The March North (4 page)

“You always been this cheerful, sir?”

“You want cheerful, Master Gunner, just think — either nothing happens, we’re all dead, or it gets written up and studied. Taught to young officers for as long as the Commonweal endures.”

That gets me an appropriately grim smile, and the mood shifting a bit.

“Part-Captain — you asked about copper because you can make bronze bulls
as well as shot?”

“All the battery drayage. It’s experimental, same as the tubes.”

I need to ask about that, but not now. You’d think the assignment orders would be more specific about such things.

“And you’d need, besides copper?”

Blossom shrugs. “A bit of glass, a bit of iron, something to do engraving with, and an ox per. Preferably a nice steady old one.”

“Do you really need the ox?” Twitch
asks, wincing in the knowledge that it’ll be the Creek Sergeant-Major who will have to explain this.

“Bunny rabbits work badly.” Blossom’s voice is dry.

“You cast the thing, and then you put the oxness in it so it moves; the meat ox drops dead when you do it, but anybody who worked with that ox’ll recognise it in the bronze one. It’s not absolutely required; you can get an animating principle
elsewhere or you can spread one ox-worth of oxness across more than one construct but it’s better if it’s one ox per construct.”

“Twitch, you can’t tell me we can’t find a bunch of ox-drovers who wouldn’t really mind getting a team of bronze bulls from the Line and keeping the beef, just for showing up when the Captain calls and hauling supplies.”

“Put like that, sir, no, no I can’t.” Both of
Twitch’s feet are trying to tap toes. Not looking forward to this. Creeks prefer magical doings to stay politely invisible. Not entirely against such doings, the Creeks as a people and an area use a lot of focus-tools, but that doesn’t count, socially. This would, will.

“Very well. Staff Thaumaturgists to assist the Part-Captain in obtaining iron for re-munitioning as soon as Split Creek co-operates
by running blood. Part-Captain, keep the shot shop well separate from whatever casting pits you set up for the bronze bulls. We want the bulls to be public and the shot not.”

“Quartermaster, get a list from the Master Gunner of everything they’re going to need for the shot shop that isn’t iron. Get it, and get a roof over it. Usual extra pay terms for available members of the company. Use the
space where Barracks Five used to be for stacking. Figure out where we can put the actual shop.” Certainly not in Westcreek Town.

“Sergeant-Major, put out the Word with respect to drinking water under field conditions. Let it be known that next drill day, the company assembled shall be engaged in public works.”

There. That’s a start.

Blossom’s iron-mining was spectacular. There was a ground-shaking roar and a pillar of fire high enough and bright enough to give everyone in Westcreek Town a faint green second shadow for most of the day.

Gleaning copper from mine tailings was much less spectacular to do; I’m told it was less loud and more ominous to watch, a dark cloud filled with an irregular throb and a fitful dull
carmine glow.

A thirty-five kilometre hastened-march with the whole company, and thirty-five kilometres hastened-march back, was no problem, but standing on the smoking hot ground gleaning copper means Chuckles is placing a lot of orders for boots. Since there’s a current glut of ox-hide, this is working out well. Nobody got really bad blisters — nothing that wore through and bled — and Rust has
become, let’s say respected, by providing a salve Rust will formally attest is derived by non-magical means from the roots of garlic mustard. It works implausibly well; weeping skin to stable callus in six hours or so, and after the first spike of pain there’s only a warm feeling. Not fainting or screaming during that first spike has become a mark of distinction within the company. Even Hector’s
eyes watered, so they can’t use that.

The bronze bulls are going well; Blossom’s new ritual is both simpler and faster than the old one, where you had to cast articulated parts. There was a bit of reassurance required over the casting in lateral halves, subsequently welded together. The general Creeks view is that the fewer pieces, the more sturdy, and why start with more than one? Inviting the
most concerned to fail to find the weld line then pointing out that a solid bronze version would be much, much heavier, worked. Halt stepped in and saved things when an awareness that the ritual was
new
got around, by pointing out that Blossom had obviously been
taught
the ritual at the
main Line foundry
, and really,
the Regular Line
wouldn’t be using it if it didn’t work at least as well as the
old way, now would they?

I can’t possibly describe Halt’s voice using every one of at least a thousand years of practice at being indirect with social cues, or Blossom’s expression on realising what was going on and why success required that Blossom had to smile.

We almost didn’t get Blossom because it was taking so long for another Independent, any other Independent, to learn this specific ritual.
Blossom did every single one of the hundred-fifty-odd bronze bulls pulling the experimental battery around, and all four tubes. Nobody else has managed to make one of those; they’re mostly cobalt instead of iron, and the engraved runes are silver and samarium instead of copper and gold and whatever’s in the black enamel.

Cobalt’s dearer than iron by some distance and samarium is rare: it’s not
a full six-tube battery because there wasn’t enough samarium for the next two tubes. Blossom remains peeved about the shortage.

The Foundry-Master really wants Blossom back, not because of the expense or the cold blue shine of the new tubes, but because the usual iron artillery tube, for the last couple hundred-odd years since some Independent figured out how to shove momentum into shot directly
instead of using a spring, is a five-layer thing. Blossom’s expensive alternative has nine, and only so few as nine because after building two twelves and a ten they discovered that the momentum transfer mechanism breaks down past nine. Blossom knows why, and what to do about it, but had to melt all three of those first experiments back down to get four nines.

In the meantime, the strength of
the momentum transfer is a function of the square of the number of layers. Those four experimental nine-layer tubes are better, in terms of throw, than two full regular batteries of fives.

Someone is being sneaky. It will sound very good indeed if there is an incursion and a territorial short company and an experimental half-battery sent off to test a new bronze bull enchantment stomps it. Things
like that do wonders for the Line’s myth of invincibility.

I figure the first step in maintaining that oh-so-cherished myth is not to lose.

The first step in not losing is being able to move, and between the Part-Captain and the copper mine, we’re getting there.

The step after that is force. There’s always a little silver in a copper mine, and the runes don’t need much. Cobalt we could, in principle,
order, but not samarium. The one known source is out of anything to send until they mine and refine more, and they do that in kilo lots. Which is why Rust is off prospecting. Rust has heard of samarium, not a given with old Independents, and has admiring things to say about Blossom’s enchantment design, which means Rust really wants to try it.

Rust swore, and Halt agreed, that Halt can summon
Rust back in not more than a day. I suppose there are advantages to having a horse that’s already dead. From the Captain’s perspective, there’s advantage in having Rust wandering through the eastern waste. Ought to notice any other wanderers.

The rules for Independents have a lot to do with “as directed” and “noncombatants”. The Line doesn’t like using Independents as anything but support, and
preferably distant support, doing things like making artillery and sorting out the logistics. Front-line Independents spend their time figuring out what that thing the battalion just squashed was, and if there are likely to be more.

Which is why I gave Rust written orders — 

Prospect for materials required for artillery tube fabrication. If you encounter an incursion, employ the least sufficient
means necessary to return with useful warning to Westcreek Town. If you cannot return, do something certain to be noticed.

Rust gives me this look, looking up from the sheet of paper. Hands it to Halt, and Halt gives me a different one. Twitch is looking blank; Twitch’d really rather be somewhere else.

“That’s it?”

“Be back by the end of the second décade of Thermidor.”

Rust sketches a gesture
that might have heard of a salute toward the plain and honest hat brim, and goes out.

Halt leans, both hands on the stick handle, nods once, and goes out, too. Halt went down to Split Creek for the iron mining with Eustace carrying two enormous glass jars that must have weighed a tonne each, empty. Aside from making it obvious that Eustace is a good deal stronger than a sheep that size ought to
be, this let everybody in Westcreek Town hope that Halt knows how to make glass by some means that doesn’t involve tonnes and tonnes of charcoal. Halt’s turned that interest into a glass factory, turning out milk pitchers, mixing bowls, and canning jars in great profusion. It’s been giving the harsh-with-a-kind-heart grandma act a real workout, training Creeks with a decent slice of talent into
glassmakers.

It’s also made canning jars less of an heirloom, and means we’re going to have more stored food available. That might be why the Binding of the Standards approves. Or it might just be that the Foremost were a radical bunch.

“What’s up, Sergeant-Major?” Twitch is twitching so much none of the individual twitches are managing to turn into anything other than a absence of holding still.

“Can you see yourself, sir?”

“Not without a mirror. Have I got dinner on my face?”

“You know how the standard shows” and Twitch’s chin lifts toward where Halt just went out.

I nod. Our immensely helpful Staff Thaumaturgists go right on looking like a visit from the end of the world if you see them through the standard.

“You’ve started looking a bit different yourself, sir.”

Which was the only thing
I could get out of Twitch on the subject, and having managed to say that, Twitch got only regularly twitchy, so it can’t have been too bad. I figure it’s just the standard leaning out to hold me up a bit when I’m giving orders to our ancient terrors. One Standard-Captain wouldn’t be much, but the whole Line is back there and it might figure they need reminding.

Gleaning the mine tailings for copper
might have done some good; we’ve done a couple of road-widenings and cleared one landslide in the approved Regular Line way, uphill into the pile. It works, so long as the focus holds solid. If it don’t, you get squashed.

Could wish to tell if the company’s getting to trust me or if it’s just a belief that I’m dangerously crazy.

The eighth day of the second décade of Thermidor tries its best to do what is expected.

It’s hot; summer humid-hot that makes you very glad you’re up on a meadow with a bit of breeze off the hills, the snowy Northern Hills, rather than in some chunk of creekside land that might as well be swamp for humidity. The bronze bulls are too hot to touch with your bare hands, and just as completely
desirous of having their faces scritched as the oxness in them ever was in life. Most of them are getting shiny patches between the eyes as the drovers resort to wire brushes; fingers don’t really get through.

Our Independent Part-Captain has explained three or four times now to various groups of worried drovers that the cud-chewing motion doesn’t mean the bronze bull wants to eat, or is hungry;
eating isn’t a source of contentment to a cow. Cud-chewing, being certain to have eaten enough today, is, and that’s what was kept in the enchantment. It doesn’t do to have bronze bulls that aren’t content with their lot.

Blossom has absolutely no idea why this doesn’t reassure anybody.

Part-Captain Blossom’s watching the four gunners take turns going through push-hands with Twitch, while the
battery as a whole does the full-body breathing exercises meant to improve focus. The four gunners are a varied lot, more or less the just run of the Commonweal, which means one is shorter than me, one is about my height, one’s a bit taller, and one’s a whole decimetre taller than I am. Even the shorter one is heavier.

Twitch is a typical Creek, which means two decimeters taller than the tall
gunner and weighing, in armour, twice what I do in my socks. Creeks tend strong, too; bending horseshoes straight with your bare hands isn’t a party trick in the Creeks because it’s something you’re embarrassed if you can’t do, not proud if you can. And Twitch is, past the twitches and fits of Creek-ness, a fine Sergeant-Major and was a fine Sergeant in the Fourteenth before being sent on a territorial
transfer as a chance to get less twitchy after the Fifth Company of the Second Heavy of the Fourteenth had a spectacularly bad day. So Twitch’s personal focus is really solid, and it’s not like any of the gunners could hope for a physical lift.

Part-Captain Blossom figures twenty metres is far enough away to smile, watching the gunners work very hard to generate enough focus to keep their balance.
All four tubes are up to ten long shot in thirty seconds, once and even twice. The Part-Captain is trying for perfect readiness marks, doing that ten times over at two minute intervals. Trying hasn’t killed any of the battery yet, and no one has gone so far as to point out to the Part-Captain that the readiness standards apply to fives, not nines. The gunners are a bunch of volunteers, and they
want the bragging rights if they can manage more than twice the throw involved in regular perfect readiness marks.

The battery are using the same sand-pit Halt’s glass factory digs out of as a backstop, and sifting the shot back out again. Since the sand needs to be sifted for the glass anyway, it’s making them friends. Sometimes more than friends; the usual social risk when you park a Regular
Line unit in garrison anywhere. So far, only a couple of informal wrestling matches and no formal complaints.

All of that, the Part-Captain has handled very well. I was expecting the shot-making to go well; I wasn’t expecting an outright factory, full-time local workers, or series production black-red-black and black-red-red shot, nor for Blossom to start making sintered front caps so the shot
can be thrown as hard as the nine-layer tubes can push without catching fire in the air. As Blossom pointed out, very formally, the Line hasn’t had nine-layer artillery before, and the shot-making will have to catch up. It usually seems like Blossom’s had all of this figured out for months and is relieved to get it built to clear the thinking room for the next thing.

It’s a contrast. The Part-Captain
has single-handedly advanced artillery in the Commonweal some immense amount, and hasn’t figured out why there’s been so much trouble getting Creeks to really listen. Blossom’s about concluded that women in authority aren’t some sort of cultural problem — Dove is obeyed, with good will and forethought, and the Creeks are not like some of the odd corners of the Commonweal where people try to
cling, despite the law, to odd old customs about work or property. I thought what happened when we tried a mixed-focus exercises day with the battery and company and the fit, determined gunners got squashed by sheer mass of part-timers might provide a hint, but I suppose that’s not something Blossom’s taken personally.

Even the amount of oddly respectful big-sister advice Dove seems compelled
to give doesn’t provide the necessary clue.

Blossom’s maybe eighteen decimeters, and eighty kilos. Has a typical-of-the-Creeks substantial, muscular build, and, for completely different reasons, tends strong. Since the average Creek woman is a decimeter taller and at least ten kilos heavier, and Blossom only really looks as old as nineteen when consciously presenting the serious officer face,
Blossom looks, to pretty much every adult Creek, like their kid sister.

Nobody in the Creeks has any belief, if they’ve even heard the facts, that Blossom looks so young in consequence of suceeding at a ritual that kills four of five who try it. Not that many of those who become Independents even seriously consider trying it, reputed material, organic perpetual youth, along with extra strength
and toughness notwithstanding.

By actual count of years, Blossom’s over eighty; being thought of as anybody’s kid sister doesn’t occur naturally. Junior, yes; I think rocks feel junior around Halt, never mind young Independents.

“The Part-Captain is pleased with the status of the battery?”

“It’ll do for now.” Blossom sounds pleased. “We should drill more with the Company; maybe try catch with
a platoon screening a tube and long shot.”

“Messy if you miss.” Halt’s tone is not more concerned than an observation that it’s warm today would be.

“Set up a kinetic dump ahead of time and don’t tell anybody it’s there. If I can do it, you can do it and go right on knitting.”

That gets Blossom an over-the-spectacles look from Halt, but Halt does indeed go right on knitting. Goes on talking,
too, which is unusual.

“You want effective practice, Blossom dear, you should be trying to hit the whole company on the march. From a good long ways back, so there’s some surprise.”

Long shot kicked out of a nine-layer artillery tube moves fast enough the air burns. You can see it fine. Doing something about it is tougher, in the little time you’ve got. So further back helps, and Halt’s right
that the startle’s something to work on.

“Soon as I think the company will hold, we try that.” I admit I don’t sound very happy saying this.

Blossom looks just as cheery as before, but it’s serious-discussion low-emotional-temperature cheery. “Why wouldn’t the company hold?”

“Half of them think the Captain’s dead, Blossom dear, and the other half think demonic.”

Blossom looks so totally flummoxed
for a moment I hope someone’s watching. We can pick one of the rumoured explanations and make a drill out of it, on the theory that you should always train for what you’re afraid of.

“The mothers mostly go for dead, and the lovers go mostly for demonic. Couldn’t tell you why.” There’s a glint in Halt’s eye that suggests there might well be a theory.

Not staying flummoxed is an excellent trait
in a young officer. I have to suppose that it’s also a necessary survival trait in Independents, because Blossom’s good at it.

“How long has it been since the Creeks had a Standard-Captain assigned?” That’s quick; I was expecting a remark about the impossibility of the standard accepting a demon.

“One hundred and eighteen years.” I’ve been here less than two, and it was close to a year before
I figured out what the problem was.

“Totally out of living memory, too, dear, there have been six Independents come into the whole of the Creeks in that time, and none of them have stayed.” Halt sounds amused by this.

Blossom is clearly trying to find something tactful to say about what I look like when Blossom’s head comes up, nostrils flaring, and there’s much more sorcerer than officer. Halt
looks approving.

It doesn’t take much to borrow a sentry’s eyes; they’re getting better about staying lightly attached even when they’re nearly ritual sentries around a conditioning exercise. There’s a single horseman coming along the road, not raising as much dust as you’d expect and not moving anything like as slowly as the steady lope of the horse would imply.

“Rust.”

I am getting to dread
Halt’s benevolent smiles.

The horse doesn’t look tired; it never does. But it’s got enough dust on it for three days’ ride. Rust, too, who gets a moment to dismount and wind the face-scarf off, dust and breath-mud cascading. Twitch and the gunners head straight over; they would have anyway, but I let them know I want them to hear this. I can hear the Master Gunner telling the sentries to look
outward with some emphasis, then Hank’s settled acknowledgement of remaining officer of the day.

“Is there a watch kept on the dry Westcreek?” Rust is dry of voice, surprising so for an Independent, and sketches a sort of this-would-be-a-bow-if-I-could-bend motion at Halt, taking the lemonade glass Halt passes. Something like Rust’s flask, the glass doesn’t seem to get empty.

It’s Twitch’s turn
to look flummoxed. “Not much point; it’s not natural dry, it’s made dry. Anybody goes down into it’s got maybe five minutes before they’re fatally mummified.”

Rust nods. “These have some considerable sorcerous protection against that effect.”

“Where are they?” Westcreek is the dry bed of what would be a navigable river. Rust wears too much dust to gauge, the dry Westcreek’s not that far away.

“They’re lost.” Rust looks very oddly chagrined, saying this. “From Reems, and most extremely lost until I should permit them to be otherwise.” Rust hands Halt a single small five-mark gold coin, and Halt takes it while not saying “I told you you so” with such thoroughness that the small crawling things in the grass must hear it. “It would appear that the Archonate did not take the intended message
from our last meeting.”

Two of the gunners look like they’d like to roll their eyes at that. The other two know enough about Rust to be with Twitch, looking worried. Twitch has been reading some extra history lately, and if you put Rust up against a substantial kingdom the historical good odds aren’t with the kingdom.

Not a drill day.

“Rust,
where
are they being lost?”

Two sweeps of Rust’s hands,
muttering darkly, and there’s a falling-from-heaven sort of map, contours and all, and if you squint, and get the standard to help, it’s got little guys in Archonate armour being very, very lost up and down the dust of the dry bed of Westcreek.

“Sergeant-Major! Return to Westcreek town; sound the alarm, fall in the company in full field kit. March to — ” I have no idea what the road junction is
called, so I point “ — by the quickest route. Expect messengers. Presume you may be attacked.” That’s going to take all of what’s left of today and a good chunk of tomorrow. “Get them there ready to fight.”

“Part-Captain! Consolidate your battery, proceed with the company. You’re in command until I rejoin at — ” pointing again “ — full field camp; assume Rust missed the plentiful heavy infantry
and some nasty fire-priests the guys in the creek are scouting for.” Rust doesn’t even ruffle. I don’t think Rust missed them, either. Still not how you plan. The standard lets me slide
avoid magical observation
to Blossom without having to say it out loud. Blossom nods, thinking look solidly in place.

Magic can’t hide itself but it lies well enough.

“Rust; how long have these guys got before
they drop?”

It’s an ornate shrug. “They’ll be pretty dry by the end of tomorrow.”

“Can you make them selectively less lost? So we can be there waiting when they emerge?”

Rust nods.

“All right. You’re already exposed, so we’re going to use you and keep Halt back if we can. Plan is to make these guys vanish, but we need to know what they think they’re doing, so we can’t just leave them lost until
the dry gets them.”

“Colour party, Halt, we’re going to Headwaters to sound the general alarm. I’m going so the Gerefan can’t commit paperwork.”

That gets me a snort out of Twitch, but it’s all too true.