The Far Side (63 page)

“Okay,” Kris told him.  “I’m a bit busy just now.  I’ll get back to you.” She turned off the radio and worked to put bandages on the worst of the young girl’s injuries.

“Do you know what you’re doing, Kris?” Kurt asked.

“Practicing first aid.”

“I’m going to send Toby Keith down to you -- he makes the Arvalans nervous as it is.  Let him get you and the girl back to the cave, okay?”

“Sure, sure,” she told him, focused only on her work.

She really had no idea how long it took to get back to the cave.  The others had gone on ahead, and Toby was patient and helped her carry the girl.  Others emerged from the dark, and they could put the wounded girl on a stretcher, and that made things much easier.

They whisked her right through the Far Side door, without comment or hesitation.  Her mother was there and took over the care of the injuries.  Kris stood rooted in place, watching her mother do her thing with swift, practiced motions.

“Is she okay?” Kris asked.

Her mother turned to her.  “Bumps and bruises, some of them pretty bad.  A couple of bad cuts, but you did a good job on those, Kris.  Mostly, I’d say, she’s simply terrified.”

“Of what?”

Her mother’s expression would haunt her until the end of days.

“You.  Me.”

“Why?” Kris’ brows furrowed.

“We’re white, she’s black.  At a guess, she thinks she has a life of slavery to look forward to.”

Kris looked at the girl, tall, willowy slender, and above all, black.  She saw Toby Keith, much shorter, much lighter skin, but still black.

There was no warning then, nothing.  Black winds rose up all around her, and there was a rushing sound as if all the air and life was being sucked out of the universe.  She was choking, unable to breathe.  There was nothing but blackness and wind, and she never bothered to try to fight it.

Chapter 24 :: Rest and Recovery

Glaive Trennys lifted his head and stared at the flaming pyre that had once been his flagship.  Then his eyes drifted to the ship’s boat drawn up on the beach, surrounded by a dozen of his men, all dead.

The Emperor’s orders had given him no leeway, and they had directly led to this.

Imperial Viceroy of the West!  A grand title!  Admiral of the Western Fleets!  Almost as grand!  Six months ago he’d commanded six fine ships and now -- this!

The last storm had been a catastrophe.  They had been sailing eastward in line abreast, two dozen miles between ships, just barely in sight of each other, communicating by radio to pass reports.  His ship, the
Glaive
, had been the furthest north.  His was a fine ship, the best in the Imperial Navy and named in honor of his grandfather.

The
Horel
, the southernmost ship, had reported the storm coming and he’d ordered bare poles and thought it would be no worse than a dozen storms he’d endured already on the voyage.  He laughed at his naiveté!  He had never heard of a storm like the one they found themselves in!

The day had turned as dark as if there was an eclipse.  Lightning shattered the heavens and wind roared and water fell from the sky faster than the pumps could deal with it.

Captain Unna of the
Feston
had messaged an hour after the storm had gotten very bad that he’d seen a bright flash to his south, which he assumed was the death of the
Horel
.  Whether or not it was truly the death of the ship or simply a brighter lightning flash than the million others, there was no way to tell. 
Horel
had never been seen or heard from again.

Then Unna had messaged a short while later that the rainwater was endangering the radio and he was going to seal it into waterproof canvas.  By that time the
Glaive
was fighting for its life and Glaive had no more time to give it any thought.

For two days the wind blew and the lightning flamed in the heavens.  Water poured from the sky in torrents, and every man and woman aboard the
Glaive
was exhausted from turns at the pumps, even himself.

Just before dark of the second day, the clouds parted for a bit and they could see land to their south, not two miles distant.  They turned further north and were safe.  Alas, the ship that was the next one south of them in line was never heard from again after that.  Only
Abna
, the smallest warship, was still transmitting, and then it too fell silent.

When the storm clouds finally parted, he could see a solid mass of land ahead of them.  It had been a close thing, because if the storm had just lasted a few more hours, they’d have crashed into the beaches there.

For the first time since the terrible storm had started they heard from the Emperor and it was Glaive’s sad duty to tell him that so far as he knew, that the
Glaive
and the four hundred and ten men and women aboard were the only survivors.

The Emperor ordered the ship to turn south to see if he could spot wreckage along this strange coast and if so, perhaps find survivors.  Imagine Glaive’s pleasant surprise when two days later they heard from Unna’s ship, the
Feston
.  Unna was dead and the ship a wreck that the surviving crew members had beached to keep it from sinking.  Unna had kept the radio safe and the survivors had set it up and got it running again.

Glaive told them to conserve the equipment as best as possible, since radios were notorious for breaking down and there were few spare parts that had survived.  The
Glaive
added more sail and as they were rounding the peninsula the lookouts had spotted a familiar ship.  That turned out to be the
Abna
, which had its transmitter fail, but its receiver still worked.  They had heard the conversations between
Glaive
and home and the
Glaive
and the survivors of the
Feston
and had sailed to meet them.

When Glaive came ashore he was met by his cousin, Yourel, who he had expected never to see again.  Yourel and most of the others aboard the
Feston
were civilians -- scholars mostly -- and a few additional soldiers of the expedition. 
Feston
had been their supply ship, and the second in command, Homer Graal, had saved most of the food supplies.

The supply situation, even so, wasn’t pretty. 
Feston
had only small quantities of gunpowder and that had been kept safe, but about a third of the food had been spoiled. 
Abna
was in much worse shape, but for them it was because their powder locker had been stove in by a freak wave, and about two thirds of the gunpowder had been ruined.

Glaive had done better preserving both, but there were a lot of mouths to feed.  Glaive ordered the surviving slaves to be put to work quarrying rock for a wall, and unloading some of the
Glaive’s
cannon to protect the camp.

For Yourel had some news, news of the greatest importance, that had been flashed home within minutes.  Men, matching the physical description of the Builders, had been seen, headed north.  Not only that, acting-captain Graal had a prisoner that Yourel could talk to in the ancient Builder language.

The man was demented and made little sense, but if you were patient and repeated your questions enough times you could learn something.

Graal had sent thirty men to search for the others the prisoner reported, and while they were at it, Glaive’s second in command, Harta Nomer, had gotten lost, probably chasing a runaway slave.

Hearing that tale, Glaive had wanted to find the man and personally wring his throat.  Why would you chase a slave who’d run into this terrible wilderness -- particularly if you were planning on killing her anyway?  Pride, he supposed.  But still -- common sense and a sense of priorities should have kept the man in the camp.

Graal’s men had gone as far north as their supplies would permit, but an enterprising lieutenant had offered to push on another day with two men, even faster than the others had been going.

Whatever -- no one knew what had happened to those three men, they had simply vanished.

Two weeks later, scouts reported about twenty of the Builders coming south.  By then, Glaive was in charge and he had Graal’s best man lead a contingent of fifty men north to fight them.

The scouts had suffered later for their incompetence.  There were more than a hundred of the Builders and they ambushed the party and killed most of them.  Glaive had been close enough so that his ship could throw a few cannon balls against those who did it -- but they were well dispersed and promptly hid.  He’d had to swallow his anger and sail away.

He’d gone north, finally finding a substantial town at the top of the peninsula.  There wasn’t much he could do, and he was aware that a third of his gunpowder was back in the camp.  He fired a broadside to let them know that the Tengri Imperium had come for them, as they had come for their ancestors.

He snorted.  The Builders!  Many of the Builders his ancestors had attacked so long ago had run, like cowards, and the remainder surrendered and were taken into captivity.  His ancestors had lived well for many years after that in the great cities the Builders had constructed, but hadn’t been able to protect.  The Tengri were contemptuous of such men and their works, however amazing.

No one paid attention to the fact that some Builders had different knowledge than the others -- they were slaves and you treated all slaves the same.  A great many of the Builders died in those first years, unable to adjust to a life of servitude.

Who cared?  They’d captured a half million slaves!  Then the aqueducts started breaking down, and the cities slowly became untenable.  There was a new Emperor, not a conqueror like his forbearers, but one who thought himself refined.  He ordered the Builders to start fixing things, ignoring that for fifty years, to display such knowledge would have resulted in death, as teaching that knowledge would have resulted in death.

The young emperor raged when his first demands were unmet, demanding that the Tengri themselves learn the Builder’s secret lore!

There were a lot of books and papers left, mostly ill-used.  Scholars were set to the task, and when that wasn’t enough, the Emperor of the Tengri conscripted an entire division of his soldiers to become scholars.

That hadn’t worked out very well either!  Still, men faced with the choice of “learn or die,” chose life.  Men learned the ancient Builder tongue, they learned the Builder’s secrets and learned to apply them.

There was no real singular moment when it happened, but it did.  One day a man discovered something that the Builders hadn’t known.  He commented on it, and after that, more and more scholars learned things that the Builders had never known.  Eventually there was far more that the Tengri knew than the Builders had ever known and the Builders had slipped back to being the inferior race everyone knew them to be.

Here and now, Builder Scholars were considered amusing anachronisms, the Imperial Academy of Scholars was where things were happening.

It had been Yourel who’d caused all of this.  Workmen tearing apart an ancient Builder palace had found a secret chamber with many of the Builders’ books.  Yourel had been called in to see if there was anything interesting that might add to the scholarship about the Builders.  It was humdrum, routine, and had been done thousands of times over the centuries.

Those books had turned the Empire on its ear.  They told of the Builders outfitting a vast fleet of ships, of men who stood on the docks and swore solemn oaths to return one day and slay the Tengri.

Had it been one book, it might have just been thought a dreamer’s fantasy, but it meshed well with the Tengri legends that spoke of the Builders fleeing.  Legends that had never made sense before and were thought most likely to have been speaking of a flight into death.

But, there were a dozen books in the one old chest, and workmen were set to looking further and more were found.  The old palace had been where the retreat had been planned, and there were many records of the flight.

Scholars had been consulted.  What was in the west?  None knew.  There was a great desert to the north of Tengri lands, inhabited with barbarians who killed Tengri with pleasure and abandon.  To the east was a great sea, and there were a half dozen kingdoms around its periphery, all of them quite strong.  To the far south there was ocean and more ocean, as it was in the west.

Tengri ships trying to sail south and east around the southern fringe of their continent were met with hails of gunfire and either turned back or were sunk.  Those kingdoms were unwilling to tell any Tengri about the shape or extent of their lands.  They all feared the Tengri; they didn’t trust the Tengri and stayed strong or they would have long before fallen to the Tengri.

The Emperor had personally commanded that an expedition be outfitted and sent as far west as ships could sail.  Irony was that Glaive had been two days from the turn-around point when the storm had struck.

And now they were here and now here was ruin.  The Emperor had commanded too many things, making them imperatives.  Explore the shape of the land here; make a secure fort, prepare for reinforcements.  Reinforcements that might be six months from coming.

Glaive had tried to do his best.

The second time the scouts had reported Builders moving south, he knew it was the end.  There were, he was told, thousands of them moving towards him.  Glaive had four hundred seamen from the
Glaive
, two hundred from
Abna
and eighty survivors of the
Feston
. 
Abna
was useless for exploration, as it had no transmitter.

The scouts reported that the Builders were armed with some sort of steel bows that threw iron rods very far, very fast.  Worse, they could fire those bows two, three and sometimes four times as fast as a man could fire a musket.

One of the survivors of the first attack against the Builders had been bitter.  “We shot at them, again and again!  Our muskets rarely hit them.  Those bows rarely missed.

“The smoke from the muskets obscures our ability to see around us, while they are in clear air.  When the smoke blows away, you have to find them before they find you, knowing that they would be able to shoot several times before you could.  We died, Viceroy!”

That had been a simple ambush and had worked well for the Builders -- and cost him fifty men -- roughly one of ten of his soldiers.

And today -- today had been a catastrophe from the opening shots that had murdered his ship and half its crew.  The steel bows were deadlier than muskets and as bad as that was, these Builders had something that threw small bombs long distances.  Once such a bomb had landed in the ready gunpowder for one of his own guns and the explosion had destroyed the gun and twenty men around it -- and breached the wall.