I’ll go to hear him in that time.” As
he nodded dismissal, the captain bowed and backed away. He rapped loudly on the
table with the pommel of the dagger. “Be silent, all of you; I’ve little time,
so give heed. Klestreus,” he addressed the elected captain-general of the
mercenary free-companies, “you have four thousand horse, two thousand foot, and
ten cannon. Add to them a thousand of my infantry and such guns of mine as you
think fit. You’ll cross the Athan at Marax Ford. Be on the road before the dew’s
off the grass tomorrow; before dawn of the next day, take and hold the ford,
put the best of your cavalry across at once, and let the others follow as
speedily as they can. “Netzigon,” he told his own chief-captain, “you’ll gather
every man you can, down to the very peasant rabble, and such cannon as
Klestreus leaves you. Post companies to confront every pass in the mountains
from across the river; use the peasants for that. With the rest of your force,
march to Listra-Mouth and Vryllos Gap. As Klestreus moves west through East Hostigos, he will attack each gap from behind; when he does, your people will cross
over and give aid. Tarr-Dombra we’ll have to starve out; the rest must be taken
by storm. When Klestreus is as far as Vryllos Gap, you will cross the Athan and
move up Listra Valley. After that, we’ll have Tarr-Hostigos to take. Gazer only
knows how long we’ll be at that, but by the end of the moon-half all else in
Hostigos should be ours.” There were gratified murmurs all along the table; this made
good hearing, and they had waited long to hear it. Only the high priest, Vyblos,
was ill-pleased. “But why so soon, Prince?” “Soon? By the Mace of Galzar, you’ve been bawling for it
like a branded calf since greenleaf-time. Well, now you have your invasion—yet
you object. Why?” “A few more days would cost nothing, Prince,” Vyblos said. “Today
I had word from Styphon’s House Upon Earth, from the pen of His Divinity,
Styphon’s Voice Himself. An archpriest, His Sanctity Krastokles, is traveling
hither with rich gifts and the blessing of Styphon. It were poor reverence not
to await His Sanctity’s coming.” Another cursed temple-rat, bigger and fatter and more
insolent than this one. Well, let him come after the victory, and content
himself with what bones were tossed to him. “You heard me,” he told the two captains. “I rule here, not
this priest. Be about it; send out your orders now, and move in the morning.” Then he rose, pushing back the chair before the servant
behind him could touch it. The line was still visible at the top of the candle. Guards with torches attended him down the winding stairs
into the dungeons. The air stank. His breath congealed; the heat of summer
never penetrated here. From the torture chamber shrieks told of some wretch
being questioned; idly he wondered who. Stopping at an iron-bound door, he
unlocked it with a key from his belt and entered alone, closing it behind him. The room within was large, warmed by a fire on a hearth in
the corner and lighted by a great lantern from above. Under it, a man bent over
a littered table, working with a mortar and pestle. As the door closed, he
straightened and turned. He had a bald head and a red beard, and wore a most unprisoner-like
dagger on his belt. A key for the door lay on the table, and by them a pair of
heavy horseman’s pistols. He smiled. “Greetings, Prince; it’s done. I tried some, and it’s as
good as they make in Hostigos, and better than the dirt the priests sell.” “And no prayers to Styphon, Skranga?” Skranga was chewing tobacco. He spat brownly on the floor. “That in the face of Styphon! You want to try it, Prince?
The pistols are empty.” There was a bowl half full of fireseed on the table. He measured
a charge and poured it into one, loaded and wadded a ball on top of it, primed
the pan, readied the flint and striker. Aiming at a billet of wood by the
hearth, he fired, then laid the pistol down and went to probe the hole with a
straw. The bullet had gone in almost a little finger’s length; Styphon’s powder
wouldn’t do that much. “Well, Skranga! “ he laughed. “We’ll have to keep you hidden
for awhile yet, but from this hour you’re first nobleman of Nostor after
myself. Style yourself Duke. There’ll be rich lands for you in Hostigos, when
Hostigos is mine.” “And in Nostor the Styphon temple-farms?” Skranga asked. “If
I’m to make fireseed for you, there’s all there that I’ll need.” “styes, by Galzar, that too! After I’ve
dealt with Ptosphes, I’ll have a reckoning with Vyblos, and before I let him
die, he’ll be envying Ptosphes.” Snatching up a pewter cup without looking to see if it were
clean, he went to the wine-barrel and drew it full. He tasted the wine, then
spat it out. “Is this the swill they’ve given you to drink?” he demanded.
“Whoever’s at fault won’t see tomorrow’s sun set!” He flung open the door and
bellowed into the hall: “Wine! Wine for Prince Gormoth and Duke Skranga! And
silver cups!” He hurled the pewter, still half full of wine, at a guard. “Move
your feet, you bastard! And see it’s fit for nobles to drink!” MOBILE force HQ had been the mansion of a Nostori noble
driven from Sevenhills Valley on D-for-Dombra Day. Kalvan’s name had been
shouted ahead as he rode to it through the torch-lit, troop-crowded village,
and Harmakros and some of his officers met him at the door. “Great Dralm, Kalvan!” Harmakros laughed. “Don’t tell me you’re
growing wings on horses, now. Our messengers only got off an hour ago.” “Yes, I met them at Vryllos Gap.” They crossed the outer
hall and entered the big room beyond. “We got the news at Tarr-Hostigos just
after dark. What have you heard since?” At least fifty candles burned in the central chandelier. Evidently
the cavalry had gotten here before the peasants, on D-Day, and hadn’t looted
too destructively themselves. Harmakros led him to an inlaid table on which a
map, scorched with hot needles on white deerskin, was spread. “We have reports from all the watchtowers along the mountains.
They’re too far back from the river for anything but dust to be seen, but the
column’s over three miles long. First cavalry, then infantry, then guns and
wagons, and then more infantry and some cavalry. They halted at Nirfa at dusk
and built hundreds of campfires. Whether they left them burning and moved on
after dark, and how far ahead the cavalry are now, we don’t know. We expect
them at Marax Ford by dawn.” “We got a little more than that. The Nostor priest of Dralm
got a messenger off a little after noon, but he didn’t get across the river
till twilight. Your column’s commanded by Klestreus, the mercenary captain-general.
All Gormoth’s mercenaries, four thousand cavalry and two thousand infantry, a
thousand of his own infantry, and fifteen guns, he didn’t say what kind, and a
train of wagons that must be simply creaking with loot. At the same time,
Netzigon’s moving west on Listra-Mouth with an all-Nostori army; dodging them
was what delayed this messenger. Chartiphon’s at Listra-Mouth with what he can
scrape up; Ptosphes is at Vryllos Gap with a small force.” “That’s it,” Harmakros said. “Double attack, but the one
from the east will be the heavy one. We can’t do anything to help Chartiphon,
can we?” “Beat Klestreus as badly as we can; that’s all I can think
of.” He had gotten out his pipe; as soon as he had it filled, one of the staff
officers was offering a light. That was another universal constant. “Thank you.
What’s been done here, so far?” “I started my wagons and the eight-pounders east on the main
road; they’ll halt just west of Fitra, here.” He pointed on the map to a little
farming village. “As soon as they’re all collected, here, I’ll start down the
back road, which joins the main road at Fitra. After I’m past, the heavy stuff
will follow on. I have two-hundred militia—the usual odd-and-sods, about half
with crossbows—marching with the wagons.” “That was all smart.” He looked again at the map. The back
road, adequate for cavalry and four-pounders but not for wagons or the heavy
guns, followed the mountain and then bent south to join the main valley road. Harmakros
had gotten the slow stuff off first, and wouldn’t be impeded by it on his own
march, and he was waiting to have all his force together, instead of feeding it
in to be chopped up by detail. “Where had you, thought of fighting?” “Why, on the Adm, of course.” Harmakros was surprised that
he should ask. “Klestreus will have some of his cavalry across before we get
there, but that can’t be helped. We’ll kill them or run them back, and then
defend the line of the river.” “No.” Kalvan touched the stem of his corncob on the Fitra
road-junction. “We fight here.” “But, Lord Kalvan! That’s miles inside Hostigos!” one of the
officers expostulated. Maybe he owned an estate down there. “We can’t let them
get that far!” “Lord Kalvan,” Harmakros began stiffly. He was going to be
insubordinate; he never bothered with titles otherwise. “We cannot give up a
foot of Hostigi ground. The honor of Hostigos forbids it.” Here we are, back in the Middle Ages! He seemed to hear the
voice of the history professor, inside his head, calling a roll of battles lost
on points of honor. Mostly by the French, though they weren’t the only ones. He
decided to fly into a rage. “To Styphon with that!” he yelled, banging his fists on the
table. “We’re not fighting this war for honor, and we’re not fighting this war
for real-estate. We’re fighting this Dralm-damned war for survival, and the
only way we can win it is to kill all the damned Nostori we can, and get as few
of our men killed doing it as we can. “Now, here,” he continued quietly, the rage having served
its purpose. “Here’s the best place to do it. You know what the ground’s like
there. Klestreus will cross here at Marax. He’ll rush his best cavalry ahead,
and after he’s secured the ford, he’ll push on up the valley. His cavalry’ll
want to get in on the best looting before the infantry come up. By the time the
infantry are over, they’ll be strung out all up East Hostigos. “And they’ll be tired, and, more important, their horses
will be tired. We’ll all have gotten to Fitra by daylight, and by the time they
begin coming up, we’ll have our position prepared, our horses will be fresh
again, all the men will have at least an hour or so sleep, and a hot meal. You
think that won’t make a difference? Now, what troops have we east of here?” A hundred-odd cavalry along the river; a hundred and fifty
regular infantry, and about twice as many militia. Some five hundred, militia
and some regulars, at posts in the gaps. “All right ... get riders off at once, somebody who won’t be
argued with. Have that force along the river move back, the infantry as rapidly
as possible, and the cavalry a little ahead of the Nostori, skirmishing. They
will not attempt to delay them; if the ones in front are slowed down, the ones
behind will catch up with them, and we don’t want that.” Harmakros had been looking at the map, and also looking over
the idea. He nodded. “East Hostigos,” he declared, “will be the graveyard of
the Nostori.” That took care of the honor of Hostigos. “Well, mercenaries from Hos-Agrys and Hos-Ktemnos. Who hired
those mercenaries, anyhow—Gormoth or Styphon’s House?” “Why, Gormoth. Styphon’s House furnished the money, but the
mercenary captains contracted with Gormoth.’. “Stupid of Styphon. The reason I asked, the Rev. What’s-his-name,
in Nostor, included an interesting bit of gossip in his report. It seems that
this morning Gormoth had one of his under-stewards put to death. Forced a
funnel into his mouth, and had close to half a keg of wine poured into him. The
wine was of inferior quality, and had been furnished to a prisoner, or supposed
prisoner, for whom Gormoth had commanded good treatment.” One of the officers made a face. “Sounds like Gormoth.” Another
laughed and named a couple of innkeepers in Hostigos Town who deserved the
same. Harmakros wanted to know who this pampered prisoner was. “You know him. That Agrysi horse-trader, Skranga.” “Yes, we got some good horses from him. I’m riding one, myself,”
Harmakros said. “Hey! He was working in the fireseed mill. Do you think he’s
making fireseed for Gormoth now?” “If he’s doing what I told him to he is.” There was an
outcry; even Harmakros stared at him in surprise. “If Gormoth starts making his
own fireseed, Styphon’s House will find it out, and you know what’ll happen
then. That’s why I was wondering who’d be able to use those mercenaries against
whom. That’s another thing. We can’t be bothered with Nostori prisoners, but
take all the mercenaries who’ll surrender. We’ll need them when Sarrask’s turn
comes up.” DAWN was only a pallor in the east, and the whitewashed
walls were dim blurs under dark thatches, but the village of Fitra was awake, and the shouting began as he approached: “Lord Kalvan! Dralm bless Lord
Kalvan!” He was used to it now; it didn’t give him the thrill it had at first.
Light streamed from open doors and windows, and a fire blazed on the little
common, and there was a crowd of villagers and cavalrymen who had ridden on
ahead. Behind him, hooves thudded on the road, and far back he could hear the four-pounders
clattering over the pole bridge at the mill. He had to make a speech from the
saddle, while orders were shouted and reshouted to the rear and men and horses
crowded off the road to make way for the guns. Then he and Harmakros and four or five other officers rode
forward, reining in where the main road began to dip into the little hollow.
The eastern pallor had become a bar of yellow light. The Mountains of Hostigos
were blackly plain on the left, and the jumble of low ridges on the right were
beginning to take shape. He pointed to a ravine between two of them. “Send two hundred cavalry around that ridge and into that
little valley, where those three farms are clumped together,” he said. “They’re
not to make fires or let themselves be seen. They’re to wait till we’re engaged
here, and the second batch of Nostori come up. Then they’ll come out and hit
them from behind.” An officer galloped away to attend to it. The yellow light
spread; only a few of the larger and brighter stars were still visible. In
front, the ground fell away to the small brook that ran through the hollow, to
join a larger stream that flowed east along the foot of the mountain. The
mountain rose steeply to a bench, then sloped up to the summit. On the right
was broken ground, mostly wooded. In front, across the hollow, was mostly open
farmland. There were a few trees around them, in the hollow and on the other
side. This couldn’t have been better if he’d had Dralm create it to special order. The yellow light had reached the zenith, and the eastern horizon
was a dazzle. Harmakros squinted at it and said something about fighting with
the sun in their eyes. “No such thing; it’ll be overhead before they get here. Now,
you go take a nap. I’ll wake you in time to give me some sack-time. As soon as
the wagons get here, we’ll give everybody a hot meal.” An ox-cart appeared on the brow of the hill across the
hollow, piled high, a woman and a boy trudging beside the team and another
woman and some children riding. Before they were down to the brook, a wagon had
come into sight. This was only the start; there’d be a perfect stream of them
soon. They couldn’t be allowed on the main road west of Fitra until the wagons
and the eight-pounders were through. “Have them turned aside,” he ordered. “And use the wagons
and carts for barricades, and the oxen to drag trees.” The village peasants were coming out now, with four- and
six-ox teams dragging chains. Axes began thudding. More refugees were coming
in; there were loud protests at being diverted and at having wagons and oxen commandeered.
The axe-men were across the hollow now, and men shouted at straining oxen as
felled trees were dragged in to build an abatis. He strained his eyes against the sunrise; he couldn’t see
any smoke. Too far away, but he was sure it was there. The enemy cavalry had
certainly crossed the Athan by now, and pyromania was as fixed in the mercenary
character as kleptomania. The abatis began to take shape, trees dragged into
line with the tops to the front and the butts to the rear, with spaces for
three of the six/four-pounders on either side of the road and a barricade of
wagons and farm carts a little in advance at either end. He rode forward now
and then to get an enemy’s-eye view of it. He didn’t want it to look too
formidable from in front, or too professional—for one thing, he wanted to make
sure that the guns were completely camouflaged. Finally he began to notice
smears of smoke against the horizon, maybe six or eight miles away. Klestreus’s
mercenaries weren’t going to disappoint him after all. A company of infantry came up. They were regulars, a hundred
and fifty of them, with two pikes (and one of them a real pike) to every
caliver, marching in good order. They’d come all the way from the Athan,
reported fighting behind them, and were disgusted at marching away from it. He
told them they’d get all they wanted before noon, and to fall out and rest. A
couple of hundred militia, some with crossbows, dribbled in. There were more
smokes on the eastern horizon, but he still couldn’t hear firing. At
seven-thirty, the supply wagons, the four eight-pounders, and the two hundred
militia arrived. That was good. The refugees, now a steady stream, could be
sent on up the road. He saw to it that fires were lit and a hot meal started,
and then went into the village. He found Harmakros asleep in one of the cottages, wakened
him, and gave him the situation to date. “Send somebody to wake me,” he finished, “as soon as you see
smoke within three miles, as soon as our cavalry skirmishers start coming in,
and in any case in two and a half hours.” Then he pulled off his helmet and boots, unbuckled his
sword-belt, and lay down in the rest of his armor on the cornshuck tick
Harmakros had vacated, hoping that it had no small inhabitants or, if so, that
none of them would find lodgement under his arming-doublet. It was cool in here
behind the stone walls and under the thick thatch. The wet heat of his body
became a clammy chill. He shifted positions a few times, decided that fewer
things gouged into him when lying on his back, and close is eyes. So far, everything had gone nicely; all he was worried about
was who was going to let him down, and how badly. He hoped some valiant fool
wouldn’t get a rush of honor to the head and charge when he ought to stand
fast, like the Saxons at Hastings. If he could bring this off just half as well as he’d planned
it, which would be about par for any battle, he could go to Valhalla when he
died and drink at the same table with Richard Coeur-de-Lion, the Black Prince
and Henry of Navarre. A complete success would entitle him to take a salute
from Stonewall Jackson. He fell asleep receiving the commendation of George S.
Patton. AN infantry captain wakened him at a little before ten. “They’re
burning Systros now,” he said. That was a town of some two thousand, two and a
half miles away. “A couple of the cavalry who’ve been keeping contact with them
just came in. The first batch, about fifteen hundred, are coming up fast, and
there’s another lot, about a thousand, a mile and a half behind them. And we’ve
been hearing those big bombards at Narza Gap.” Between Montoursville and Muncy; that would be Klestreus’s
infantry on this side, and probably some of Netzigon’s ragtag and bobtail on
the other. He pulled on his boots and buckled on his belt, and somebody brought
him a bowl of beef stew with plenty of onion in it, and a mug of sour red wine.
When his horse was brought, he rode forward to the line, noticing in passing
that the Mobile Force Uncle Wolf and the village priest of Dralm and priestess
of Yirtta had set up a field hospital in the common, and that pole-and-blanket
stretchers were being made. He hoped he wouldn’t be wounded. No anesthetics,
here-and-now, though the priests of Galzar used sandbags. A big cloud of smoke dirtied the sky over Systros. Silly buggers—first
crowd in had fired it. Here-and-now mercenaries were just the same as Tilly’s
or Wallenstein’s. Now the ones behind would have to bypass it, which would
bring them to Fitra in even worse order. The abatis was finished, and he cantered forward for a final
look at it. He couldn’t see a trace of any of the guns, and it looked, as he
had wanted it to, like the sort of thing a lot of peasant home-guards would
throw up. At each end, between the abatis itself and the short barricades of
carts, was an opening big enough for cavalry to sortie out. The mounted
infantry horse-lines were back of the side road, with the more poorly armed
militia holding horses. Away off, one of the Narza Gap bombards boomed; they were
still holding out. Then he began to hear the distant, and then not-so-distant,
pop of small arms. Cavalry drifted up the road, some reloading pistols as they
came. The shouts grew louder; more cavalry, in more of a hurry, arrived.
Finally, four of them topped the rise and came down the slope; the last one
over the top turned in his saddle and fired a pistol behind him. A dozen
Nostori cavalry appeared as they were splashing through the brook. Immediately, a big 8-bore rifled musket bellowed from behind
the abatis, and then another and another. His horse dance-stepped daintily.
Across the hollow, a horse was down, kicking, another reared, riderless, and a
third, also empty saddled, trotted down to the brook and stopped to drink. The
mercenaries turned and galloped away out of sight into the dead ground beyond
the rise. He was wondering where Harmakros had put the rest of the riflemen
when a row of smoke-puffs blossomed along the edge of the bench above the
stream on the left, and shots cracked like a string of firecrackers. There were
yells from out of sight across the hollow, and musketoons thumped in reply.
Wasting Styphon’s good fireseed—at four hundred yards, they couldn’t have hit
Grant’s Tomb with smoothbores. He wished he had five hundred rifles up there. Hell, why not
wish for twenty medium tanks and half a dozen Sabre-Jets, while he was at it?! Then Klestreus’s mercenary cavalry came up in a solid front
on the brow of the hill—black and orange pennons and helmet-plumes and scarves,
polished breastplates. Lancers all in front, musketoon-men behind. A shiver ran
along the front as the lances came down. As though that had been the signal, and it probably had
been, six four-pounders and four eight-pounders went off together. It wasn’t a
noise, but a palpable blow on the ears. His horse started to buck; by the time
he had him under control the smoke was billowing out over the hollow, and
several perfect rings were floating up against the blue, and everybody behind
the abatis was yelling, “Down Styphon!” Round-shot; he could see where it had tom furrows back into
the group of black and orange cavalry. Men were yelling, horses rearing, or
down and screaming horribly, as only wounded horses can. The charge had stopped
before it had started. On either side of him, gun-captains were shouting, “Grapeshot!
Grapeshot!” and cannoneers were jumping to their pieces before they had stopped
recoiling with double-headed swabs, one end wet to quench lingering powder-bag
sparks and one end dry. The cavalry charge slid forward in broken chunks, down the
slope and into the hollow. When they were twenty yards short of the brook, four
hundred arquebuses crashed. The whole front went down, horses behind falling
over dropped horses in front. The arquebusiers who had fired stepped back,
drawing the stoppers of their powder-flasks with their teeth. Spring powder
flasks, self-measuring, get made and issued soonest. He also added cartridge
paper to the paper memo. When they were half reloaded, the other four hundred arquebuses
crashed. The way those cavalry were jammed down there, it would take an
individual miracle for any bullet to miss something. The smoke was clogging the
hollow like spilled cotton now, but through it he could see another wave of
cavalry coming up on the brow of the opposite hill. A four-pounder spewed
grapeshot into them, then another and another, till the whole six had fired. Gustavus Adolphus’s four-pounder crews could load and fire
faster than musketeers, the dry lecture-room voice was telling him. Of course,
the muskets they’d been timed against had been matchlocks; that had made a big
difference. Lord Kalvan’s were doing almost as well: the first four-pounder had
fired on the heels of the third arquebus volley. Then one of the eight-pounders
fired, and that was a small miracle. A surprising number of Klestreus’s cavalry had survived the
fall of their horses. Well, not so surprising; horses were bigger targets, and
they didn’t wear breastplates. Having nowhere else to go, the men were charging
on foot, using their lances as pikes. A few among them had musketoons; they’d
been in the rear. Quite a few were shot coming up, and more were piked trying
to get through the abatis. A few did get through. As he galloped to help deal
with one of these parties, he heard a trumpet sound on the left, and another on
the right, and there was a clamor of “Down Styphon!” at both ends. That would
be the cavalry going out; he hoped the artillery wouldn’t get excited. Then he was in front of a dozen unhorsed Nostori cavalrymen,
pulling up his horse and aiming a pistol at them. “Yield, comrades! We spare mercenaries!” An undecided second
and a half, then one of them lifted a reversed musketoon. “We yield; oath to
Galzar.” That, he thought, they would keep. Galzar didn’t like
oath-breaking soldiers; he let them get killed at the next opportunity. Cult of
Galzar encourage. Some peasants ran up, brandishing axes and pitchforks. He
waved them back with his pistol, letting them have a look at the muzzle. “Keep your weapons,” he told the mercenaries. “I’ll find
somebody to guard you.” He detailed a couple of Mobile Force arquebusiers; they impressed
some militia. Then he had to save a wounded mercenary from having his throat
cut. Dralm-damned civilians! He’d have to detail prisoner-guards. Disarm these
mercenaries and the peasants’d cut their throats; leave them armed, and the
temptation might overcome the fear of Galzar. Along the abatis, the firing had stopped, but the hollow
below was a perfect hell’s bedlam—pistol shots, clashing steel, “Down Styphon!”
and, occasionally, “Gormoth!” Over his shoulder he could see villagers, even women
and children, replacing militiamen on the horse-lines. Captains were shouting, “Pikes forward!” and pikemen were dodging among the branches
to get through the abatis. Dimly, through the smoke, he could see red and blue
on horsemen at the brow of the opposite hill. Uniforms; do something about.
Brown, or dark green. The road had been left unobstructed, and he trotted through
and down toward the brook. What he saw in the hollow made his stomach heave,
and it didn’t heave easily. It was the horses that bothered him more than
anything else, and he wasn’t the only one. The infantry, going forward, were
stopping to cut wounded horses throats, or brain them, or shoot them with
pistols from saddle-holsters. They shouldn’t do that, they ought to keep on,
but he couldn’t stand seeing horses suffer. Stretcher-bearers were coming forward to, and villagers to
loot. Corpse robbing was the only way the here-and-now civil population had of
getting a little of their own back after a battle. Most of them had clubs or
hatchets, to make sure that what they were robbing really were corpses. There were a lot of good weapons lying around. They ought to
be collected before they rusted into uselessness, but there was no time for
that now. Stopping to do that, once, had been one of Stonewall Jackson’s few
mistakes. Something was being done toward that, though: he saw crossbows lying
around, and each one meant a militiaman who had armed himself with An enemy
cavalry musketoon. The battle had passed on eastward; unopposed infantry were
forming up, blocks of pikemen with blocks of arquebusiers between, and men were
running back to bring up horses. Away ahead, there was an uproar of battle;
that would be the two hundred cavalry he had posted on the far right hitting
another batch of Gormoth’s mercenaries, who, by now, would be disordered by fugitives
streaming back from the light at the hollow. The riflemen on the bench were
drifting eastward, too, firing as they went. And enemy cavalry were coming in in groups, holding their
helmets up on their sword-points, calling out, “We yield, oath to Galzar.” One
of the officers of the flanking party, with four troopers, was coming in with
close to a hundred of them, regretting that so many had gotten away. And all
the infantry who had marched in from the Athan, and many of the local militia,
had mounted themselves on captured horses. There was a clatter behind him, and he got his horse off the
road to let the four-pounders pass in column. Their captain waved to him and
told him, laughing, that the eights would be along in a day or so. “Where do we get some more shooting?” he asked. “Down the road a piece; just follow along and we’ll show you
plenty to shoot at.” He slipped back the knit cuff under his mail sleeve and
looked at his watch. It was still ten minutes to noon, Hostigos Standard
Sundial Time. BY 17:30, they were down the road a really far piece, and
there had been considerable shooting on the way. Now they were two miles west
of the Athan, on the road to Marax Ford, and the Nostori wagons and cannon were
strung out for half a mile each way. He was sitting, with his helmet off, on an
upended wine keg at a table made by laying a shed-door across some boxes, with
Harmakros’s pyrographed deerskin map spread in front of him, and a mug where he
could reach it. Beside the road, some burned out farm buildings were still
smoking, and the big oaks which shaded him were yellowed on one side from heat.
Several hundred prisoners squatted in the field beyond, eating rations from
their own wagons. Harmakros, and the commander of mounted infantry, Phrames—he’d
be about two-star rank—and the brigadier-general commanding cavalry, and the
Mobile Force Uncle Wolf—somewhat younger than the Tarr-Hostigos priest of Galzar
and about chaplain-major equivalent—sat or squatted around him. The messenger
from Sevenhills Valley, who had just caught up with him, paced back and forth,
trying to walk the stiffness out of his legs. He drank from a mug as he talked.
He was about U.S. first lieutenant equivalent. Titles of rank, regularize. This business of calling
everybody from company commander up to commander-in-chief a captain just wouldn’t
do. He’d made a start with that, on the upper echelons; he’d have to carry it
down to field and company level. Rank, insignia of, establish. He thought he’d
adopt the Confederate Army system—it was simpler, with no oak and maple leaves
and no gold and silver distinctions. Then he pulled his attention back to what
the messenger was saying. “That’s all we know. All morning, starting before mess call,
there was firing up the river. Cannon-fire, and then small arms, and, when the
wind was right, we could hear shouting. About first morning drill break, some
of our cavalry, who’d been working up the river along the mountains, came back
and reported that Netzigon had crossed the river in front of Vryllos Gap, and
they couldn’t get through to Ptosphes and Princess Rylla.” He cursed, first in Zarthani and then in English. “Is she at
Vryllos Gap, too?” Harmakros laughed. “You ought to know that girl by now,
Kalvan; you’re going to marry her. Just try and keep her out of battles.” That he would, by Dralm! With how much success, though, was
something else. The messenger, having taken time out for a deep drink, continued:
“Finally, a rider came in from this side of the mountain. He said that the Nostori were across and pushing Prince Ptosphes back into
the gap. He wanted to know if the captain of Tarr-Dombra could send him help.” well? The messenger shrugged. “We only had two hundred regulars
and two hundred and fifty militia, and it’s ten miles to Vryllos along the
river, and an even longer way around the mountains on the south side. So the
captain left a few cripples and kitchen-women to hold the castle, and crossed
the river at Dyssa. They were just starting when I left; I could hear
cannon-fire as I was leaving Sevenhills Valley.” “That was about the best thing he could do.” Gormoth would have a couple of hundred men at Dyssa. Just a holding
force; they’d given up the idea of any offensive operations against Dombra Gap.
If they could be run out and the town burned, it would start a scare that might
take a lot of pressure off Ptosphes and Chartiphon both. “Well, I hope nobody expects any help from us,” Harmakros
said. “Our horses are ridden into the ground; half our men are mounted on
captured horses, and they’re in worse shape than what we have left of our own.” “Some of my infantrymen are riding two to a horse,” Phrames
said. “You can figure what kind of a march they’d make. They’d do almost as
well on foot.” “And it would be midnight before any of us could get to Vryllos
Gap, and that would be less than a thousand.” “Five hundred, I’d make it,” the cavalry brigadier said. “We’ve
been losing by attrition all the way east.” “But I’d heard that your losses had been very light.” “You heard? From whom?” “Why, the men guarding prisoners. Great Galzar, Lord Kalvan,
I never saw so many prisoners.. “That’s been our losses: prisoner-guard details. Every one
of them is as much out of it as though he’d been shot through the head.” But the army Klestreus had brought across the Athan had
ceased to exist. Not improbably as many as five hundred had recrossed at Marax
Ford. Six hundred had broken out of Hostigos at Narza Gap. There would be
several hundred more, singly and in small bands, dodging through the woods to
the south; they’d have to be mopped up. The rest had all either been killed or
captured. First, there had been the helter-skelter chase east from
Fitra. For instance, twenty riflemen, firing from behind rocks and trees, had
turned back two hundred trying to get through at the next gap down. Mostly,
anybody who was overtaken had simply pulled off his helmet or held up a
reversed weapon and cried for quarter. He’d only had to fight once, himself, he and two Mobile
Force cavalrymen had caught up to ten fleeing mercenaries and shouted to them
to yield. Maybe this crowd were tired of running, maybe they were insulted at
the demand from so few, or maybe they’d just been bullheaded. Instead, they had
turned and charged. He had half-dodged—and half parried a lance and spitted the
lancer in the throat, and then had been fighting two swordsman, and good ones,
when a dozen mounted had come up. Then, they’d had a small battle a half-mile west of Systros.
Fifteen hundred infantry and five hundred cavalry, all mercenaries, had just
gotten onto the main road again after passing on both sides of the burning town
when the Fitra fugitives came dashing into them. Their own cavalry were swept
away, and the infantry were trying to pike off the fugitives, when mounted
Hostigi infantry arrived, dismounted, gave them an arquebus volley, and then
made a pike charge, and then a couple of four-pounders came up and began
throwing case-shot, leather tubes full of pistol balls. The Fitra fugitives had
never been exposed to case-shot before, and after about two hundred were
casualties they began hoisting their helmets and invoking Galzar. Galzar was being a big help today. Have to do something nice
for him. That had been where the mercenary general, Klestreus, had
been captured. Phratnes had taken his surrender; Kalvan and Harmakros had been
too busy chasing fugitives. A lot of these had turned toward Narza Gap. Hestophes, the Hostigi CO there, had been a real cool cat.
He’d had two hundred and fifty men, two old bombards, and a few lighter pieces.
Klestreus’s infantry had attacked Nirfa Gap, the last one down, and, with the
help of Netzigon’s people from the other side, swamped it. A few survivors had
managed to get away along the mountain top and brought him warning. An hour
later, he was under attack from both sides, too. He had beaten off three attacks, by a probable total of two
thousand, and was bracing for a fourth when his lookouts on the mountain
reported seeing the fugitives from Fitra and Systros streaming. east.
Immediately he had spiked his guns and pulled his men up the mountain. The
besieging infantry on the south were swept through by fleeing cavalry, and they
threw the Nostori on the other side into confusion. Hestophes spattered them
generously with small-arms fire to discourage loitering and let them go to
spread panic on the other side. By now, they would be spreading it in Nostor Town. Then, just west of the river, they had run into the wagon
train and artillery, inching along under ox-power, accompanied by a thousand of
Gormoth’s subject troops and another five hundred mercenary cavalry. This had
been Systros over again, except it had been a massacre. The fugitive cavalry
had tried to force a way past, the infantry had resisted them, the
four-pounders—only five of them, now; one was off the road just below Systros
with a broken axle—arrived and began firing case-shot, and then two
eight-pounders showed up. Some of the mercenaries attempted to fight—when they
later found the pay chests in one of the wagons, they understood why—but the
Nostori simply emptied their arquebuses and calivers and ran. Along with “Down
Styphon! “ the’ pursuers were shouting “Dralm and no Quarter!” He wondered what
Xentos would think of that; Dralm wasn’t supposed to be that kind of a god, at
all. “You know,” he said, getting out his pipe and tobacco, “we
didn’t have a very big army to start with. What do we have now?” “Five hundred, and four hundred along the river,” Phrames
said. “We lost about five hundred, killed and wounded. The rest are guarding
prisoners all the way back to Fitra.” He looked up at the sun. “Back almost to Hostigos Town, by now.” “Well, we can help Ptosphes and Chartiphon from here,” he
said. “That gang Hestophes let through Narza Gap will be in Nostor Town by now, panting their story out, and the way they’ll tell it, it will be five times
worse than it really was.” He looked at his watch. “By this time, Gormoth
should be getting ready to fight the Battle of Nostor.” He turned to Phrames. “You’re
in charge of this stuff here. How many men do you really need to guard it? Two
hundred?” Phrames looked up and down the road, and then at the prisoners,
and then, out of the comer of his eye, at the boxes under the improvised table.
They hadn’t gotten around to weighing that silver yet, but there was too much
of it to be careless with. “I ought to have twice that many.” “The prisoners are mercenaries, and have agreed to take
Prince Ptosphes’s colors,” the priest of Galzar said. “Of course, they may not
bear arms against Prince Gormoth or any in his service until released from
their oaths to him. In the sight of the war god, helping guard these wagons
would be the same, for it would release men of yours to fight. But I will speak
to them, and I will answer that they will not break their surrender. You will
need some to keep the peasants from stealing, though.” “Two hundred:’ Phrames agreed. “We have some walking wounded
who can help.” “All right. Take two hundred; men with the worst beat up
horses and those men who are riding double, and mind the store. Harmakros, you
take three hundred and two of the four-pounders, and cross at the next ford
down. I’ll take the other four hundred and three guns and work north and east.
You might split into two columns, a hundred men and one gun, but no smaller.
There’ll be companies and parts of companies over there, trying to re-form.
Break them up. And burn the whole country out—everything that’ll catch fire and
make a smoke by daylight or a blaze at night. Any refugees, head them up the
river, give them a good scare and let them go. We want Gormoth to think we’re
across the river with three or four thousand men. By Dralm, that’ll take some
pressure off Ptosphes and Chartiphon!” He rose, and Phrames took his seat. Horses were brought, and
he and Harmakros mounted. The messenger from Sevenhills Valley sat down,
stretching his legs in front of him. He rode slowly along the line of wagons,
full of food the Nostori wouldn’t eat this winter, and would curse Gormoth for
it, and fireseed the Styphon temple-farm slaves would have to toil to replace.
Then he came to the guns, and saw one that caught his eye. It was a long brass eighteen-pounder,
on a two-wheel cart, with the long tail of the heavy timber stock supported by
a four-wheel cart. There were two more behind it, and an officer with a
ginger-brown beard sat morosely smoking a pipe on the limber-cart of the middle
one. He pulled up. “Your guns, Captain?” “They were. They’re Prince Ptosphes’s guns now, I suppose.” “They’re still yours, if you take our colors, and good pay
for the use of them. We have other enemies besides Gormoth, you know.” The captain grinned. “So I’ve heard. Well, I’ll take
Ptosphes’s colors. You’re the Lord Kalvan? Is it true that you people make your
own fireseed?” “What do you think we were shooting at you, sawdust? You
know what the Styphon stuff’s like. Try ours and see the difference.” “Well, Down Styphon, then!” They chatted for a little. The
mercenary artilleryman’s name was Alkides; his home, to the extent that any
free-captain had one, was in Agrys City, on Manhattan Island. His guns, of
which he was inordinately proud, and almost tearfully happy at being able to
keep, had been cast in Zygros City. They were very good; if Verkan could
collect a few men capable of casting guns like that, with trunnions ... “Well, go back there by that burned house, by those big
trees. You’ll find one of my officers, Count Phrames, and our Uncle Wolf there.
You’ll find a keg of something, too. Where are your men?” “Well, some were killed before we cried quits. The rest are
back with the other prisoners.” “Gather them up. Tell Count Phrames you’re to have oxen—we
have no horses to spare—and get your company and guns on the road for Hostigos Town as soon as you can. I’ll talk to you later. Good luck, Captain Alkides Or Colonel Alkides; if he was as good as he seemed to be,
maybe Brigadier-General Alkides. There were dead infantry all along the road, mostly killed
from behind. Another case of cowardice carrying its own penalty; infantry who
stood against cavalry had a chance, often a good one, but infantry who turned
tail and ran had none. He didn’t pity them a bit. It grew progressively worse as he neared the river, where
the crews of the four-pounders and the two eight-pounders were swabbing and
polishing their pieces, and dark birds rose cawing and croaking and squawking
when disturbed. Must be every crow and raven and buzzard in Hos-Harphax; he
even saw eagles. The river, horse-knee deep at the ford, was tricky; his mount
continually stumbled on armor-weighted corpses. That had been case-shot,
mostly, he thought. SO your boy did it, all by himself,” the lady history
professor was saying. Verkan Vall grinned. They were in a seminar room at the
University, their chairs facing a big map of Fourth Level Aryan-Transpacific
Hostigos, Nostor, northeastern Sask and northern Beshta. The pin-points of
light he had been shifting back and forth on it were out, now. “Didn’t I tell you he was a genius?” “Just how much genius did it take to lick a bunch of klunks
like that?” said Taigan Dreth, the outtime studies director. “The way I heard
it, they licked themselves.” “Well, considerable, to predict their errors accurately and
plan to exploit them,” argued old Professor Shalgro, the paratemporal
probability theorist. To him, it was a brilliant theoretical achievement, and
the battle was merely the experiment which had vindicated it. “I agree with
Chief’s Assistant Verkan; the man is a genius, and the fact that he was only
able to become a minor police officer on his own time-line shows how these
low-order cultures allow genius to go to waste.” “He knew the military history of his own time-line, and he
knew how to apply it on Aryan-Transpacific.” The historian wasn’t letting her
own subject be slighted. “Actually, I think Gormoth planned an excellent
campaign against people like Ptosphes and Chartiphon. If it hadn’t been for
Kalvan, he’d have won.” “Well, Chartiphon and Ptosphes fought a battle of their own
and won it, didn’t they?” “More or less.” He began punching buttons on the arm of his chair and throwing on red and blue lights. “Netzigon was supposed to wait here, at Listra-Mouth,
till Klestreus got up to here. Chartiphon began cannonading him—ordnance
engineering by Lord Kalvan—and Netzigon couldn’t take it. He attacked
prematurely.” “Why didn’t he just pull back? He had that river in front of
him. Chartiphon couldn’t have gotten his guns across that, could he?” Talgan
Dreth asked. “Oh, that wouldn’t have been honorable. Besides, he didn’t
want the mercenaries to win the war; he wanted the glory of winning it himself.” The historian laughed. “How often I’ve heard that!” she
said. “But don’t these Hostigi go in for all this honor and glory jazz too?” “Sure—till Kalvan talked them out of it. As soon as he
started making fireseed, he established a moral ascendancy. And then, the new
tactics, the new swordplay, the artillery improvements; now it’s ‘Trust Lord
Kalvan. Lord Kalvan is always right’.” “He’ll have to work at that now,” Dreth said. “He won’t dare
make any mistakes. What happened to Netzigon?” “He made three attempts to cross the river, which is a
hundred yards wide, in the face of artillery superiority. That was how he lost
most of his cavalry. Then he threw his infantry across here at Vryllos, pushed
Ptosphes back into the gap, and started a flank attack up the south bank on
Chartiphon. Ptosphes wouldn’t stay pushed; he waited till Netzigon was between
the river and the mountain, and then counter-attacked. Then Rylla took what cavalry
they had across the river, burned Netzigon’s camp, butchered some
camp-followers, and started a panic in his rear. That was when everything came
apart and the pieces began breaking up, and then the commander at Tarr-Dombra,
there, took some of his men across, burned Dyssa, and started another panic.” “It was too bad about Rylla,” the lady historian said. “Yes.”
He shrugged. “Things like that happen, in battles.” That was why Dalla was
always worried when she heard he’d been in one. “We had a couple of antigrav
conveyers in, after dark. They had to stay up to twenty thousand feet, since we
didn’t want any heavenly portents on top of everything else, but they got some
good infrared telephoto views. Big fires all over western Nostor, and around
Dyssa, and more of them, the whole countryside, in the southwest—that was
Kalvan and Harmakros. And a lot of hasty fortifying and entrenching around Nostor Town; Gormoth seems to think he’s going to have to fight the next battle there.” “Oh, that’s ridiculous,” Talgan Dreth said. “It’ll be a
couple of weeks before Kalvan has his army in shape for an offensive, after
those battles. And how much powder do you think he has left?” “Six or seven tons. That came in just before I came here,
from our people in Hostigos Town. After he crossed the river last evening,
Harmakros captured a big wagon train. A Styphon’s House archpriest, on his way
to Nostor Town, with four tons of fireseed and seven thousand ounces of gold.
Subsidies for Gormoth.” “Now that’s what’s called making war support war,” the history
professor commented. “And another ton or so in Mistress’s supply train, and the
pay-chests for his army,” he added. “Hostigos came out of this all right.” “Wait till I get this all worked up,” old Professor Shalgro
was gloating. “Absolute proof of the decisive effect of one superior individual
on the course of history. Kalthar Morth and his Historical Inevitability, and
his vast, impersonal social forces, indeed!” “Well, what are we going to do now?” Talgan Dreth asked. “We
have the study-team organized, the five men who’ll be the brass-founders, and
the three girls who’ll be the pattern-makers.” “Well, we have horseback travel-time between Zygros City and Hostigos Town to allow for. They’ve been familiarizing on adjoining near-identical
time-lines? Send them all to Zygros City on the Kalvan time-line. I have a
couple of Paracops planted there already. Let them make local contacts and call
attention to themselves. Dalla and I will do the same. Then we won’t have to
worry about some traveler from Zygros showing up in Hostigos Town and punching holes in our stories.” “How about conveyer-heads?” He shook his head. “You’ll have
to have your team established in Hostigos Town before they can put one in
there. You have a time-line for operations on Fifth Level, of course; work from
there. You’ll have to get onto Kalvan timeline by an antigrav conveyer drop.” “Horses and all?” “Horses and all. That will be mounts for myself and Dalla,
for two Paracops who will pose as hired guards, and for your team. Seventeen saddle
horses. And twelve pack horses, with loads of Zygrosi and Grefftscharr wares.
Lord Kalvan’s friend Verkan is a trader; traders have to have merchandise.” Talgan Dreth whistled softly. “That’ll mean at least two hundred-foot
conveyers. Where had you thought of landing them?” “Up here.” He twisted the dial; the map slid down until he
had the Southern corner of the Princedom of Nyklos, north and west of Hostigos.
“About here,” he said, making a spot of light. GORMOTH of Nostor stood inside the doorway of his presence-chamber,
his arm over the shoulder of the newly ennobled Duke Skranga, and together they
surveyed the crowd within. Netzigon, who had come stumbling in after midnight with all his guns and half his army lost and the rest a frightened rabble. His
cousin, Count Pheblon, his ransom still unpaid; he’d hoped Ptosphes wouldn’t be
alive to be paid by the moon’s end. The nobles of the Elite Guard, who had
attended him here at Tarr-Hostigos, waiting for news of victory until news of
defeat had come in. Three of Mistress’s officers, who had broken through at
Narza Gap to bring it, and a few more who had gotten over Marax Ford and back
to Nostor alive. And Vyblos, the high priest, and with him the Archpriest
Krastokles from Styphon’s House Upon Earth, and his black-armored
guard-captain, who had arrived at dawn with half a dozen troopers on
broken-down horses. He hated the sight of all of them, and the two priests most
of all. He cut short their greetings. “This is Duke Skranga,” he told them. “Next to me, he is
first nobleman of Nostor. He takes precedence over all here.” The faces in
front of his went slack with amazement, then stiffened angrily. A mutter of
protest was hushed almost as soon as it began. “Do any object? Then it had better
be one who’s served me at least half as well as this man, and I see none such
here.” He turned to Vyblos. “What do you want, and who’s this with you?” “His Sanctity, the Archpriest Krastokles, sent by His
Divinity, Styphon’s Voice,” Krastokles began furiously. “And how has he fared
since entering your realm? Set upon by Hostigi heathens, hounded like a deer
through the hills, his people murdered, his wagons pillaged ... “His wagons, you say? Well, great Galzar, what of my gold
and my fireseed, sent me by Styphon’s Voice in his care, and look how he’s
cared for them. he and Styphon between them.” “You blaspheme!” Archpriest Krastokles cried. “And it was
not your gold and fireseed, but the god’s, to be given you in the god’s service
at my discretion.” “And lost at your indiscretion. You witless fool in a yellow
bed gown, didn’t you know a battle when you were riding into one?” “Sacrilege!” A dozen voices said it at once: Vyblos’s and
Krastokles’s, and, among others, Netzigon’s. By the Mace of Galzar, now didn’t
he have a fine right to open his mouth here? Anger almost sickened him; in a
moment he was afraid that he would vomit pure bile. He strode to Netzigon, snatching
the golden chief-captain’s chain from over his shoulder. “All the gods curse you, and all the devils take you! I told
you to wait at Listra-Mouth for Klestreus, not to throw your army away along
with his. By Galzar, I ought to have you flayed alive!” He struck Netzigon
across the face with the chain. “Out of my sight, while you’re still alive!”
Then he turned to Vyblos. “You, too—out of here, and take the Archpimp
Krastokles with you. Go to your temple and stay there; return here either at my
bidding or at your peril.” He watched them leave: Netzigon shaken, the black-armored
captain stolidly, Vyblos and Krastokles stiff with rage. A few of Netzigon’s
officers and gentlemen attended him; the rest drew back from them as though
from contamination. He went to Pheblon and threw the golden chain over his
head. “I still don’t thank you for losing me Tarr-Dombra, but that’s
a handful of dried peas to what that son of a horse-leech’s daughter cost me.
Now, Galzar help you, you’ll have to make an army out of what he left you.” “My ransom still needs paying,” Phebion reminded him. “Till
that’s done, I’m oath-bound to Prince Ptosphes and Lord Kalvan.” “So you are; twenty thousand ounces of silver for you and
those taken with you. You know where to find it? I don’t.” “I do, Prince,” Duke Skranga said. “There’s ten times that
in the treasure vault of the temple of Styphon.” COLONEL Netzigon waited until he was outside to touch a
handkerchief to his check. It was bleeding freely, and had dripped onto his
doublet. Now, by Styphon, the cleaning of that would cost Gormoth dear! It wasn’t his fault, anyhow. Great Styphon, was he to sit
still while Chartiphon cannonaded him from across the river? And how had he
known what sort of cannon Chartiphon had? The Hostigi really must be making
fireseed; he hadn’t believed that until yesterday. Three times he had sent his cavalry
splashing into the river, and three times the guns had murdered them. He’d
never seen guns throw small-shot so far. So then he’d sent his infantry over at
Vryllos, and driven those with Prince Ptosphes back into the gap, and then,
while he was driving against Chartiphon’s right and the day had seemed won,
Ptosphes had brought his beaten soldiers back, fighting like panthers, and that
she-devil daughter of his—he’d heard, later, that she’d been killed. Styphon
bless whoever did it! Then everything had gone down in bloody ruin. Driven back
across the river again, the Hostigi pouring after them, and then riders from
Nostor Town with word that Mistress’s army was beaten in East Hostigos and
orders to fall back, and they had retreated, with the whole country burning
around them, fire and smoke at Dyssa and fugitives screaming that a thousand
Hostigi were pouring out of Dombra Gap, and his worthless peasant levies
throwing away their weapons and taking to their heels.... Sorcery, that’s what it was! That cursed foreign wizard, Kalvan!
Someone touched his arm. His hand flew to his poignard, and then he saw that it
was the archpriest’s guard-captain. He relaxed. “You were ill-used, Count
Netzigon,” the man in black armor said. “By Styphon, it ired me to see a brave
soldier used like a thievish serf!” “His Sanctity wasn’t reverently treated, nor His Holiness Vyblos.
It shocked me to hear such words to the consecrated of Styphon” he replied. “What
good can come to a realm whose Prince so insults the anointed of the god?” “Ah!” The captain smiled. “It’s a pleasure, in such a court,
to hear such piety. Now, Count Netzigon, if you could have a few words with His
Sanctity—this evening, say, at the temple. Come after dark, cloaked and in
commoner’s dress.” KALVAN’S horse stumbled, jerking him awake. Behind him,
fifty-odd riders clattered, many of them more or less wounded, none seriously.
There had been a score on horse litters, or barely able to cling to their
mounts, but they had been left at the base hospital in Sevenhills Valley. He couldn’t remember how long it had been since he had had his clothes, or even all his
armor, off, except for quarter-hour pauses, now and then, he had been in the
saddle since daylight, when he had recrossed the Athan with the smoke of southern
Nostor behind him. That had been as bad as Phil Sheridan in the Shenandoah, but
every time some peasant’s thatching blazed up, he knew it was burning another
hole in Prince Gormoth’s morale. He’d felt better about it today, after
following the mile-wide swath of devastation west from, Marax Ford and seeing
it stop, with dramatic suddenness, at Fitra. And the story Harmakros’s stragglers had told him: fifteen
eight-horse wagons, four tons of fireseed, seven thousand ounces of gold—that
would come to about $150,000—two wagon-loads of armor, three hundred new
calivers, six hundred pistols, and all of a Styphon’s House archpriest’s
personal baggage and vestments. He was sorry the archpriest had gotten away;
his execution would have been an interesting feature of the victory
celebration. He had passed prisoners marching east, all mercenaries,
under arms and in good spirits, at least one pike or lance in each detachment
sporting a red and blue pennon. Most of them shouted, “Down Styphon!” as he
rode by. The back road from Fitra to Sevenhills Valley hadn’t been so bad, but
now, in what he had formerly known as Nittany Valley, traffic had become heavy
again. Militia from Listra-Mouth and Vryllos, marching like regulars, which was
what they were, now. Trains of carts and farm-wagons, piled with sacks and
barrels or loaded with cabbages and potatoes, or with furniture that must have
come from manor-houses. Droves of cattle, and droves of prisoners, not armed,
not in good spirits, and under heavy guard: Nostori subjects headed for
labor-camps and intensive Styphon-is-a-fake indoctrination. And guns, on
four-wheel carts, that he couldn’t remember from any Hostigi ordnance
inventory. Hostigos Town was in an all-time record traffic-jam. He ran
into Alkides, the mercenary artilleryman, with a strip of blue cloth that
seemed to have come from a bedspread and a strip of red from the bottom of a
petticoat. He was magnificently drunk. “Lord Kalvan!” he shouted. “I saw your guns; they’re wonderful!
What god taught you that? Can you mount mine that way?” “I think so. I’ll have a talk with you about it tomorrow, if
I’m awake then.” Harmakros was on his horse in the middle of the square, his
rapier drawn, trying to untangle the chaos of wagons and carts and riders.
Kalvan shouted to him, above the din: “What the Styphon—when did we start using three-star generals
for traffic-cops?” Military Police; organize soonest. Mercenaries, tough ones. “Just till I get a detail here. I sent all my own crowd up
with the wagons.” He started to say something else, then stopped short and
asked, “Did you hear about Rylla?” “No, for Dralm’s sake.” He went cold under his scalding armor.
“What about her?” “Well, she was hurt—late yesterday, across the river. Her
horse threw her; I only know what I got from one of Chartiphon’s aides. She’s
at the castle.” “Thanks; I’ll see you there later.” He swung his horse about
and plowed into the crowd, drawing his sword and yelling for way. People
crowded aside, and yelled his name to others beyond. Outside town, the road was
choked with troops, and with things too big and slow to get out of the way; he
rode mostly in the ditch. The wagons Harmakros had captured, great
canvas-covered things like Conestogas, were going up to Tarr-Hostigos. He
thought he’d never get past them: there always seemed to be more ahead. Finally
he got through the outer gate and galloped across the bailey. Throwing his reins to somebody at the foot of the keep
steps, he stumbled up them and through the door. From the Staff Room, he heard
laughing voices, Ptosphes’s among them. For an instant he was horrified, then
reassured; if Ptosphes could laugh, it couldn’t be too bad. He was mobbed as soon as he entered, everybody shouting his
name and thumping him on the back; he was glad for his armor. Chartiphon,
Ptosphes, Xentos, Uncle Wolf, most of the General Staff crowd. And a dozen
officers he had never seen before, all wearing new red and blue scarves.
Ptosphes was presenting a big man with a florid face and gray hair and beard. “Kalvan, this is General Klestreus, late of Prince Gormoth’s
service, now of ours.” “And most happy at the change, Lord Kalvan,” the mercenary
said. “An honor to have been conquered by such a soldier.” “Our honor, General. You fought most brilliantly and valiantly.”
He’d fought like a damned imbecile, and gotten his army chopped to hamburger,
but let’s be polite. “I’m sorry I hadn’t time to meet you earlier, but things
were a trifle pressing.” He turned to Ptosphes. “Rylla? What happened to her?” “Why, she broke a leg,” Ptosphes began. That frightened him.
People had died from broken legs in his own world when the medical art was at
least equal to its here-and-now level. They used to amputate.... “She’s in no danger, Kalvan,” Xentos assured him. “None of
us would be here if she were. Brother Mytron is with her. If she’s awake, she’ll
want to see you.” “I’ll go to her at once.” He clinked goblets with the
mercenary and drank. It was winter-wine, aged quite a few winters, and evidently
frozen down in a very cold one. It warmed and relaxed him. “To your good
fortune in Hostigos, General. Your capture,” he lied, “was Gormoth’s heaviest
loss, yesterday, and our greatest gain.” He set down the goblet, took off his
helmet and helmet-coif and detached his sword from his belt; then picked up the
wine again and finished it. “If you’ll excuse me now, gentlemen. I’ll see you
all later.” Rylla, whom he had expected to find gasping her last, sat
propped against a pile of pillows in bed, smoking one of her silver-inlaid
redstone pipes. She was wrapped in a loose gown, and her left leg, extended,
was buckled into a bulky encasement of leather-no plaster casts, here-and-now.
Mytron, the chubby and cherubic physician-priest, was with her, and so were
several of the women who functioned as midwives, hexes, herb-boilers and
general nurses. Rylla saw him first, and her face lighted like a sunrise. “Hi, Kalvan! Are you all right? When did you get in? How was
the battle?” “Rylla, darling!” The women sprayed away from in front of
him like grasshoppers. She flung her arms around his neck as he bent over her;
he thought Mytron stepped in to relieve her of her pipe. “What happened to you?” “You stopped in the Staff Room,” she told him, between
kisses. “I smell it on you.” “How is she, Mytron?” he asked over his shoulder. “Oh, a
beautiful fracture, Lord Kalvan!” the doctor enthused. “One of the priests of
Galzar set it; he did an excellent job.” “Gave me a fine lump on the head, too,” Rylla added. “Why,
my horse fell on me. We were burning a Nostori village, and he stepped on a hot
ember. He almost threw me, and then fell over something, and down we both went,
the horse on top of me. I was carrying an extra pair of pistols in my boots and
I fell on one of them. The horse broke a leg, too. They shot him. I guess they
thought I was worth making an effort about.... Kalvan! Never hug a girl so
tight when you’re wearing mail sleeves!” “It’s nothing to worry about, Lord Kalvan,” Mytron was saying.
“Not the first time for this young lady, either. She broke an ankle when she
was eight, trying to climb a cliff to rob a hawk’s nest, and a shoulder when
she was twelve, firing a musket-charge out of a carbine.” “And now,” Rylla was saying, “it’ll be a moon, at least,
till we can have the wedding.” “We could have it right now, sweetheart...” “I will not be married in my bedroom,” she declared. “People
make jokes about girls who have to do that. And I will not limp to the temple of Dralm on crutches.” “All right, Princess; it’s your wedding.” He hoped the war
with Sask that everybody expected would be out of the way before she was able
to ride again. He’d have a word with Mytron about that. “Somebody,” he said, “go
and have a hot bath brought to my rooms, and tell me when it’s ready. I must
stink to the very throne of Dralm.” “I was wondering when you were going to mention that, darling,”
Rylla said. HE did speak to Mytron the next day, catching him between a
visit to Rylla and his work at the main army hospital in Hostigos Town. Mytron thought, at first, that he was impatient for Rylla’s full recovery and the
wedding. “Oh, Lord Kalvan, quite soon. You know, of course, that broken
bones take time to knit, but our Rylla is young and young bones knit fast.
Inside a moon, I’d say.” “Well, Mytron; you know we’re going to have to fight Sarrask
of Sask now. When war with Sask comes, I’d be most happy if she were still in
bed, with that thing on her leg. So would Prince Ptosphes.” “Yes. Our Rylla, shall we say, is a trifle heedless of her
own safety.” That was a generous five hundred percent understatement. Mytron
put on his professional portentous frown. “You must understand, of course, that
it is not good for any patient to be kept too long in bed. She should be able
to get up and walk about as soon as possible. And wearing the splints is not
pleasant.” He knew that. It wasn’t any light plaster cast; it was a frame
of heavily padded steel splints, forged from old sword-blades, buckled on with
a case of saddle leather. It weighed about ten pounds, and it would be even
more confining and hotter than his armor. But the next thing she broke might be
her neck, or she might stop a two-ounce musket ball, and then his luck would
run out along with hers. His mind shied like a frightened horse from the
thought of no more happy, lovely Rylla. “I’ll do my best, Lord Kalvan, but I can’t keep her in bed
forever.” War with Sask wouldn’t wait that long, either. Xentos was in contact
with the priests of Dralm in Sask Town; they reported that the news of Fitra
and Listra-Mouth had stunned Sarrask’s court briefly, then thrown Sarrask into
a furor of activity. More mercenaries were being hired, and some sort of
negotiations, the exact nature undetermined, were going on between Sarrask and
Balthar of Beshta. A Styphon archpriest, one Zothnes, had arrived in Sask Town, with a train of wagons as big as the one taken by Harmakros in southern Nostor. A priest of Galzar arrived at Tarr-Hostigos from Nostor Town
with an escort and a thousand ounces of gold-gold and silver seemed to be on a
twenty-to-one ratio, here-and-now—to pay the ransoms of Count Pheblon and the
other gentlemen taken at Tarr-Dombra. The news was that Phebion was now Gormoth’s
chief-captain and was trying to reorganize what was left of the Nostori army.
Gormoth would be back in the ring for another bout in the spring; that meant
that Sarrask must be dealt with this fall. He was having his own reorganization problems. They’d taken
heavier losses than he’d liked, mostly the poorly armed and partly trained
militia who’d fought at Listra-Mouth. On the other hand, they’d acquired over a
thousand mercenary infantry and better than two thousand cavalry. They were a
headache; they’d have to be integrated into the army of Hostigos. He didn’t
want any mercenary troops at all. Mercenary soldiers, as individual soldiers,
were as good as any; in fact, any regular army man was simply a mercenary in
the service of his own country. But mercenary troops, as troops, weren’t good
at all. They didn’t fight for the Prince who hired them; they fought for their
own captains, who paid them from what the Prince had paid him. Mercenary
captains, he could hear his history professor quoting Machiavelli, are either
very capable men or not. If they are, you cannot rely upon them, for they will
always aspire to their own greatness, either by oppressing you, their master,
or by oppressing others against your intentions; but if the captain is not an
able man, he will generally ruin you. Most of the captains captured in East Hostigos seemed to be quite able. Klestreus was one exception. As a battle commander, he was
an incompetent—Fitra had proven that. He wasn’t a soldier at all; he was a
military businessman. He could handle sales, promotion and public relations,
but not management and operations. That was how he’d gotten elected captain-general
in Nostor. But he did have a wide knowledge of political situations, knew most
of the Princes of Hos-Harphax, and knew the composition and command of all the
mercenary outfits in the Five Kingdoms. So Kalvan appointed him Chief of
Intelligence, where he could really be of use, and wouldn’t be able to lead
troops in combat. He was quite honored and flattered. Nothing could be done about breaking up the mercenary cavalry
companies, numbering over two thousand men. The mercenary infantry, however,
were broken up and put into militia companies, one mercenary to three
militiamen. This almost started a mutiny, until he convinced them that they
were being given posts of responsibility and the rank of private first class,
with badges. The sergeants were all collected into a quickie OCS company, to
emerge second lieutenants. Alkides, the artilleryman, was made captain of
Tarr-Esdreth-of-Hostigos, and sent there with his three long brass eighteens,
now fitted with trunnions on welded-on iron bands and mounted on proper
field-carriages. Tarr-Esdreth-of-Hostigos was a sensitive spot. The
Sask-Hostigos border followed the east branch of the Juniata, the Besh, and ran
through Esdreth Gap. Two castles dominated the gap, one on either side; until
one or the other could be taken, the gap would be closed both to Hostigos and Sask. TEN days after Fitra and Listra-Mouth, an unattached mercenary,
wearing the white and black colors of unemployment, put in an appearance at Tarr-Hostigos.
There were many such; they were equivalent to the bravos of Renaissance Italy.
This one produced letters of credence, which Xentos found authentic, from
Prince Armanes of Nyklos. His client., he said, wanted to buy fireseed, but
wished to do so secretly; he was not ready for an open break with Styphon’s
House. When asked if he would trade cavalry and artillery horses, the
unofficial emissary instantly agreed. Well, that was a beginning. SESKLOS rested his elbows on the table and palmed his smarting
eyes. Around him, pens scratched on parchment and tablets clattered. He longed
for the cool quiet and privacy of the Innermost Circle, but there was so much
to do, and he must order the doing of all of it himself. There were frantic letters from everywhere; the one before
him was from the Archpriest of the Great Temple of Hos-Agrys. News of Gormoth’s
defeat was spreading rapidly, and with it rumors that Prince Ptosphes, who had
defeated him, was making his own fireseed. Agents-inquisitory were reporting
that the ingredients, and even the proportions, were being bandied about in
taverns; it would take an army of assassins to deal with everybody who seemed
to know them. Even a pestilence couldn’t wipe out everybody who knew at least
some of the secret. Oddly, it was even better known in far northern Zygros City than elsewhere. And they all wanted him to tell them how to check the spread of
such knowledge. Curse and blast them! Did they have to ask him about anything?
Couldn’t any of them think for themselves? He opened his eyes. Why, admit it; better that than try to
deny what would soon be proven everywhere. Let everyone in Styphon’s House,
even the lay Guardsmen, know the full secret, but for those outside, and for
the few believers within, insist that special rites and prayers, known only to
the yellow-robes of the Inner Circle, were essential. But why? Soon it would be known that fireseed made by unconsecrated
hands would fire just as well, and to judge from Prince Ptosphes’s sample, with
more force and less fouling. Well, there were devils, malignant spirits of the
netherworld; everybody knew that. He smiled, imagining them thronging about—scrawny
bodies, bat-wings, bristling beards, clawed and fanged. In fireseed, there were
many—they made it explode—and only the prayers of anointed priests of Styphon
could slay them. If fireseed were made without the aid of Styphon, the devils
would be set free as soon as the fireseed burned, to work manifold evils and
frights in the world of men. And, of course, the curse of Styphon was upon any
who presumed profanely to make fireseed. But Ptosphes had made fireseed, and he had pillaged a
temple-farm, and put consecrated priests cruelly to death, and then he had
defeated the army of Gormoth, which had marched under Styphon’s blessing. How
about that? But wait! Gormoth himself was no better than Ptosphes. He
too had made fireseed—both Krastokles and Vyblos were positive of that. And
Gormoth had blasphemed Styphon and despitefully used a holy archpriest, and
forced a hundred thousand ounces of silver out of the Nostor temple, at as
close to pistol-point as made no difference. To be sure, most of that had
happened after the day of battle, but outside Nostor who knew that? Gormoth, he
decided, had suffered defeat for his sins. He was smiling happily now, wondering why he hadn’t thought
of that before. And what was known in Nostor would matter little more than what
was known in Hostigos before long. Both would have to be destroyed utterly. He wondered how many more Princedoms he would have to doom
to fire and sword. Not too many—a few sharp examples at the start ought to be
enough. Maybe just Hostigos and Nostor, and Sarrask of Sask and Balthar of
Beshta could attend to both. An idea began to seep up in his mind, and he
smiled. Balthar’s brother, Balthames, wanted to be a Prince,
himself; it would take only a poisoned cup or a hired dagger to make him Prince
of Beshta, and Balthar knew it. He should have had Balthames killed long ago.
Well, suppose Sarrask gave up a little corner of Sask, and Balthar gave up a
similar piece of Beshta, adjoining and both bordering on western Hostigos, to
form a new Princedom; call it Sashta. Then, to that could be added all western
Hostigos south of the mountains; why, that would be a nice little Princedom for
any young couple. He smiled benevolently. And the father of the bride and the
brother of the groom could compensate themselves for their generosity,
respectively, with the Listra Valley, rich in iron, and East Hostigos, manured
with the blood of Gormoth’s mercenaries. This must be done immediately, before winter put an end to
campaigning. Then, in the spring, Sarrask, Balthar and Balthames could hurl
their combined strength against Nostor. And something would have to be done about fireseed making in
the meantime. The revelation about the devils would have to be made public
everywhere. And call a Great Council of Archpriests, here at Balph—no, at Harphax City: let Great King Kaiphranos bear the costs—to consider how they might best meet
the threat of profane fireseed making, and to plan for the future. It could be,
he thought hopefully, that Styphon’s House might yet survive. VERKAN Vall watched Dalla pack tobacco into a little
cane-stemmed pipe. Dalla preferred cigarettes, but on Aryan-Transpacific they
didn’t exist. No paper; it was a wonder Kalvan wasn’t trying to do something
about that. Behind them, something thumped heavily; voices echoed in the barn-like
pre-fab shed. Everything here was temporary—until a conveyor-head could be established
at Hostigos Town, nobody knew where anything should go at Fifth Level Hostigos
Equivalent. Talgan Dreth, sitting on the ed e of a packing case with a
clipboard on his knee, looked up, then saw what Dalla was doing and watched as
she got out her tinderbox, struck sparks, blew the tinder aflame, lit a pine
splinter, and was puffing smoke, all in fifteen seconds. “Been doing that all your life,” he grinned. “Why, of course,” Dalla deadpanned. “Only savages have to
rub sticks together, and only sorcerers can make fire without flint and steel.” “You checked the pack-loads, Vall?” he asked. “Yes. Everything perfectly in order, all Kalvan time-line
stuff. I liked that touch of the deer and bear skins. We’d have to shoot for
the pot, on the way south, and no trader would throw away saleable skins.” Talgan Dreth almost. managed not to show how pleased he was.
No matter how many outtime operations he’d run, a back-pat from the Paratime
Police still felt good. “Well, then we make the drop tonight,” he said. “I had a reconnaissance
crew checking it on some adjoining time-lines, and we gave it a looking over on
the target time-line last night. You’ll go in about fifteen miles east of the
Hostigos-Nyklos road.” “That’s all right. They’re hauling powder to Nyklos and bringing
back horses. That road’s being patrolled by Harmakros’s cavalry. We make camp
fifteen miles off the road and start around sunrise tomorrow; we ought to run
into a Hostigi patrol before noon.” “Well, you’re not going to get into any more battles, are
you?” Dalla asked. “There won’t be any more battles,” Talgan Dreth told her. “Kalvan
won the war while Vall was away.” “He won a war. How long it’ll stay won I don’t know, and neither
does he. But the war won’t be over till he’s destroyed Styphon’s House. That is
going to take a little doing.” “He’s destroyed it already,” Talgan Dreth said. “He
destroyed it by proving that anybody can make fireseed. Why, it was doomed from
the start. It was founded on a secret, and no secret can be kept forever.” “Not even the Paratime Secret?” Dalla asked innocently. “Oh,
Dalla!” the University man cried. “You know that’s different. You can’t compare
that with a trick like mixing saltpeter and charcoal and sulfur,” THE late morning sun baked the open horse market; heat and
dust and dazzle, and flies at which the horses switched constantly. It was hot
for so late in the year; as nearly as Kalvan could estimate it from the way the
leaves were coloring, it would be mid-October. They had two calendars
here-and-now—lunar, for daily reckoning, and solar, to keep track of the seasons—and
they never matched. Calendar reform; do something about. He seemed to recall
having made that mental memo before. And he was sweat-sticky under his armor, forty pounds of it—quilted
arming-doublet with mail sleeves and skirt, quilted helmet-coif with mail
throat-guard, plate cuirass, plate tassets down his thighs into his jackboots,
high combed helmet, rapier and poignard. It wasn’t the weight—he’d carried
more, and less well distributed, as a combat infantryman in Korea—but he
questioned if anyone ever became inured to the heat and lack of body
ventilation. Like a rich armor worn in heat of day, That scalds with safety. Shakespeare
had never worn it himself except on the stage, he’d known plenty of men who
had, like that little Welsh pepperpot Williams, who was the original of
Fluellen. “Not a bad one in the lot!” Harmakros, riding beside him,
was enthusing. “And a dozen big ones that’ll do for gun-horses.” And fifty-odd cavalry horses; that meant, at second or third
hand, that many more infantrymen could get into line when and where needed, in
heavier armor. And another lot coming in tonight; he wondered where Prince
Armanes was getting all the horses he was trading for bootleg fireseed. He
turned in his saddle to say something about it to Harmakros. As he did, something hit him a clanging blow on the breastplate,
knocking him almost breathless and nearly unhorsing him. He thought he heard
the shot; he did hear the second, while he was clinging to his seat and clawing
a pistol from his saddlebow. Across the alley, he could see two puffs of smoke
drifting from back upstairs windows of one of a row of lodginghouse-wineshop-brothels.
Harmakros was yelling; so was everybody else. There was a kicking, neighing
confusion among the horses. His chest aching, he lifted the pistol and fired
into one of the windows. Harmakros was filing, too, and behind him an arquebus
roared. Hoping he didn’t have another broken rib, he bolstered the pistol and
drew its mate. “Come on!” he yelled. “And Dralm-dammit, take them alive! We
want them for questioning.” Torture. He hated that, had hated even the relatively mild
third-degree methods of his own world, but when you need the truth about
something, you get it, no matter how. Men were throwing poles out of the corral
gate; he sailed past them, put his horse over the fence across the alley, and
landed in the littered backyard beyond. Harmakros took the fence behind him,
with a Mobile Force arquebusier and a couple of horse-wranglers with clubs
following on foot. He decided to stay in the saddle; till he saw how much
damage the bullet had done, he wasn’t sure how much good he’d be on foot.
Harmakros Rung himself from his horse, shoved a half-clad slattern out of the
way, drew his sword, and went through the back door into the house, the others
behind him. Men were yelling, women screaming; there was commotion everywhere
except behind the two windows from which the shots had come. A girl was
bleating that Lord Kalvan had been murdered. Looking right at him, too. He squeezed his horse between houses to the street, where a
mob was forming. Most of them were pushing through the front door and into the
house; from within came yells, screams, and sounds of breakage. Hostigos Town would be the better for one dive less if they kept at that. Up the street, another mob was coagulating; he heard savage
shouts of “Kill! Kill!” Cursing, he bolstered the pistol and drew his rapier,
knocking a man down as he spurred forward, shouting his own name and demanding
way. The horse was brave and willing, but untrained for riot work; he wished he
had a State Police horse under him, and a yard of locust riot-stick instead of
this sword. Then the combination provost-marshal and police chief of Hostigos Town arrived, with a dozen of his men laying about them with arquebus-butts.
Together they rescued two men, bloodied, half-conscious and almost ripped
naked. The mob fell back, still yelling for blood. He had time, now, to check on himself. There was a glancing
dent on the right side of his breastplate, and a lead-splash, but the plate was
unbroken. That scalds with safety—Shakespeare could say that again. Good thing
it hadn’t been one of those great armor-smashing brutes of 8-bore muskets. He
drew the empty pistol and started to reload it, and then he saw Harmakros
approaching on foot, his rapier drawn and accompanied by a couple of soldiers,
herding a pot-bellied, stubble-chinned man in a dirty shirt, a blowsy woman
with “madam” stamped all over her, and two girls in sleazy finery. “That’s them! That’s them!” the man began, as they came up,
and the woman was saying, “Dralm smite me dead, I don’t know nothing about it! “Take these two to Tarr-Hostigos,” Kalvan directed the provost-marshal.
“They are to be questioned rigorously.” Euphemistic police-ese; another
universal constant. “This lot, too. Get their statements, but don’t harm them
unless you catch them trying to lie to you.” “You’d better go to Tarr-Hostigos yourself, and let Mytron
look at that,” Harmakros told him. “I think it’s only a bruise; plate isn’t broken. If it’s
another broken rib, my back-and-breast’ll hold it for awhile. First we go to
the temple of Dralm and give thanks for my escape. Temple of Galzar, too.” He’d been building a reputation for piety since the night of his appearance, when
he’d bowed down to those three graven images in the peasant’s cottage; not
doing that would be out of character, now. “And we go slowly, and roundabout.
Let as many people see me as possible. We don’t want it all over Hostigos that
I’ve been killed.” AS a child, he had heard his righteous Ulster Scots father
speak scornfully of smoke-filled-room politics and boudoir diplomacy. The Rev.
Alexander Morrison should have seen this—it was both, and for good measure, two
real idolatrous heathen priests were sitting in on it. They were in Rylla’s
bedroom because it was easier for the rest of Prince Ptosphes’s Privy Council
to gather there than to carry her elsewhere, they were all smoking, and because
the October nights were as chilly as the days were hot, the windows were all
closed. Rylla’s usually laughing eyes were clouded with anxiety. “They
could have killed you, Kalvan.” She’d said that before. She was quite right,
too. He shrugged. “A splash on my breastplate, and a big black-and-blue place
on me. The other shot killed a horse; I’m really provoked about that.” “Well, what’s being done with them?” she demanded. “They
were questioned,” her father said distastefully. He didn’t like using torture,
either. “They confessed. Guardsmen of the Temple—that’s to say, kept cutthroats
of Styphon’s House—sent from Sask Town by Archpriest Zothnes, with Prince
Sarrask’s knowledge. They told us there’s a price of five hundred ounces gold
on Kalvan’s head, and as much on mine. Tomorrow,” he added, “they will be beheaded
in the town square.” “Then it’s war with Sask.” She looked down at the saddler’s
masterpiece on her leg. “I hope I’m out of this before it starts.” Not between him and Mytron she wouldn’t; Kalvan set his mind
at rest on that. “War with Sask means war with Beshta,” Chartiphon said
sourly. “And together they outnumber us five to two.” “Then don’t fight them together,” Harmakros said. “We can
smash either of them alone. Let’s do that, Sask first.” “Must we always fight?” Xentos implored. “Can we never have
peace?” Xentos was a priest of Dralm, and Dralm was a god of peace, and in his
secular capacity as Chancellor Xentos regarded war as an evidence of bad
statesmanship. Maybe so, but statesmanship was operating on credit, and sooner
or later your credit ran out and you had to pay off in hard money or get sold
out. Ptosphes saw it that way, too. “Not with neighbors like
Sarrask of Sask and Balthar of Beshta we can’t,” he told Xentos. “And we’ll
have Gormoth of Nostor to fight again in the Spring, you know that. If we haven’t
knocked Sask and Beshta out by then, it’ll be the end of us.” The other heathen priest, alias Uncle Wolf, concurred. As
usual, he had put his wolfskin vestments aside; and as usual, he was nursing a
goblet, and playing with one of the kittens who made Rylla’s room their
headquarters. “You have three enemies,” he said. You, not we; priests of
Galzar advised, but they never took sides. “Alone, you can destroy each of
them; together, they will destroy you.” And after they had beaten all three, what then? Hostigos was
too small to stand alone. Hostigos, dominating Sask and Beshta, with Nostor
beaten and Nyklos allied, could, but then there would be Great King Kaiphranos,
and back of him, back of everything, Styphon’s House. So it would have to be an empire. He’d reached that
conclusion long ago. Klestreus cleared his throat. “If we fight Balthar first,
Sarrask of Sask will hold to his alliance and deem it an attack on him,” he
pronounced. “He wants war with Hostigos anyhow. But if we attack Sask, Balthar will vacillate, and take counsel of his doubts and fears, and consult his
soothsayers, whom we are bribing, and do nothing until it is too late. I know
them both.” He drained his goblet, refilled it, and continued: “Balthar of Beshta is the most cowardly, and the most
miserly, and the most suspicious, and the most treacherous Prince in the world.
I served him, once, and Galzar keep me from another like service. He goes about
in an old black gown that wouldn’t make a good dust-clout, all hung over with
wizards’ amulets. His palace looks like a pawnshop, and you can’t go three lance-lengths
anywhere in it without having to shove some impudent charlatan of a soothsayer
out of your way. He sees murderers in every shadow, and a plot against him
whenever three gentlemen stop to give each other good day.” He drank some more, as though to wash the taste out of his
mouth. “And Sarrask of Sask’s a vanity-swollen fool who thinks with
his fists and his belly. By Galzar, I’ve known Great Kings who hadn’t half his
arrogance. He’s in debt to Styphon’s House beyond belief, and the money all
gone for pageants and feasts and silvered armor for his guards and jewels for
his light-o’-loves, and the only way he can get quittance is by conquering
Hostigos for them.” “And his daughter’s marrying Balthar’s brother,” Rylla
added. “They’re both getting what they deserve. The Princess Amnita likes
cavalry troopers, and Duke Balthames likes boys.” And he, and all of them, knew what was back of that marriage—this
new Princedom of Sashta that there was talk of, to be the springboard for
conquest and partition of Hostigos, and when that was out of the way, a
concerted attack on Nostor. Since Gormoth had started making his own fireseed,
Styphon’s House wanted him destroyed, too. It all came back to Styphon§ House. “If we smash Sask now, and take over some of these mercenaries
Sarrask’s been hiring on Styphon’s expense-account, we might frighten Balthar
into good behavior without having to fight him.” He didn’t really believe that,
but Xentos brightened a little. Ptosphes puffed thoughtfully at his pipe. “If we could get
our hands on young Balthames,” he said, “we could depose Balthar and put
Balthames on the throne. I think we could control him.” Xentos was delighted. He realized that they’d have to fight Sask, but this looked like a bloodless—well, almost—way of conquering Beshta. “Balthames would be willing,” he said eagerly. “We could
make a secret compact with him, and loan him, say, two thousand mercenaries,
and all the Beshtan army and all the better nobles would join him.” “No, Xentos. We do not want to help Balthames take his
brother’s throne,” Kalvan said. “We want to depose Balthar ourselves, and then
make Balthames do homage to Ptosphes for it. And if we beat Sarrask badly
enough, we might depose him and make him do homage for Sask.” That was something Xentos seemed not to have thought of. Before
he could speak, Ptosphes was saying, decisively “Whatever we do, we fight Sarrask now; beat him before that
old throttle-purse of a Balthar can send him aid.” Ptosphes, too, wanted war now, before Rylla could mount a
horse again. Kalvan wondered how many decisions of state, back through the
history he had studied, had been made for reasons like that. “I’ll make sure of that,” Chartiphon promised. “He won’t
send any troops up the Besh.” That was why Hostigos now had two armies: the Army of the
Listra, which would make the main attack on Sask, and the Army of the Besh,
commanded by Chartiphon in person, to drive through southern Sask and hold the
Beshtan border. “How about Tarr-Esdreth?” Harmakros asked. “You mean
Tarr-Esdreth-of-Sask? Alkides can probably shoot rings around anybody they have
there. Chartiphon can send a small force to hold the lower end of the gap, and
you can do the same from the Listra side.” “Well, how soon can we get started?” Chartiphon wanted to
know. “How much sending back and forth will there have to be first?” Uncle Wolf put down his goblet, and then lifted the kitten
from his lap and set her on the floor. She mewed softly, looked around, and
then ran over to the bed and jumped up with her mother and brothers and sisters
who were keeping Rylla company. “Well, strictly speaking,” he said, “you’re at peace with
Prince Sarrask, now. You can’t attack him until you’ve sent him letters of
defiance, setting forth your causes of enmity.” Galzar didn’t approve of undeclared wars, it seemed. Harmakros
laughed. “Now, what would they be, I wonder?” he asked. “Send them Kalvan’s breastplate.” “That’s a just reason,” Uncle Wolf nodded. “You have many
others. I will carry the letter myself.” Among other things, priests of Galzar
acted as heralds. “Put it in the form of a set of demands, to be met on pain of
instant war—that would be the quickest way.” “Insulting demands,” Klestreus specified. “Well, give me a
slate and a soapstone, somebody,” Rylla said. “Let’s see how we’re going to
insult him.” “A letter to Balthar, too,” Xentos said thoughtfully. “Not
of defiance, but of friendly warning against the plots and treacheries of
Sarrask and Balthames. They’re scheming to involve him in war with Hostigos,
let him bear the brunt of it, and then fall on him and divide his Princedom
between them. He’ll believe that—it’s what he’d do in their place.” “Your job, Klestreus,” Kalvan said. A diplomatic assignment
would be just right for him, and would keep him from combat command without
hurting his feelings. “Leave with it for Beshta Town tomorrow. You know what
Balthar will believe and what he won’t; use your own judgment.” “We’ll get the letters written tonight,” Ptosphes said. “In
the morning, we’ll hold a meeting of the Full Council of Hostigos. The nobles
and people should have a voice in the decision for war.” As though the decision hadn’t been made already, here in Princess
Rylla’s smoke-filled boudoir. Real democracy, this was. Just like Pennsylvania. THE Full Council of Hostigos met in a long room, with tapestries
on one wall and windows opening onto the inner citadel garden on the other. The
speaker for the peasants, a work-gnarled graybeard named Phosg, sat at the foot
of the table, flanked by the speaker for the shepherds and herdsmen on one
side, and for the woodcutters and charcoal burners on the other. They graded up
from there, through the artisans, the master-craftsmen, the merchants, the
yeomen farmers, the professions, the priests, the landholding gentry and
nobility, to Prince Ptosphes, at the head of the table, in a magnificent fur
robe, with a heavy gold chain on his shoulders. He was flanked, on the left, by
the Lord Kalvan, in a no less magnificent robe and an only slightly less
impressive gold chain. The place on his right was vacant, and everybody was looking
at it. It had been talked about—Kalvan and Xentos and Chartiphon
and Harmakros had seen to that—that the Princess Rylla would, because of her
injury, be unable to attend. So, when the double doors were swung open at the
last moment and six soldiers entered carrying Rylla propped up on a couch,
there were exclamations of happiness and a general ovation. Rylla was really
loved in Hostigos. She waved her hand in greeting and replied to them, and the
couch was set down at Ptosphes’ right. Ptosphes waited until the clamor had
subsided, then drew his poignard and rapped on the table with the pommel. “You all know why we’re here,” he began without preamble. “The
last time we met, it was to decide whether to have our throats cut like sheep
or die fighting like men. Well, we didn’t have to do either. Now, the question
is, shall we fight Sarrask of Sask now, at our advantage, or wait and fight Sarrask
and Balthar together at theirs? Let me hear what is in your minds about it.” It was like a council of war; junior rank first. Phosg was
low man on the totem-pole. He got to his feet. “Well, Lord Prince, it’s like I said the last time. If we
have to fight, let’s fight.” “Different pack of wolves, that’s all,” the shepherds’ and
herdsmen’s speaker added. “We’ll have another wolf-hunt like Fitra and
Listra-Mouth.” It went up the table like that. The speaker for the lawyers,
naturally, wanted to know if they were really sure Prince Sarrask was going to
attack. Somebody asked him why not wait and have his throat cut, his house
burned and his daughters raped, so that he could really be sure. The priestess
of Yirtta abstained; a servant of the Allmother could not vote for the shedding
of the blood of mothers’ sons. Uncle Wolf just laughed. Then it got up among
the nobility. “Well, who wants this war with Sask?” one of them demanded. “That
is, besides this outlander who has grown so great in so short a time among us,
this Lord Kalvan.” He leaned right a little to look. Yes, Sthentros. He was
some kind of an in-law of Ptosphes ... had a barony over about where Boalsburg
ought to be. He’d made trouble when the fireseed mills were being started—refused
to let his peasants be put to work collecting saltpeter. Kalvan had threatened
to have his head off, and Sthentros had run spluttering to Ptosphes. The
interview had been private, nobody knew exactly what Ptosphes had told him, but
he had emerged from it visibly shaken. The peasants had gone to work collecting
saltpeter. “Just who is this Kalvan?” Sthentros persisted. “Why, until
five moons ago, nobody in Hostigos had even heard of him!” A couple of other nobles, including one who had just sworn
to wade to his boot-tops in Saski blood, muttered agreement. Another, who had
fought at Fitra, said: “Well, nobody’d ever heard of you in Hostigos, either, till
your uncle’s wife’s sister married our Prince.” Uncle Wolf laughed again. “They’ve heard of Kalvan since,
and in Nostor, too, by the war god’s mace!” “Yes,” another noble said, “I grant that. But you’ll have to
grant that the man’s an outlander, and it’s a fine thing indeed to see him rise
so swiftly over the heads of nobles of old Hostigi family. Why, when he came
among us, he couldn’t speak a word that anybody could understand.” “By Dralm, we understand him well enough now!” That was
another newcomer to the Full Council—the speaker for the fireseed makers. There
were murmurs of agreement; quite a few got the point. Sthentros refused to be silenced. “How do we know that he
isn’t some runaway priest of Styphon himself.” Mytron, present as speaker for the physicians, surgeons and
apothecaries, rose. “When Kalvan came among us, I tended his wounds. He is not
circumcised, as all priests of Styphon are.” Then he sat down. That knocked that on the head. It was a
good thing the Rev. Morrison had refused to let the doctor load the bill with
what he’d considered non-essentials when his son had been born.—He’d never say
another word against Scotch-Irish frugality. Sthentros, however, was staying
with it. “Well, maybe that’s worse,” he argued. “It’s flatly against
nature for anything to act like fireseed. I think there are devils in it that
make it explode, and maybe the priests of Styphon do something to keep the
devils from getting out when it explodes ... something that we don’t know
anything about.” The speaker for the fireseed makers was on his feet. “I make
the stuff, I know what goes in it. Saltpeter and sulfur and charcoal, and there
aren’t any devils in any of them.” He didn’t know anything about oxidization,
but he knew that the saltpeter made the rest of it burn fast. “Next thing, he’ll
be telling us there are devils in wine, or in dough to make the bread rise, or
in ...” “Has anybody heard of any devils around Fitra?” somebody
else asked. “We burned plenty of fireseed there.” “What in Galzar’s name does Sthentros know about Fitra?—he
wasn’t there!” “I’m going to have a little talk with that fellow, after
this is over,” Ptosphes said quietly to Kalvan. “All he is in Hostigos, he is
by my favor, and my favor to him is getting frayed now.” “Well, devils or not, the question is Lord Kalvan’s place
among us,” the noble who had sided with Sthentros said. “He is no Hostigi—what
right has he to sit at the Council table?” “Fitra!” somebody cried, from a place or two above
Sthentros; “Tarr-Dombra!” added another voice, from across the table. “He sits here,” Rylla said icily, “as my betrothed husband,
by my choice. Do you question that, Euklestes?” “He sits here as heir-matrimonial to the throne of Hostigos,
and as my son-adoptive,” Ptosphes added. “I hope none of you presume to
question that.” “He sits here as commander of our army,” Chartiphon roared, “and
as a soldier I am proud to obey. If you want to question that, do it with your
sword against mine!” “He sits here as one sent by Dralm. Do you question the
Great God?” Xentos asked. Euklestes gave Sthentros a look-what-you-got-me-into look. “Great
Dralm, no!” “Well, then. We still have the question of war with Sask to be voted:’ Ptosphes said. “How vote you, Lord Sthentros?” “Oh, war, of course; I’m as loyal a Hostigi as any here.” There was no more argument. The vote was unanimous. As soon
as Ptosphes had thanked them, Harmakros was on his feet. “Then, to show that we are all in loyal support of our
Prince, let us all vote that whatever decision he may make in the matter of our
dealings with Sask, with Beshta, or with Nostor, either in making war or in
making peace afterward, shall stand approved in advance by the Full Council of
Hostigos.” “What? “ Ptosphes asked in a whisper. “Is this some idea of
yours, Kalvan?” “Yes. We don’t know what we’re going to have to do, but
whatever it is, we may have to do it in a hurry, and afterward we won’t want
anybody like Sthentros or Euklestes whining that they weren’t consulted.” “That’s probably wise. We’d do it anyhow, but this way there’ll
be no argument. Harmakros’s motion was also carried unanimously. The organization
steamroller ran up the table without a bump. VERKAN, the free-trader from Grefftscharr, waited till the
others—Prince Ptosphes, old Xentos, and the man of whom he must never under any
circumstances think as Calvin Morrison—were seated, and then dropped into a chair at the table in Ptosphes’s study. “Have a good trip?” Lord Kalvan was asking him. He nodded,
and ran quickly over the fictitious details of the journey to Zygros City, his stay there, and his return to Hostigos, checking them with the actual facts.
Then he visualized the panel, and his hand reaching out and pressing the black
button. Other Paratimers used different imagery, but the result was the same.
The pseudo-memories fed to him under hypnosis took over, the real memories of
visits on this time-line to Zygros City were suppressed, and a complete
blockage imposed on anything he knew about Fourth Level Europo-American,
Hispano-Columbian Subsector. “Not bad,” he said. “I had a little trouble at Glarth Town, in Hos-Agrys. I’d sold those two kegs of Tarr-Dombra fireseed to a merchant,
and right away they were after me, the Prince of Glarth’s soldiers and Styphon’s
House agents. It seems Styphon’s House had put out a story about one of their
wagon-trains being robbed by bandits, and everybody’s on the lookout for
unaccountable fireseed. They’d arrested and tortured the merchant; he put them
onto me. I killed one and wounded another, and got away.” “When was that?” Xentos asked sharply. “Three days after I left here.” “Eight days after we took Tarr-Dombra and sent that letter
to Sesklos,” Ptosphes said. “That story’ll be all over the Five Kingdoms by
now.” “Oh, they’ve dropped that. They have a new story, now. They
admit that some Prince in Hos-Harphax is making his own fireseed, but it isn’t
good fireseed.” Kalvan laughed. “It only shoots half again as hard as
theirs, with half as much fouling.” “Ah, but there are devils in your fireseed. Of course, there
are devils in all fireseed—that’s what makes it explode—but the priests of
Styphon have secret rites that cause the devils to die as soon as they’ve done
their work. When yours explodes, the devils escape alive. I’ll bet East Hostigos is full of devils, now.” He laughed, then stopped when he saw that none of the others
were. Kalvan cursed; Ptosphes mentioned a name. “That story has appeared here,” Xentos said. “I hope none of
our people believe it. It comes from Sask Town.” “This Sthentros, a kinsman by marriage of mine,” Ptosphes
said. “He’s jealous of Kalvan’s greatness among us. I spoke to him, gave him a
good fright. He claimed he thought of it himself, but I know he’s lying.
Somebody from Sask’s been at him. Trouble is, if we tortured him, all the other
nobles would be around my ears like a swarm of hornets. We’re having him
watched.” “They move swiftly,” Xentos said, “and
they act as one. Their temples are everywhere, and each temple has its post
station, with relays of fast horses. Styphon’s Voice can speak today at Balph,
in Hos-Ktemnos, and in a moon-quarter his words are heard in every temple in
the Five Kingdoms. Their lies can travel so fast and far that the truth can
never overtake them.” “Yes, and see what’ll happen,” Kalvan said. “From now on, everything,
plague, famine, drought, floods, hailstones, forest-fires, hurricanes—will be
the work of devils out of our fireseed. Well, you got out of Glarth; what then?” “After that, I thought it better to travel by night. It took
me eight days to reach Zygros City. My wife, Dalla, met me there, as we’d
arranged when I started south from Ulthor. In Zygros City, we recruited five brass-founders—two
are cannon-founders, one’s a bell-founder, one’s an image-maker and knows the
wax-runoff method, and one’s a general foundry foreman. And three girls,
wood-carvers and pattern makers, and two mercenary sergeants I hired as guards. “I gave the fireseed secret to the gunmakers’ guild in Zygros City, in exchange for making up twelve long rifled fowling-pieces and rifling some
pistols. They’ll ship you rifled caliver barrels at the cost of smoothbore
barrels. They’d heard the devil story; none of them believe it. And I gave the
secret to merchants from my own country; they will spread it there.” “And by this time next year, Grefftscharr fireseed will be
traded down the Great River to Xiphion,” Kalvan said. “Good. Now, how soon can
this gang of yours start pouring cannon.” “Two moons; a special miracle for each day less.” He started to explain about the furnaces and moulding sand;
Kalvan understood. “Then we’ll have to fight this war with what we have. We’ll
be fighting in a moon-quarter, I think. We sent our Uncle Wolf off to Sask Town today with demands on Prince Sarrask. As soon as he hears them, they’ll have to
chain Sarrask up to keep him from biting people.” “Among other things, we’re demanding that Archpriest Zothnes
and the Sask Town high priest be sent here in chains, to be tried for plotting
Kalvan’s death and mine,” Ptosphes said. “If Zothnes has the influence over
Sarrask I think he has, that alone will do it.” “You’ll command the Mounted Rifles again, won’t you?” Kalvan
asked. “It’s carried on the Army List as a regiment, so you’ll be a colonel. We
have a hundred and twenty rifles, now.” Dalla wouldn’t approve. Well, that was too bad, but people
who didn’t help their friends fight weren’t well thought of around here. Dalla
would just have to adjust to it, the way she had to his beard. Ptosphes finished his wine. “Shall we go up to Rylla’s room?”
he asked. “I’m glad you brought your wife with you, Verkan. Charming girl, and
Rylla likes her. They made friends at once. She’ll be company for Rylla while
we’re away.” “Rylla’s sore at us,” Kalvan said. “She thinks we’re keeping
that bundle of splints on her leg to keep her from going to war with us.” He
grinned. “She’s right; we are. Maybe Dali will help keep her amused.” Vall didn’t doubt that. Rylla and Dalla would get along together,
all right; what he was worried about was what they’d get into together. Those
two girls were just two cute little sticks of the same brand of dynamite; what
one wouldn’t think of, the other would. THE common-room of the village inn was hot and stuffy in
spite of the open door; it smelled of woolens drying, of oil and sheep-tallow
smeared on armor against the rain, of wood smoke and tobacco and wine, unwashed
humanity and ancient cooking-odors. The village outside was jammed with the
Army of the Listra; the inn with officers, steaming and stinking and smoking,
drinking mugs of mulled wine or strong sassafras tea, crowding around the fire
at the long table where the map was unrolled, spooning stew from bowls or gnawing
meat impaled on dagger-points. Harmakros was saying, again and again, “Dralm
damn you, hold that dagger back; don’t drip grease on this!” And the priest of
Galzar, who had carried the ultimatum to Sask Town and gotten this far on his
return, and who had lately been out among the troops, sat in his shirt with his
back to the fire, his wolfskin hood and cape spread to dry and a couple of
village children wiping and oiling his mail. He had a mug in one hand, and with
the other stroked the head of a dog that squatted beside him. He was laughing
jovially. “So I read them your demands, and you should have heard
them! When I came to the part about dismissing the newly hired mercenaries, the
captain-general of free companies bawled like a branded calf. I took it on
myself to tell him you’d hire all of them with no loss of pay. Did I do right,
Prince?” “You did just right, Uncle Wolf,” Ptosphes told him. “When
we come to battle, along with ‘Down Styphon’ we’ll shout, ‘Quarter for
mercenaries.’ How about the demands touching on Styphon’s House?” “Ha! The Archpriest Zothnes was there, sitting next to
Sarrask, with the Chancellor of Sask shoved down one place to make room for
him, which shows you who rules in Sask now. He didn’t bawl like a calf; he
screamed like a panther. Wanted Sarrask to have me seized and my head off right
in the throne-room. Sarrask told him his own soldiers would shoot him dead on
the throne if he ordered it, which they would have. The mercenary captain-general
wanted Zothnes’s head off, and half drew his sword for it. There’s one with
small stomach to fight for Styphon’s House. And this Zothnes was screaming that
there was no god at all but Styphon; now what do you think of that?” Gasps of horror, and exclamations of shocked piety. One officer
was charitable enough to say that the fellow must be mad. “No. He’s just a—” A monotheist, Kalvan wanted to say, but
there was no word in the language for it. “One who respects no gods but his
own. We had that in my own country.” He caught himself just before saying, “in
my own time”; of those present, only Ptosphes was security-cleared for that
version of his story. “They are people who believe in only one god, and then
they believe that the god they worship is the only true one, and all others are
false, and finally they believe that the only true god must be worshiped in
only one way, and that those who worship otherwise are vile monsters who should
be killed.” The Inquisition; the wicked and bloody Albigensian Crusade; Saint
Bartholomew’s; Haarlem; Magdeburg. “We want none of that here.” “Lord Prince,” the priest of Galzar said, “you know how we
who serve the war god stand. The war god is the Judge of Princes, his courtroom
the battlefield. We take no sides. We minister to the wounded without looking
at their colors; our temples are havens for the war-maimed. We preach only
Galzar’s Way: be brave, be loyal, be comradely; obey your officers; respect
yourselves and your weapons and all other good soldiers; be true to your
company and to him who pays you. “But Lord Prince, this is no common war, of Hostigos against
Sask and Ptosphes against Sarrask. This is a war for all the true gods
against false Styphon and Styphon’s foul brood. Maybe there is some devil
called Styphon, I don’t know, but if there is, may the true gods trample him
under their holy feet as we must those who serve him.” A shout of “Down Styphon!” rose. So this was what he had
said they must have none of, and an old man in a dirty shirt, a mug of wine in
his hand and a black and brown mongrel thumping his tail on the floor beside
him, had spelled it out. A religious war, the vilest form an essentially vile
business can take. Priests of Dralm and Galzar preaching fire and sword against
Styphon’s House. Priests of Styphon rousing mobs against the infidel
devil-makers. Styphon wills it! Atrocities. Massacres. Holy Dralm and no quarter! And that was what he’d brought to here-and-now. Well, maybe
for the best; give Styphon’s House another century or so in power and there’d
be no gods, here-and-now, but Styphon. “And then?” “Well, Sarrask was in a fine rage, of course. By Styphon, he’d
meet Prince Ptosphes’s demands where they should be met, on the battlefield,
and the war’d start as soon as I took my back out of sight across the border.
That was just before noon. I almost killed a horse, and myself, getting here. I
haven’t done much hard riding, lately,” he parenthesized. “As soon as I got
here, Harmakros sent riders out.” They’d reached Tarr-Hostigos at cocktail time, another alien
rite introduced by Lord Kalvan, and found him and Ptosphes and Xentos and Rylla
and Dalla in Rylla’s room. Hasty arming and saddling, hastier good-bys, and
then a hard mud-splashing ride up Listra Valley, reaching this village after
dark. The war had already started; from Esdreth Gap they could hear the distant
dull thump of cannon. Outside, the Army of the Listra was still moving forward; an
infantry company marched past with a song: Roll another barrel out, the party’s just begun. We beat Prince Gormoth’s soldiers; you oughta seen them
run! And then we crossed the Athan, and didn’t we have fun, While we were marching through Nostor! Galloping hoofs; cries of “Way! Way! Courier!” The song
ended in shouted imprecations from mud-splashed infantrymen. The galloping horse
stopped outside. The march, and the song, was resumed: Hurrah! Hurrah! We burned the bastards out! Hurrah! Hurrah! We put them all to rout! We stole their pigs and cattle and we dumped their
sauerkraut, While we were marching through Nostor! A muddy cavalryman stumbled through the door, looked around
blinking, and then made for the long table, saluting as he came. “From Colonel Verkan, Mounted Rifles. He and his men have
Fyk; they beat off a counter-attack, and now the whole Saski army’s coming at
him. I found some Mobiles and a four-pounder on the way back; they’ve gone to
help him. “By Dralm, the whole Army of the Listra’s going to help him.
Where is this Fyk place?” Harmakros pointed on the map—beyond Esdreth Gap, on the main
road to Sask Town. There was a larger town, Gour, a little beyond. Kalvan
pulled on his quilted coif and fastened the throat-guard; while he was settling
his helmet on his head, somebody had gone to the door and was bawling into the
dripping night for horses. THE rain had stopped, an hour later, when they reached Fyk.
It was a small place, full of soldiers and lighted by bonfires. The civil
population had completely vanished; all fled when the shooting had started. A
four-pounder pointed up the road to the south, with the dim shape of an improvised
barricade stretching away in the darkness on either side. Off ahead, an
occasional shot banged, and he could distinguish the sharper reports of
Hostigos-made powder from the slower-burning stuff put out by Styphon’s House.
Maybe Uncle Wolf was right that this was a war between the true gods and false
Styphon; it was also a war between two makes of gunpowder. He found Verkan and a Mobile Force major in one of the village
cottages; Verkan wore a hooded smock of brown canvas, and a short chopping-sword
on his belt and a powder-horn and bullet-pouch slung from his shoulder. The
major’s cavalry armor was browned and smeared with tallow. They had one of the
pyrographed deerskin field-maps spread on the table in front of them. Paper,
invention of, he’d made that mental memo a thousand times already. “There were about fifty cavalry here when we arrived,” Verkan
was saying. “We killed them or ran them out. In half an hour there were a
couple of hundred back. We beat them off, and that was when I sent the riders
back. Then Major Leukestros came up with his men and a gun, just in time to
help beat off another attack. We have some cavalry and mounted arquebusiers out
in front and on the flanks; that’s the shooting you’re hearing. There are some
thousand cavalry at Gour, and probably all Sarrask’s army following.” “I’m afraid we’re going to have to make a wet night of it,”
Kalvan said. “We’ll have to get our battle-line formed now; we can’t take
chances on what they may do.” He shoved the map aside and began scribbling and diagramming
an order of battle on the white-scrubbed table top. Guns to the rear, in column
along a side road north of the village, four-pounders in front; horses to be
unhitched, but fed and rested in harness, ready to move out at once. Infantry in
a line to both sides of the road a thousand yards ahead of the village, Mobile
Force infantry in the middle. Cavalry on the flank; mounted infantry horses to
the rear. A battle-order that could be converted instantly into a march-order
if they had to move on in the morning. The army came stumbling in for the next hour or so, in bits
and scraps, got themselves sorted out, and took their positions astride of the
road on the slope south of the village. The air had grown noticeably warmer. He
didn’t like that; it presaged fog, and he wanted good visibility for the battle
tomorrow. Cavalry skirmishers began drifting back, reporting pressure of large
enemy forces in front. An hour after he had his line formed, the men lying in the
wet grass on blankets, or whatever bedding they could snatch from the village,
the Saski began coming up. There was a brief explosion of small-arms fire as
they ran into his skirmishers, then they pulled back and began forming their
own battle-line. Hell of a situation, he thought disgustedly, lying on a cornshuck
tick he and Ptosphes and Harmakros had stolen from some peasant’s abandoned
bed. Two blind armies, not a thousand yards apart, waiting for daylight, and
when daylight came ... A cannon went off in front and on his left, with a loud,
dull whump! A couple of heartbeats later, something whacked behind the line. He
rose on his hands and knees, counting seconds as he peered into the darkness.
Two minutes later, he glimpsed an orange glow on his left, and two seconds
after that heard the report. Call it eight hundred yards, give or take a
hundred. He hissed to a quartet of officers on a blanket next to him. “They’re overshooting us a little. Pass the word along the
line, both ways, to move forward three hundred paces. And not a sound; dagger
anybody who speaks above a whisper. Harmakros, get the cavalry and the mounted
infantry horses back on the other side of the village. Make a lot of noise
about five hundred yards behind us.” The officers moved off, two to a side. He and Ptosphes picked
up the mattress and carried it forward, counting three hundred paces before
dropping it. Men were moving up on both sides, with a gratifying minimum of
noise. The Saski guns kept on firing. At first there were yells of
simulated fright; Harmakros and his crowd. Finally, a gun fired almost in front
of him; the cannonball passed overhead and landed behind with a swish and whack
like a headsman’s sword coming down. The next shot was far on his left. Eight
guns, at two minute intervals—call it fifteen minutes to load. That wasn’t bad,
in the dark and with what the Saski had. He relaxed, lying prone with his chin
rested on his elbows. After awhile Harmakros returned and joined him and
Ptosphes on the shuck tick. The cannonade went on in slow procession from left
to right and left to right again. Once there was a bright flash instead of a
dim glow, and a much sharper crack. Fine! One of the guns had burst! After
that, there were only seven rounds to the salvo. Once there was a rending crash
behind, as though a round-shot had hit a tree. Every shot was a safe over. Finally, the firing stopped. The distant intermittent
dueling between the two Castles Esdreth had ceased, too. He let go of wakefulness
and dropped into sleep. PTOSPHES, stirring beside him, wakened him. His body ached
and his mouth tasted foul, as every body and mouth on both battle-lines must.
It was still dark, but the sky above was something less than black, and he made
out his companions as dim shapes. Fog. By Dralm that was all they needed! Fog, and the whole Saski
army not five hundred yards away, and all their advantages of mobility and
artillery superiority lost. Nowhere to move, no room to maneuver, visibility
down to less than pistol-shot, even the advantage of their hundred-odd rifled
calivers nullified. This looked like the start of a bad day for Hostigos. They
munched the hard bread and cold pork and cheese they had brought with them and
drank some surprisingly good wine from a canteen and talked in whispers, other
officers creeping in until a dozen and a half were huddled around the
headquarters mattress. “Couldn’t we draw back a little?” That was Mnestros, the mercenary
“captain”—approximately major-general—in command of the militia. “This is a
horrible position. We’re halfway down their throats.” “They’d hear us,” Ptosphes said, “and start with their guns
again, and this time they’d know where to shoot.” “Bring up our own guns and start shooting first,” somebody
suggested. “Same objection; they’d hear us and open fire before we
could. And for Dralm’s sake keep your voices down,” Kalvan snapped. “No,
Mnestros said it. We’re halfway down their throats. Let’s jump the rest of the
way and kick their guts out from the inside.” The mercenary was a book-soldier. He was briefly dubious,
then admitted: “We are in line to attack, and we know where they are and they
don’t know where we are. They must think we’re back at the village, from the
way they were firing last night. Cavalry on the flanks?” He deprecated that.
According to the here-and-now book, cavalry should be posted all along the
line, between blocks of infantry. “Yes, half the mercenaries in each end, and a solid line of
infantry, two ranks of pikes, and arquebuses and calivers to fire over the
pikemen’s shoulders,” Kalvan said. “Verkan, have your men pass the word along
the line. Everybody stay put and keep quiet till we can all go forward
together. I want every pan reprimed and every flint tight; we’ll all move off
together, and no shouting till the enemy sees us. I’ll take the extreme right.
Prince Ptosphes, you’d better take center; Westros, command the left.
Harmakros, you take the regular and Mobile Force cavalry and five hundred
Mobile Force infantry, and move back about five hundred yards. If they flank us
or break through, attend to it.” By now, the men around him were individually recognizable,
but everything beyond twenty yards was fog-swallowed. Their saddle-horses were
brought up. He reprimed the pistols in the holsters, got a second pair from a
saddlebag, renewed the priming, and slipped one down the top of each jackboot.
The line was stirring with a noise that stood his hair on end under his
helmet-coif, until he realized that the Saski were making too much noise to
hear it. He slipped back the cuff under his mail sleeve and looked at his
watch. Five forty-five; sunrise in half an hour. They all shook hands with one
another, and he started right along the line. Soldiers were rising, rolling and slinging cloaks and
blankets. There were quilts and ticks and things from the village lying on the
ground; mustn’t be a piece of bedding left in Fyk. A few were praying, to Dralm
or Galzar. Most of them seemed to take the attitude that the gods would do what
they wanted to without impertinent human suggestions. He stopped at the extreme end of the line, on the right of
five hundred regular infantry, like all the rest lined four deep, two ranks of
pikes and two of calivers. Behind and on the right, the mercenary cavalry were
coming up in a block of twenty ranks, fifty to the rank. The first few ranks
were heavy-armed, plate rerebraces and vambraces on their arms instead of mail
sleeves, heavy pauldrons protecting their shoulders, visored helmets, mounted
on huge chargers, real old style brewery-wagon horses. They came to a halt just
behind him. He passed the word of readiness left, then sat stroking his horse’s
neck and talking softly to him. After awhile the word came back with a moving stir along the
line through the fog. He lifted a long pistol from his right-hand holster,
readied it to fire, and shook his reins. The line slid forward beside him,
front rank pikes waist high, second rank pike-points a yard behind and breast
high, calivers behind at high port. The cavalry followed him with a slow fluviatile clop-clatter-clop. Things emerged from the fog in
front—seedling pines, clumps of tall weeds, a rotting cartwheel, a whitened cow’s
skull—but the gray nothingness marched just twenty yards in front. This, he recalled, was how Gustavus Adolphus had gotten
killed, riding forward into a fog like this at Lьtzen. An arquebus banged on his left; that was a charge of Styphon’s
Best. Half a dozen shots rattled in reply, most of them Kalvan’s Unconsecrated,
and he heard yells of “Down Styphon!” and “Sarrask of Sask!” The pikemen
stiffened; some of them lost step and had to hop to make it up. They all seemed
to crouch over their weapons, and the caliver muzzles poked forward. By this
time, the firing was like a slate roof endlessly sliding off a house, and then,
much farther to the left, there was a sudden ringing crash like sheet-steel
failing into a scrap-car. The Fyk corpse-factory was in full production. But in front,
there was only silence and the slowly receding curtain of fog, and pine-dotted
pastureland broken by small gullies in which last night’s rainwater ran
yellowly. Ran straight ahead of them—that wasn’t right. The Saski position was
up a slope from where they had lain under the midrange trajectory of the guns,
and now the noise of battle was not only to the left but behind them. He flung
up the hand holding the gold-mounted pistol. “Halt!” he called out. “Pass the word left to stand fast!”
He knew what had happened. Both battle-lines, formed in the dark, had
overlapped the other’s left. So he had flanked them, and Mnestros, on the
Hostigi left, was also flanked. “You two,” he told a pair of cavalry lieutenants. “Ride left
till you come to the fighting. Find a good pivot-point, and one of you stay
with it. The other will come back along the line, passing the word to swing
left. We’ll start swinging from this end. And find somebody to tell Harmakros
what’s happened, if he doesn’t know it already. He probably does. No orders;
just use his own judgment.” Everybody would have to use his own judgment, from here out.
He wondered what was happening to Mnestros. He hadn’t the liveliest confidence
in Mnestros’s judgment when he ran into something the book didn’t cover. Then
he sat, waiting for centuries, until one of the lieutenants came thudding back
behind the infantry line, and he gave the order to start the leftward swing. The level pikes and slanting calivers kept line on his left;
the cavalry clop-clattered behind him. The downward slope swung in front of
them, until they were going steeply uphill, and then the ground was level under
their feet, and he could feel a freshening breeze on his cheek. He was shouting a warning when the fog tore apart for a hundred
yards in front and two or three on either side, and out of it came a mob of
infantry, badged with Sarrask’s green and gold. He pulled his horse back, fired
his pistol into them, holstered it, and drew the other from his left holster.
The major commanding the regular infantry blew his whistle and screamed above
the din: “Action front! Fire by ranks, odd numbers only!” The front
rank pikemen squatted as though simultaneously stricken with diarrhea. The
second rank dropped to one knee, their pikes advanced. Over their shoulders,
half the third rank blasted with calivers, then dodged for the fourth rank to
fire over them. As soon as the second volley crashed, the pikemen were on their
feet and running at the disintegrating front of the Saski infantry, all
shouting, “Down Styphon!” He saw that much, then raked his horse with his spurs and
drove him forward shouting, “Charge!” The heavily armed mercenaries thundered
after him, swinging long swords, firing pistols almost as big as small
carbines, smashing into the Saski infantry from the flank before they could
form a new front. He pistoled a pikeman who was thrusting at his horse, then
drew his sword. Then the fog closed down again, and dim shapes were dodging
among the horses. A Saski cavalryman bulked in front of him, firing almost in
his face. The bullet missed him, but hot grains of powder stung his cheek. Get
a coalminer’s tattoo out of that, he thought, and then his wrist hurt as he
drove the point into the fellow’s throat-guard, spreading the links. Plate gorgets,
issue to mounted troops as soon as can be produced. He wrenched the point free,
and the Saski slid gently out of his saddle. “Keep moving!” he screamed at the cavalry with him. “Don’t
let them slow you down!” In a mess like this, stalled cavalry were all but helpless.
Their best weapon was the momentum of a galloping horse, and once lost, that
took at least thirty yards to regain. Cavalry horses ought to be crossed with
jackrabbits; but that was something he couldn’t do anything about at all. One
mass of cavalry, the lancers and musketoon-men who had ridden behind the
heavily armed men, had gotten hopelessly jammed in front of a bristle of pikes.
He backed his horse quickly out of that, then found himself at the end of a
line of Mobile Force infantry, with short arquebuses and cavalry lances for
pikes. He directed them to the aid of the stalled cavalry, and then realized
that he was riding across the road at right angles. That meant that he—and the
whole battle, since all the noise was either to his right or left along the
road—was now facing east instead of south. Of the heavily armed mercenary
cavalry who had been with him at the beginning, he could see nothing. A horseman came crashing at him out of the fog, shouting “Down
Styphon!” and thrusting at him with a sword. He had barely time to beat it
aside with his own and cry, “Ptosphes!” and a moment later: “Ptosphes, by Dralm!
How did you get here?” “Kalvan! I’m glad you parried that one. Where are we?” He told the Prince, briefly. “The whole Dralm-damned battle’s
turned at right angles; you know that?” “Well, no wonder. Our whole left wing’s gone. Mnestros is
dead—I heard that from an officer who saw his body. The regular infantry on our
extreme left are all but wiped out; what few are left, and what’s left of the
militia next to them, reformed on Harmakros, in what used to be our rear. That’s
our left wing, now.” “Well, their left wing’s in no better shape; I swung in on
that and smashed it up. What’s happened to the cavalry we had on the left?” “Dralm knows; I don’t. Took to their heels out of this, I suppose.”
Ptosphes drew one of his pistols and took a powder-flask from his belt. “Watch
over my shoulder, will you, Kalvan.” He drew one of his own holster-pair and poured a charge into
it. The battle seemed to have moved out of their immediate vicinity, though off
in the fog in both directions there was a bedlam of shooting, yelling and
steel-clashing. Then suddenly a cannon, the first of the morning, went off in
what Kalvan took to be the direction of the village. An eight-pounder, he
thought, and certainly loaded with Made-in-Hostigos. On its heels came another,
and another. “That,” Ptosphes said, “will be Harmakros.” “I hope he knows what he’s shooting at.” He primed the
pistol, bolstered it, and started on its mate. “Where do you think we could do
the most good?” Ptosphes had his saddle pair loaded, and was starting on one
from a boot-top. “Let’s see if we can find some of our own cavalry, and go
looking for Sarrask,” he said. “I’d like to kill or capture him, myself If I
did, it might give me some kind of a claim on the throne of Sask. If this
cursed fog would only clear.” From off to the right, south up the road, came noises like a
boiler-shop starting up. There wasn’t much shooting—everybody’s gun was empty
and no one had time to reload—just steel, and an indistinguishable
waw-wawwaw-ing of voices. The fog was blowing in wet rags, now, but as fast as
it blew away, more closed down. There was a limit to that, though; overhead the
sky was showing a faint sunlit yellow. “Come on, Lytris, come on!” he invoked the weather goddess. “Get
this stuff out of here! Whose side are you fighting on, anyhow?” Ptosphes finished the second of his spare pair, he had the
last one of his own four to prime. Ptosphes said, “Watch behind you!” and he
almost spilled the priming, then closed the pan and readied the pistol to fire.
It was some twenty of the heavy-armed cavalry who had gone in with him. Their
sergeant wanted to know where they were. He hadn’t any better idea than they had. Shoving the flint
away from the striker, he pushed the pistol into his boot and drew his sword;
they all started off toward the noise of fighting. He thought he was still
going east until he saw that he was riding, at right angles, onto a line of
mud-trampled quilts and bedspreads and mattresses, the things that had been
appropriated in the village the night before. He glanced left and right.
Ptosphes knew what they were, too, and swore. Now the battle had made a full 180-degree turn. Both armies
were facing in the direction from whence they had come; the route of either
would be in the direction of the enemy’s country. Galzar, he thought irreverently, must have overslept this
morning. But at least the fog was definitely clearing, gilded above by
sunlight, and the gray tatters around them were fewer and more threadbare,
visibility now better than a hundred yards. They found a line of battle
extending, apparently, due east of Fyk, and came up behind a hodgepodge of
militia, regulars and Mobiles, any semblance of unit organization completely
lost. Mobile Force cavalry were trotting back and forth behind them, looking
for soft spots where breakthroughs, in either direction, might happen. He
yelled to a Mobile Force captain who was fighting on foot: “Who’s in front of you?” “How should I know? Same mess of odds-and-sods we are. This
Dralm damned battle ...” Officially, he supposed, it would be the Battle of Fyk, but
nobody who’d been in it would ever call it anything but the Dralm-damned Battle. Before he could say anything, there was a crash on his left
like all the boiler-shops in creation together. He and Ptosphes looked at one
another. “Something new has been added,” he commented. “Well, let’s go see.” They started to the left with their picked up heavy cavalry,
not too rapidly, and with pistols drawn. There was a lot of shouting——“Down
Styphon!” of course, and “Ptosphes!” and “Sarrask of Sask!” There were also
shouts of “Balthames!” That would be the retinue Balthar’s brother, the prospective
Prince of Sashta, had brought to Sask Town—some two hundred and fifty, he’d
heard. Then there were cries of “Treason! Treason!” Now there was a hell of a thing to yell on any battlefield,
let alone in a fog. He was wondering who was supposed to be betraying whom when
he found the way blocked by the backs of Hostigi infantry at right angles to
the battle-line; not retreating, just being pushed out of the way of something.
Beyond them, through the thinning fog, he could see a rush of cavalry, some
wearing black and pale yellow surcoats over their armor. They’d be Balthames’s
Beshtans; they were filing and chopping indiscriminately at anything in front
of them, and, mixed with them, were green-and-gold Saski, fighting with them
and the Hostigi both. All he and Ptosphes and the mercenary men-at-arms could
do was sit on their horses and fire pistols at them over the heads of their own
infantry. Finally, the breakthrough, if that was what it had been, was
over. The Hostigi infantry closed in behind them, piking and shooting, and
there were cries of “Comrade, we yield!” and “Oath to Galzar!” and “Comrade,
spare mercenaries!” “Should we give them a chase?” Ptosphes asked, looking after
the Saski-Beshtan whatever-it-had-been. “I shouldn’t think so. They’re charging in the right
direction. What the Styphon do you think happened?” Ptosphes laughed. “How should I know? I wonder if it really
was treason.” “Well, let’s get through here.” He raised his voice. “Come
on—forward! Somebody’s punched a hole for us; let’s get through it!” SUDDENLY, the fog was gone. The sun shone from a cloudless
sky; the Mountainside, nearer than he thought, was gaudy with Autumn colors;
all the drifting puffs and hanging bands of white on the ground were
powder-smoke. The village of Fyk, on his left, was ringed with army wagons like
a Boer laager, guns pointing out between them. That was the strong point on
which Harmakros had rallied the wreckage of the left wing. In front of him, the Hostigi were moving forward, infantry
running beside the cavalry, and in front of them the Saski line was raveling
away, men singly and in little groups and by whole companies turning and taking
to their heels, trying to join two or three thousand of their comrades who had
made a porcupine. He knew it from otherwhen history as a Swiss hedgehog: a
hollow circle bristling pikes in all directions. Hostigi cavalry were already
riding around it, firing into it, and Verkan’s riflemen were sniping at it.
There seemed to be no Saski cavalry whatever; they must all have joined the
rush to the south at the time of the breakthrough. Then three four-pounders came out from the village at a
gallop, unlimbered at three hundred yards, and began firing case-shot. When two
eight-pounders followed more sedately, helmets began going up on pike-points
and caliver muzzles. Behind him, the fighting had ceased entirely. Hostigi
soldiers had scattered through the brush and trampled cornstalks, tending to
their wounded, securing prisoners, robbing corpses, collecting weapons, all the
routine after-battle chores, and the battle wasn’t over yet. He was worrying
about where all the Saski cavalry had gotten, and the possibility that they
might rally and counterattack, when he saw a large mounted column approaching
from the south. This is it, he thought, and we’re all scattered to Styphon’s
House and gone—He was shouting at the men nearest him to drop what they were
doing and start earning their pay when he saw blue and red colors on lances, saddle
pads, scarves. He trotted forward to meet them. Some were mercenaries, some were Hostigi regulars; with them
were a number of green-and-gold prisoners, their helmets hung on saddlebows. A
captain in front shouted a greeting as he came up. “Well, thank Galzar you’re still alive, Lord Kalvan! Where’s
the Prince?” “Back at the village, trying to get things sorted out. How
far did you go?” “Almost to Gour. Better than a thousand of them got away;
they won’t stop short of Sask Town. The ones we have are the ones with the slow
horses. Sarrask may have gotten away; we know Balthames did.” “Dralm and Galzar and all the true gods curse that Beshtan
bastard!” one of the prisoners cried. “Devils eat his soul forever! The
Dralm-damned lackwit cost us the battle, and only Galzar’s counted how many
dead and maimed.” “What happened? I heard cries of treason.” “Yes, that dumped the whole bagful of devils on us,” the
Saski said. “You want to know what happened? Well, in the darkness we formed
with our right wing far beyond your left; yours beyond ours, I suppose, from
the looks of things. On our right, we carried all before us, drove your cavalry
from the field and smashed your infantry. Then this boy-lover from Beshta—we
can fight our enemies, but Galzar guard us from our allies—took his own men and
near a thousand of our mercenary horse off on a rabbit-hunt after your fleeing
cavalry, almost to Esdreth. “Well, you know what happened in the meantime. Our right
drove in your left, and yours ours, and the whole battle turned like a wheel,
and we were all facing in the way we’d come, and then back comes this Balthames
of Beshta, smashing into our rear, thinking that he was saving the day. “And to make it worse, the silly fool doesn’t shout ‘Sarrask
of Sask,’ as he should have; no, he shouts ‘Balthames!’—he and all his, and the
mercenaries with him took it up to curry favor with him. Well, great Dralm, you
know how much anybody can trust anybody from Beshta; we thought the bugger’d turned
his coat, and somebody cried treason. I’ll not deny crying it myself, after I
was near spitted on a Beshtan lance, and me crying ‘Sarrask!’ at the top of my
lungs. So we were carried away in the rout, and I fell in with mercenaries from
Hos-Ktemnos. We got almost to Gour and tried to make a stand, and were ridden
over and taken.” “Did Sarrask get away? Galzar knows I want to spill his
blood badly enough, but I want to do it honestly.” The Saski didn’t know; none of Sarrask’s silver-armored personal
guard had been near him in the fighting. “Well, don’t blame Duke Balthames too much.” Looking around,
he saw over a score of Saski and mercenary prisoners within hearing. If we’re
going to have a religious war, let’s start it now. “It was,” he declared, “the work
of the true gods! Who do you think raised the fog, but Lytris the Weather
Goddess? Who confounded your captains in arraying your line, and caused your
gunners to overshoot, harming not one of us, but Galzar Wolfhead, the Judge of
Princes? And who but Great Dralm himself addled poor Balthames’s wits, leading
him on a fool’s chase and bringing him back to strike you from behind? At long
last,” he cried, “the true gods have raised their mighty hands against false
Styphon and the blasphemers of Styphon’s House!” There were muttered amens, some from the Saski prisoners.
Styphon’s stock had dropped quite a few points. He decided to let it go at
that, and put them in with the other prisoners and let them talk. PTOSPHES was shocked by the casualties. Well, they were
rather shocking—only forty-two hundred electives left out of fifty-eight
hundred infantry, and eighteen hundred of a trifle over three thousand cavalry.
The body count didn’t meet the latter figure, however, and he remembered what
the Saski officer had said about Balthames’s chase almost to Esdreth Gap. Most
of the mercenaries on the left wing had simply bugged out; by now, they’d be
fleeing into Listra Valley, spreading tales of a crushing Hostigi defeat. He
cursed; there wasn’t anything else he could do about it. Some cavalry arrived from Esdreth Gap: Chartiphon’s Army of
the Besh men. During the night, they reported, infantry from both the army of
the Besh and the Army of the Listra had gotten onto the mountain back of
Tarr-Esdreth-of-Sask, and taken it by storm just before daylight. Alkides had
moved his three treasured brass eighteen-pounders and some lighter pieces down
into the gap, and was holding it at both ends with a mixed force. As the fog
had started to blow away, a large body of Saski cavalry had tried to force a
way through; they had been driven off by gunfire. Perturbed by the presence of
enemy troops so far north, he had sent to find out what was going on. Riders
were sent to reassure him, and order him to come up in person and bring his
eighteens with him. There was no telling what they might have to break into
before the day was over. The long eighteen-pounders were excellent burglar-tools. Harmakros got off at ten, with the
Mobile Force and all the four-pounders, up the main road for Sask Town. All the captured mercenaries agreed to take Prince Ptosphes’s colors and were released
under oath and under arms. The Saski subjects were disarmed and put to work
digging trenches for mass graves and collecting salvageable equipment. Mytron
and his staff preempted the better cottages and several of the larger and more
sanitary barns for hospitals. Taking five hundred of the remaining cavalry,
Kalvan started out a little before noon, leaving Ptosphes to await the arrival
of Alkides and the eighteen-pounders. Gour was a market town of some five thousand. He found bodies,
already stripped of armor, in the square, and a mob of townsfolk and disarmed
Saski prisoners working to put out several fires, guarded by some lightly
wounded mounted arquebusiers. He dropped two squads to help them and rode on. He thought he knew this section; he’d been stationed in Blair County five otherwhen years ago. He hadn’t realized how much the Pennsylvania
Railroad Company had altered the face of Logan Valley. At about what ought to
be Allegheny Furnace, he was stopped by a picket-post of Mobile Force cavalry
and warned to swing right and come in on Sask Town from behind. Tarr-Sask was
being held, either by or for Prince Sarrask, and was cannonading the town.
While he talked with them, he could hear the occasional distant boom of a heavy
bombard. Tarr-Sask stood on the south end of Brush Mountain, Sarrask’s golden-rayed sun on green flying from the watchtower. The arrival of his
cavalry at the other side of the, town must have been observed; four bombards
let go with strain-everything charges of Styphon’s Best, hurling hundred and
fifty pound stone cannonballs among the houses. This, he thought, wouldn’t do
much to improve relations between Sarrask and his subjects. Harmakros, who had
nothing but four-pounders, which was to say nothing, was not replying. Wait, he
thought, till Alkides gets here. Battering-pieces, thirty-two-pounders, about six, get cast
as soon as Verkan’s gang gets foundry going. And cast shells, do something
about. There had been no fighting inside the town; Harmakros’s blitzkrieg
had hit it too fast, before resistance could be organized. There had been some
looting—that was to be expected—but no fires. Arson for arson’s sake, without a
valid strategic reason as in Nostor, was discountenanced in the Hostigos army.
Most of the civil population had either refugeed out or were down in the
cellar. The temple of Styphon had been taken first of all. It stood
on almost the exact site of the Hollidaysburg courthouse, a circular building
under a golden dome, with rectangular wings on either side. If, as he
suspected, that dome was really gold, it might go a long way toward paying the
cost of the war. A Mobile Force infantryman was up a ladder with a tarpot and a
brush, painting DOWN STYPHON over the door. Entering, the first thing he saw
was a twenty-foot image, its face newly spalled and pitted and lead-splashed.
The Puritans had been addicted to that sort of small-arms practice, he
recalled, and so had the Huguenots. There was a lot of gold ornamentation
around; guards had been posted. He found Harmakros in the Innermost Circle, his spurred
heels resting on the high priest’s desk. He sprang to his feet. “Kalvan! Did you bring any guns?” “No, only cavalry. Ptosphes is bringing Alkides’s three eighteens.
He’ll be here in about three hours. What happened here?” “Well, as you see, Balthames got here a little ahead of us
and shut himself up in Tarr-Sask. We sent the local Uncle Wolf up to parley
with him. He says he’s holding the castle in Sarrask’s name, and won’t
surrender without Sarrask’s orders as long as he has fireseed.” “Then he doesn’t know where Sarrask is, either.” Sarrask could be dead and his body stripped on the field by
common soldiers—it’d be worth stripping—and tumbled anonymously into one of
those mass graves. If so, they might never be sure, and then, every year for
the next thirty years, some fake Sarrask would be turning up somewhere in the
Five Kingdoms, conning suckers into financing a war to recover his throne. That
had happened occasionally in otherwhen history. “Did you get the priests along with this temple?” “Oh, yes, Zothnes and all. They were packing to leave when
we got here, and argued about what to take along. We have them in chains in the
town jail, now. Do you want to see them?” “Not particularly. We’ll have their heads off tomorrow or
the next day, when we find time for it. How about the fireseed mill?” Harmakros laughed. “Verkan’s surrounding it with his riflemen.
As soon as we get a dozen or so men dressed in priestly robes, about a hundred
more will chase them in, with a lot of yelling and shooting. If that gets the
gate open, we may be able to take the place before some fanatic blows it up.
You know, some of these under-priests and novices really believe in Styphon.” “Well, what did you get here?” Harmakros waved a hand about him. “All this gold and fancywork.
Then there’s gold and silver, specie and bullion, in the vaults, to about fifty
thousand gold ounces, I’d say.” That was a lot of money. Around a million US. dollars. He could believe it, though; besides making fireseed, Styphon’s House was in
the loan-shark business, at something like ten percent per lunar month,
compound interest. Anti-usury laws; do something about. Except for a few small-time
pawnbrokers, they were the only money-lenders in Sask. “Then,” Harmakros continued, “there’s a magazine and armory.
We haven’t taken inventory yet, but I’d say ten tons of fireseed, three or four
hundred stand of arquebuses and calivers, and a lot of armor. And one wing’s
packed full of general merchandise, probably taken in as offerings. We haven’t
even looked at that, yet; just put it under guard. A lot of barrels that could
be wine; we don’t want the troops getting at that yet.” The guns of Tarr-Sask kept on firing slowly, smashing a
house now and then. None of the round-shot came near the temple; Balthames was
evidently still in awe of Styphon’s House. The main army arrived about 1630;
Alkides got his brass eighteen-pounders and three twelves in position and began
shooting back. They didn’t throw the huge granite globes Balthames’s bombards
did, but they fired every five minutes instead of every half hour, and with
something approaching accuracy. A little later, Verkan rode in to report the
fireseed mill taken intact. He didn’t think much of the equipment—the mills
were all slave-powered—but there had been twenty tons of finished fireseed, and
over a hundred of sulfur and saltpeter. He had had some trouble preventing a massacre
of the priests when the slaves had been unshackled. At 1815, in the gathering dusk, riders came in from Esdreth,
reporting that Sarrask had been captured, in Listra Valley, while trying to
reach the Nostori border to place himself under the questionable protection of
Prince Gormoth. “He was captured,” the sergeant in command finished, “by the
Princess Rylla and Colonel Verkan’s wife, Dalla.” He and Ptosphes and Harmakros and Verkan all shouted at
once. A moment later, the roar of one of Alkides’s eighteens was almost an anticlimax.
Verkan was saying, “That’s the girl who wanted me to stay out of battles!” “But Rylla can’t get out of bed,” Ptosphes argued. “I wouldn’t know about that, Prince,” the sergeant said. “Maybe
the Princess calls a saddle a bed, because that’s what she was in when I saw
her.” “Well, did she have that cast—that leather thing—on her leg?”
Kalvan asked. “No, sir—just regular riding boots, with pistols in them.” He and Ptosphes cursed antiphonally. Well, at least they’d
kept her out of that blindfold slaughterhouse at Fyk. “Sound Cease Fire, and then Parley,” he ordered. “Send Uncle
Wolf up the hill again; tell Balthames we have his pa-in-law.” They got a truce arranged; Balthames sent out a group of neutrals,
merchants and envoys from other princedoms, to observe and report. Bonfires
were lit along the road up to the castle. It was full dark when Rylla and Dalla
arrived, with a mixed company of mounted Tarr-Hostigos garrison troops,
fugitive mercenaries rallied along the road south, and overage peasants on overage
horses. With them were nearly a hundred of Sarrask’s elite guard, in silvered
harness that looked more like table-service than armor, and Sarrask himself in
gilded armor. “Where’s that lying quack of a Mytron?” Rylla demanded, as
soon as she was within hearing. “I’ll doctor him when I catch him—a double orchidectomy!
You know what? Yes, of course you do; you put him up to it! Well, Dalla had a
look at my leg this morning, she’s forgotten more about doctoring than Mytron
ever learned, and she said that thing ought to have been off half a moon ago.” “Well, what’s the story?” Kalvan asked. “How did you pick
all this up?” He indicated Sarrask, glowering at them from his saddle, with his
silver-plated guardsmen behind him. “Oh, this band of heroes you took to a battle you tried to
keep me out of,” Rylla said bitterly. “About noon, they came clattering into
Tarr-Hostigos—that’s the ones with the fastest horses and the sharpest spurs—screaming
that all was lost, the army destroyed, you killed, father killed, Harmakros
killed, Verkan killed, Mnestros killed; why, they even had Chartiphon, down on
the Beshtan border, killed!” “Well, I’m sorry to say that Mnestros was killed,”
her father told her. “Well, I didn’t believe a tenth of it, but even at that something
bad could have happened, so I gathered up what men I could mount at the castle,
appointed Dalla my lieutenant—she was the best man around—and we started south,
gathering up what we could along the way. Just this side of Darax, we ran into
this crowd. We thought they were the cavalry screen for a Saski invasion, and
we gave them an argument. That was when Dalla captured Prince Sarrask.” “I did not,” Verkan’s wife denied. “I just shot his horse.
Some farmers captured him, and you owe them a lot of money, or somebody does.
We rode into this gang on the road, and there was a lot of shooting, and this
big man in gilded armor came at me swinging a sword as long as I am. I fired at
him, and as I did his horse reared and caught it in the chest and fell over
backward, and while he was trying to get clear some peasants with knives and
hatchets and things jumped on him, and he began screaming, ‘I am Prince Sarrask
of Sask; my ransom is a hundred thousand ounces of silver!’ Well, right away,
they lost interest in killing him.” “Who are they, do you know?” Ptosphes asked. “I’ll have to
make that good to them.” “Styphon will pay,” Kalvan said. “Styphon ought to; he got Sarrask into this mess in the
first place,” Ptosphes commented. He turned back to Rylla. “What then?” “Well, when Sarrask surrendered, the rest of them began pulling
off helmets and holding swords up by the blades and crying, ‘Oath to Galzar!’ They
all admitted they’d taken an awful beating at Fyk, and were trying to get into
Nostor. Now wouldn’t that have been nice?” “Our gold-plated friend here didn’t want to come along with
us,” Dalla said. “Rylla told him he didn’t need to; we could take his head
along easier than all of him. You know, Prince, your daughter doesn’t fool. At
least, Sarrask didn’t think so.” She hadn’t been fooling, and Sarrask had known it. “So,”
Rylla picked it up, “we put him on a horse one of his guards didn’t need any
more, and brought him along. We thought you might find a use for him. We
stopped at Esdreth Gap—I saw our flag on the Sask castle; that looked pretty,
but Sarrask didn’t think so ...” “Prince Ptosphes!” Sarrask burst out. “I am a Prince, as you
are. You have no right to let these—these girls—make sport of me!” “They’re as good soldiers as you are,” Ptosphes snapped. “They
captured you, didn’t they?” “It was the true gods who made sport of you, Prince Sarrask!”
Kalvan went into the same harangue he had given the captured officers at Fyk,
in his late father’s best denunciatory pulpit style. “I pray all the true gods,”
he finished, “that now that they have humbled you, they will forgive you.” Sarrask was no longer defiant; he was a badly scared Prince,
as badly scared as any sinner at whom the Rev. Alexander Morrison had thundered
hellfire and damnation. Now and then he looked uneasily upward, as though
wondering what the gods were going to hit him with next. It was almost midnight before Kalvan and Ptosphes could sit
down privately in a small room behind Sarrask’s gaudy presence chamber. There
had been the takeover of Tarr-Sask, and the quartering of troops, and the
surrendered mercenaries to swear into Ptosphes’s service, and the Saski troops
to disarm and confine to barracks. Riders had been coming and going with
messages. Chartiphon, on the Beshtan border, was patching up a field truce with
Balthar’s officers on the spot, and had sent cavalry to seize the lead mines in
Sinking Valley. As soon as things stabilized, he was turning the Army of the
Besh over to his second in command and coming to Sask Town. Ptosphes had let his pipe go out. Biting back a yawn, he
leaned forward to relight it from a candle. “We have a panther by the tail here, Kalvan; you know that?”
he asked. “What are we going to do now?” “Well, we clean Styphon’s House out of Sask, first of all.
We’ll have the heads off all those priests, from Zothnes down.” Counting the
lot that had been brought in from the different temple-farms, that would be
about fifty. They’d have to gather up some headsmen. “That will have to be
policy, from now on. We don’t leave any of that gang alive.” “Oh, of course,” Ptosphes agreed. “‘To be dealt with as
wolves are.’ But how about Sarrask and Balthames? If we behead them, the other
Princes would criticize us.” “No, we want both of them alive, as your vassals. Balthames
is going to marry that wench of Sarrask’s if I have to stand behind him with a
shotgun, and then we’ll make him Prince of Sashta, and occupy all that
territory Balthar agreed to cede him. In return, he’ll guarantee us the entire
output of those lead mines. Lead, I’m afraid, is going to be our chief
foreign-exchange monetary metal for a long time to come. “To make it a little tighter,” he continued, “we’ll add a
little of Hostigos, east of the mountains, say to the edge of the Barrens.” “Are you crazy, Kalvan? Give up Hostigi land? Not as long as
I’m Prince of Hostigos!” “Oh, I’m sorry. I must have forgotten to tell you. You’re
not Prince of Hostigos any more. I am.” Ptosphes’s face went blank, for an
instant, with shocked incredulity. Then he was on his feet with an oath, his
poignard half drawn. “No,” Kalvan continued, before his father-in-law-to-be
could say anything else. “You are now His Majesty, Ptosphes the First, Great
King of Hos-Hostigos. As Prince by betrothal of your Majesty’s domain of Old
Hostigos, let me be the first to do homage to your Majesty.” Ptosphes resumed his chair, solely by force of gravity. He
stared for a moment, then picked up his goblet and drained it. This was a Hos of another color. “If the people in that
section don’t want to live under the rule of Balthames, for which I shouldn’t
blame them, we’ll buy them out and settle them elsewhere. We’ll fill that
country with mercenaries we’ve had to take over and don’t want to carry on the
payroll. The officers can be barons, and the privates will all get forty acres
and a mule, and we’ll make sure they all have something to shoot with. That’ll
keep them out of worse mischief, and keep Prince Balthames’s hands full. If we
need them, we can always call them up again. Styphon, as usual, will pay. “I don’t know how long it’ll take us to get Beshta—a moon or
so. We’ll let Balthar find out how much gold and silver we’re getting, out of
this temple here. Balthar is fond of money. Then, after he’s broken with
Styphon’s House, he’ll find that he’ll have to join us.” “Armanes, too,” Ptosphes considered, toying with his golden
chain. “He owes Styphon’s House a lot of money. What do you think Kaiphranos
will do about this?” “Well, he won’t be happy about it, but who cares? He only
has some five thousand troops of his own; if he wants to fight us, he’ll either
have to raise a mercenary army—and there’s a limit to how many mercenaries
anybody, even financed by Styphon’s House, can hire—or he’ll have to levy on
his subject Princes. Half of them won’t send troops to help coerce a fellow
Prince—it might be their turn next—and the rest will all be too jealous of
their own dignities to take orders from him. And in any case, he won’t move
till spring.” Ptosphes had started to lift the chain from around his neck.
He replaced it. “No, Kalvan,” he said firmly. “I will remain Prince of Old
Hostigos. You must be Great King.” “Now, look here, Ptosphes; Dralm-dammit, you have to be
Great King!” For a moment, he was ten years old again, arguing who’d be cops
and who’d be robbers. “You have some standing; you’re a Prince. Nobody in
Hos-Harphax knows me from a hole in the ground.” Ptosphes slapped the table till the goblets jiggled. “That’s
just it, Kalvan! They know me all too well. I’m just a Prince, no better than
they are; every one of these other Princes would say he had as much right to be
Great King as I do. But they don’t know who you are; all they know is what you’ve
done. That and the story we told at the beginning, that you come from far
across the Western Ocean, around the Cold Lands. Why, that’s the Home of the
Gods! We can’t claim that you’re a god, yourself; the real gods wouldn’t like
that. But anybody can plainly see that you’ve been taught by the gods, and sent
by them. It would be nothing but plain blasphemy to deny it!” Ptosphes was right; none of these haughty Princes would
kneel to one of their own ilk. But Kalvan, Galzar-taught and Dralm-sent; that
was a Hos of another color, too. Rylla’s father had risen to kneel to him. “Oh, sit down; sit down! Save that nonsense for Sarrask and Balthames
to do. We’ll have to talk to some of our people tonight; best do that in the
presence chamber.” Harmakros was still up and more or less awake. He took the
announcement quite calmly; by this time he was beyond surprise at—anything. They
had to waken Rylla; she’d had a little too much, for her first day up. She
merely nodded drowsily. Then her eyes widened. “Hey, doesn’t this make me Great
Queen, or something?” Then she went back to sleep. Chartiphon, arriving from the Beshtan border, was informed.
He asked, “Why not Ptosphes?” then nodded agreement when the reasons were
explained. About the necessity for establishing a Great Kingdom he had no
doubt. “What else are we now? We’ll have Beshta next.” A score of others, Hostigi nobles and top army brass, were
gathered in the presence chamber. Among them was Sthentros; maybe he hadn’t
been at Fitra, but nobody could say he hadn’t been at Fyk. He might have envied
Lord Kalvan, but Great King Kalvan was completely beyond envy. They were all
half out on their feet—they’d only marched all day yesterday, tried to sleep in
a wet cow pasture with cannon firing over them, fought a “great murthering
battle” in the morning, marched fifteen more miles, and taken Sask Town and
Tarr-Sask—but they wanted to throw a party to celebrate. They were persuaded to
have one drink to their new sovereign and then go to bed. The rank-and-file weren’t in any better shape; half a den of
Cub Scouts could have taken Tarr-Sask and run the lot of them out. THE next morning Kalvan’s orderly, who didn’t seem to have
gotten much sleep, wakened him at nine-thirty. Should have done it earlier, but
he’d probably just gotten awake himself He bathed, put on clothes he’d never
seen before—have things brought from Tarr-Hostigos, soonest—and breakfasted
with Ptosphes, who had also been outfitted from some Saski nobleman’s wardrobe.
There were more messages: from Klestreus, in Beshta Town, who had bullied
Balthar into agreeing to a truce and pulling his troops back to the line agreed
on the treaty with Sarrask; and from Xentos, at Tarr-Hostigos. Xentos was
disturbed about reports of troop mobilization in Nostor; Gormoth, he knew, had
recently hired five hundred mercenary cavalry. Immediately, Ptosphes became
equally disturbed. He wanted to march at once down the Listra Valley. “No, for Dralm’s sake!” Kalvan protested. “We have a panther
by the tail, here. In a day or so, when we’re in control, we can march a lot of
these new mercenaries to Listra-Mouth, but right now we mustn’t let anybody know
we’re frightened or they’ll all jump us.” “But if Gormoth’s invading Hostigos—” “I don’t think he is. Just to make sure, we’ll send Phraines
off with half the Mobile Force and four four-pounders; they can hold anything
Gormoth’s moving against us for a few days.” He gave the necessary orders, saw to it that the troops left
Sask Town quietly, and tried to ignore the subject. He was glad, though, that
Rylla had gotten out of her splints and come to Sask Town; she might be safer
here. So they had Sarrask and Balthames brought in. Both seemed to be expecting to be handed over to the headsman,
and were trying to be nonchalant about it. Ptosphes informed them abruptly that
they were now subjects of the Great King of Hos-Hostigos. “Who’s he?” Sarrask demanded, with a truculence the circumstances
didn’t quite justify. “You?” “Oh, no. I am Prince of Old Hostigos. His Majesty, Kalvan
the First, is Great King.” They were both relieved. Ptosphes had been right; the sovereignty
of the mysterious and possibly supernatural Kalvan would be acceptable; that of
a self-elevated equal would not. When the conditions under which they would
reign as Princes, respectively, of Sashta and Sask were explained, Balthames
was delighted. He’d come out of this as well as if Sask had won the war.
Sarrask was somewhat less so, until informed that he was now free of all his
debts to Styphon’s House and would share in the loot of the temple and be given
the fireseed mill. “Well, Dralm save your Majesty!” he cried, and then loosed a
torrent of invective against Styphon’s House and all in it. “You’ll let me put
these thieving priests to death, won’t you, your Majesty?” “They are offenders against the Great King; his justice will
deal with them,” Ptosphes informed him. Then they had in the foreign envoys, representatives of
Prince Kestophes of Ulthor, on Lake Erie, and Armanes of Nyklos, and Tythanes
of Kyblos, and Balthar of Beshta, and other neighboring Princes. There had been
no such diplomatic corps at Tarr-Hostigos, because of the ban of Styphon’s
House. The Ulthori minister immediately wanted to know what the new Great Kingdom included. “Well, at the moment, the Princedom of Old Hostigos, the
Princedom of Sask, and the new Princedom of Sashta. Any other Princes who may
elect to join us will be made welcome under our rule and protection; those
which do not will be respected in their sovereignty as long as they respect us
in ours. Or what they may conceive to be their sovereignty as subjects of this
Great King of Hos-Harphax, Kaiphranos.” He shrugged Kaiphranos off as too trivial for consideration.
Several of them laughed. The Beshtan minister began to bristle: “This Princedom of Sashta, now; does that include territory
ruled by my master, Prince Balthar of Beshta?” “It includes territory your master ceded to our subject,
Prince Balthames, in a treaty with our subject Prince Sarrask, which we
recognized and confirm, and which we are prepared to enforce. As to how we are
prepared to enforce it, I trust I don’t have to remind you of what happened at
Fyk yesterday moming.” He turned to the others. “Now, if your respective Princes
don’t wish to acknowledge our sovereignty, we hope they will accept our
friendship and extend their own,” he said. “We also hope that mutually. satisfactory
arrangements for trade can be made. For example, before long we expect to be
producing fireseed in sufficient quantities for export, of better quality and
at lower price—than Styphon’s House.” “We know that,” the Nyklosi envoy said. “I can’t, of course,
commit my Prince to accepting the sovereignty of Hos-Hostigos, though I will
strongly advise it. We’ve been paying tribute to King Kaiphranos and getting
absolutely nothing in return for it. But in any case, we’ll be glad to get all
the fireseed you can send us.” “Well, look here,” the Beshtan began. “What’s all this about
devils? The priests of Styphon make the devils in fireseed die when it bums,
and yours lets them loose.” The Ulthori nodded. “We’ve heard about that, too,” he said. “We
have no use for King Kaiphranos; for all he does, we might as well not have a
Great King. But we don’t want Ulthor being filled with evil spirits.” “We’ve been using Hostigos fireseed in Nyklos, and we haven’t
had any trouble with devils,” the Nyklosi said. “There are no devils in fireseed,” Kalvan declared. “It’s
nothing but saltpeter and charcoal and sulfur, mixed without any prayers or
rites or magic whatever. You know how much of it we burned at Fitra and
Listra-Mouth. Nobody’s seen any devils there, since.” “Well, but you can’t see the devils,” the envoy from Kyblos
said. “They fill the air, and make bad weather, and make the seed rot in the
ground. You wait till spring, and see what kind of crops you have around Fitra.
And around Fyk.” The Beshtan was frankly hostile, the Ulthori unconvinced.
That devil story was going to have to be answered, and how could you prove the
nonexistence of something, especially an invisible something, that didn’t
exist? That was why he was an agnostic instead of an atheist. They got rid of the diplomatic corps, and had in the priests
and priestesses of all the regular, non-Styphon, pantheon. The one good thing
about monotheism, he thought, was that it reduced the priesthood problem. Hadn’t
the Romans handled that through a government-appointed pontifex maximus? Think
over, seriously. The good thing about polytheism was that the gods operated in
non-competitive fields, and their priests had a common basis of belief, and
mutual respect for each other’s deities. The high priest of Dralm seemed to be
the acknowledged dean of the sacred college. Assisted by all his colleagues, he
would make the invocation and proclaim Kalvan Great King in the name of all the
gods. Then they had in a lot of Sarrask’s court functionaries, who bickered endlessly
about protocol and precedence. And they made sure that each of the mercenary
captains swore a new oath of service to the Great King. After noon-meal, they assembled everybody in Prince Sarrask’s
throne room. In Korea, another sergeant in Calvin Morrison’s company had
seen the throne-room of Napoleon at Fontainebleau. “You know,” his comrade had said, “I never really understood
Napoleon till I saw that place. If Al Capone had ever seen it, he’d have gone
straight back to Chicago and ordered one for himself, twice as big, because he
couldn’t possibly have gotten one twice as flashy or in twice as bad taste.” That described Sarrask’s throne-room exactly. The high priest of Dralm proclaimed him Great King, chosen
by all the true gods; the other priests and priestesses ratified that on behalf
of their deities. Divine right of kings was another innovation, here-and-now.
He then seated Rylla on the throne beside him, and then invested her father
with the throne of Old Hostigos, emphasizing that he was First Prince of the Great Kingdom. Then he accepted the homage of Sarrask and Balthames, and invested them with
their Princedoms. The rest of the afternoon was consumed in oaths of fealty
from the more prominent nobles. When he left the throne, he was handed messages from Klestreus,
in Beshta Town, and Xentos. Klestreus reported that Prince Balthar had
surrounded the temple of Styphon with troops, to protect it from mobs incited
by priests of Dralm and Galzar. Xentos reported confused stories of internal
fighting in Nostor, and no incidents on the border, where Phrames was on watch. That evening, they had a feast. THE next morning, after assembling the court, the priests
and priestesses of all the regular deities, and all the merchants, itinerant
traders and other travelers in Sask Town, the priests of Styphon, from Zothnes
down, were hustled in. They were a sorry-looking lot, dungeon-soiled,
captivity-scuffed, and loaded with chains. Prodded with pike-butts, they were
formed into a line facing the throne, and booed enthusiastically by all. “Look at them!” Balthames jeered. “See how Styphon cares for
his priests!” “Throw their heads in Styphon’s face!” Sarrask shouted.
Other suggestions were forthcoming, most of which would have horrified the
Mau-Mau. A few, black-robe priests and white-robe under-priests, were defiant.
He remembered what Harmakros had said about some on the lower echelons really
believing in Styphon. Most of them didn’t, and were in no mood for martyrdom.
Zothnes, who should have been setting an example, was in a pitiable funk. Finally, he commanded silence. “These people,” he said, “are
criminals against all men and against all the true gods. They must be put to
death in a special manner, reserved for them and those like them. Let them be
blown from the muzzles of cannon!” Well, the British had done that during the Sepoy Mutiny, in
the reign of her enlightened Majesty, Victoria, and could you get any more
respectable than that? He was making a bad pun about cannonized martyrs. There
was a general shout of approval—original, effective, uncomplicated, and highly
appropriate. A yellow-robe upper priest fainted. Kalvan addressed his mercenary Chief of Artillery: “Alkides,
say we use the three eighteens and three twelve; how long would it take your
men to finish off this lot?” “Six at a time.” Alkides looked the job-lot over. “Why, if
we started right after noon-meal, we could be through in time for dinner.” He
thought for a moment. “Look, Lord Kal—pardon, your Majesty. Suppose we use the
big bombards, here. We could load the skinny ones all the way in, and the fat
ones up to the hips.” He pointed at Zothnes. “I think that one would go all the
way in a fifty-pounder, almost.” Kalvan frowned. “But I’d wanted to do it in the town square.
The people ought to watch it.” “But it would make an awful mess in the square,” Rylla objected.
“The people could come out from town to watch,” Sarrask suggested helpfully. “More
than could see it in the square. And vendors could come out and sell
honey-cakes and meat-pies.” Another priest fainted. Kalvan didn’t want too many of them
doing that, and nodded unobtrusively to Ptosphes. “Your Majesty,” the First Prince of the Great Kingdom said, “I understand this is a fate reserved only for the priests of the false god
Styphon. Now, suppose, before they can be executed, some of these criminals
abjure their false god, recant their errors, and profess faith in the true
gods. What then?” “Oh, in that case we’d have no right to put them to death at
all. If they make public abjuration of Styphon, renounce their priesthood,
profess faith in Dralm and Galzar and Yirtta Allmother and the other true gods,
and recant all their false teachings, we would have to set them free. To those
willing to enter our service, honorable employment, appropriate to their
condition, would be given. If Zothnes, say, were to do so, I’d think something
around five hundred ounces of gold a year—” A white-robe under-priest shouted that he would never deny
his god. A yellow-robe upper priest said, “Shut your fool’s mouth!” and hit him
across the face with the slack of his fetter-chain. Zothnes was giggling in
half-hysterical relief. “Dralm bless your Majesty; of course we will, all of us!” he
babbled. “Why, I spit in the face of Styphon! You think any true god would
suffer his priests to be treated as we’ve been?” XENTOS reached Sask Town that evening. The news from Nostor
was a little more definite: according to his sources there, Gormoth had started
mobilizing for a blitz attack on Hostigos on hearing the first, false, news of
a Hostigi disaster at Fyk. As soon as he had learned better, he had used his
troops to seize the Nostor Town temple of Styphon and the temple-farm up
Lycoming Creek. Now there was savage fighting all over Nostor, between Gormoth’s
new mercenaries and supporters of Styphon’s House, and the Nostori regular army
was split by mutiny and counter-mutiny. There had been an unsuccessful attack
on Tarr-Nostor. Gormoth still seemed to be in control. The Sask Town priestcraft all deferred to Xentos; it was evident
that he was Primate of the Great Kingdom, Archbishop of Canterbury or something
of the sort. Established Church of Hos-Hostigos; think over carefully. He
immediately called an ecclesiastical council and began working out a program
for the auto-da-fe Held the next day, it was a great success. Procession of the
penitents from Tarr-Sask to the Sask Town temple of Dralm, in sackcloth and
ashes, guarded by enough pikemen to keep the mob from pelting them with
anything more lethal than rotten cabbage and dead cats. Token flagellation.
Recantation of all heresies, special emphasis on fireseed, supernatural nature
and devil content of. He was pleased to observe the reactions of the diplomatic
corps—to this. Sermon of the Faith, preached by the Hostigos Uncle Wolf; as a
professional performance, at least, the Rev. Alexander Morrison would have
approved. And, finally, after profession of faith in the true gods and
absolution, a triumphant march through the streets, the new converts robed in
white and crowned with garlands. And free wine for everybody. This was even
more fun than shooting them out of cannons would have been. The public was
delighted. They had another feast that evening. The next day, Klestreus
reported that Balthar had seized the temple of Styphon and massacred the
priests; the mob was parading their heads on pike-points. He refused, however,
to renounce his sovereignty and accept the rule of Great King Kalvan. Evidently
he never considered his vassalage to Great King Kaiphranos, which wasn’t
surprising. Late in the afternoon, a troop of cavalry from Nyklos Town arrived, escorting one of Prince Armanes’s chief nobles with a petition that Nyklos
be annexed to the Great Kingdom of Hos-Hostigos, and also a pack-horse loaded
with severed heads. Prince Armanes was more interested in liquidating his debts
by liquidating the creditors than he was in winning converts for the true gods.
Prince Kestophes of Ulthor blew his priests of Styphon off the guns of his lakeside
fort; along with his allegiance he gave Hos-Hostigos a port on the Great Lakes. By that time the demolition of the Sask Town temple of Styphon had begun,
starting with the gold dome. It was real gold, twelve thousand ounces, of which
Sarrask, after his ransom was paid, received three thousand. When he returned to Tarr-Hostigos, Klestreus was there, seeking
instructions. Prince Balthar was now ready to accept the sovereignty of King
Kalvan. It seemed that, after seizing the temple, massacring the priests, and
incurring the ban of Styphon’s House, he discovered that there was no fireseed
mill at all in Beshta; all the fireseed the priests had furnished him had been
made in Sask. He was, in spite of the Sask Town auto-da-fe, still worried about
the possible devil content of Kalvan’s Unconsecrated. The ex-Archpriest
Zothnes, now with the Ministry of State at six thousand ounces, gold, a year,
was sent to reassure him. It took more reassurance to induce him to come to
Tarr-Hostigos to do homage; outside Tarr-Beshta, Balthar was violently
agoraphobic. He came, however, in a mail-curtained wagon, guarded by two
hundred of Harmakros’s cavalry. The news from Nostor was still confused. A civil war was raging,
that was definite, but exactly who against whom was less clear. It sounded a
little like France at the time of the War of the Three Henries. Netzigon, the
former chief-captain, and Krastokles, who had escaped the massacre when Gormoth
had taken the temple, were in open revolt, though relations between them were
said to be strained. Fighting continued in the streets of Nostor Town after the abortive attack on the castle. Count Pheblon, Gormoth’s cousin and Netzigon’s
successor, commanded about half the army; the other half adhered to their
former commander. The nobles, each with a formidable following, were split
about evenly. Then there were minor factions: anti-Gormoth-and-anti-Styphon,
pro-Styphon-and-pro-Gormoth, anti-Gormoth-and-pro-Pheblon. In addition, several
large mercenary companies had invaded Nostor on their own and were pillaging
indiscriminately, committing all the usual atrocities, while trying to auction
their services. Not liking all this anarchy next door, Kalvan wanted to intervene.
Chartiphon and Harmakros were in favor of that; so was Armanes of Nyklos, who
hoped to pick up a few bits of real estate on his southeast border. Xentos, of
course, wanted to wait and see, and, rather surprisingly, he was supported by
Ptosphes, Sarrask and Klestreus. Klestreus probably knew more about the
situation in Nostor than any of them. That persuaded Kalvan to wait and see. Tythanes of Kyblos arrived to do homage, attended by a large
retinue, and bringing with him twenty-odd priests of Styphon, yoked
neck-and-neck like a Guinea Coast slave-kaffle. Baron Zothnes talked to them;
there was an auto-da-fe and public recantation. Some went to work in the
fireseed mill and some became novices in the temple of Dralm, all under close
surveillance. Kestophes of Ulthor came in a few days later. Balthar of Beshta
was still at Tarr-Hostigos, which, by then, was crowded like a convention
hotel. Royal palace, get built. Something that could accommodate a mob of
subject Princes and their attendants, but not one of these castles. Castles,
once he began making cast-iron round-shot and hollow explosive shells and heavy
brass guns, would become scenic features, just as these big hooped iron
bombards would become war memorials. Something simple and homelike, he thought.
On the order of Versailles. When the Princes were all at Tarr-Hostigos, he and Rylla
were married, and there was a two-day feast, with an extra day for hangovers.
He’d never been married before. He liked it. It couldn’t possibly have happened
with anybody nicer than Rylla. Some time during the festivities, Prince Balthames and Sarrask’s
daughter Amnita were married. There was also a minor and carefully hushed
scandal about Balthames and a page boy. Then they had the Coronation. Xentos, who was shaping up
nicely as a prelate-statesman of the Richelieu type, crowned him and Rylla.
Then he crowned Ptosphes as First Prince of the Great Kingdom, and the other
Princes in order of their submission. Then the Proclamation of the Great Kingdom was read. Quite a few hands, lifting goblets between phrases, had labored on
that. His own contributions had been cribbed from The Declaration of Independence
and, touching Styphon’s House, from Martin Luther. Everybody cheered it
enthusiastically. Some of the Princes were less enthusiastic about the Great
Charter. It wasn’t anything like the one that Tammany Hall in chain mail had
extorted from King John at Runnymede; Louis XIV would have liked it much
better. For one thing, none of them liked having to renounce their right, fully
enjoyed under Great King Kaiphranos, of making war on one another, though they
did like the tightening of control over their subject lords and barons, most of
whom were an unruly and troublesome lot. The latter didn’t like the abolition
of serfdom and, in Beshta and Kyblos, outright slavery. But it gave everybody
security without having to hire expensive mercenaries or call out peasant levies
when they were most needed in the fields. The regular army of the Great Kingdom would take care of that. And everybody could see what was happening in Nostor at the
moment. He understood, now, why Xentos had opposed intervention; Nostor was too
good a horrible example to sacrifice. So they all signed and sealed it. Secret police, to make
sure they live up to it, think of somebody for chief. Then they feasted for a couple more days, and there were tournaments
and hunts. There was also a minor scandal, carefully hushed, about Princess
Amnita and one of Tythanes’s cavalry officers. Finally they all began taking
their leave and drifting back to their own Princedoms, each carrying the flag
of the Great Kingdom, dark green with a red keystone on it. Darken the green a little more and make the scarlet a dull maroon
and they’d be good combat uniform colors. THE weather stayed fine until what he estimated to be the
first week in November—calendar reform; get onto this now—and then turned cold,
with squalls of rain which finally turned to snow. Outside, it was blowing
against the window panes—clear glass; why can’t we do something about this?—and
candles had been lighted, but he was still at work. Petitions, to be granted or
denied. Reports. Verkan’s Zygrosi were going faster than anybody had expected
with the brass foundry; they’d be pouring the first heat in ten or so days, and
he’d have to go and watch that. The rifle shop was up to fifteen finished
barrels a day, which was a real miracle. Fireseed production up, too,
sufficient for military and civilian hunting demands in all the Princedoms of
the Great Kingdom, and soon they would be exporting in quantity. Verkan and his
wife were gone, now, returning to Grefftscharr to organize lake trade with
Ulthor; he and Rylla both missed them. And King Kaiphranos was trying to raise an army for the reconquest
of his lost Princedoms, and getting a very poor response from the Princes still
subject to him. There’d be trouble with him in the spring, but not before. And
Sesklos, Styphon’s Voice’ had summoned all his archpriests to meet in Harphax
city. Council of Trent, Kalvan thought, nodding; now the Counter Reformation
would be getting into high gear. And rioting in Kyblos; the emancipated slaves were beginning
to see what Samuel Johnson had meant when he defined freedom as the choice of
working or starving. And the Prince of Phaxos wanted to join the Great Kingdom, but he was making a lot of conditions he’d have to be talked out of. And pardons, and death-warrants. He’d have to be careful not
to sign too many of the former and too few of the latter; that was how a lot of
kings lost their thrones. A servant announced a rider from Vryllos Gap, who, ushered
in, informed him that a party from Nostor had just crossed the Athan. A priest
of Dralm, a priest of Galzar, twenty mercenary cavalry, and Duke Skranga, the
First Noble of Nostor. He received Duke Skranga in his private chambers, and remembered
how he had told the Agrysi horse-trader that Dralm, or somebody, would reward
him. Dralm, or somebody, with substantial help from Skranga, evidently had. He
was richly clad, his robe lined with mink-fur, a gold chain about his neck and
a gold-hilted poignard on a gold link belt. His beard was neatly trimmed. “Well, you’ve come up in the world,” he commented. “So, if
your Majesty will pardon me, has your Majesty.” Then he produced a signet-ring—the
one given as pledge token by Count Phebion when captured and released at
Tarr-Dombra, and returned to him when his ransom had been delivered. “So has
the owner of this. He is now Prince Phebion of Nostor, and he sends me to declare
for him his desire to submit himself and his realm to your Majesty’s
sovereignty and place himself, and it, under your Majesty’s protection.” “Well, your Grace, I’m most delighted. But what, if it’s a
fair question, has become of Prince Gormoth?” The ennobled horse-trader’s face was touched with a look of
deepest sorrow. “Prince Gormoth, Dralm receive his soul, is no longer with us,
your Majesty. He was most foully murdered.” “Ah. And who appears to have murdered him, if that’s a fair
question too?” Skranga shrugged. “The then Count Phebion, and the Nostor priest
of Dralm, and the Nostor Uncle Wolf were with me in my private apartments at
Tarr-Nostor when suddenly we heard a volley of shots from the direction of
Prince Gormoth’s apartments. Snatching weapons, we rushed thither, to find the
Princely rooms crowded with guardsmen who had entered just ahead of us, and, in
his bedchamber, our beloved Prince lay weltering in his gore, bleeding from a
dozen wounds. He was quite dead:’ Skranga said sadly. “Uncle Wolf and the high
priest of Dralm, whom your Majesty knows, will both testify that we were all
together in my rooms when the shots were fired, and that Prince Gormoth was dead
when we entered. Surely your Majesty will not doubt the word of such holy men.” “Surely not. And then?” “Well, by right of nearest kinship, Count Phebion at once declared
himself Prince of Nostor. We tortured a couple of servants lightly—we don’t do
so much of that in Nostor, since our beloved and gentle Prince ... Well, your
Majesty, they all agreed that a band of men in black cloaks and masks had
suddenly forced their way into Prince Gormoth’s chambers, shot him dead, and
then fled. In spite of the most diligent search, no trace of them could be
found.” “Most mysterious. Fanatical worshipers of false Styphon,
without doubt. Now, you say that Prince Phebion, whom we recognize as the
rightful Prince of Nostor, will do homage to us?” “On certain conditions, of course, the most important of
which your Majesty has already met. Then, he wishes to be confirmed in his
possession of the temple of Styphon in Nostor Town, and the fireseed mills,
nitriaries and sulfur springs which his predecessor confiscated from Styphon’s
House.” “Well, that’s granted. And also the act of his late
Highness, Prince Gormoth, in elevating you to the title of Duke and First Noble
of Nostor..” “Your Majesty is most gracious!” “Your Grace has earned it. Now, about these mercenary companies
in Nostor?” “Pure brigands, your Majesty! His highness begs your Majesty
to send troops to deal with them.” “That’ll be done; I’ll send Duke Chartiphon, our Grand Constable,
to attend to that. What’s happened to Krastokles, by the way?” “Oh, we have him, and Netzigon too, in the dungeons at
Tarr-Nostor. They were both captured a moon-quarter ago. If your Majesty
wishes, we’ll bring both of them to Tarr-Hostigos.” “Well, don’t bother about Netzigon; take his head off yourselves,
if you think he needs it. But we want that archpriest. I hope that our faithful
Baron Zothnes can spare us the mess of blowing him off a cannon by talking some
sense into him.” “I’m sure he can, your Majesty.” He wondered just who had arranged
the killing of Gormoth, Skranga or Pheblon, or both together. He didn’t care;
Nostor hadn’t been his jurisdiction then. It was now, though, and if either of
that pair had ideas about having the other killed, he’d do something about it
in a hurry. Court intrigues, he supposed, were something he’d have with him
always, but no murders, not inside the Great Kingdom. After he showed Skranga out, he returned to his desk, opened
a box, and got out a cigar—a stogie, rather, and a very crudely made stogie at
that. It was a beginning, however. He bit the end and lit it at one of the
candles, and picked up another report, a wax-covered wooden tablet. He still
hadn’t gotten anything done on paper-making. Maybe he’d better not invent
paper; if he did, some Dralm-damned bureaucrat would invent paper-work, and
then he’d have to spend all his time endlessly reading and annotating reports. He was happy about Nostor, of course; that meant they wouldn’t
have a little war to fight next door in the spring, when King Kaiphranos would
begin being a problem. And it was nice Pheblon had Krastokles and would turn
him over. Two archpriests, about equivalent to cardinals, defecting from
Styphon’s House was a serious blow. It weakened their religious hold on the
Great Kings and their Princes, which was the only hold they had left now that
they had lost the fireseed monopoly. Priests, and especially the top level of
the hierarchy, were supposed to believe in their gods. Xentos believed in Dralm, for instance. Maybe he’d have trouble
with the old man, some day, if Xentos found his duty to Dralm conflicting with
his duty to the Great Kingdom. But he hoped that would never happen. He’d have to find out more about what was going on in the
other Great Kingdoms. Spies—there was a job for Duke Skranga, one that would
keep him out of mischief in Nostori local politics. Chief of Secret Service.
Skranga was crooked enough to be good at that. And somebody to watch Skranga,
of course. That could be one of Klestreus’s jobs. And find out just what the situation was in Nostor. Go there
himself; Machiavelli always recommended that for securing a new domain. Make
the Nostori his friends—that wouldn’t be hard, after they’d lived under the
tyranny of Gormoth. And ... General Order, to all Troops: Effective immediately, it
shall be a court-martial offense for any member of the Armed Forces of the
Great Kingdom of Hos-Hostigos publicly to sing, recite, play, whistle, hum, or
otherwise utter the words and/or music of the song known as Marching through
Nostor. VERKAN Vall looked at his watch and wished Dalla would
hurry, but Dalla was making herself beautiful for the party. A waste of time,
he thought; Dalla had been born beautiful. But try and tell any woman that.
Across the low table, Tortha Karf also looked at his watch, and smiled happily.
He’d been doing that all through dinner and ever since, and each time had been
broader and happier as more minutes till midnight leaked away. He hoped Dallas preparations would still permit them to
reach Paratime Police Headquarters with an hour to spare before midnight. There’d
be a big crowd in the assembly room—everybody who was anybody on the Paracops
and the Paratime Commission, politicians, society people, and, by special
invitation, the Kalvan Project crowd from the University. He’d have to shake
hands with most of them, and have drinks with as many as possible, and then,
just before midnight, they’d all crowd into the Chief’s office, and Tortha Karf
would sit down at his desk, and, precisely at 2400, rise, and they’d shake
hands, and Tortha Karf would step aside and he’d sit down, and everybody would
start that Fourth Level barbarian chant they used on such occasions. And from then on, he’d be stuck there—Dralm-dammit! He must
have said that aloud. The soon-to-retire Chief grinned unsympathetically. “Still
swearing in Aryan-Transpacific Zarthani. When do you expect to get back there?” “Dralm knows, and he doesn’t operate on Home Time Line. I’m
going to have a lot to do here. One, I’m going to start a flap, and keep it
flapping, about this pickup business. Ten new cases in the last eight days. And
don’t tell me what you told Zarvan Tharg when he was retiring, or what Zarvan Tharg
told Hishan Galth when he was retiring. I’m going to do something about this,
by Dralm I am!” “Well, fortunately for the working cops, we’re a longevous
race. It’s a long time between new Chiefs.” “Well, we know what causes it. We’ll have to work on eliminating
the cause. I’m a hundred and four; I can took forward to another two centuries
in that chair of yours. If we don’t have enough men, and enough robots, and
enough computers to eliminate some of these interpenetrations, we might as well
throw it in and quit.” “It’ll cost like crazy.” “Look, I don’t make a practice of preaching moral ethics,
you know that. I just want you to think, for a moment, of the morality of
snatching people out of the only world they know and dumping them into an
entirely different world, just enough like their own.” “I’ve thought about it, now and then,” Tortha Karf said, in
mild understatement. “This fellow Morrison, Lord Kalvan, Great King Kalvan, is
one in a million. That was the best thing that could possibly have happened to
him, and he’d be the first to say so, if he dared talk about it. But for the
rest, the ones the conveyer operators ray down with their needlers are the
lucky ones. “But what are we going to do, Vall? We have a population of
ten billion, on a planet that was completely exhausted twelve thousand years
ago. I don’t think more than a billion and a half are on Home Time Line at any
one time; the rest are scattered all over Fifth Level, and out at
conveyer-heads all over Fourth, Third and Second. We can’t cut them loose;
there’s a slight moral issue involved there, too. And we can’t haul them all in
to starve after we stop paratiming. That little Aryan-Transpacific expression
you picked up fits. We have a panther by the tail.” “Well, we can do all we can. I saw to it that they did it on
the University Kalvan Operation. We checked all the conveyer-heads equivalent
with Hostigos Town on every Paratime penetrated time-line, and ours doesn’t
coincide with any of them.” “I’ll bet you had a time.” Tortha Karf sipped some more of
the after-dinner coffee they were dragging out, and lit another cigarette. “I’ll
bet they love you in Conveyer Registration Office, too. How many were there?” “A shade over three thousand, inside four square miles. I
don’t know what they’ll do about the conveyer-head for Agrys City when they go to put one in there. There’s a city on that river-mouth island on every
time-line that builds cities, and tribal villages on most of the rest.” “Then they aren’t just establishing a conveyer-head at Hostigos Town?” “Oh, no; they’re making a real operation out of it. We have
five police posts, here and there, including one at Greffa, the capital of
Grefftscharr, where Dalla and I are supposed to come from. The University will
have study teams, or at least observers, in the capital cities of all the Five
Great Kingdoms. Six Kingdoms, now, with Hos-Hostigos. They’ll have to be
careful; by spring, there’ll be a war that’ll make the Conquest of Sask look
like a schoolyard brawl.” They were both silent for awhile. Tortha Karf, smiling
contentedly, was thinking of his farm on Fifth Level Sicily; he’d be there this
time tomorrow, stuck with nothing to worry about but what the rabbits were doing
to his gardens. Verkan Vall was thinking about his friend, the Great King
Kalvan, and everything Kalvan had to worry about. Now there was a man who had a
panther by the tail. Then something else occurred to him; a disquieting thought
that had nagged him ever since a remark Dalla had made, the morning before they’d
made the drop as Verkan and his party. “Chief,” he said, and remembered that in a couple of hours
people would be calling him that. “This pickup problem is only one facet, and a
small one, of something big and serious, and fundamental. We’re supposed to
protect the Paratime Secret. Just how good a secret is it?” Tortha Karf looked up sharply, his cup halfway to his lips. “What’s
wrong with the Paratime Secret, Vall?” “How did we come to discover Paratime transposition?” Tortha Karf had to pause briefly. He had learned that long
ago, and there was considerable mental overlay. “Why, Ghaldron was working to
develop a spacewarp drive, to get us out to the stars, and Hesthor was working
on the possibility of linear time-travel, to get back to the past, before his
ancestors had worn the planet out. Things were pretty grim, on this time-line,
twelve thousand years ago. And a couple of centuries before, Rhogom had worked
up a theory of multidimensional time, to explain the phenomenon of precognition.
Dalla could tell you all about that; that’s her subject. “Well, science was pretty tightly compartmented, then, but
somehow Hesthor read some of Rhogom’s old papers, and he’d heard about what
Ghaldron was working on and got in touch with him. Between them, they
discovered paratemporal transposition. Why?” “As far as I know, nobody off Home Time Line has ever developed
any sort of time-machine, linear or lateral. There are Second Level
civilizations, and one on Third, that have over-light-speed drives for
interstellar ships. But the idea of multidimensional time and worlds of
alternate probability is all over Second and Third Levels, and you even find it
on Fourth—a mystical concept on Sino-Hindic, and a science-fiction idea on
Europo-American.” “And you’re thinking, suppose some Sino-Hindic mystic, or
some Europo-American science-fiction writer, gets picked up and dumped onto,
say, Second Level Interworld Empire?” “That could do it. It mightn’t even be needed. You know,
there is no such thing as a single-shot discovery; anything that’s been discovered
once can be discovered again. That’s why it always amuses me to see some
technological warfare office classifying a law of nature as top-secret.
Gunpowder was the secret of Styphon’s House, and look what’s happening to
Styphon’s House now. Of course, gunpowder is a simple little discovery; it’s
been made tens of thousands of times, all over paratime. Paratemporal transposition
is a big, complicated, discovery; it was made just once, twelve thousand years
ago, on one time-line. But no secret can be kept forever. One of the University
crowd said that, speaking of Styphon’s House. He became quite indignant when
Dalla mentioned the Paratime Secret in that connection.” “I’ll bet you didn’t. That’s a nice thought to give a
retiring Chief of Paratime Police. Now I’ll be having nightmares about—” He broke off, rising to his feet with a smile. A paratimer
could always produce a smile when one was needed. “Well, now, Dalla! That gown! And how did you achieve that
hairdo?” He rose and turned. Dalla had come out onto the terrace and was
pirouetting slowly in the light from the room behind her. It hadn’t been a
waste of time, after all. “But I kept you waiting ages! You’re both dears, to be so patient.
Do we go now?” “Yes, the party will have started; we’ll get there just at
the right time. Not too early, and not too late.” And in two hours, Verkan Vall, Chief of Paratime Police,
would begin to assume responsibility for guarding the Paratime Secret. A panther by the tail. And he was holding it. |
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