Read A Company of Heroes Book One: The Stonecutter Online
Authors: Ron Miller
A Company of Heroes Book One: The Stonecutter (11 page)
“I think that I know what you have in mind,” says Bronwyn, sorry that she had laughed at Thud, “but my chess-playing’s not very good.”
“It is not necessary! We will not be putting on a show for the Guards, we only need a place to hide you. You are very much taller than Henda; it will not be easy for you. But you are young and can bend like a sapling. You
must!
” he finishes with sudden intentness.
“I can but try. But I’ll die in there! How long will it take us to get away from the city?
“I do not think that you will nes to stay inside the sultan all the time. I will show you how to get in, and we will practice the movements and timing. It is very easy. Then all I will need to do is signal you if we are to be stopped. I will be riding beside the driver. We will be taking the canal north from the city. I think that we will only be searched at the barge pool, but it will be a good search, they will try to miss nothing. Ho ho! But they will miss everything!”
In the northwest of Blavek’s island, on the south bank of the Moltus, is the reservoir that feeds the canal that runs due north out of the city. It is on a high bluff overlooking the water, just downstream from Pordka Falls. A stone aqueduct carries the canal from the reservoir, over the churning river, to the top of the vertical granite cliffs opposite.
A full troop of Guards is waiting for the gypsies. The caravan joins the milling throng of passengers and freight wagons that are waiting to be inspected before they can board their respective barges. The Guards are being as thorough as the gypsy had warned Bronwyn they would be. It is slow work and tempers are short. Few, however, dare to speak out too harshly against the inspection. The black mood of the soldiers is too obvious and already several people have been beaten and arrested for obstructing the search, or for just simply being annoying. The message is too blatant for those remaining to miss. The people wisely kept their grumbling
sotto voce
.
Slowly, one barge after another moves through the lock and onto the aqueduct. Finally, the gypsy wagons come under the scrutiny of the Guards. The fugitives’ gypsy friend accompanies the inspection, which is thorough indeed. Half a dozen men comb through each wagon down the line, one at a time. They sound the walls, they look beneath the vans and on the roofs, they check every box, basket, pot, bag, sack and bundle; even things it would be impossible for either the girl or the big man to have fitted into. They are thorough, but, as has been said already, they have no imagination. When they reach the wagon containing Thud, the wagon immediately preceding Bronwyn’s, the Guard in charge asks, “What’s in here?”, an entirely unnecessary question since the closed panels are covers with colorful paintings of a giant, snarling, slavering, sharp-fanged and dagger-taloned animal. Surrounding these are two-foot-high words in gold-outlined letters ‘and altogether belying the ferocious images):
“It is a dancing bear.”
“A dancing bear?
“Yes, a bear; very dangerous animal, very ferocious. I do not know why I keep it, it will kill someone some day, I am sure of this. It also dances.
“Well, open up, let’s see it.
“As you wish.” And the gypsy pulls on one of the dangling cords, raising a side panel a few feet, so that it angles out like an awning, shading the inside. The Guard peers into the dim interior. He can see that there is nothing in the cage but a great black shape sitting huddled on the bare wooden floor.
“That’s it, huh?”
He rattles the bars with the butt of his rifle.
“Hoo! Hoo!” he cries.
The black mass shakes itself.
“Grrr!” it says.
“Ugly brute, ain’t it?” says the Guard, stepping back a pace involuntarily. “All right, close it up.”
As the Guard turns to walk away, the driver gives the wall behind his seat a surreptitious
tap, tap, taptap.
“What’s in here?”the Guard asks as he approaches the next wagon.
“It is for supplies. A little bit of everything: clothes, props, I do not know. A lumber room, a catch-all.”
“Open it up.”
Inside, the Guard faces the almost solid mass of baggage with an air of dejection. “Go through every piece!” he orders his men.
Only two can fit into the interior at one time. They began passing the larger boxes and trunks to the men outside. In only minutes, the ground surrounding the wagon is buried under the contents of the wagon. There is a surprised shout from inside the van.
“Captain!”
“What is it?” asks the officer, putting his head into the doorway. Then: “Holy Musrum!” Then: “Get that thing out of there, it scared the shit out of me!”
The sultan is wrestled out of the wagon.
“Please be careful,” worries the gypsy. “That is a valuable work of art!
“You,” says the captain to the gypsy, “get your people to load this other junk back onto the wagon. Meanwhile, what
is
this thing?”
“It is The Great Peigambar Sultan!”
To which information the captain merely looks blank.
“It is a chess-player! A grand master! You wind it up, it plays chess. Surely a man of the world such as yourself has heard of this great wonder?”
“Of course, of course. Open it up, I want to see what’s inside.”
The gypsy opens the first sliding panel, and then the matching one in the back. The captain bends to look inside and can see one of his other men peering back at him through the maze of gears, pinions and cams. Before he can say anything, the gypsy slides the panels to the other side of the box, revealing the remaining half of its contents. The captain and the soldier repeat their performance. The gypsy is easily able to keep his face sober: he has seen bumpkins in every village in Tamlaght do what he is watching the Guards do now. Once again anticipating the captain’s orders, the gypsy slips the panels shut and opens the sultan’s chest and the door in its back. It is hollow but for a few rods, springs and cables coming from the machinery below.
“Make it work.”
“What?”
“Make it work. I want to see it play this game.”
“Yes, Sir.” He feels around in his pockets, patting one after another. “Do you have a crown on you, Sir? I need to put a crown in it before it will work. I do not seem to have anything less than an eagle.”
“Yes, yes, yes.”
The captain fumbles for a second in his uniform, finally pulling forth a golden coin, with the pride of a magician producing an egg. The gypsy takes it and inserts it in the machine. Stepping to its side, he cranks the handle for a turn or two. The machinery begins its mysterious writhings. The captain is fascinated by the spinning works.
“You must make the first move,” says the gypsy as he closes the panels.
“Eh?”
“The game. The sultan cannot play until you make the first move.”
“Oh. Well, ah ...”
The captain reaches out a tentative hand and moves one of the pawns. The sultan
whirrrs
like a cat; its free arm vibrates, raises itself above the game board, moves until it is above one of its pieces, drops, grasps the pawn between a pincer-like thumb and forefinger and moves it one square ahead.
“Fascinating!” exclaims the captain. “Well, we must move on...”
“You will not finish the game? You are doing so well!”
“Yes? Ah. Well...”
He moves another piece. So does the sultan. He moves another, and so does the sultan.
“Ha! Ha!” cries the captain, and jumps four of the automaton’s men, sweeping them off the board into his hand. “Your machine is not so clever as a captain of the Guards, is it, gypsy?
“I should have known it was futile! My machine has been outwitted! My congratulations, Sir!”
“All right. Get that thing back in your wagon and move on. Damnedest thing I’ve ever seen!” he confides to the man next to him. “Scared the shit out of me when I saw it sitting in there. Can’t play worth beans, though! Ha!”
“If I were you, Sir, I’d check to make sure I still had my watch,” suggests the lieutenant, dryly, who
does
know how to play chess and has always thought his superior officer an idiot. He watches superciliously as the captain checks his watch pocket, happily discovering the timepiece, and decides rather meanly not to remind him of the gold crown he lost in the fruitless demonstration.
The dozen wagons are loaded onto one of the long, flat, very narrow wooden barges. The animals are penned closely together amidships. The barge masters with their fifteen-foot wooden poles line either side of the boat. They push against the bottom of the shallow reservoir; guided by shore men hauling on cables attached to the bows, the heavily laden barge moves into the rectangular stone lock, within which there is scarcely a foot of clearance all around. The entrance is sealed by a thick timber gate. The water begins churning and there is a distant throbbing sound of draining liquid. The water level drops quickly until the tops of the wagons are well below the rim of the lock. The gates at the opposite end open and the barge is pushed out into the canal by the efforts of the barge masters, aided by the flow of the excess water, their poles straining against the mossy sides of the lock. It glides between grassy banks for a few yards, then enters the aqueduct. Here the canal is carried nearly a hundred feet above the turbulent Moltus by the ancient stone structure, its piers planted firmly in the rocks below. It is a vertiginous five minutes: the sides of the aqueduct are low, barely above the level of the water, and scarcely further apart than the width of the barge. It is possible, by grasping some firmly attached object, to lean out away from the barge and look straight down to the river. There is no way Bronwyn would ever be convinced to try this, in fact, it is just as well for her peace of mind that she is still hidden.
The barge slips smoothly into the broad main canal beyond the cliffs, still carried by its initial momentum. The gypsy climbs to the driver’s seat of his caravan and raps his knuckles against the wall behind it:
tap, tap, taptap
.
“Princess?” he whispers to the wood. “All is well, come to the door.”
He climbs back to the deck of the barge and circles to the rear of the wagon. He unlocks the door and swung it open.
“It is safe to come out. The bargemen, they are blind and dumb to that which does not concern them. Do not think about them.”
Bronwyn steps down from the wagon, shielding her eyes from the glare that squeezes tears from them. The gypsy lends her a hand until she regains her vision.
“Ah, you were wonderful. Perhaps you are not meant to be a princess; you are intelligent and brave enough to be one of us!”
“I may never walk erect again,” she answers, bending her back and stretching her knees, up and down. “I feel like a used paper clip.”
“Let us go and fetch your friend; I do not think he has been any more comfortable than you.”
The late Gretl’s wagon is directly behind that of the gypsy leader. He unlocks the rear gate.
“Grrr!” comes a throaty snarl from inside. Bronwyn had almost forgotten there isn’t really a wild animal inside.
“Thud!” she cries into the dark interior. “It’s me, Princess Bronwyn. You can come out now, everything’s all right.”
She steps back as an enormous, black, furry creature emerges. The wagon looks like a cubical egg giving birth to a gorilla. The creature shrugs and molts its skin as neatly as a snake. Underneath, Thud’s clothing clung to him wetly: he is drenched to the skin with sweat. Now, however, he begins to shiver in the brisk wind that whisks across the open deck.
“Are you all right, Thud?”
“Sure! Fooled them, didn’t we? That was a lot of fun. Grrr! That Guard almost made me laugh!”
“Well,” says the gypsy, “it is a good thing you did not; even a Guard would not be stupid enough to believe in a laughing bear.”
“I think Thud needs something warm to put on. Look at him, he’s freezing!”
“Come, my friend, I think we can accommodate you!”
The gypsy takes Thud by the arm and leads him to the baggage wagon. Bronwyn, balancing along the narrow catwalk that ran the perimeter of the boat, went to the bow, a blunt, triangular point. The clean air from the north tumbles her hair, shaking it like a terrier worrying a fox. It brushes her cheeks until they stung, until she knew they are bright red. The air is as clear as a vacuum and she can see the multicolored leaves on distant trees with the clarity of the dots in a halftone engraving. They have entered the rolling, open countryside north of Blavek; ahead are foothills that promise ragged mountains still beyond the horizon. The grassy undulations are dun from the frosty gusts of late fall. There is a long winter ahead she decides.
CHAPTER III
THE JACKAL, THE FOX & THE HOUND
Meanwhile, back at the palace, Prince Ferenc is in a frenzy of despair. Lord Roelt will be returning to Blavek in a matter of days, he is probably on the road now, yet Bronwyn is still missing, and the damning letters with her.
Why hadn’t I listened to Payne?
he worries.
Why hadn’t I destroyed them? Payne is always right in matters like these: if I need proof of that, this affair is certainly sufficient. I expect that Payne will be furious when he discovers how badly I’ve botched something so simple.
And Prince Ferenc hates making Payne angry.
The prince and his sister had grown up all in a golden afternoon; the handsome boy and the handsome girl. They knew only parks and green forests, broad lawns and small, clear lakes with fountains and beautifully carved and paints boats. They each had stables full of lean, muscular horses, with steaming breath and rolling eyes. There were carriages, carts, and buggies for whatever degree of comfort or occasion of state might be required. When they were taken on afternoon drives, it was in a carriage with a coachman, two footmen and a groom. A vanguard of household militia made certain that the way is without hazard. Every day, at exactly the same time, on a lawn during the brief summer or indoors when the weather turned frosty, the children gathered for tea, accompanied by their governesses and tutors. At small tables covered with embroidered linens and set with silver and translucent china, they drank their spicy tea from crystal glasses in silver holders. Their birthdays were as lavish as coronations. For toys, they had real armies and real houses full of living dolls that would do whatever they were asked. The children’s companions were chosen from the highest-ranking families and were intelligent, active and obedient. Neither the boy nor the girl wanted for anything. There was one great inequality, however: one was a prince and the other a princess.
Their father, the king, had left the rearing and education of his children to professionals. There was always a proper method for doing something was his philosophy and the best way to approach a problem was to find the people who are expert at solving it and let them do their jobs unimpeded. As applied to the rule of his nation, it was on the whole an admirable philosophy . So perhaps he had no reason to imagine it would be any different with his children.
Bronwyn discovered that even a king is entitled to his mistakes.
By right and precedent, the boy, as both the elder and, only incidentally, the male child, was heir to the throne. Had the girl been the elder, the king would perhaps have treated her more as the boy had been treated, the children were elements of tradition, not the fruit of his loins, flesh of his flesh, his son, his daughter. If Fate had chosen one to be the elder, rather than the other, so be it. Tradition dictated that it would be the elder child who would eventually be the monarch. So be it. Suitability for the role was a consideration that never entered into the matter.
The children’s lives were in the hands of a succession of nurses, nannies, governesses and tutors. Loving hands, no question about that; caring and capable ones, there was never any doubt. But they were still hands controlled by the Great Puppeteer of tradition. The prince was destined to be the king someday and all of his education and all of his training had to prepare him for that career. Long days were spent in lessons on military matters: strategies of historic victories, the lives of the great generals and admirals, the rudiments of weapon construction and the theories of ballistics, those aspects of chemistry and metallurgy that could be applied to warfare; he was taught sailing, naval architecture and navigation. Nor did his education neglect the intellectual and artistic, for a king needs to be wise and cultured, or at least be able to maintain the appearance of being such, if he were not to be considered a bumpkin by his fellow heads of state. The prince was instructed in philosophy, the classics, languages ancient and modern, astronomy and geography, music and art. For a child of even modest intelligence, curiosity and ambition, this education would have been a joy, since its teachers were all expert, enthusiastic and sympathetic, an ideal composition, and would have, even at the worst, turned out a passably usable product. Unfortunately, the prince was sullen, lazy, unambitious and if not even remotely intelligent, had made up the difference with craftiness. He had taken everything his privileged life had allowed him and considered it as nothing less than what he was due. He was spoiled. His attitude toward his training was that it was an unnecessary and nearly unbearable burden he was forced to tolerate if only to avoid his father’s wrath; there was a preconceived image of the future king that his father was adamant that the prince be made to fit. He escaped it as often as possible, having also measured his father’s indulgence to a fineness.
The life of the younger of the two children was very different, though she did all she could to improve it according to her own ambition and contrariness. Her official education was limited to those subjects that were thought would best suit her for making intelligent conversation, as a suitable ornament for the court of her brother the king, and toward developing her into a respectable and desirable bride who would contribute her part toward making the international ruling class even more interrelated and inbred than it already is. This did not place any great demands on her time. It was supposed that she would devote her free periods to riding, playing croquet or tennis, painting or drawing, being taken sailing or for carriage trips through the city parks, or whatever other gentle pursuits are appropriate for a young royal princess. Her free time was her own, however, and she quickly discovered that nothing prevented her from accompanying her brother in his lessons. The prince’s tutors just as quickly discovered that while they were ostensibly instructing a patently dull-witted boy, they were in fact educating another child, one who was officially invisible to them, but whose intelligence was as brightly keen as a kitten’s.
She loved to run and climb and fight with the children of the servants. She had to be more circumspect then. Her father could never be allowed to see her in a tree or wrestling in the dirty furrows of the kitchen herb gardens. More than once, a sniveling servant child was sent to its room by angered and frightened parents after they had caught him or her pounding the royal princess’ face with a pulped tomato. The fact that the princess had already given their child a black eye was of no possible account in the matter. Still, it must be admitted that the punishments were only token.
The princess never seemed aware of differences in rank, at least she seldom made an issue of it, and the servants loved her like one of their own. Perhaps she benefitted, in their affection, from a kind of rebound, since her brother enjoyed a perverse pleasure in creating situations where he would be able to bring grief and distress to the defenseless palace staff.
Thus the two children each became the opposite of what the king intended to create, though he was to his dying day unaware of this. The prince is unpleasant, condescending, physically weak, vain, dull, supercilious, sarcastic and lazy. The princess is intelligent, though not particularly intellectual ‘she enjoys learning but has not yet learned to enjoy thinking), curious, too pragmatic to be romantic, a little too ambitious, a little too serious, reckless, selfish, physically strong; quick-tempered; self-important, perhaps, and much more naive than she believes, but not altogether an unpleasant person. If there was any error in the princess’ education, perhaps “miscalculation” is a better word, even if it implies that what is done is done consciously, which it is not, it is that of
artificiality
. If her playmates and their parents treated her as an equal, it is not because they actually
believed
that to be so. Certainly not, and neither did Bronwyn, at heart. The children were always aware that the princess was of another, and superior, species than they. She had dozens of fond playmates, but not a single friend. The parents were all too aware of the power that lay behind the girl. While they were not obsequious, neither were they stupid: they still pulled their punches. If the children’s play was rough-and-tumble, the princess was never hurt beyond a bruise or a scuff. If she occasionally lost at the games they played, she never lost very badly, and never as often as she won. If she thinks she has grown tough and self-assured, it is in large measure because her opposition had been resilient; she earnestly believes that her world is an accurate replica of the larger world beyond the palace. It is not: it is a fictional simulacrum. A Romantic utopia. Within the palace, it made a difference that she was Bronwyn Tedeschiiy, no matter how much it is pretends it didn’t; no one told her that the world outside doesn’t care. There is more than the obvious differences in the manners with which the two treated their inferiors. It is difficult to truly tell which is the worst: that the prince considers people of common birth with contempt, or the princess never considers them at all.
As part of the prince’s training, his friends were carefully chosen from among the leaders of the ruling class. Sons of the most powerful barons, dukes and earls were selected for his companions. He was expects to play, exercise and study with those who would eventually support his throne. These boys would come and go, as circumstances, politics and personalities dictated. One only was a constant. He arrived at the palace when the prince was seven years old. The newcomer was an elfin child, preternaturally thin, with black eyes sunken deep within their sockets and hair as black and glossy as oil against his pale, dry skin. He had hands like spiders, but they were not fragile: the princess once saw him break walnuts in his fists. He had not been in the prince’s company for more than a few days before it was clear who possessed the dominant personality. While always obsequious and demonstrably aware of his rank in relation to his royal companion, Payne Roelt was no toady like the others. Instead, the princess saw the other boys treating Payne with the same fawning respect they dealt her brother.
Eventually, in games and conversation, Payne became the acknowledged leader. It was he who suggested the sports, the day’s activities, the rules by which they played, the topics they discussed. It was his opinion that settled any debate, his ruling that squared any dispute on the field. The prince seemed relieved to be able to delegate his authority to his friend, who in turn merely acted in the prince’s name. Ferenc was pleased at how accurately his lieutenant was able to translate the prince’s desires into such intelligent commands, and was amazed at how often his thoughts are anticipated. His friend was able to come up with the most impressive ideas bare minutes before the prince himself was about to think them. And did the new boy ever for a moment consider taking credit away from the prince? Not at all! What honesty! What loyalty!
Ferenc was convinced, and admittedly not without some justification, that his teachers took pleasure in making him feel stupid and that his sister treated him like a simpleton. In the person of Payne Roelt was at last was someone who appreciated his intelligence.
Less than a year after his arrival, the father of the new boy died. It was easy, then, for Payne to become a permanent fixture of the royal household. The princess and the lieutenant quickly developed a loathing and fear for one another. He recognized in her an intelligence as vital as his own, if of a different variety. She saw in him a power that her brother lacked and that he was exercising this power in the prince’s name and with the prince’s authority but not always with the prince’s knowledge.
The tall, lean girl and the slight, reptilian boy were, in fact, more equally matched than either would have cared to admit, even had they realized it. Both were dedicated individualists, powerful both physically and intellectually, imaginative, ambitious, heedless and with great courage, single-mindedness and boldness. But the energies they possessed were of very different sorts and manifested themselves in very different ways. To compare them is as futile as comparing a wildcat and an electric current. The princess knew what the boy was doing to her brother within weeks of his arrival and the boy just as quickly was aware of
her
knowledge. Even though he recognized the girl as an enemy, he never treated her with anything other than his usual faultlessly polite respect, a smirking unflappability that invariably drove the girl into a helpless rage.
There was little or nothing that the princess could do about him, or to him, and he knew this. But he also knew that she was an implacable foe, and possessed of a mind so alien to his own that to attempt to predict what she could or could not, or would or would not, do would be impossible for him. So he was polite to her, always watched her and tried never to underestimate her.
The process was already well under way when the princess found herself being gradually forced out of the palace. More and more often she had discovered rooms locked where they had once stood open; unfamiliar faces among the servants: faces surly, evil and sneering; strangers coming and going on business of which she had no knowledge; banquets, balls and receptions held from which she was excluded by never being told of them. The number of occasions where her official presence might be employed, christenings, openings, concerts, operas and that sort of thing, declined. These, which her brother had once shunned like the plague, were now attended by him, always with his amanuensis at his side to provide the witty remark, the pithy epigram that would soon be quoted throughout the city as having been spoken by the prince himself.
Occasionally, the intriguing pale young man who always accompanied the prince, someone of undoubted importance, everyone was certain, would appear in the prince’s place, if the heir to the throne was indisposed or demanded elsewhere. Fewer people all the time asked themselves where the princess was; eventually few people even missed her.
* * * * *
The tall young man in the tight-fitting, dove-grey and entirely honorary uniform of a major in the Royal Slottenen Fusiliers paces the ornately parqueted floor of his apartment. The potentially handsome, babyish face is twisted into a pink knot with the effort of puzzling out a dilemma.