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Authors: Steven Savile

BOOK: Elemental
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There was an explosion and a scream as someone's wheel lock pistol went off, then a dozen little popping sounds as the scattered grains of powder from the musket's blast ignited.
Kade scrambled to her feet. The grass near the gate had caught fire and she was forgotten in the face of that immediate threat. She ran to the back wall with its loose bricks and crumbling mortar and climbed it easily. At the top she paused and looked back. In the glow of the grass fire she could see Devereux walking back and forth, shouting at the servants in angry frustration. Revenge against her royal relatives would have been sweet.
But it would never have worked, not with him, anyway
, she thought with a grimace.
Too bad
.
 
 
It was barely dawn when she reached the inn, and through the windows she could see that candles had been lit in the common room. From just outside the door she thought there was more noise than seemed normal at this hour, especially after last night's drinking bout.
When she stepped inside, she heard a woman say, “Must have died in his sleep, poor thing.”
 
 
 
The morning was well advanced when Kade waited for the Glaistig beneath a bent aging willow in a stretch of forest near the river.
It dropped a lock of golden hair into Kade's palm.
“Did he notice?” Kade asked, looking up at the creature.
The glaistig's eyes were limpid, innocent. “I did it while he slept.”
“Very good.” She should have treated Devereux's curse with more caution, she had said that to herself a hundred times over the rest of the long night.
And you should have known
. All those brave stories Giles had told of her, his audacity in coming here to find her should have said it plainly enough. She had also said that she didn't care, but no amount of repetition could make a lie the truth.
Giles knew I was dangerous company to keep
. Yes, he knew, but he had kept it anyway. And that made it all the worse.
She added the hair to a small leather pouch prepared with apricot
stones and the puss from a plague sore, then sat down on a fallen log to sew it up with the small neat stitches she had learned as a child.
“The sorcerer was lovely,” the glaistig said regretfully, watching her.
“He was lovely,” Kade agreed. “And cunning, like me. And I would trade a hundred of both of us to know that one unlovely ballad singer was still alive somewhere in the world.”
 
 
Kade left Riversee after that. She had thought to stay to see the result of her handiwork but she had discovered that knowing was enough.
Gray clouds were building for a storm, and she might have summoned one of the many flighted creatures of fayre and ridden the wind with it, but she had also discovered that she preferred to walk the dusty road. Some things had lost their pleasure.
BY DAVID DRAKE
 
David Drake has written or cowritten more than fifty books and edited or coedited more than thirty. He is the author of the Isles series of fantasy novels (beginning with
Lord of the Isles
) and the science fiction RCN series (beginning with
With the Lightnings
), but he is most well known as the creator of the futuristic military unit Hammer's Slammers.
The Hammer's Slammers series began as a collection of short stories published in 1979, each with a sophisticated military background that drew heavily on Drake's own experiences while serving in the United States Army in Vietnam and Cambodia. The series has continued over the last twenty-seven years in the form of novels, novellas, and short stories. The pieces in the Hammer series are (with only a very few exceptions) self-standing and in no particular order. In addition, there are very few continuing characters. Drake feels this is a benefit. “A reader who never heard of me or the series should be able to read ‘The Day of Glory' with understanding as complete as that of someone who's read every story I've written.”
David Drake lives in North Carolina.
 
 
The locals had
turned down the music from the sound truck while the bigwigs from the capital were talking to the crowd, but it was still playing. “I heard that song before,” Trooper Lahti said, frowning. “But that was back on Icky Nose, two years ago. Three!”
“Right,” said Platoon Sergeant Buntz, wishing he'd checked the fit of his dress uniform before he put it on for this bloody rally. He'd gained weight during the month he'd been on medical profile for tearing up his leg. “You hear it a lot at this kinda deal.
La Marseillaise
. It goes all the way back to Earth.”
This time it was just brass instruments, but Buntz's memory could fill in,
“Arise, children of the fatherland! The day of glory has arrived … .”
Though some places they changed the words a bit.
“Look at the heroes you'll be joining!” boomed the amplified voice of the blond woman gesturing from the waist-high platform. She stood
with other folks in uniform or dress clothes on what Buntz guessed in peacetime was the judges' stand at the county fair. “When you come back in a few months after crushing the rebels, the cowards who stayed behind will look at you the way you look at our allies, Hammer's Slammers!”
Buntz sucked in his gut by reflex, but he knew it didn't matter. For this recruitment rally he and his driver wore tailored uniforms with the seams edged in dark blue, but the yokels saw only the tank behind them.
Herod
, H42, was a veteran of three deployments and more firefights than Buntz could remember without checking the Fourth Platoon log.
The combat showed on
Herod
's surface. The steel skirts enclosing her plenum chamber were not only scarred from brush-busting but patched in several places where projectiles or energy weapons had penetrated. A two-meter section had been replaced on Icononzo, the result of a fifty-kilo directional mine. Otherwise the steel was dull red except where the rust had worn off.
Herod
's hull and turret had taken an even worse beating; the iridium armor there turned all the colors of the spectrum when heated. A line of rainbow dimples along the rear compartment showed where a flechette gun—also on Icononzo—had wasted ammo, but it was on Humboldt that a glancing 15-cm powergun bolt had flared a banner across the bow slope.
If the gunner from Greenwood's Archers had hit
Herod
squarely, the tank would've been for the salvage yard and Lahti's family back on Leminkainan would've been told that she'd been cremated and interred where she fell.
Actually Lahti'd have been in the salvage yard too, since there wouldn't be any way to separate what was left of the driver from the hull. You didn't tell families all the details. They wouldn't understand anyway.
“Look at our allies, my fellow citizens!” the woman called. She was a newsreader from the capital station, Buntz'd been told. The satellites were down now, broadcast as well as surveillance, but her face'd be familiar
from before the war even here in the boonies. “Hammer's Slammers, the finest troops in the galaxy! And look at the mighty vehicle they've brought to drive the northern rebels to surrender or their graves. Join them! Join them or forever hang your head when a child asks you, ‘Grampa, what did you do in the war?'”
“They're not
really
joining the Regiment, are they, Top?” Lahti said, frowning again. The stocky woman'd progressed from being a fair driver to being a bloody good soldier. Buntz planned to give her a tank of her own the next time he had an opening. She worried too much, though, and about the wrong things.
“Right now they're just tripwires,” Buntz said. “Afterwards, sure, we'll probably take some of 'em, after we've run 'em through newbie school.”
He paused, then added, “The Feds've hired the Holy Brotherhood. They're light dragoons mostly, but they've got tank destroyers with 9-cm main guns. I don't guess we'll mop them up without somebody buying the farm.”
He wouldn't say it aloud, even with none of the locals close enough to hear him, but he had to agree with Lahti that Placidus farmers didn't look like the most hopeful material. Part of the trouble was that they were wearing their fanciest clothes today. The feathers, ribbons, and reflecting bangles that passed for high fashion here in Quinta County would've made the toughest troopers in the Slammers look like a bunch of dimwits. It didn't help that half of 'em were barefoot, either.
The county governor, the only local on the platform, took the wireless microphone. “Good friends and neighbors!” he said and stopped to wheeze. He was a fat man with a weather-beaten face, and his suit was even tighter than Buntz's dress uniform.
“I know we in Quinta County don't need to be bribed to do our duty,” he resumed, “but our generous government is offering a lavish prepayment of wages to those of you who join the ranks of the militia today. And there's free drinks in the refreshment tents for all those who kiss the book!”
He made a broad gesture. Nearly too broad; he almost went off the edge of the crowded platform onto his nose. His friends and neighbors laughed. One young fellow in a three-cornered hat called, “Why don't
you
join, Jeppe? You can stop a bullet and save the life of somebody who's not bloody useless!”
“What do they mean, ‘kiss the book'?” Lahti asked. Then, wistfully, she added, “I don't suppose we could get a drink ourself?”
“We're on duty, Lahti,” Buntz said. “And I guess they kiss the book because they can't write their names, a lot of them. You see that in this sorta place.”
“
March, march!
” the sound truck played.
“Let impure blood water our furrows!”
It was hotter'n Hell's hinges, what with the white sun overhead and its reflection from the tank behind them. The iridium'd burn 'em if they touched it when they boarded to drive back to H Company's laager seventy klicks away. At least they didn't have to spend the night in this Godforsaken place … .
Buntz could use a drink too. There were booths all around the field. Besides them, boys circulated through the crowd with kegs on their backs and metal tumblers chained to their waists. It'd be rotgut, but he'd been in the Slammers thirteen years. He guessed he'd drunk worse and likely
much
worse than what was on offer in Quinta County.
But not a drop till he and Lahti stopped being a poster to recruit cannon fodder for the government paying for the Regiment's time. Being dry was just part of the job.
The Placidan regular officer with the microphone was talking about honor and what pushovers the rebels were going to be. Buntz didn't doubt that last part; if the Fed troops were anything like what he'd seen of the Government side, they were a joke for sure.
But the Holy Brotherhood was another thing entirely. Vehicle for vehicle they couldn't slug it out with the Slammers, but they were division-sized and bloody well trained.
Besides, they were all mounted on air cushion vehicles. The Slammers
won more of their battles by mobility than by firepower, but this time their enemy would move even faster than they did.
“Suppose he's ever been shot at?” Lahti said, her lip curling at the guy who spoke. She snorted. “Maybe by his girlfriend, hey? Though dolled up like he is, he prob'ly has boyfriends.”
Buntz grinned. “Don't let it get to you, Lahti,” he said. “Listening to blowhards's a lot better business than having the Brotherhood shoot at us. Which is what we'll be doing in a couple weeks or I miss my bet.”
While the Placidan officer was spouting off, a couple of men had edged to the side of the platform to talk to the blond newsreader. The blonde snatched the microphone back and cried, “Look here, my fellow citizens! Follow your patriotic neighbors Andreas and Adolpho deCastro as they kiss the book and drink deep to their glorious future!”
The officer yelped and tried to grab the microphone; the newsreader blocked him neatly with her hip, slamming him back. Buntz grinned; this was the blonde's court, but he guessed she'd also do better in a firefight than the officer would. Though he might beat her in a beauty contest … .
The blonde jumped from the platform, then put an arm around the waist of each local to waltz through the crowd to the table set up under
Herod
's bow slope. The deCastros looked like brothers or anyway first cousins, big rangy lunks with red hair and moustaches that flared into their sideburns.
The newsreader must've switched off the microphone because none of her chatter to one man, then the other, was being broadcast. The folks on the platform weren't going to use the mike to upstage her, that was all.
“Rise and shine, Trooper Lahti,” Buntz muttered out of the side of his mouth as he straightened. The Placidan clerk behind the table rose to his feet and twiddled the book before him. It was thick and bound in red leather, but what was inside was more than Buntz knew. Maybe it was blank.
“Who'll be the first?” the blonde said to the fellow on her right. She'd
cut the mike on again. “Adolpho, you'll do it, won't you? You'll be the first to kiss the book, I know it!”
The presumed Adolpho stared at her like a bunny paralyzed in the headlights. His mouth opened slackly.
Bloody Hell!
Buntz thought.
All it'll take is for him to start drooling!
Instead the other fellow, Andreas, lunged forward and grabbed the book in both hands. He lifted it and planted a kiss right in the middle of the pebble-grain leather. Lowering it he boomed, “There, Dolph, you pussy! There's one man in the deCastro family, and the whole county knows it ain't you!”
“Why you—” Adolpho said, cocking back a fist with his face a thundercloud, but the blonde had already lifted the book from Andreas. She held it out to Adolpho.
“Here you go, Dolph, you fine boy!” she said. “Andreas, turn and take the salute of Captain Buntz of Hammer's Slammers, a hero from beyond the stars greeting a Placidan patriot!”
“What's that?” Andreas said. He turned to look over his shoulder.
Buntz'd seen more intelligence in the eyes of a poodle, but it wasn't his business to worry about that. He and Lahti together threw the fellow sharp salutes. The Slammers didn't go in for saluting much—and to salute in the field was a court-martial offense since it fingered officers for any waiting sniper—but a lot of times you needed some ceremony when you're dealing with the locals. This was just one of those times.
“An honor to serve with you, Trooper deCastro!” said Lahti. That was laying it on pretty thick, but you really couldn't overdo it in a dog-and-pony show for the locals.
“You're a woman!” Andreas said. “They said they was taking women too, but I didn't believe it.”
“That's right, Trooper,” Buntz said briskly before his driver replied. He trusted Lahti—she wouldn't be driving
Herod
if he didn't—but there was no point in risking what might come out when she was hot and dry and pretty well pissed off generally.
“Now,” he continued, “I see the paymaster—” another bored clerk, a
little back from the recorder “—waiting with a stack of piasters for you. Hey, and
then
there's free drinks in the refreshment car just like they said.”
The “refreshment car” was a cattle truck with slatted steel sides that weren't going to budge if a new recruit decided he wanted to be somewhere else. A lot of steers had come to that realization over the years and it hadn't done 'em a bit of good. Two husky attendants waited in the doorway with false smiles, and there were two more inside dispensing drinks: grain alcohol with a dash of sweet syrup and likely an opiate besides. The truck would hold them, but a bunch of repentant yokels crying and shaking the slats wouldn't help lure their neighbors into the same trap.

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