The Heretic (24 page)

Then he saw it. A mirror flash. Kruso immediately flashed back. An exchange of silent conversation followed.

They had made it. The rendezvous had succeeded. They rode onward. The path narrowed to the point that they must proceed single file. Sandstone scraped against his protruding legs and might have taken the skin and more had it not been for his leg wraps. Here was the reason they were part of the Scout uniform, the reason for all the snap uniform inspections he’d endured in his youth.

Steeper, and the donts were on two legs by necessity in order to climb the path. Then, to his right, he saw the side path, the trail up a rivulet that his own memory and the maps they’d made said was dont-passable. It was, nonetheless, very steep, and he bade the girl, who was only semi-conscious now, to wake up as best she could and hold on tight. To her credit, he felt her grip tighten around his waist.

And after what seemed an interminable scramble, they emerged on the rim. They were out.

There was Weldletter, and beside him were Abel’s sergeants, the leaders of the squads he’d left behind to pursue Gaspar. One of them, a crusty Ingresman named Maday, he’d left in charge; and it was Maday who reported. His accent was thick, but he did not choose to always speak in the patois as did Kruso.

“Charges are in place, sir,” Maday reported.

“Did you follow Weldletter’s instructions?”

“We did,” said Maday. “Packed every map case full of powder. Maps are going to be ruined, I’m afraid, sir.”

“Let’s get out of this first, then worry about the maps,” Abel replied.

“Aye, sir.”

Now the big question.

“And the corning? Did you do it?”

“We didn’t much like the idea, you know,” said the sergeant. “Thursday school and all that.”

“Did you do it?” Abel said.

“Corning gunpowder beyond priming grain strength is a Stasis violation,” Maday said, “but we did as you suggested and held a séance with the Lady.” Maday smiled broadly, revealing three missing teeth. His mouth looked like a portcullis. “And what do you know, we all had a vision of the Fifty Days and Fifty Nights, her suckling baby Zentrum, even though she was dead in body. And we took it as a sign that sometimes there were exceptions, you know. That she’d told us that corning gunpowder beyond priming grain is a Stasis violation
only in the Land
. She came to
me
, she did, and told me not only to go ahead, but to keep it a bit damp to make the process go easier, just like you said before. Irisobrian provides.”

“The Lady provides,” Abel answered back. “Alaha Zentrum.”

Observe:

A line of men on a rock slab. They were sitting in the sun under broad-brimmed hats and makeshift head scarves and spending a day, all of it, every sunlit hour, carefully tap, tap, tapping at gunpowder with a pestle made of minié balls pounded together. Stones were too coarse grained, and rifle metal wouldn’t do. The lead gave no spark. One problem: this required using every minié ball in the cartridge box to make a useful-sized pestle. No more bullets for the duration.

Watch upon watch of sifting the powder, winnowing it like grain through linen gauze. Tap, tap, tapping it again.

The Lady provides patience, I guess,
Abel thought.

Beliefs are what men fight for,
Raj said.
Laugh at the beliefs, maybe, but not at the believers.

By the second day, the tapping had worn shallow tanajas into the slab upon which the Scouts worked.

Weldletter and the sergeants loaded the powder into the cases, and Weldletter had his team set them out. They’d completed the task not long before the first echoes traveling up the canyon had let them know Abel’s troop was on its way.

“Tham Redlanders up coming!” shouted one of the other sergeants, Moreau. Abel’s attention snapped back to the present.

He dismounted and strode to the rim’s edge. Sure enough, the Blaskoye had stayed on the trail, had relentlessly pursued them up the canyon, expecting, no doubt to lock them in a corner and slaughter them. Whether or not they knew of the exit path Abel and his Scouts had taken, it wasn’t going to matter soon.

“Fire in the hole,” shouted another voice from below.

“Fire in the hole,” shouted another, and another.

Then the men burst out into the open on the path, fleeing from the conflagration they’d prepared in the canyon below.

Rising behind them, up into the sky, a single trail of gunsmoke, like a line drawn straight up into the sky. A sizzling sound accompanied the sight, like wind through tiny leaves.

Then, as Abel watched the gunsmoke line write itself out, it began to spiral, twist in two, then three directions, as if a giant invisible hand were losing control of a pen tip, and scrawling all over a papyrus tablet.

Suddenly, the end of the line exploded.

Analysis indicates one of the explosive canisters under-loaded,
Center reported.
Insufficiently placed and weighted, as well. This canister burned from its end up and made itself into the rocket we just witnessed.

A rocket?
Abel thought.
Like the ships that travel the stars?

Not quite.

Well, whatever it is, I like it!

Then he was back in reality. In the same instant that the rocket exploded, so did the canyon below Abel. The explosions were muted, heard from this position above the absorbing canyon walls, but from the great blanketing cloud that arose below, Abel knew they’d been powerful. Then he saw that the cloud had not been caused by exploding gunpowder at all, but by the avalanches those explosions had set off.

Weldletter had placed the explosive canisters in masterfully chosen locations. When the cloud settled, Abel saw that the pathway was sealed. What had been an escape path was now boulder-filled and impassable. It would take them at least a day, and leagues and leagues of travel, to backtrack and go around.

From below came the sound of gunfire and shouting men. The surviving Blaskoye were enraged. And completely ineffective. They could not come up. They would have to ride around.

“I veel find you, Dashiaaaaaaan,” came the loudest call. “I veel come for you. Dashiaaan! Dashiaaan!”

Abel realized Maday was telling him more, nattering on in the usual good-natured Scout’s litany of complaints. “Worked, thank the Lady. And us two days at it. I can’t say the men much liked sitting around taking mortar to the stuff. And then I had to tell them to unwrap their cartridges, too, that we needed it all, and that they’d be going home with only their bows to depend on. We’re plumb out of powder, Lieutenant.”

“Understood,” Abel said. He turned wearily back to his dont. “We also need to ride to water.”

“Weldletter says Ruddy Seep’s three leagues from here, but that’s what they’d expect.”

“Yes, you’re right.”

“A half day is that little sunken spring we passed on our way out, the one on the plain with the single tree.”

“We’ll go there.”

“Can you make it another half day?”

Abel shook his head to clear it. Good question, could he? Yes, but could the donts?

I guess we’ll find out how good Scout dont stock really is on this trip,
he thought.

“We head for the single-tree spring,” he said. “Pass the word.”

He tried to climb back onto his dont, found he could not muster the strength the first time or the second.

But when he tried the third time, a hand reached down to help. The girl, Loreilei, held to the saddle with one hand, grabbed him by the sleeve with the other and pulled. Her strength was not great, but it was the little extra he needed. He slung his leg over and was on.

“Thank you,” he said to her, but she did not reply.

“Mount up!” he called out to all. “No rest for you sorry layabouts. I’ll get a day’s work out of you yet.” He nodded at his weary, but smiling, men.

His sergeants rode up beside him.

“On your command,” said Maday. “We’re ready.”

A good reconnaissance. There will be much to report to your father,
said Center.
I have almost reached my conclusions, as well. We have a chance now.

Good?
said Raj.
The boy circled the Blaskoye like J.E.B. Stuart for Lee, and you’re calling it
good
. I’d call it spectacular. I’m proud of the lad!

Abel grinned wearily in the saddle.

I also have reached a few conclusions,
he thought.

And what are those, lad?

I know what I want now,
Abel thought.

Rockets,
Abel thought.
I liked that. I want them. And those guns that load from behind you have been telling me about. No more of this awkward reloading when men are trying to kill us.

Yes,
Center replied.
With an invasion timeline now in place, variable cascade analysis
indicates your conclusions are correct. It is time for tiered innovation if we are to survive beyond the next year. This must be done carefully. There will be setbacks. They will have to be dealt with appropriately, perhaps ruthlessly.

Abel was barely listening.

One more thing,
he thought.
There is one more thing I want. I don’t know if you would call it an innovation, but I want it nonetheless, and I’ll have it.

And what is that?
Did he detect a trace of worry in Center’s normal utter neutrality of speech?

Mahaut,
he said.
I want her. I want the woman. If she’ll have me.

Center’s silence and Raj’s good-hearted, throaty laughter accompanied him all the way to the distant watering hole.

7

It was when they were a day out from the Valley’s edge that Center reported his conclusion: an invasion of Treville would come on the night of the next new three-moon evening.

The expedition has been a success. I have factored observed numbers, states of preparedness, known Blaskoye tactics, and psychodynamic modeling using our encounter with the clan leadership. They are coming at what they will view as the first opportunity. This will be the first night when all three moons are below the horizon. There are only three nights a year when this is the case in Duisberg’s northern hemisphere.

So you won’t have to kill me and start all over because I went for the child,
Abel thought. It was not a question, but a factual statement.
Meeting Rostov face-to-face was essential to your calculations.

That proved to be correct,
Center replied, a little too quickly and coldly for Abel’s liking.
Your gamble was effective.

Don’t fight it, lad,
laughed Raj.
It’s good to be careful, but if you can’t be careful, it’s even better to be lucky.

The next day they encountered the first outlying Scout picket. They had been stationed in position for two eight-days, and apart from operational wigwag had no news to report. For the past days, it had slowly dawned on Abel that they were no longer being pursued. Kruso and a half squad had doubled back to check, and this had proved true. Nevertheless, he ordered the outpost corporal to send out long pickets with good mirrors and be watchful.

Abel and the Scouts rode on.

Another day, and they were at the Escarpment’s edge. Another half day and they rode into Hestinga. It was midday.

He’d thought about bringing the girl to her relatives, delivering her in triumph on a washed and festooned dont, but he’d known at the time it was merely a fantasy. Lilleheim was too far out of the way. Who would take the Remlap boy was more problematic, and Abel was on the verge of ordering a man to feed and clothe him, and to give him a bunk among the cadets, when Weldletter stepped up and volunteered to take the boy in at his officer’s billet. The mapmaker had taken a liking to the child, and, using Kruso for a translator, had spoken gently in his dry, exacting voice to the Remlap boy about the time he’d spent with the boy’s father. These talks seemed to calm the boy on nights when he could be heard crying softly in his meager bedroll—an extra saddle blanket they had converted for the purpose—or at least got the crying to stop.

So it was the girl who proved more of an immediate problem after all.

She did not want to physically let go of Abel, much less leave him, when they arrived in the headquarters yard.

“You have to let me go to the commander,” he told her. “It’s my duty. It’s why I was sent. To bring back a report.”

She looked up at him wordlessly—she had probably spoken no more than five or six words in the six days they had travelled together—and held tightly to his tunic lapel.

As if to say: “
I
am the report,”
he thought to himself.

“I cannot bring you inside,” he said. He looked around, but his men were busy taking care of their donts. He’d handed his own over to Maday to feed, water, and groom.

In the end, he simply let her tag along close at his heels. The others made not to notice her. Even Lieutenant Courtemanche, his father’s adjunct and the keeper of the outer office gate, only glanced down at the girl, said nothing, and saluted Abel.

“The commander will see you now, Captain,” he said.

Captain?
Abel thought. But he was too tired to correct the man, and too tired to wonder why someone who was normally an extremely meticulous sort when it came to military matters would slip up on his rank.

He didn’t have to wait long to find out. When he stepped into the office, his father looked up from his table full of scrolls and said, “Sharplett is dead. You are now Captain and Regimental Commander of Scouts.”

Abel stiffened to attention. Sharplett.

Stern taskmaster, ass-kicker, and finally a kindly, if grumpy, uncle to me,
Abel thought. “Yes, sir,” Abel said. “How, if I may ask?”

“A raid ten days ago,” said Joab. “An undermanned patrol, near to the Escarpment. All massacred. He seems to have been targeted. They hung him by his own—”

Joab glanced down, seemed to see the girl for the first time.

“He was killed,” he finished.

“You should give it to Colefax,” Abel said. “He has seniority.”

“No,” Joab said. “You.”

Then Joab stood up and smiled at the little girl. “You are Loreilei Jacobson, I presume?” he said. He came around the desk and bent down on his haunches so he was eye to eye with the girl. Abel saw a frown flicker across his face when he noticed the slave scar, but it did not displace his smile, which was genuine. “It is Lorielei, isn’t it?”

The girl stared back at him, blinked twice, then replied, as if she were just discovering the fact for herself in the speaking of it, “My name is Lorielei. Yes.”

Then Joab looked up and shook his head at Abel. “I made it worse, didn’t I? Trying to get you away from that woman?”

“I didn’t do it for that,” Abel said.

“I’m sure you believe you did not,” said Joab. He turned back to Loreilei. “Your mother has missed you. She will be very glad to see you. Very, very glad. Do you want to see her?”

The girl nodded.

“Ah!” A cry from the door. Abel turned. A woman in a diaphanous green robe was standing there. The kohl around her eyes was running in black traces down her cheeks. “My baby, my baby,” Adele Jacobson whispered. She hesitated for a moment, as if to be sure she was stepping into a room and not into a beguiling and empty dream, but then she ran the three paces from the door to the girl and took the child in her arms. “Loreilei.”

The girl said nothing, but after a moment, she too was crying, letting her mother hold her, envelop her.

“How did you—”

“Wigwag from the outpost,” said Joab. “I sent for her immediately. We couldn’t have her around here, of course, so she was waiting in the officer’s mess. I imagine Courtemanche sent for her as soon as you came in.”

“Thank you, Father,” Abel said.

“Yes,” he said. He watched the mother and daughter reunion a bit longer. “Lilleheim will have some good news. They sorely need it. As will the Jacobsons.”

The woman, Adele Jacobson—she was Edgar’s sister, and Loreilei was his niece—was already ushering the child toward the door. “You will have a bath, and your room, I told them not to, never to change it…oh, it’s just like it was. And we’ll see to your cut.” She looked at the slavery scar. “I think we can, yes, it should be possible with a little powder to…oh, never mind, darling, that doesn’t matter. Nothing matters but that you’re back. Let’s go to the wagon. Luther is waiting with the wagon. We’ll go home. Let’s go home. Don’t you want to go home?”

She asked this as if uncertain of the answer, but the girl nodded. Still, she did not smile, but she was crying, which, for Abel, was the best sign he’d seen from her for days that she might, someday, heal from what had been done to her.

As Adele led her away, the girl, who was Loreilei, but would always be
the girl
to him, turned around and gave him a parting look.

It was a look that was near to being frightening, it was so intense. He did not attempt to fathom the feeling behind it. Then she turned back to her mother, and was gone.

“I have something for you, Captain,” Joab said. Abel turned back to his father.

There was the unmistakable clang of metal upon metal as Joab drew his saber from its scabbard. “Few are permitted such a weapon. Captains and above.”

“Father, it’s
yours
. As DMC.”

“Not at all,” Joab replied. “I
inherited
this. It is the Dashian blade.”

“No other captain has one.”

“In Treville, perhaps. You are now a regimental commander,” Joab said. “Plenty of Guardians and Regulars in Lindron carry them.” Joab set the saber on his desk, considered it for a moment in its bare form. Then he unhitched the belt and scabbard, and, re-sheathing the saber, set saber and scabbard together back on the desk. “I always told myself I’d give this to you after you had done something…extraordinary.” He smiled. “And, of course, after you’d made captain, which I have always fully expected.”

“Father, I don’t know what to say,” Abel replied. “It is completely ineffectual against artillery. We had exactly
no
battles, no encounters even, where we grew close enough for sword-work with the enemy. The only time I might have used it, it would have been impossible to conceal, and concealment was what I needed at the time.”

“I know all this well. Believe me, I’ve experienced it myself,” Joab said. “And yet, I expect you to wear it into battle.”

“Why?”

“For the family? For glory?” Joab said. “Some matters cannot be put into words. Just take it, Abel.”

Your father has a point, lad,
Raj said.
You should do as he wishes.

“As you command,” Abel replied. He picked up the saber and scabbard and buckled it around his waist.

“That’s that. Now, to practical matters,” Joab said. Abel took a stealthy glance but noticed no tear in his father’s eye. Sentimentality was certainly not one of his father’s weaknesses. “Do you have an idea when they’re coming?”

“Yes, I know exactly. Next new three-moon night.”

“That actually makes a lot of sense,” Joab mused. “You have an estimate of how many?”

“It will be…overwhelming.”

“And where they will strike?”

“No, I don’t know that,” said Abel. He sighed. Not a sigh of regret, but of relief.

Safe, for a moment, to breathe,
he thought.
To not fear my next breath will see an arrow or bullet in my back.

He smiled. “But I do have an idea of what their thinking might be,” he said. “We left them with a certain map, you see.”

* * *

“My father is a complete bastard,” Abel said as he paced across the room. Mahaut sat up in a chair. They were in her sitting room now, the room outside her bedroom, her long sickroom, in Lilleheim. He’d thought he would sleep one night in Hestinga, collapse in the bed in his father’s house, the same room he’d grown up in, with the pallet becoming a cot, with the chest of clothing and his few toys replaced by a respectable wardrobe he’d bought with two months of saved wages. But that was not to be.

And then, rested, he would ride to Lilleheim, leave his dont and sleeping roll at the outpost, and go to see her in the village. Instead, he had ridden to Lilleheim shortly after delivering his report. No rest. He’d barely stopped moving.

His father had ordered him back to the Redlands immediately to take over Sharplett’s command from the outpost at the Upper Cliffs. He was to leave in the morning. He’d managed to secure permission to wait until after breakfast, so he’d bought at least that much time.

He’d tormented himself with fantasies that Edgar Jacobson might be there, having returned from his urgent business at Garangipore, but that was not the case.

She was alone, but for a servant, who absented herself to her quarters quickly enough after he arrived. They sat drinking wine in the cool night air, the room lit by three evenly spaced oil lamps, all profligately lit. The Jacobsons really did have more wealth than they knew what to do with to burn oil like that. He supposed Mahaut was getting used to it, too. She allowed the servant to pour their wine before leaving, but sat upright upon her lounging couch rather than recline in a semi-swoon position, as would most women with her position and means. Abel sat in a leatherback chair that felt solid, comfortable, and far more expensive than anything he could afford.

The change in her was enormous. No longer was she taking faltering steps, but hopping around with plenty of energy, only hampered by the slight limp in her right leg. She wore a saffron linen gown with a red sash drawing it closed. And she’d even applied kohl liner to her eyes and a bit of rouge to her cheeks.

“Did you do that before?” he asked her, he said, pointing to his own eye to illustrate. “I don’t remember.”

“You barely noticed my existence before I was shot,” she told him. “I doubt you remember a thing about me.”

“Not true,” he said. “I did at least know Xander had a sister.”

“I saw you,” she said. “When you were in from scouting. That russet tunic. Xander made fun of it, told me how black was better, but I liked it then. And I like it now.”

“It hides bloodstains well, they say.”

“No doubt,” she said. “You were saying your father was a bastard?”

“He didn’t want me to come here. He doesn’t think this is a good idea.”

“Doesn’t think
what
is a good idea?”

“You are married.”

“We are friends.”

“Yes,” he said. “And I want to be your lover.”

Now she was taken aback. She flushed, and even in the wan light and even with the rouge, he could see it.

“I am a ruin,” she finally said. “You of all people know that.”

He took a strong swallow of wine.
There, I’ve told her,
he thought.
I’ve brooded for two three-moons over how I would say it, and now it’s out, done.

“An interesting ruin,” he answered her. “You can’t pretend I don’t know. I’ve seen it. I’ve touched it.”

“You’ve healed what could be healed,” she said. Mahaut nodded, sipped from her own cup. The lamplight flickered across her face, and it slowly dawned on him.

She’s prettier than I remembered. Much.

“What have you done to yourself, anyway?” he asked her. “You’ve…I’m so tired…it isn’t just the makeup, is it?”

“The hair,” she said. “I don’t have it pulled it back in braids. And the robe. You remember me from when I was wearing Xander’s castoffs, and then from the Lilleheim knoll. I long ago made a truce with fine linen, Abel. Let’s just say smooth linen and I became allies, if not friends. And do you like this bracelet? The gems are northern black onyx.”

She held up her arm, and the robe sleeve fell back to reveal a glittering train of jewels. Her fingernails were painted a subtle red.