The Wizard from Earth (51 page)

"If you don't want the torsion to break you shouldn't wind past this point here.  Now shall we trouble-shoot the accuracy?"

"Trouble-the-what?"

She watched them load, aim, and launch.  "You did not use the charts for range and drift.  Do you have them memorized?"

"The charts for what?"  Before she could answer, he poked through the debris in a corner of the cart and produced a filthy and stained sheet of paper.  "I was told these numbers were important, but not why.  What does it mean by an 'angle of forty-five?'  It seems nonsensical to turn forty-five times to right or left, and it does not even say which way."

With her barely-used school-teacher's pencil, she inscribed a protractor on the back of the sheet, marking the degrees.  She explained how to adjust the launch angle for proper range, and to orient the catapult to compensate for wind.

"You also must compensate for the slope of the ground."  She unraveled a thread from her dress, tied a pebble to the end, and demonstrated how to use it as a plumb-bob.

The leader broke into a broad smile.  "You are quite amazing, young lady!  By the way, I am called Norian – and what is your name?"

"People call me Carrot."

"Carrot?  Why is that?"

"Well . . . they just do."

"And what do you do here?"

"At the moment, the laundry."

"You should join the Leaf, with that head on your shoulders!"

"Carrot, Carrot," one of the men said.  "Wasn't there a story of a woman in the Eastlands who had orange hair and so was called Carrot, who fought in the Leaf over there?  They said she was equal to three men in battle."

"Do you see any orange in this lady's hair?"  Norian asked.  "Besides, that woman would have to be a hulking giantess to accomplish the strenuations attributed to her, while this girl here is indeed almost as slender as a carrot!"

Carrot decided she liked Norian.

"Besides," Norian added, "after Boudica, haven't we learned?  If Britan needs any kind of queen, it's not one of brute strength.  We need a queen who can think!"

"About catapults," his fellow said.

"Exactly."  Norian laughed and slapped Carrot lightly on the back.  "We need a Queen of Catapults!"

They had a pleasant conversation and the men departed cheerfully, and Carrot assumed that was that and went back to laundry.  The next day she was bringing kindling from the woods into the village center when another group of serious-looking, well-weaponed men wandered from the road.

"The Wizard is not available," the elder said.

"Wizard?" the leader asked.  "We seek a woman named 'Carrot.'"

The copying error had propagated, and she showed how to correct.  She gave the same tutorial on how to aim.  Before she could stop them, however, in their excitement they had over-wound the torsion and snapped it in half.

"The women of our village cut their hair for that," the leader said.  "Now how are we to find a replacement?"

"That won't be necessary," Carrot said.  She grasped the split ends in both hands and squeezed tight.  When she released, the strands were made whole. 

"Well!"  The leader tilted his head.  "They called you a queen of catapults and so you are!"

The next day, another catapult team arrived, and then another.  On the third, the leader said, "We're looking for your queen."

"Our village has no queen," the elder said.  "This isn't the Eastlands, we don't go in for that royalty nonsense."

"I was told to seek here a Queen Catapulta."

Carrot stopped sweeping.  "You have a problem with a catapult?"

"Are you Queen Catapulta?"

"No, my name is Carrot."

"So you are Queen Carrot?"

"I.  Am.  Not.  A. Queen." 

But she examined their catapult just the same.  Before she finished, another cart arrived, and then another.  Then it was dusk, and they couldn't practice shooting any longer and so they set camp by the road.  By then, a lantern from the meadow signaled the return of Matt and the scientists.

"What's this about?" Archimedes asked.

"They want instruction on how to operate their catapults," she said.

"Ah."  He circled the nearest catapult, tugging on joints and running his hand along the beams.  "Rather well constructed.  Yet how did small farming villages acquire the resources to – ah, I think I see where my retirement funds were invested."

"I will pay you back," Carrot said.  "I don't know how, but I will."

"Dear, have I borne any grudge?  You have already more than paid me back in the form of endless entertainment." 

Chuckling, Archimedes casually tossed his staff into the air.  He caught it roughly, and by accident the trigger snagged on his cuff and the barrel discharged.  The boom echoed and the camp silenced.  At the limit of the bonfire's light, a branch fell from a tree, revealing a fresh hole.

A catapulter pointed to the still-smoking tip of the staff and said, "Can you make us some of those?"

"Most certainly not," Archimedes said. 

Matt stepped forw
ard and said, "Carrot, I – "

"Lady Carrot!  We request your insight!" one of the team leaders called and took her arm and tugged her toward a group of others.

Carrot looked back helplessly and Matt looked on stonily. 

She resolved that she would only be a minute, but the conversation with the Leaf leaders delved into how to integrate catapults into general tactics, and then they discussed general tactics in general, and she had a rapt audience as she knew details of Roman soldiery better than most Roman soldiers.  By the time she broke free, Matt had gone on to the village.  So she went back to the bonfire and resumed the discourse.

Late that evening, Carrot returned to the privacy of her hut.  As she flopped onto the bed, she heard the laughter of a woman coming from her father's hut, and sighed. 
I'll never fall asleep with that going on
, she thought, but she did.

In the morning, Carrot barely had time to bathe and comb her hair in the reflection of the lake, and more catapulters arrived.  She formulated a lesson plan for a multi-day training seminar.  Over the next days, still more catapulters arrived, and then volunteers from seemingly all West Britan poured in, lacking catapults but eager to learn whatever might help in waylaying Roman tax collector squads, of which there had been a recent spate.  Carrot gave up on holding classes herself with all the comers, and chose a more free-style form of instruction that involved training subordinates in specific tasks, in which they would then train others. 

Though she had never witnessed personally, she had heard of training contests in the Coliseum between legions, and decided to try the same.  She organized contests between catapult crews for speed, range, and accuracy, and Carrot was drafted into judging and disbursing laurels, because when anyone else did so it seemed to lead to a fight. 

It's like a harvest festival
, she thought one day as she observed the multitude of men and boys (and all too few women) in the camp engaged in the contest trials.  Her informal school had formed precisely because the villagers had time between harvests.  She might still be sweeping her porch otherwise. 

Then during a break by the field, she sensed his presence and turned. 

"Carrot," Matt said.

"I'm so sorry about the other day," Carrot said.  "I'm suddenly so busy, I don't know how to handle it, I should have come and spoken to you – "

"That's not what I'm here about," he said.  "I'll need to show you." 

He held out his hand.  She stared for a moment, then bowed and closed her eyes.  He touched her forehead, and then they were standing together, looking down from orbit upon the road entering the Dark Forest from the east. 

The winding, crawling thread was pretty from a distance:  banners fluttering, armor flashing. 

"How many?" she asked.

"Five hundred regular soldiers," Ivan said.  "That doesn't include logistical support."

"They'll be here tomorrow," Matt said.  "Archimedes has informed Prin and Andra, the plan is we'll fly the ship farther west – "

"No," Carrot said.  She removed his hand and looked at him directly.  "No.  We stay."

"Carrot, you're doing great work here, but those are professional soldiers.  They've trained for years.  Don't even think of fighting them."

Carrot faced to the northeast and said, "We won't fight them.  We will instruct them."

She summoned the training team leaders and gathered them in a circle.  With a stick, she traced in the dirt what she had seen in sky view.  "The Romans are vulnerable in the Dark Forest because they are confined to the road and must march in file.  If we surround on both sides while in the woods, they can be attacked while we remain in safety."

A leader said, "Then we will move in and slaughter!"

"We would be the ones slaughtered.  These are well-schooled veterans and we are no match yet.  Yes, we will engage them, but only to bloody their noses.  We shall lead them to think they are facing a much larger force, and once they have gained that erroneous wisdom, we will allow them to retreat, and it should be some time before they seek to again enter the Westlands."

Carrot organized teams into squads, and squads into 'legions,' with leaders correspondingly 'promoted' to provisional ranks of captains, majors, and colonels.  No one asked her rank.  They worked a set of signals and packed to march.

By then, Matt returned with Geth.

"Arcadia," Geth said softly.

She stood very still.  She wished he had yelled at her, then she might have been able to resist.

"You don't think this will work," she said. 

"I have no opinion yet.  You have not briefed me.  Do you even take advice?"

Her face became hot.  Her ideas had come in a flash, had seemed so sure, she hadn't even thought to solicit advice.

She summoned the legion commanders and with her father watching, she reviewed the plan and asked for advice.  Only her father spoke.  "I would stage the attack here, on these ridges, rather than in the forest."

"It's a longer march," she said.  "We won't have as much time to take position.  We will also be farther from their troops and our aim will not be as accurate."

"The stones from your catapults will fall harder with the greater drop.  But you also need to see beyond one battle.  If you attack from the concealment of trees, the Romans will think the forest the problem, and next time they will burn it.  All of it.  Do you want that done to Britan?  Then attack from these ridges, and they won't blame the forest."

A 'legion-colonel' flared,  "I think that's the stupidest – who are you to – "

But Carrot bowed and said, "We will do it your way, Father."

They moved before dawn.  Upon entering the western edge of the Dark Forest, Carrot advanced ahead of the tromp of sandals and rattle of carts and scent of the men, to focus on the force to the east.  Nonetheless, in this battle it was not superior senses that counted, but the scouts who ranged far ahead and flashed lantern signals to report Roman activity. 

At sunrise they reached the ridge.  Captains distributed the catapult components from the carts and their crews hauled them off the road by backpack.  Lantern boys lit the trails up to the top of the ridges, then were sent home as they were too young to fight. 

Her misfit army of farm boys spread evenly along the ridges bordering the road on north and south.  They may not have qualified as skilled warriors yet, but they erected their catapults and foraged stones for ammunition with efficiency and speed.  They camouflaged so well that even Carrot had to look hard though she had memorized their positions when they had started.

She held a final briefing for the colonels and concluded,  "Remember this is not a stand.  The most important objective is to keep your men alive."  Men, she determined, was a term that included boys smaller than herself.  "When you return to your crews, search for paths of retreat.  There is no shame in retreat, for it is a tactic so that we can attack another day."

"What of our machines?" one man asked.  "We can't just abandon them."

"You will, if it appears you are to be overrun.  Keeping your men alive past this one battle is more important.  Remember, our goal is to drive the Romans from Britan by wearing them out over time."

One man raised a hand.  "Have the Romans ever been driven from any land?"

In her anxiety, Carrot felt like lashing out, but she knew the man's question was fair.  She calmly replied, "It has been said that Romans are very persistent, especially when humiliated."  She did not meet her father's gaze.  "But now the Romans have lost half their naval fleet and Londa cannot long sustain even a single legion in the field.  They are making this show of force, but it is only a show.  If we give them a taste of resolve, the Romans must cede the west for now and perhaps in a year or two I can answer your question."

The men laughed softly and she dismissed them to their positions.  Carrot tied a scarlet scarf to a spear, and climbed the tallest nearby tree.  She shielded her eyes from the rising sun and watched the sunlight-reflecting snake of Roman armor trickling toward them upon the forest road.