IronStar (47 page)

Tsk, tsk,
(said a familiar
voice)
. Too many clues. You always give too many clues… How’s she ever going
to learn on her own?

“…aaaiiiiii!” Kirrah lunged upright
in the bed, gasping for air and fighting at the covers and the hands holding
her shoulders. The door to their room slammed open, and two of Corporal
Mastha'cha’s guards stormed in, swords drawn.

“Kirrah!
Kirrah! Are you
attacked?
” Irshe shook her back to full awareness.

“
Ahh!
No…” she coughed
twice, held up one hand, drew another few panting breaths. “I am not attacked.
It was another dream. I
apologize
for alarming everyone!” Faces all
around her relaxed slightly.

“Guardsman, please fetch Issthe,
this has
got
to stop!” The words barely left her lips when the tall
priestess appeared at the doorway, along with the worried faces of Tash’ta and
Akaray. Issthe stepped into the room, took in the scene in a glance, and with a
sweep of one robed arm cleared everyone to one side and gestured Kirrah to sit
opposite her in one of the room’s chairs. Tash’ta lit a small lamp, and in its
comforting orange glow one of Issthe’s pale hands touched Kirrah’s, and the
trembling and adrenaline seemed to drain from her as from a lanced abscess.

“I listen,” the priestess said, her
calm eyes drawing in Kirrah’s wild gaze, in and down. In moments, the dream’s
story tumbled out.

“Issthe, I cannot keep alarming my
guards like this!” Kirrah concluded. “Bad enough out on the plains, but here in
the city, where a scream has signaled death for so many people…”

“Kirrah, they attend their duties.
Your duty is your dream. What is its gift?”
“Gift? You said that before, I know, but it just seemed frightening. I see no
gift.”

“Describe what was chasing you.”

“It was… nothing. It was small,
invisible, deadly.” The priestess’ face turned a little, dark gray eyes looking
slightly askance into hers.

“And what,
aska
, does
that
remind you of?”

“Remind me? It’s the damned
smartshots
,
that’s what it is, and the
nanowire
. Is that the gift? To know that I’m
afraid of the things that are killing us? Killing everyone?”

“Patience,
aska
. Be patient
with your
ito
, and it will unfold unto you. What was the second figure,
you said it was a teacher?”

“Master-teacher
Stanglee
,
yes. He just
disappeared
. Left me alone to face the danger.”

“When did he do something like
that, in waking life?” Kirrah noticed, Issthe did not say ‘real life’, as
though the opposite of ‘
dream’
was not necessarily ‘
real’
.

“I remember once, just before a big
test at the Academy, I went to see him in his office for some help. I was
having trouble with some problem. I really needed his help, and he wasn’t in.”

“What happened next?” asked
Issthe’s soothing voice.

“I had to go into the test without
his help, and the damned question was
on
it! Huh… and I managed to
figure it out anyway, right there in the…” Issthe shifted somehow, as though
some corner had been turned, and indeed Kirrah felt something stirring at the
back of her mind. Issthe asked:

“What then, in this entire dream,
was the hardest part? The very center of your fear?” Kirrah reflected a moment,
reaching for that intimately detached way Issthe had of just
looking
at
things.

“Hmmm, I’d have to say it was
diving into that lake of fire. It’s pretty obvious, isn’t it? Akaray lobbed
that fire-arrow into the pond, and I was still thinking…” Kirrah broke off as
Issthe raised two fingers. “What?”

“What does fire
do
?” Issthe
asked.

“Huh? Well, it burns, it, um…”
Kirrah paused, stalled by the obvious. The soft voice prompted:

“In your dream, did the fire
burn
?”

A thoughtful pause, “No, it was
floating, like on water, like on the pool, where Akaray…”

“Then, what does fire do
on
water
, Kirrah?”

The Regnum Survey Service
Lieutenant’s eyes flew wide open, her head flew back, her fists pounded her
knees, and she exclaimed, “
Aaaah!
How could I be so
stupid!
” She
looked up to the stunned people surrounding her,
stunned except for Issthe,
who already knows, I
swear
somehow she knows
.

“Akaray! Come here!” She swept him
up in a fierce joyous bear-hug, dropped him and hugged Issthe, whose arms
seemed to gather her in like a child herself.

“
You two have just saved the
Realm!
Now I know how to defeat the O’dai,
Kruss weapons and all!
”
She bounded to her feet. “Irshe! I need a messenger! We must get that flood
control gate on the Upper Geera closed immediately!
Tonight
! And get me
Maka'ra the shipwright! Wake him up if necessary! And find me someone who has
watched this river… Captain Og’drai! He fished it as a child! Come on, people,
move!
We have a
war
to win!”

“If you're going through hell,
keep going.” - Sir Winston Churchill,
op. cit.

“Quiet, lads!” Captain Crath’pae
whispered loudly. “I think it’s dark enough, let’s do it!” It had been a
beautiful, clear, warm evening, and the Talamae captain was standing in the
tenth barge they’d floated down the lake that afternoon under the jeers and
taunts of the O’dai on the south shore. Like the other nine, it was moored
across the current, bow to stern with the next barge. Its downstream gunwale
was chained firmly to the heavy anti-shipping chain laid across the Geera at
the point where Talameths'cha’s western wall reached the river. The O’dai,
seeing a floating bridge forming, had sent extra sentries and a quarter of
their cavalry, plus the distinctive pair of three-horse teams that carried the
ends of the deadly nanowire.

I show you a row of barges and
you see a bridge
, the Captain thought.
But you don’t know our Warmaster!
This ain’t no bridge, fools, it’s a
dam
!

Like the others, this barge’s hold
was weighted with rocks and gravel. And like the others, it was sinking quietly
in place as the dark Geera flowed greedily in through the hole they had just
punched in its bottom. In a few moments, water surged over its low upstream
gunwales. The four-by-twelve meter flat-bottomed barge tilted sharply onto its
side, the upstream gunwale sinking down into the current while the downstream
side remained suspended from the heavy defensive chain crossing the river. With
a soft thud, the upstream gunwale came to rest on the river bottom. The ten
barges’ plank bottoms now formed a row of wooden gates across the river,
sharply constricting the lake’s outflow. The river gurgled and rushed
frantically through the narrow spaces between the ends of the sunken barges,
and began to back up behind the obstacle.

“But Cap’n, how we gonna get
downriver past all these wrecks, if the O’dai send another fleet up the river?”

“Don’t you worry your thick nut
about that, Ola’mata! Our clever Warmaster already taught them one lesson
they’ll never forget. They’ll not be comin’ up our river for a while! B’sides,
those barges we sunk over there in the middle of the shipping channel, they got
iron chain for ballast. Same’s this big chain. But one end of it’s layin’ on
our side the river, by the watchtower there, where we can pull it out if we
need to float ‘em out.”

“Ooooh.”

“You just make sure our part’s
done. There’s more happenin’ t’night,
lots
more. ‘Block the Geera’s flow
as well as you can, Cap’n Crath’pae,’ she said. And block it’s what we done.”

“Here they come,” whispered
Lieutenant Bra'dack into the darkness. “Ready the horses.” Behind him, men and
animals moved silently out of the dense trees and brush and onto the north bank
of the Geeratha river. This was not war as the Cavalry Lieutenant had learned
war, but he had his orders, and by his ancestors and his company’s colors, he
would
not
be the one to disappoint their audacious Warmaster! She had
had steamships maneuvering every evening for the last three days, until the
O’dai were used to these apparently-pointless excursions up and down the three
tributaries. But this time would be different,
oh, yes
. Behind him, in
the heavily wooded wedge of land between the Upper Geera and the Geeratha
rivers, the entire Talamae cavalry, plus eighty-some Wrth warriors on their
war-ponies, plus the four companies of competent-looking Pavattan medium
cavalry, waited in utter silence. Every hoof was muffled in cloth bindings,
every bit of gear that could jingle was wrapped with cloth or twine.

As he waited, the steamship he had
heard coming upriver from the lake loomed up in the darkness beside them,
trailing a row of barges. Anchors dipped quietly into the water and the ship
swung ponderously beam-on to the current. Within two
bhrakka
, ramps and
planks joined the barges to form a serviceable bridge over the Geeratha.
Bra’dack and his men began leading their horses rapidly across, following the
pikemen who had arrived on the barges and the four squads of archers debarking
from the steamship. Now only the South Geera tributary separated them from the
O’dai camp on the peninsula.

In the darkness a hundred meters
downriver from Bra'dack’s position, Do'thablu the master carpenter and four
barges loaded with heavy wood barrels arrived at the point of land where the Geeratha
and the Upper Geera rivers met. As they grounded gently at the tip of the
point, men stepped quietly into the shallows and tied mooring ropes to trees at
the water’s edge. Other men on those vessels quietly laid down their barge
poles, picked up axes or mallets, and settled themselves comfortably to wait
for their signal.

Looking north across the lake,
Do'thablu and his men could see the subdued lights of the half-deserted city of
Talameths'cha. Somewhere just about
there
, the body of his nephew lay
freshly buried, felled by the plague-of-screams. O’dai campfires glimmered on
the water to the southwest, and occasional snatches of music and voices could
be heard from the enemy camp.
A nice night to be out under the stars
,
Do'thablu decided.

Eight kilometers up the nearly-dry
Upper Geera riverbed, Irshe sat on his horse while it grazed contentedly on a
small patch of real grass atop the new earthen dam. His experienced eye gauged
the darkness of the sky.
Any time now… there!
Down along the north shore,
two torches waving by hand in a simplified version of the signal-tower code.
Red waving left to right, green straight up,
go!
At his sharp whistle,
men began working the winches, and five-meter sections of square logs began
lifting out of the four iron-bound wood sluiceways in the dam.

Behind the three-meter high earth
dam, four days’ pent-up flow of the Upper Geera, by now spread out into a
shallow lake a kilometer wide and six long, gathered itself and gushed through
the openings. As the last log came out of the dam, four torrents of water two
meters high and five wide cascaded with a roar through the openings, merged
into one, and raced down the nearly-dry riverbed between the dam and the city.
The flow frothed and spread and settled into a speeding, seething flash flood,
waist deep but with eight million tonnes of pent-up water coming behind.

“Always surprises me when it works
the first time!” called Wai'thago cheerfully, wrapping the last of the log
chains around the shaft of a winch. Trading salutes with the big blacksmith,
Irshe reined his horse around and began racing his Warmaster’s latest surprise
down-river.

At the east end of the small lake,
a point of land contained the shipwright’s docks. From the southernmost
watchtower on the point, Kirrah stared out into the blackness through her
gunsight’s night-vision optics. Three hundred meters to the southeast, she
could make out the steamship and barges bridging the Geeratha. A column of men
was visible in her gunsight, crossing the river and then trooping southwest
over the second wedge of land, between the Geeratha and the South Geera. They
were gathering on the east bank of the South Geera, six or seven hundred meters
upstream from the main O’dai camp on its opposite shore.

That force represented virtually
every horseman she could muster - a mix of Talamae heavy and Pavattan medium
cavalry and Wrth raiders, all together four hundred seventy-five riders. They
were strengthened by eighty archers and almost four hundred pikemen, with
strict orders to lead any advance and probe the air before them with
pikeshafts. Theirs would be the only warning anyone had before running onto a
section of nanowire. Just upstream from the men, three more steamships lay
moored in the South Geera. Beneath her watchtower, two members of the
star-throwers’ guild stood ready.

Now if the damned river will
just cooperate before the moons start rising… yes, there it comes!
Audible
even from the twelve-meter height of the watchtower, the Upper Geera, still and
silent the past four days, was coming alive with chuckles and gurgles. In a
minute it was a gush; in three, a muddy torrent was pouring into the lake,
already noticeably raised by the scuttled barges blocking its outflow at the
west end.
I hope Captain Og’drai called this right
…

In fifteen minutes, the south
shoreline of the lake was visibly encroaching on the circular peninsula which
the O’dai force had called home for the last fifty days. By twenty minutes, the
engorged outflow from the Upper Geera had overwhelmed the normal northerly
currents from the other two tributaries, and was carrying their flow as well as
its own, southwest where it was cutting into the by now only centimeters high
bank at the eastern end of the O’dai position. The combined flow began pushing
a tongue of water thirty meters wide and a few centimeters deep across the flat
plains behind the O’dai. The lake level continued to rise, a centimeter every
few minutes. Now half the peninsula was a sheet of shallow but rapidly
spreading water. Shouts were rising from the enemy camp as men woke to
waterlogged blankets and squished out of their tents to find themselves in the
center of a giant puddle.