Valour and Victory (18 page)

Katia ran over
to the mantelpiece and found the tinderbox. “What are you going to
do?” she asked, glancing at the door. It rattled. “Hurry Isobel,
they’re here,” she pleaded.

“If we light
the oil it’ll begin to burn,” explained Isobel, “and as soon as the
flames reach the storage tank hidden behind the panelling it’ll
blow up like a fireball. Seems a vastly preferable way to go than a
knife across each other’s throats or being ripped to pieces. We’re
going to take as many with us as we can. Are the children sound
asleep? Go check.”

The girls could
hear the screams of agony emanating from the étagère below. Katia
felt that she would do just about anything to avoid such a fate.
She checked the children. The ungba had done its work. The children
were unconscious. Katia stroked the hair on little Anne’s forehead,
which was flushed, and damp. She wondered how her little sister
Jill was faring.

Mother
Breguswið will be looking after her, she’ll not let anything happen
to Jill.

The thought
brought her comfort as she turned to Isobel, “fast asleep.”

“Good. We
should just have time before they reach us,” said Isobel, her hands
busy trying to make a spark. “By the way Katia, I’m glad you’re
here with me. Start the prayer would you?”

Kneeling by
Isobel’s side Katia began to intone the prayer for the dying.

The wick came
alive with a tiny bout of flame.

James Cocteau,
Katia’s husband and Isobel’s beloved brother was the only one still
alive on the ground floor when the tower blew. His last conscious
thought was one of relief as the walls and ceilings tumbled down on
top of him.

In the cellar
Tamsin felt the blast and the masonry falling. Terrified, they
huddled together wondering what was happening.

Please God,
please don’t let us all be entombed alive down here.

Their vigil was
only at its beginning.

It was over two
tendays later when they heard human voices and shouted for help. It
was another day after that before their rescuers cleared enough of
the rubble to reach the trapdoor. It was only then that Tamsin
found out that her father and husband were dead and that the Ducal
House of Cocteau had been virtually wiped out.

* * * * *

The
Prince-Duke

Xavier woke
with a start. It was a tenday since he had fled the Citadel, taking
with him a small escort of some dozen men, mercenaries all,
sell-swords who he had hired to help him overrun the palace complex
at the start of the coup.

He had not
brought with him the men who had served him since he was a boy. All
his life Xavier had put himself first but something had prompted
him, with thoughts about his own mortality staring him in the face
to do something for his two children. Before he had fled the palace
he had sent these men to the castle. Xavier hated his wife with a
deadly hatred but his children were the only living creatures apart
from his horse he cared for. The men had instructions to get his
wife and children away from the Larg.

Mercenaries
were expensive and Xavier was sure of their loyalty, until that is,
last evening when the first, faint, stirrings of doubt had set
in.

He had
overheard them talking in the stable yard of the farm on which the
thirteen fugitives had descended, throwing out the family whose
farm it was and taking over the farmhouse and outbuildings.

For this was
the Duchy of South Baker, Xavier’s own. He believed he had the
god-given right to take and enjoy whatever he chose.

That right had
included the farmer’s eldest daughter who he had taken to his bed
and enjoyed with savage abandonment as he tried to forget the
events of the last days.

It had been
during a lull in this pleasure-taking when he overheard the
mercenaries talking. It had been a warm night, the room was stuffy
and the sweating Xavier had risen from the bed and gone to the
window to let in some fresh air.

These were
rough men, accustomed to taking their pleasure from unwilling women
but they had been shocked at Xavier’s actions. The farmer’s eldest
daughter was little more than a child.

Her piteous
screams had unsettled them; that much had been obvious, even to
Xavier. He had made a serious misjudgement. Sell-swords and
mercenaries were considered the lowest of the low but they did hold
to an unofficial code of practice. They did not make war on
children and had been known to turn on their own if one of their
own transgressed this unwritten rule.

Xavier looked
over. The girl was asleep, huddled on the floor. Her face was puffy
with crying and her hair was matted with sweat.

Xavier felt
uneasy but he did not believe he was in any danger. The mercenaries
were being well paid to guard him during his flight from the
kingdom. He had plenty of coin - he had ransacked the royal
coffers. There was more than enough to pay the men a bonus too and
to pay for a ship to take him to one of the islands to set up in
comfort. There were plenty of islands in the Great Eastern Sea
whose leaders would accept him, no questions asked.

Xavier walked
over to the corner and prodded the girl with his foot. Her
eyelashes flickered but she did not move.

Xavier
shrugged. Awake or asleep, it did not matter. Xavier licked his dry
lips and gulped down another large slug of rough farm wine.

* * * * *

Next morning
Xavier dressed with care. Even though he was a fugitive, there were
standards to be upheld. He was a Prince of the Blood, son of a King
and he had always known that dress and demeanour was important.

He glanced at
the bed as he left the room. The girl was awake and was watching
him warily.

“Get yourself
cleaned up,” Xavier ordered. “I’ll be back for you later.”

Xavier had
decided to take her with him.

She did not
respond, hiding her head in the covers as if to blot him from
sight.

The farm
kitchen was deserted when he jumped the last few rungs of the
ladder. Remains of a meal lay on the table. Xavier grabbed an end
of bread and took a swig from a half empty bottle of wine. He went
outside, intent on finding out when the mercenaries would be ready
to depart.

The yard was as
deserted as the kitchen had been. With rising panic, Xavier ran to
the stables. No horses munched in the stalls. His own horse was
also gone.

By now Xavier
was prickling with unease and more. He ran out of the stable.

Standing in
front of him was the farmer, armed with a sharp looking pitchfork.
Beside
him
stood his wife and she was holding what Xavier,
to his horror, recognised as a gelding-knife. He heard the sounds
of footsteps behind and whipped his body round. It was the two sons
of the farmer and both were holding a sharp-looking scythe.

They marched
him out of the yard and into a nearby field. There he was forced to
dig a hole six feet in length, three feet wide and four feet
deep.

Xavier began to
blubber, he pleaded for his life. He told the farmer and his sons
that they could have all of his coin if they would let him go.

The three said
nothing, encouraging him with their fists to keep digging.

“Drop the
spade,” ordered one of the sons at last.

Xavier fell to
his knees, begging for clemency.

They ignored
him.

He tried
another tack.

“I am
Prince-Duke Xavier. It is your duty to obey me.”

They
laughed.

“You are an
evil man. You do not deserve to live,” said the farmer and nodded
to his sons.

They grabbed
him and staked him to the ground beside the grave hole.

They castrated
him, laughing at his high-pitched screams.

They walked
away.

Xavier bled to
death.

When it was
over, the three men returned, untied his lifeless hands and kicked
his body into the grave. It tumbled in face down. They filled the
grave in, patting down the mud until it was level.

They walked
away again.

* * * * *

The
Guildmaster

“Is it
working?” asked Jhonas in excitement. It was three days since the
Boton had arrived, carried by a young boy called Hans riding the
longest legged Lind Guildmaster Annert had ever seen.

It had taken
time to disconnect the crystal and to work out how it could be
connected to the prototype power-core. They had been very careful
not to damage the connector leads and had made an adaptor.

Now both
crystal and prototype sat in the sunny garden that lay behind the
Guildhouse and Jhonas was staring at the dial so he would be the
first to detect any flicker of movement.

“Nothing,”
wailed Jeannie, looking over his shoulder.

“But the
crystal
is
charging, look at it!” shouted Annert in triumph.
“It’s just not transferring the energy it is accumulating to the
prototype yet.”

“I think it is,
a very little bit,” said Jhonas, “but it’s too little to have any
effect on the coils inside the core.”

Professor Angus
the Theorist sauntered over to the group. “Probably because the
metal you used to make the coils in your prototype are not the same
as in the original. Trust me, my calculations are correct, with the
real power-core the crystal will transfer its energy and keep on
doing so until it reaches the critical level. It will blow because
it cannot take any more. I’ve checked and rechecked the
calculations. What did you use to make the coils?”

“Copper,”
answered Jeannie.

“That’s why,”
the Professor answered, “I don’t know what metal our ancestors used
but it was certainly not copper. It doesn’t have the strength or
the capacity for the amount of energy the core needs.”

“We can’t just
send it off just because we
think
it will work,” protested
Jhonas.

“Do you have a
choice?” asked the Professor.

“None at all,”
confirmed Annert.

“Look,” began
Professor Angus. “The original power-core will accept energy, any
energy. The crystal is the source and we have the leads and
adaptor.”

“It fits
perfectly on the prototype,” agreed Jhonas.

The Professor
ignored him, “which was built to the exact specifications except
for the coils themselves. We don’t know what metal it should be.
The print-outs didn’t say because they did not need to. Our
ancestors knew what to use without being told. We’ve tried copper,
iron, and silver, even gold. We cannot test it so you must trust
me. Mathematics and logic do not lie.”

“You may be a
cantankerous old bastard but I think you’re right,” said Annert
with a sigh.

“Thanks a lot,”
said Angus, pretending annoyance although secretly he was very
pleased.

“You have
never, for as long as I have known you and that is a long time,
been wrong regarding something important. The little things, like
putting a pan of milk on to boil,
that
you are not good at,”
Annert continued with an arch look, thinking about the resultant
mess in the kitchen the one time Angus had volunteered to make the
evening kala. Miggi, Annert’s maid for more years than he cared to
think had almost given notice over it. Jeannie and Jhonas had
cleaned the mess up (the milk had been dripping from walls and
ceiling) while Miggi had retreated to her room in high dudgeon.

“I am a
genius,” declared Professor Angus.

Annert
laughed.

“I trust you
even though others may doubt. Now, we must package up the crystal
and the adaptor.”

“And the
leads,” added Jhonas, “and the
spare
leads. We don’t know if
the original leads were buried with the power-core and even if they
were they will have degraded.”

“I’ll write out
the first draft of the instructions,” offered Jeannie.

“Make it
simple,” advised Angus, “they are in very dangerous country. Tala
might not make it through to the core site. One of the others might
have to do it.”

“We will,”
promised Annert, “but I’m sure she’s still alive. Tala
Talansdochter is one of the most determined people I have ever
met.”

“I think I’ll
add some spare wire to the pack,” said Jhonas, half to himself,
“might come in useful.”

* * * * *

Hilla

It took the
army over a tenday to travel from the staging area to the ridge.
The army marched through a country deserted by its inhabitants.
Crops grew untended in the fields and herds of grazing cattle
watched them pass from large astonished eyes.

The members of
the commissariat were gathering in these beasts. Feeding an army
this size took a lot of provender and fresh meat was a welcome
addition to the army’s diet, especially for the Lind.

On the northern
continent, cattle consisted of the native species, kura, zarova and
jedzic. Here in the south, especially in the northerly duchies, the
cattle were descendants of the animals who had arrived on the
Electra
, sheep replacing kura, cows replacing zarova and
oxen replacing jedzic.

There was also
an abundance of pigs that were only now, after six hundred years,
beginning to make inroads into the northern continent. Although the
Lind found the meat tasty, it was found that pig meat upset their
stomach inducing attacks of diarrhoea and tummy pains.

The
Commissariat had been instructed to ensure that nolind received any
pig meat as part of his or her daily ration. The human soldiery
were finding that gammon and bacon were being served to them in
ever increasing amounts. All of a sudden vegetarian stews had
become very popular. There was a limit to how much pig meat one
could eat and enjoy.