Spirit of Empire 4: Sky Knights (49 page)

Graylee wanted nothing more than to sit down with her back against the wall of the cart, but she knew there might be more gleasons. She maintained a constant watch ahead and to the sides of her cart.

Thaeron, crouched down behind a side wall and keeping an eye out as well, said, “You fought bravely. You are truly a soldier.”

“And a builder and a scholar. I’ve decided I don’t like the soldier part.”

“Nor do I.”

Crowles returned to the cart a little while later and found her that way. “Good job,” he told her. “I forgot to tell you to keep an eye out.
”
He reached out and brushed some gore from her helmet, saying, “That’s the way we do it. We don’t give in, we just get back to work.”

She nodded numbly, still in shock at the ferociousness of the attack. “What should I do now?”

“Keep your eyes outside. We’re getting underway shortly.”

“Forward or back?” she asked.

Crowles spoke to Thaeron. “These are your people. Do you want to call if off?”

Thaeron, frightened out of his wits, shook his head. “I can’t. The town needs a wall.”

“We can take you in a sky ship.”

Thaeron gave the question serious consideration. In the end he shook his head again. “I can’t. Nor will my men.”

Crowles spoke to Lieutenant Bardek on his comm unit, advising him that the caravan would continue to the mine. Thaeron spoke to his driver, then climbed down from the cart and made his way along the line of carts, speaking with each driver and the workmen, offering them encouragement. The carts eventually began moving again, and as expected, sporadic gleason attacks kept everyone on edge.

Bardek rode up beside the first wagon and reigned in his gorlac. “Hawke is on the way to the transporter. I’m sorry, but it looks real bad.”

With those words, Graylee’s world collapsed. She suddenly felt alone and isolated, without purpose on a violent world. What was she going to do now, she wondered? She had counted on Hawke’s guidance, had in fact come here more because of him than the job. During the horrible trials of marine training during the past year, her sole focus had been to impress him, and now he was out of the picture for the foreseeable future and maybe forever. She nodded dumbly as Bardek urged his mount ahead toward the forward outriders.

Crowles sat her down in the back of the wagon, their sentry duties ignored for the moment. “He’s my friend, too,” Crowles said. “In fact, he’s why I’m here. I’m supposed to keep an eye on you.”

She stared at him in shock. “No way!”

“It’s true. He’s spoken of little but you since his return from Aldebaran, a complete change for him, and after meeting you I can see why. He planned all this the moment he heard, though he didn’t plan on this side trip to the mine. He was as angry as I’ve ever heard him when he found out.”

Tears filled her eyes. “I wasn’t sure how he felt about me, but I had hoped. He’s why I came. Can I go to him?”

Crowles considered, then shook his head. “No. We have a job to do here, and you know the doctors won’t let anyone near him.” He paused, then added, “This won’t help, but I have to be honest with you—most of the marines we send to the transporter never come back. Sometimes it’s because of their wounds, but sometimes it’s because being that up close and personal with a gleason does something to you. Hawke has seen a lot here, but I can’t predict how he’ll deal with this, if he survives at all.”

“I’m not sure how I will. I’m still shaking.”

“We all are. That part never changes.”

“How do you keep coming back to this day after day?”

He shrugged. “It’s what I do, what I signed up for.” His eyes narrowed as he looked into the distance. “As bad as it is, imagine it from the perspective of the locals. Until we came, they fought with swords, bows and arrows, and knives. Can you imagine? I have incredible respect for them. I’m not ready to go back to
gzeikolts
and the shallow life I lived on Aldebaran.”

Her eyebrows rose. “You’re staying?”

He cocked his head to the side and looked at her. “If they’ll let me. I’m in training to be a Teacher, and I hope I pass muster.” He got up to resume his sentry duties. “I suggest you keep your eyes open and give yourself time to get to know these people. With Hawke out of the picture, you’ll eventually have to decide if you want to stay or go home. He told me he promised you a ride back if that’s your choice.”

She stood up and lowered her visor into position. “At the moment I just want a hot bath.”

He grinned. “That’s the spirit! So do I.”

They made it to the mine, loaded the wagons with barrels of lime and sand, and returned home fighting gleasons all the way, though they had learned their lesson about traveling through the cave area. Shuttles stunned and blasted that area thoroughly before the carts reached it.

It seemed like the whole town came to the front gates to welcome them back. Builders rarely enjoyed fame, and Thaeron reveled in the attention. He invited her to his home again and she accepted.

This time as they walked through the streets she asked him how the town dealt with human waste. He seemed uncomfortable discussing it with her, but fighting side by side with a person tended to create bonds that transcended social boundaries. She did not relent, doing her best to explain how the open trenches along streets invited disease and illness.

“It’s just the way things are,” he grumbled.

“But it’s going to change. Remember how we talked about your lives changing because of the sky knights?” When he nodded uneasily, she continued. “This is one area that we can change sooner rather than later. In the long run, it will be even more important than our trip to the mine today. A lot of people have died at the hands of demons. We need to protect the survivors. Preventing disease is an important part of that.”

“What would you have me do?”

“You’re a builder. Can you build a pipe?”

“What’s a pipe?”

“If you wrap clay around a straight tree trunk or branch and let it dry in the sun, then remove the branch and fire the clay in a kiln just like you fire the limestone, what comes out is a hard, hollow tube which we call a pipe.”

“What would I do with it?”

“Many things. If you connect enough pipes together, you can bring water right into your home from the well. Or with larger pipes you can carry your waste out of town, thereby keeping everyone healthier.”

“That’s a big project. You’ll have to talk to the king.”

“I will, but you’ll be the one who has to make it work. Will you spend a little time with me so I can show you?”

“After we repair the wall.”

“The wall will take many days to repair. With this limestone mortar you can only add what . . . three or four levels each day?”

“So you’ve worked with it.”

“No, but I read up on it.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s been a long day and I’m hungry. Can we clean up and talk about it after dinner?”

“Clean up?”

“I need a bath.”

“It’s too dangerous to go to the river.”

She stared at him, her hopes for renewing her outlook on life evaporating. She thought about returning to a shuttle, but she decided he might be offended. Then she wondered if he’d be offended at the smell of a clean person.

Hawke’s dusty visage from earlier in the day suddenly brought tears to her eyes. So much had happened since then that she had barely had time to consider what it meant to have him gone from her life. She shook her head at what he must have been thinking when they met. She had been barefoot on cultured, essentially clean grass and thinking it was a big deal. Things had been rough with the colony, but that roughness paled in comparison to here.

She looked about herself and wondered if this place could ever become her home. The girlish, giddy adventure she had anticipated had evaporated with Hawke’s leaving, but her spirits sank even lower knowing the bath she so craved was out of reach. She wondered at Lieutenant Crowles
’
contempt for a
gzeikolt
. Lifestyles there might not be as rewarding as he found this place to be, but they were at least clean. Even as a colonist, she had always had access to showers.

Following dinner, she asked everyone to sit around the table. She brought out her pad, warning them that it might seem like magic, though it was not. When she turned it on, everyone gasped and pulled away except for Thaeron’s eleven year old daughter, Pen. Her eyes narrowed and she leaned forward for a better view of the light emanating from the pad. As of yet, there were no meaningful images on the pad.

“You have books, right?” Graylee asked her.

“I’ve heard of them,” the girl answered, looking away from the pad toward her father.

“The king has books,” Thaeron answered, eying the pad suspiciously.

“I have stored many, many books inside my pad,” she said, lifting it and handing it to Pen. Pen took it gingerly and looked at it, then passed it to her father. He stared at it but did not touch it, and his wife would have nothing to do with it at all.

“Some of the books in here have to do with ancient building processes. Well,” she said, suddenly embarrassed, “they’re ancient compared to where I come from. I mean no disrespect.”

“We had this conversation earlier,” Thaeron said. “Your ancestors lived as we live.”

She nodded. “Do you draw pictures of things you’re going to build before you build them?”

“Sometimes. For complicated projects.”

“We talked about pipes earlier.” She tapped on her pad and brought a line drawing of the pipe-making process to the screen. “This is how my ancestors made pipes from clay.” She showed him the drawings, moving from one screen to another as she showed him the process.

She couldn’t tell at first if he was looking at the processes or the pad, but he quickly became engrossed. “They shaved a tree branch or trunk to be narrower on one end, then they covered it with clay and let it dry. After drying, they gently pounded the clay free and put it in a kiln. When they took the clay from the kiln and cooled it, they had a pipe. When they had more pipes, they inserted the narrow end of one pipe into the larger end of the other. They could make the pipe as long as they wanted.”

“But they could carry it in small sections,” he said nodding his head thoughtfully.

“They installed the pipes in trenches, then covered them up, but I don’t think you could do that here. Your town looks to me like it’s been built on solid rock.”

“It is. I could not bury these pipes.”

“But you could make them if your king agrees. Where you can’t bury the pipes, your stone masons can carve trenches and cover them with stone blocks, or you can rest them on flat stones along the streets or on the sides of buildings.”

He looked up at her. “To stop sickness.”

“It won’t stop it, but it will reduce it. Those are the kinds of things the sky knights want to show you.”

Pen spoke up. “Will you tell us what your home is like?”

Graylee leaned away from the table, though she was sitting on a bench and could not fully lean back. Could she show pictures to these people, she wondered? Were they ready for them? She wished she’d asked Hawke. Then she remembered and her heart missed a beat—Hawke was gone. She was on her own here with no guidance. She considered her plight for long enough that Thaeron called her back. When she looked at him, he was holding a cloth out to her.

“Why do you cry?” he asked gently.

She wiped the tears away with her sleeve, then wished she hadn’t. She suspected what she looked like, though thankfully there were no mirrors. “I came here because of a man. You know him—the Teacher.”

Thaeron nodded silently. “He was injured today and taken away.”

She nodded, not trusting her voice. Eventually, she said, “I’m told he might never return.”

“Will you leave, too?” Pen asked, her eyes brimming in sympathy.

“I don’t know. I’ve been preparing to come here for a long time. He wanted me to teach you how to build things. I can still do that, but before I go very much farther, I’ll have to teach you your numbers and how to read and write. It’s a big job. It’s his job.”

“It’s part of the future you talked about earlier,” Thaeron said, “but what’s wrong with the way we live now?”

“Nothing. Nothing at all,” she answered, looking from him to Pen. “But each generation does things a little better, a little smarter. Eventually, mothers and babies will not die during childbirth. People will not die from illnesses. You won’t have to go to bed when it gets dark because you’ll have plenty of light for things like reading and sewing and learning. Aren’t those good things?”

“Then show us,” Thaeron said.

She shook her head. “It’s not that simple. The older you are the harder it is to learn new things. You could learn to read, but it would be a slow, difficult process. Pen could learn in a year. Younger people learn faster than older people.”

“Why would anyone want to read?”

“Because the things I want you to learn require lots of thinking. Reading guides the thinking process. Without numbers and reading, none of what I’m talking about will happen. I want to make sure Pen doesn’t die in childbirth some day or die of an illness.”

“No father wants that,” Thaeron said. He looked at his wife. “The midwife told Ottsla she could not have another child.”

“So you have no son, but you have a wonderful, bright daughter. Will you let her learn to read?”

“I’ll think about it. Tell us about your home.”

“Telling will not do it justice. If you have the courage to learn something else new, I’ll show you what my home is like.”

He sat up straight with his arms folded across his chest. She took that as permission to proceed. Wishing Hawke was here, she took her pad and manipulated it under the table out of their sight.

“We’ll start with the easy part,” she said. “I told you I stored many books in here. I’ve also stored other things. One of them is a painting of myself.” She brought the pad back up to the table and set it down for everyone to see. The picture was of her dressed for an evening of entertainment. The 3-dimensional picture looked completely life-like.

“You can’t be here and in there at the same time.” Thaeron said with narrowed eyes.

“Look at me,” she demanded. “Now close your eyes. Do you still see me?”

“Of course.”

“Am I in your head?”

He rolled his eyes, demanding she get on with it.

“When you close your eyes, you see an image of me. That’s what you’re seeing on my pad.”

“Such fine clothes,” Pen breathed. “I didn’t know you were a princess.”

Graylee put an arm around Pen’s shoulders and pulled her closer. “I’m not a princess. Where I come from, everyone has fine clothes. The fine clothes don’t make us better, it just means there are many generations separating us. Someday homes and clothes here will become more like mine.”