Collected Short Fiction, page 174
Norvis burst into laughter. “Girl, you’re perfect! Absolutely perfect.” Kris chuckled in agreement. “Right. All of her father’s virtues and none of his faults.”
Ganz peDel broke in then. “Is there anything l can do?” His voice sounded eager and—perhaps—just a trifle hurt.
Kris looked thoughtful. “Well, I—”
“He can help me,” said Norvis quickly. “The Secretariat has a great deal of important work to do, and Ganz will be very useful.”
“Good enough,” said Kris. “Meanwhile, Dran and I will be training men. I have an idea for a group of men who would be a sort of Peacemen group of my own. Those who qualify will be well paid.”
Bor pePrannt said: “I can teach them to use knives, Ancient One.”
“Good,” said Kris. And they fell to planning their group.
Later, when the others had gone to bed, Norvis raised the first objections.
“I can’t see it. Just scraping up an army and marching into Bel-rogas like that—it can’t go. I don’t like it, Kris.”
“Why? Great Light, why?” Kris gestured angrily. “Look here, Norvis—all my life, I’ve hated those devils, and I know you hate them, too!”
Norvis’ face darkened. “And for good reason,” he said bitterly.
“All right, you hate them,” Kris persisted. “And now that I propose to smash them down, you draw back. Great Light, Norvis, what’s going on in your head?”
Norvis sat back and gently smoothed his ruffled down. He was silent for a moment, then turned to face Kris. When he spoke, he seemed to be choosing his words with utmost care.
“Kris—you’re not a plotter. You are a fine leader, but you can’t see more than three days into the future. I agree that the Earthmen should be wiped out—the devils—or at least driven back to the sky they came from.”
“So?”
“Not your way, though. Not by just busting in there and wrecking the place.”
Kris frowned quizzically. This had happened time and time again in the past, and he was getting not to like it. He would present a plan, carefully thought out and closely reasoned, and Norvis would hew it to threads in a moment’s time.
Who is this Norvis anyway? Kris asked himself. He thinks he’s smart, and I’ll het he thinks he can run me. Well, he never has, and he won’t start now.
“We attack Bel-rogas next week,” Kris said firmly. “My way. I’ve got the approach strategy all worked out.”
“All right,” Norvis said wearily. “But you’d better start wearing a brass hat if you don’t want to rejoin your ancestors as fast as Del did.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“I mean that you won’t outlive the gutting of Bel-rogas by a month,” Norvis said quietly.
“Are you dictating policy to me?” Kris demanded.
“Far from it,” said the Secretary, “just offering my opinion.”
“Your opinion’s not needed,” Kris snapped. “I’ll manage by myself.”
“Very well,” Norvis said. Fie closed his eyes for a moment. Then, changing the subject, he said, “Oh, by the way—what do you plan to do with all that cobalt we have cached away on the Bronze Islands?”
“What does that have to do with—”
Suddenly Kris paused, stood up, smiled slyly as a thought occurred to him. I’ll show Norvis who’s a plotter, he thought vehemently. “Go get Dran peDran. Wake him up.”
“What for?”
“We’re journeying to the Bronze Islands tonight.”
Norvis’ face wrinkled. “You’re . . . why?”
“You’ll see,” Kris said. He didn’t elaborate, and he made sure that the expression on his face would discourage Norvis from asking any further questions.
IX
The Krand left the harbor of Tammulcor a week later, carrying Kris, Dran, a crew of eighteen picked men, and a noisy, restless cargo of deests. The false bottom was also in use. Eight million weights in cobalt lay hidden there. It had been a quick but arduous job, getting the cache out of the Bronze Islands earlier in the week.
They pulled out of the Bay of Tammulcor and headed north up the river Tammul. A dinghy-load of Peacemen cut across their path before they had gotten very far upriver, and a tall man at the front of the small boat held up one hand.
“Hoy! Who are you, and where are you heading?”
“Captain Kris peKym Yorgen,” Kris replied. “Heading for Gelusar to market these deests.” He gestured at the herd on the deck.
The Peaceman looked up at him suspiciously for a moment. Kris waited impatiently. They were still worried about their missing cobalt, evidently—but since the recent upswing in Bank of Dimay currency, they were somewhat relaxed. Somewhat. Kris hoped he wouldn’t be put to the nuisance of another three hour search; a delay of that length might be utterly damaging to his project.
Finally the Peaceman said, “Deests, eh? Very well, head upriver. They’ll probably stop you again at the Bridge of Klid, though.”
“Thanks,” Kris said. “I appreciate the clearance. Any news of the missing cobalt, by the way?”
The Peaceman shook his head. “All is quiet. We’re sure we’ll find the money soon, though. No one’s being allowed out of Dimay without full search.”
“Wise move,” Kris said. “I hope you won’t search fruitlessly for long.”
“Something tells me the cobalt will come to light soon,” the Peaceman said. “Good voyage to you, captain.”
“And a pleasant night to you,” said Kris. “Great Light illumine you.”
“And you,” the Peaceman replied.
The dinghy glided away. “All right,” Kris yelled. “Up river to Gelusar, now!”
It was early evening as they passed under the Great Cor Bridge, out of the environs of Tammulcor, and up the sluggish Tammul. The Great Light had begun to set, the Lesser Light was not yet in evidence, and the air was moist with promise of the evening’s rain yet to come.
Kris stood on the deck, listening to the quiet complaining of the deests. Behind him, Tammulcor shrank in the distance; Gelusar lay far ahead upriver. The night was still young. If they made good time, they would reach the landing point just about this time the following night.
After a while, Dran came out on deck.
“Everything is well, captain.”
“Good,” Kris said. “It’s going to be a tough trip, sailing upriver.”
From starboard came the cry of one of the men, calling out the sounding.
“All well,” Kris yelled back. He peered out at the wide, flat stretch of water ahead. The Tammul was a shallow, sleepy river, and Kris had little mind to run aground in the night—not with eight million weights of cobalt on board.
“Here comes the rain,” he murmured to Dran, as the nightly drizzle began to sprinkle down. “Better get the deests under.”
“I is just about to do that, captain,” Dran said. “Hoy there! Drosh! Mam! Down with those deests!”
Kris stood alone on deck for a while, then strolled aft to the helmsman.
“How’s it going, Dom?”
“We’ll make it, captain.”
“We’d better,” Kris said. Fie frowned. “Not much wind tonight, is there?”
“No, captain,” the helmsman said locanically. “It’s a hard night for sailing, captain. A very hard night.”
Kris nodded and walked away. It was a very hard night indeed.
Morning came, and the Krand was still a good distance from its destination. Other boats were moving downriver from Gelusar, heading toward Tammulcor, and occasionally a wandering Peace dinghy would cut by, peering suspiciously at the ship without hailing it. It was the river patrol, on guard for strange craft.
By the time evening had arrived, the journey was nearly over. Kris peered ahead into the gathering dusk at the shore to the westward, searching for the landing.
“All right,” he said after some time. “There’s where we go ashore.” The Krand moved silently through the dark waters to the inlet, and they dropped anchor as close to shore as possible. Kris called the men on deck.
“We’re landing here,” he said.
“I thought we were going to Gelusar,” a deckhand said. “Isn’t that where we’re going?”
“We’re going to Bel-rogas,” said Kris. “And it’ll be a lot easier to leave the river now and finish the trip overland than to try to carry eight million weights of cobalt through the heart of town.”
Dran nodded. “Is right. We is about ten miles from Bel-rogas now. Is not so bad.”
“We’ll have to make three trips, Bronze Islander,” said Bor pePrannt unhappily. “We’ve got a hundred manweights aboard, and twenty deests. The best of our animals can’t do better than two or three manweights of cobalt.”
“Not so,” Kris said. “Each deest’s going to carry five manweights.”
“We can’t do that!” Bor pePrannt protested. “They can’t carry that much!”
“They can if we walk alongside of them instead of riding on their backs,” Kris said. “We’ve only got ten hours till dawn. If the Great Light rises while we’re still in Bel-rogas, we’re finished. We’ll have to make it in one trip and no doubts about it.”
He looked around. “Everyone understand, then? Dran, get your crew down and start unslinging the cobalt from the hold. Bor, get a couple of men and drive the deests out on shore. We can’t waste any time.”
It was a strange sight twenty deests, each groaning and swaying under a fortune in cobalt, each with a man walking at its side urging it along.
The Lesser Light glimmered faintly above as the strange caravan wound its way through the narrow dirt paths that led to Bel-rogas. Kris and his crew had anchored ship about two miles below the Bridge of Klid that spanned the Tammul, and, under cover of nightfall, they were heading west and north toward the School.
Two roads forked out from the Bridge of Klid—one going directly into Gelusar, the other bypassing the Holy City and carrying outward to Bel-rogas, which lay some five miles west of Gelusar. Kris guided his caravan through the backroads and byways to the fork, and then along the little-traveled road from there to Bel-rogas.
The coins jingled faintly as the deests struggled along under them. It was not, thought Kris, exactly a quiet group traveling along the road. He fingered the butt of the pistol at his sash; in case anyone should come down the road from the School, there might be trouble. It wouldn’t be easy to explain where they were heading in the middle of the night with eight million weights of cobalt.
There were no difficulties, though, and finally they reached the borders of the School. Spacious parks bordered Bel-rogas; standing on the outskirts, Kris could see the group of majestic Earthman-designed buildings located around the central campus, and the spreading lawns that surrounded the entire School.
All was quiet. Lights burned in a few of the distant buildings, and Kris saw shadowy forms bent over desks in several of the windows. Earthmen, he thought. Plotting against us, late at night. A quiver of hatred ran through him.
It had taken five hours to cover the ten miles from the Tammul to the School. Five hours yet remained before the Great Light rose. Five hours to plant the cobalt and get moving back to the Krand. It was more than enough time.
He paused for a moment, mopping away the rain that had soaked into his eyes, and listened to the noisy breathing of the deests. They were struggling under the heavy load of coins, and some of them were scraping at the ground with their hoofs. They couldn’t bear the burden too much longer.
“Let’s go this way,” Kris said. “Get the deests in line and follow single-file.”
Stealthily, he edged into the grove that led to the School. He brought the caravan to a halt about half a mile from the nearest of the buildings. No one was around, though a light burned in a window of the building.
“Unload the deests,” Kris ordered. “And don’t clank those loops of coins around too much.”
He joined them in the job of unloading, and before long eight million weights of cobalt lay in a deceptively small pile on the grass. Kris turned to Dran. “Pick two men and start driving the deests back to the ship. I don’t want them bothering us while we work.”
“We could always drive them down into the School and stable them there,” Dran suggested.
“It wouldn’t do,” Kris said, chuckling. “The idea lacks practicality.”
Dran chose his men and began herding the deests back out of the School grounds. Kris turned to the others.
“Unload those shovels,” he ordered. He picked out four men and said, “You come with me. The rest of you deploy yourselves in a loose circle around us.”
Each of his four chosen men grabbed a shovel and Kris led them as close to the School building as he dared. “We dig here,” he said.
The eight million weights of cobalt took up more than thirty-six cubic feet. That meant a pit three by three by four, at least. Shovels bit into the ground.
It was slow work, because Kris insisted on a tidy job. When one of his men showed signs of tiring, lie sent him back to be replaced with a fresh digger. They had the pit finished within three hours; the first glimmers of the Great Light were beginning to filter through.
“In with the cobalt, now,” Kris said. He watched as they lowered the heavy loops of coin into the ground and painstakingly replaced the turf over the pit. He stepped back to survey the job.
“You’d hardly know anything was under that hump in the ground,” he said approvingly. Then lie chuckled. “Let’s get back to the ship. The Earthmen are going to have a hard time explaining this away!”
X
The next few months moved slowly, as far as Kris was concerned. They were months of waiting, of exasperating detail-work and tine-lined planning. Slowly, lie began to organize the sort of group that he felt would best serve his needs.
It took delicate juggling. Norvis peKrin took over the Scrip Exchange Office, carefully keeping the sagging monetary system of Dimay on a fairly even keel. But the paper scrip of Pelvash was none the less running dangerously low. Fewer and fewer people came in to exchange their money, true; since they assumed that it must be worth something, they were reluctant now to give it away for half its price. The money had acquired an artificial backing which consisted solely of Kris’ pledge to redeem it for Pelvash money—a pledge that no longer mattered. It hadn’t taken long for the Merchants’ Party to accumulate several million in Dimay scrip by their trading policy. It now was back at its earlier value—and Kris and Norvis had thereby doubled their capital.
Meanwhile, Kris started his training program. It involved much word-of-mouth activity, a technique he was rapidly becoming proficient at, but before long he had assembled a fairly large corps of young men, drawing them from the landless farmers in the outlying districts, from the irreverent sailors willing to jump their papers, from anyone else who wanted to serve. Under the leadership of Dran peDran and Bor pePrannt, the men drilled every day in the flatlands just north of the city. No specific target had been revealed, but the men enjoyed the discipline.
Young Ganz peDel began to show promise, too. Norvis had suggested that he, too, be trained, and at first Kris had been reluctant. But the boy showed he was made of the right stuff. He could handle a peych-knife as well as, if not better than the others.
He had worked up a rather clever little exercise for the men. They formed up in a column on their deests, and then, galloping full tilt at a wooden pole, each man swung at it with his knife, lopping a bit off the top. Of course, as it grew shorter, each man had to bend lower to get his bit off. It improved their aim with the knife tremendously. Yes, Ganz showed promise.
Marja geDel was doing her job well—even brilliantly. Kris became definitely aware of it the day a loutish-looking farmer in his thirties came to the office and asked to join Kris’ men.
“Why do you want to join?” Kris asked. Norvis had suggested the question; it was helpful to know men’s motives for doing something that was unheard of in Nidorian history.
The lout twisted his fingers together. “Well, Ancient One, I understand I can make a little extra money, which, Light knows, we need. My wife said she’d manage the farm; she said it was time I did something to help drive the devil Earthmen away. I never thought much about it, but she’s right, I guess. All the women seem to think we’ve got to do something.”
“We do,” said Kris, hiding a grin. “Report to Garf peDom’s farm tomorrow—just outside of Tammulcor, on the Tammul Road. That’s our training field. Come at the Hour of Second Prayer.”
“I’ll be there, Aged One.” When he had gone, Kris thought over what he’d said. The women were definitely coming round. Preparations, then, were nearing completion. Now other wheels had to be set in motion—and for that, he would have to resort to his skill at rumor-mongering.
“Is there anything to the story that the Earthmen robbed that Bank?” Kris inquired casually, one evening, in a Tammulcor bar.
The barkeep looked surprised. “Haven’t heard that story myself. Where’d you pick it up?”
Kris shrugged. “Oh . . . it’s all around. I thought you could give me some further information, that’s all.”
The barkeep leaned forward, interested. “Tell me about this, will you?”
“Seems the Earthmen—this is the way I got it—used some kind of magic to get into the Bank, and floated the cobalt out.”
“No!”
“That’s the story,” Kris said. “They floated it right up to Gelusar, out to that School of theirs, and they’ve got it hoarded away some place.”
“The devils!”
Another man came up—a seaman named Bort peDril Sesom, a man Kris knew vaguely. “What’s this I hear?”
Kris told him.
“The Earthmen, eh? Well, I never did trust them, never did at all.”
Meanwhile, far at the other end of the city, Dran peDran curled his wiry fingers around a mug of peych-beer and smiled confidentially at the fat merchant sitting opposite him.
“It’s the Earthmen, all right,” the Bronze Islander said in a hoarse voice. “They is stolen the cobalt and buried it somewhere. I hears that everywhere.”
