The Far Side (53 page)

“I’ve had us eating local food and leaving the last of the MREs for an emergency.  I have a modest proposal.  I don’t like it -- and you won’t like it.  But it is something we need to do if it looks like we’re going to be forced further west.”

“You want to go back to the cave?” Kris said, understanding instantly.

“Yes.”

“A minute ago,” Andie said, her voice tight with anger, “we couldn’t carry enough food to get there and get back.”

“I’m not at a hundred percent,” Ezra told them, “but I’m sure a lot better than the doctors told me I’d be.  All this fresh air and healthy living!”

They could all laugh at that.

“The difference between you and me is that I’ve gone four hundred miles in ten days before, and you haven’t.  I can go down at night when none of the Tengri will be awake.  I can slide into the rookery and leave an addendum to the instructions we left them before with more specific warnings about the Tengri.  Then I’ll do fifty miles a day on the return trip.  Call it three weeks.  I can carry enough MREs for three weeks.”

“Eighty pounds?” Kris asked, now entirely too familiar with how much MREs weighed and how fast you ate them.  “You can carry eighty pounds?”

“Yeah, I can carry sixty pounds down there and forty pounds back.  If you recall, we stashed four cases of MREs in the pile of packaging we made.”

Kris remembered that.  It had seemed prudent at the time, since those were odd cases that would have made the load uneven for some.  And Ezra was right.  Those four cases wouldn’t have sufficed for three of them to get back to Arvala.  But for one...  it would work just fine.

Ezra looked at them in turn.  “Yeah, we’ve resisted being separated.  I went south twice before, and it wasn’t the end of the world.  This won’t be either.”

“And of course, we’ll get our money back if you get killed?” Andie said with more bitterness than Kris felt.

“Double, in fact,” Ezra said evenly.

Kris turned to Andie.  “I don’t like it -- but Andie, we have to do one of two things now -- pretend that they will come for us, even though it has been months, or assume that they aren’t coming and we have to make our way as best we can.  Ezra needs to go south if we are to hold any hope of rescue.  If anyone came now with the Tengri around, they’d just get killed or captured -- that’s not something I want to have on my head!

“Sure, there is no way the Tengri could get back to Earth, or threaten much if they did, but they could sure make it impossible for us to return!”

Andie smiled, her face pale.  “As near as I can tell, Kris, that is you sitting firmly on the fence.”

“Pretty much.  I’m not going to lie, Andie.  I like and admire the people here, and helping them is exciting and interesting, but I’d kill to spend a night sleeping in my own bed.  Arvala is a place with people I’d like to help, but I’m not entirely convinced that we can do it, or if it would be appreciated if we did.”

“You bet!  We’ve already had a quick introduction to ingratitude!  This is a challenge, and I like overcoming challenges.  Still, yeah, to be in my bed again... listening to the fusor running quietly in the closet...”

The two of them howled with laughter, while Ezra simply sat still, trying to be patient.

“Sorry, Ezra,” Kris told him.  “You had to have been there.”

“Kris, I liked your father when I met him.  He was calm, collected and focused.  You are that and ten thousand times more.  You get flapped -- who wouldn’t about the things we’ve seen!  But you calm down and think logically.  You do the right thing, Kris!  You say the right things, you ask the right questions, and above all, you’re right!”

“Nothing wrong with being right,” Kris said, trying to joke.

Ezra looked at her.  “So, am I a go?”

“Yeah.  We need to -- coordinate -- I was going to say clear it -- with Melek, but yeah,” Kris told him.

Ezra looked at her soberly.  “Collum has sent back reports, but I’d like to get a chance to talk to him at length.  He’ll be back day after tomorrow.  That night?”

Kris closed her eyes.  “Yes,” she said simply, not willing to open them.  How do you deal with asking someone to risk their life for you?

* * *

Melek clasped Collum around the shoulders, and the two men, one young and one old, grinned at each other.  “I understand I could have left my iron ball behind?” Collum told Melek, laughing.

“Aye, they sent us thirty-seven, although some of them are the worse for wear.”

“I have no idea what we can do against thunder rods like that,” Collum told Melek.

Melek smiled thinly.  “I didn’t want to put it into a message.  But Ezra has told the smiths here how to build the big thunder weapons, and he’s told them what they need to make them shoot.

“Collum, I fear it will not be enough.”

“Why not?”

“Because the thunder weapons are huge, requiring hundreds of pounds of iron for each one.  I’ve sent the plans west to the King, and haven’t heard back yet, of course, but even though the smiths here have ordered every ounce of iron ore they could afford, there is no word yet whether or not we’ll get enough to make more than a few of those weapons.”

“Well, we gave them a sharp lesson -- hopefully it will give them pause.”

“Or make them come on faster.  Collum, Ezra thinks that the attack on Arvala was just to intimidate us.  They could have done worse, and will do worse, whenever they wish.”

“They fired just once, yes?”

“Aye, Collum.  We were as ready as we could be, but they ignored us cowering on the ground and fired into the city.  I had men going around fixing walls and setting things right, and it didn’t take long.  But if they fire more than once...”

Collum looked at Melek for a moment and then a broad smile appeared on his face.  “You say that the thunder weapons use large quantities of iron and consume some sort of fuel to make them work?”

“Aye, Sachem.”

“If one of those ships were to run out of fuel for the thunder weapons, if they were to run out of iron balls for them -- it would take them several months to travel home and load more, and another several months to return.  They have a vulnerability there.”

“Aye, Sachem.  But it is a very large ship, and I’m sure they have a lot to shoot at us before they have to worry about running out.”

“There is nothing in the south for a man to eat, and while there are a few iron deposits, the better ones are further north.  That puts them within range of us.  And thunder rods or not, we can hit men now using crossbows nearly as far.  Moreover, after you fire a crossbow, you can quickly reload and be ready to fire again -- with their thunder rods, they have to wait for the smoke to clear.  That was their doom in the two times we’ve faced them.”

“So, it isn’t hopeless,” Melek said, feeling better.

“No, it’s not hopeless.  We have a lot of people, and we have things right to hand.  Some of our people will have to work on farming and the like, but the soldiers will be free to fight, and it won’t take two or three months to fill our quivers.”

“Sachem, Ezra wants to go south.  I am not sure I understand him exactly, but he says that if he travels at night, no one will see him.”

“The only way to travel at night is to show a light,” Collum told the younger man.

“He says his people have ways to see even if there isn’t much light.  He says he can see quite well and will be able to travel far and fast.  They left some of their supplies there in the rookery -- not much, but some.  Thus he doesn’t have to carry quite enough to go and return.  He wanted to talk to you about what you’ve seen of the Tengri first.”

“Then, by all means, I shall.  Andie should listen as well.  We can compare information on that Tengri ship.”

They spent two hours discussing in depth Collum’s observations in the battle he’d fought, then another hour covering the attack on Arvala.

It was Kris who asked the question that none of them could answer.  “If I’d been cast away, months from home, and another ship arrived to help me, would I send that ship north to scout my enemies -- or would I return home and come back later with more men and ships?”

“Perhaps the man who commands that ship is the commander of the others?” Melek offered.

“It would be a cold thing to do,” Andie told them.  “Because if anything happened to that ship, those people would be as good as dead.”

The discussion turned back to what they would need to make copies of the Tengri thunder weapons, both the muskets and the cannon.

Ezra had been forthright about the thunder rods.  “I can tell you how to make those.  I can show you how to make the powder and shot.  But I think the steel used in making these is better than your smiths know how to make, and I’m pretty sure that the tools to make weapons like this don’t exist either.

“The barrel -- that’s the tough thing.  They are cast solid, then a special drill is used to bore the hole in the barrel.  It’s not that complicated to do, but the steel is the critical component.”  He held one of the weapons up and looked into the barrel.  “I can’t see this very well, but I’m pretty sure it’s a smooth bore.”

He held up one of the miniature balls that the weapon shot.  “See, these are round.  If you look at mine, they are longer, with a round front.  Fired from my rifle, the bullets spin, making them more accurate.”

“How can they be more accurate if they are spinning?” Melek asked.

“Trust me, it works.”  He turned to Andie and Kris and said something in his own language.  Both shook their heads but Andie spoke up.  Andie excused herself and came back in a few moments with an arrow and two pieces of wood, one rough and irregular and one that was a stopper for a pot and was round.

She quickly cut the arrow into short segments, and then used her knife to drill a hole from one side of each block to the other.  She used one of the small pieces of the cloth that Ezra said were used to fire the thunder rods to make the arrow pieces fit snugly in the holes.

Finally, she twisted the arrow of the irregular block, and it started spinning, but wobbling wildly on a table top and eventually it fell off the edge.  “That is a ball in flight,” Ezra told them.  “Now watch the other.”

The second block was about four inches across and was round.  As near as Melek could tell, Andie had drilled the hole in the middle, using a straight piece of wood to scratch lines across it.

When she twisted that arrow, the result was amazing.  The block spun very fast, and stayed in one place and not moving very much.  She said something apologetic and Ezra explained.

“The balance is very sensitive -- even a little bit off impacts how it spins.”  He smiled.  “At home we make these for children to play with.  They like to spin them for hours, watching them go around.  We paint colorful patterns on these that look pretty when they are spinning.”

Melek started, realizing he’d been staring at the spinning device, fascinated.  So was Collum.

Ezra went over the use of the thunder rods once more, with Andie paying careful attention, then he talked to Andie quite some time about how to use them.  Finally, he bid Melek and Collum goodbye, so he could go prepare for his journey.

Ezra was hugged by Kris and Andie, and a few minutes before it got dark, he went out the main gate and headed south.

“Do you think he’ll make it?” Melek asked the Sachem.

“I think he has about as much of a chance as we do,” Collum replied.  “Have we heard anything from the King since that last message?”

“Not a word, but in fairness, I don’t think that there is any way he could have replied in the time there’s been.  I assume that he’s on the way but...”

“And the city?”

“We have food for about two hundred days, and that number remains roughly constant.  We have five hundred members of the various fighting orders and another three thousand city militia.  Considering that they may come by ship, however, reveals a weakness.  We have made no provision to defend the docks.  A force landed there would have access to the city and wouldn’t have to force the wall.  Further, Ezra was positive that even if we had a wall on the seaward side, it would do no good -- the ship’s thunder weapons would have knocked holes in it.”

Collum remembered the shattered wagon.  “And crossbows?”

“We have a thousand in the city now that you’ve returned, and we’re making a hundred a day from old swords.  The smiths have crafted some better steel for the bow staves, and we are making a half dozen of those a day now.  We are making about two thousand quarrels a day.  Andie’s method of making iron quarrels is very efficient.”

“Pour molten iron into a mold, then open it and file the excess metal off?”

“Aye, that’s it.  We have about thirty thousand quarrels now.  In a month every man in the city will have a crossbow and all the quarrels he’ll need.  Of course, about a tenth of the men won’t have swords, but as the new way of making crossbows improves, we’ll need fewer swords, and we should have some new swords as well by then.”

“And the thunder weapons?”

“There are several issues.  It took a long time to understand what was required.  Charcoal, of course, is simple enough.  The yellow powder is sulfur, and I have sent men to the Kayenga Mountains to gather it from there.  However, the big thunder weapons -- Ezra calls them ‘cannon’ -- consume it very fast and in considerable quantities.  Then there is the main component, which comes from either guano beds or dung heaps.  Ezra says that rookery guano is superior to dung heap niter, and since we have plenty of that, I have men gathering that as well.”