The Heretic (18 page)

The stocks were lovingly reconditioned. Some were willow-wood, but most were made from the hardwood maple of the Delta.

A local cambium-producing flora, not related to Earth’s maples genetically, but similar in dendrological characteristics,
Center said.

And in the rear was the rebuild shop, where all came back together to produce the reconditioned rifle. Here the most skilled priest-smiths worked, checking each component and, in a final step, test firing and calibrating sights using complicated instruments that, anywhere else, would have been considered utterly nishterlaub, and probably poisonous to the touch, as well.

They closed the door to Golitsin’s office—a wooden interior door, rather than beads, was a necessity here to keep out the noise of the shop—and Abel, still excited from what he’d just witnessed—
From the
possibilities
, most of all,
he thought—proceeded to lay out his plans for a new kind of gun that would help them stem another Blaskoye invasion.

“It comes down to this: reloading is slow and you die,” Abel continued. “You have to put in the powder, put in the ball, ram them down the barrel. Put your primer cap over the nipple so that its fire will ignite the gunpowder within the barrel. And only then can you aim and fire. And hope you’ve done it all right. And then start all over again as fast your love of life demands of you, because they are coming right for you, the ones who want to kill you, while you are doing this.”

“So you need to make the steps quicker,” said Golitsin. “Or combine them.”

“Yes,” Abel said. “And here is my idea.”

Or the idea that was delivered to me from the stars,
Abel thought.
The stars that are suns, and the planets that circle them filled with other men who have discovered and lost this knowledge a hundred, a thousand times.
I
can barely conceive of this after a lifetime’s instruction, so I won’t tell you that, my friend Golitsin. You’ll think I’m crazy, as I may well be.

“First of all, the cartridge. It needs to combine the percussion cap. And we have to get rid of this biting off and pouring. I’ll show you my idea—”

Abel took out the scroll. On it was the cartridge design he had copied from memory, from the picture that Center had placed in his mind.

“I see, I see,” Golitsin said. “A cylinder. One end the cap, the other the minié ball.”

“Yes,” Abel said. “The paper cartridge should be the diameter of the rifle bore. It should fit snugly, but not so tightly it can’t slide into place. They must be extremely uniform.”

“We can wrap them around a dowel,” Golitsin said, scratching his head. “We can hold them together with glue, I suppose. I’ll have to work up a prototype for you to take a look at.”

He grunted in consternation. “But this will be pointless without a way to load it. You can’t ram it down the barrel from the muzzle.”

Abel smiled. Golitsin was getting it. He was understanding the problem, and so approaching the solution. Raf Golitsin was a very intelligent man, but if he could get it, many others might, as well.

“We are going to load it from the rear of the barrel,” Abel said. He broke out the second scroll with his drawings on it. “It will require a new mechanism.”

“A new…mechanism?”

“Yes,” said Abel.

“Use of nishterlaub remains is sanctioned only for piecemeal work. Combinations are forbidden,” Golitsin said from rote memory. “A mechanism is a combination of simple machines. You know this, of course. It’s a basic Thursday school lesson.”

“What I know,” Abel said. “What I know: we are faced with an enemy concentrated in overwhelming numbers. No one is going to send help. Cascade is corrupt. Ingres barely has a force of Regulars, and no Militia to speak of. Lindron feels secure and will do nothing until it is too late.”

“This is heresy, Abel,” said Golitsin. “You are asking me to commit heresy.”

“This is survival.”

He waited. He could see the eagerness on Golitsin’s face, the desire to know
how
. The need to try something
new.
He could also see that this longing was at war with a thousand Thursday school lectures.

Golitsin blinked twice as if to clear his eyes, shook his head. The inner war was over. All that remained was to discover the outcome.

“All right, show me,” said Golitsin. “I’d rather burn for the knowing of it than live as a fool.”

Abel put a hand on the priest’s shoulder. “Let’s hope it won’t come to that.”

“We can always hope,” the priest said with a forlorn sigh. “Show me.”

After a moment, Abel rolled out the scroll.

“The breech lock,” he said, “is a very simple concept. It’s the execution that may be the problem. But seeing what you have in place here in your shop, I think you may be able to handle it.”

* * *

“The point of using the women is not to prove anything,” said Abel, “but to increase our firepower.”

Joab shook his head. Abel had reported to him in his office to detail the assignment of Scout tasks, but had decided that now was the time to bring up this innovation with his father.

It was not an innovation that Center had insisted upon, although he had not rejected the idea. He’d merely said it would “alter certain equations that might lead to interesting variables to consider.”

It was something Abel felt he had to push for, after he’d seen the women fight at Lilleheim. They were throwing away a resource in a war where the forces of the Land were being purposely undermined and thinned.

I agree with your reasoning
, Raj had said with a laugh.
But maybe your motivations are not so pure as you purport them to be.

“No,” Joab said. “Absolutely not. Look at what happened at Lilleheim. That woman brought out her little coterie of—I don’t know what to call them. Women who aren’t content with one cock to lead a man around with, but who have got to have their own, to yank themselves here and there with, I suppose. And she got thirteen wives and daughters of some very prominent men killed in the bargain.“

“They fought like carnadons,” Abel said. “We need their numbers. Plus, they have almost all been around military men in some way or another. They are our sisters and our wives. They’ve absorbed many skills, and they know how we do things.”

“It could have been worse,” Joab mused. “Rape. Torture. The Blaskoye using the women against us the way they used the children.”

“We are at war, Father,” Abel replied. “If they beat us, they’re going to do those things anyway. And right before our eyes.”

“Try telling that to Tarl Magiorre, whose daughter lay dead on that thrice-damned nameless knoll,” Joab said.

“Yes,” Abel said with a bitter laugh. “And try telling it to Edgar Jacobson.”

Joab considered his son. Abel was not sure how much he knew, or how much he’d guessed, about Abel’s own interest in
Dame
Jacobson. But one thing he’d learned about his father over his years of serving under him was that there wasn’t much that went on in his district that he didn’t at least have some inkling about, especially when it came to the military families.

“Jacobson should have controlled her,” Joab said. “The women’s auxiliary exists for washing, mending, doing a soldier’s chores when he is better occupied with fighting. And, well, at least creating the hope of a good fuck afterward. The Scouts have always had their retinue of women following them about, as you know.”

“Oh, yes.” Abel shook his head. “Some would follow them into the Redlands if they could.”

“I have no doubt,” Joab replied. “They perform a function, a useful function. But not as warriors. Not as fighters.”

“Not ideally,” Abel said. “But we live in far from ideal times.”

“I simply won’t allow it,” Joab said. “And I especially won’t allow
her
to continue with it, which is what I know you are really after.”

“Who do you mean?”

“You know what I’m talking about, Lieutenant, and don’t say you don’t,” his father said testily. Then he shook his head, sighed. “She’s a
married
woman, Abel. From a good family, married
into
a good family. This cannot end well.”

“I know who she is,” Abel said. “I respect it. As much as she does.”

“Besides, from what I hear—well, she’s rather damaged goods. I mean that in very literal sense. That wound…” Joab looked down, shook his head sadly.

“You’re being unkind, Father.”

“I suppose you’re right,” Joab replied. He again met Abel’s eyes and seemed genuinely chagrined. “But when one’s only son looks to be on the verge of throwing his manhood away on something—all right, some
one
—like that, it brings out the beast in a father. He’ll take the low road, if that’s what’s required.”

Abel considered. There was always the question of how much he could tell his father. Raj and Center were adamant. He must reveal nothing. If he did, they would not merely go away; they would kill him if they could. Raj, he was not so sure about. He had no doubt Center would do just that. His affection for Center was genuine, but it was rather like affection for a pet carnadon. You must never allow yourself to believe your feelings were returned.

“It may not matter, all this concern over status and position,” Abel said. “The Blaskoye have grown
very
strong. They seem determined to spread into the Land, to take it from us. They are gathering for that purpose. Every sign points to it: the incursions, the sack of Lilleheim, the increased raids. The way that they turn the corruption of Cascade to their advantage.” How to say it? “Father, do you not think what we both agree is a coming war might change, well, everything. The Land. The Law?”

Careful, lad,
Raj murmured.
See that where you’re going with this is not over a cliff.

“And will the nature of men and women change? Will what is right and good under Zentrum?” Joab laughed. “I think not. Some things flow and change. Some things are written in stone.” He put a hand on Abel’s shoulder. “You sound like a man who is trying to convince himself that something he wishes with all his heart
were
true actually
was
true. I understand that.”

A pensive look, a shadow, passed across Joab’s face.

He’s thinking about Mother,
Abel thought.

“But we are men who deal in reality, not wishes and fantasy,” he said. He pointed toward the outspread papyrus map scroll on the big table in his office. “The Blaskoye will try again soon, but it will be far worse than Lilleheim.”

“I agree.”

“We have drawn their ire by our own competence, I’m afraid. Cascade has paid them off. Ingres is protected to the west by Treville itself. Lindron District is too well defended and anyway too long and wide to take with a west-to-east invasion. Twenty leagues of flat land with walls and flooded rice paddies favors organized foot, not savages on dontback.”

“Yes, they’ll move on Lindron last, when they’re certain of it.”

“Which leaves the northern districts and us.”

“Agreed,” Abel said. “But I would add one thing. You said they are drawn by ire at our competence. I would say that they are very angry at one commander in particular: you. They want your head. It is the way the Redlanders think. From them, a single charismatic leader rises and fights his way, or tricks his way, into leading a band, a tribe. Sometimes he even grabs for himself a godlike status.”

“Utter heresy.”

“Yes, I know,” said Abel. “You know this, but they don’t know. They understand us as badly as we understand them. For them, there is no Law of Zentrum. No Thursday school lessons. Whatever poor excuse for being something other than meat and dust that they have—well, that must be the way the world is for
everyone
, they believe. Their gods are
the
gods. Those gods’ rules are the only way men can rightly behave. So they figure we have exactly the same motives, that we are exactly the same men as they. They figure that if they shoot the dont in the head, the rest of the beast will collapse.”

“And you’re saying
I’m
the head.”

“To them, you are the
god
head on Treville District,” Abel replied. “I believe they are particularly targeting
you
, Father.”

Joab sat back, took a long sip of wine. “Great,” he said, shaking his head. “Do they not realize that any competent officer can do as I do, that one will do so if he is called to take my place?”

“I’m not so sure you’re right about that,” Abel said. “But they surely do not understand how we organize and build in redundancy. Or even what organization means in a farming society such as ours. They are herders. But they’re learning. You saw it. They were much better commanded at Lilleheim than we’ve ever seen them before.”

“Agreed.”

“They may be organized enough to move in two directions at once.”

“How do you mean?”

“A feint,” said Abel. “To draw you out. You in particular. To draw the Regulars into a dry plain, say, where they can use their donts and overrun the Regulars, destroy the Militia. They don’t want to attack us in the town, not really, because they lose all advantage, and we gain several, not the least of which is fighting on our own turf. They have no villages, much less towns, of course.”

“You may be right,” Joab said. He paused in the midst of his thought and then displayed the slightest smile. His voice grew more heated with what was evidently conviction—and a plan. “In fact, I think there’s a good chance that you are. But where and when? I want to do more than guess.”

Oh no,
Abel thought, realizing, before he could formulate it exactly, what his father had in mind.
He’s had an idea that he believes will solve two of his problems. Damn it, he may be right.

“We’ve been reacting since Lilleheim,” Joab said. “It’s time to start acting. But we need more information.”

“That’s what the Scouts are for,” Abel said weakly.

“You’re a Scout. I’m sending you.”

“But I’m on detached duty with the Regulars,” Abel replied. “By your orders, I might add.”

“Yes.” Joab nodded. “Exactly. I need Sharplett nearby, to deal with threats. No, you will go. Long reconnaissance. Take four squads, and a command group.”