Mitchell Smith - Kingdom River

There was conversation down on the sled, hard to hear over the wind. Then, something easy to hear.

"We'll board this one! You – you up there! Lower some fucking ladder or whatever. I'm coming up!"

"Oh, my God…" Lieutenant Neal's second prayer. Apparently too little, and too late.

At four glass-hours after the center of the night, the river below the Bronze Gate was black as running ground-oil, and brought a black wind with it.

Sam, with Sergeant Wilkey nimbler after him, managed from the dock-finger into a narrow sailing boat, then past a low cabin to the bow. He found it an advantage, in that sort of scramble, having his sword strapped down his back, rather than tangling and tripping him… The boat shifted, as even within a stone harbor, ice came nudging, scraping against its hull.

The two crewmen – both River-men – loosed the lines, came aboard neatly, and sheeted in the single sail.

General DeVane, standing beside Lenihan and two other officers high on the wharf – and seeming even plumper, cloak-wrapped in torchlight – called out softly, "Good hunting, milord."

Already seized by the current, the boat was swinging out into the harbor pool, rocking a little as a crewman took the tiller. It drifted… then, caught by the wind, its sail bellied taut, bucked into low waves and tapping ice-shards as it carved away west, out onto the river.

Island – a dark mountain except where specks of lamplight shone through granite casemates and arrow-slits – loomed behind them for nearly a glass-hour, till swallowed by the night.

For glass-hours after, Sam sat at the boat's bow, enjoying freezing spray and wind gusts. He would have been pleased by anything taking him from the Boxcars' palace. Taking him from inescapable scheming, persuading, and threatening. Taking him from admirals, generals, and river lords… He rode the river's sinuous courses, taking deep breaths of night air, no matter that it bit his lungs and made them ache. He yearned for his army like a lover – an army, and a home to him – and knew he would lose that simplicity, whether the coming battle was lost or won.

A secret, of course, that Queen Joan already knew. That the Khan already knew. "Victories," Sam said aloud, "but triumph never."

"Sir?" The sergeant barely visible by the small cabin behind him,

"I was talking to the river, Wilkey."

"Sir."

Behind them… dawn's first light.

Martha had always thought battles, however frightening, must at least be interesting. It was disappointing to discover that wasn't so, at least wasn't so yet.

Certainly not as interesting as Ralph-sergeant – after saying no special word to her since he'd come – suddenly stepping from his post on the tower stairs as Martha and the Queen were leaving, taking Martha by the arm, then hugging her as if she'd given him leave. His armor and her mail had been pressed hard between them when, though startled, she'd hugged him back.

Then he'd taken his helmet off, and kissed her.

The Queen, a few steps lower, had looked back and said, "Martha, for Christ's sake," – referring to the first Jesus – "this is not the time for it!"

Though it had seemed to Martha the perfect time for it…

The battle had been going on – the Queen had been assured by Captain Dearborn – for a day and a night, as reported by little ice-boats hissing along fast as birds. But a battle scattered over miles and miles of river ice, so only faint formations – looking, it seemed to Martha, like spilled ground pepper on a glittering field – appeared and disappeared, and left no trace. Except once, when the Mischief, rumbling along fast as a fast horse could gallop, its great skates leaving plumes of ice-powder behind, sliced its way over sheets of frozen blood and frosted slaughtered Kipchak men and horses that crunched and thumped beneath the ship's blades as its tons sailed over them.

"Well done!" the Queen had shouted, and danced on the narrow poop. She'd hit Captain Dearborn on the arm with her fist. "Well fucking done!" as if the Mischief had killed those horse-riders.

The captain had said, "So far, ma'am, matters do seem to go our way." He appeared to be a cautious man.

Too cautious. By the next morning, the Queen had noticed.

Martha followed her up from breakfast – oat cakes and hot apple juice brought to the captain's cabin. The main deck was ice-slippery, but the Queen, wrapped in a lynx cloak, a slender circlet of gold at her brow, stomped over it sure-footed, past coiled lines and awkward devices. Ship's officers bowed as she went past; crewmen stood aside. She climbed the narrow ladder up through the poop-deck's railing, to where the captain was standing, observing the set of the sails.

"Captain…" The frost clouding from Queen Joan's breath seemed like smoke from a story dragon's.

"Ma'am?"

"Don't you 'ma'am' me! I want to know what messages, what orders you and your yellow dogs have been passing back and forth to those packets. Have you – have you dared to keep me back from my soldiers? Keep this fucking boat – ship, whatever – back from the fighting?"

"I do… I do as I'm ordered, Your Majesty." Martha thought Captain Dearborn looked pale. The Mischief hit a low ice-reef, and he had to reach to the rail for balance, but the Queen stood as if she were nailed to the deck.

"Give me a better answer," she said, no longer shouting, and put her hand on her knife.

"It was felt… Admiral Hopkins feels that Your Majesty, while viewing aspects of – "

"I'm losing patience," the Queen said, in a very pleasant way.

"He felt… you should not be put in danger."

"And ordered so?"

"Yes, ma'am – Your Majesty. Lord Monroe had also asked special care for you."

Then the story dragon was on the poop, roaring, and a steel fang out and brandished. Martha stepped away. The captain clutched the rail.

Below, the Mischief's main deck seemed frozen as the river, and all the men stood as still, until slowly… slowly the Queen grew calm and quiet, took a deep breath, and sheathed her knife.

"Now you listen to me," she said to Captain Dearborn. "You turn this fucking boat in whatever direction is needful to get to my soldiers – and my brave sailors – who are fighting."

"Yes, ma'am. As you command." Captain Dearborn ran down the poop's steep ladder quickly as a boy, shouting orders as he went, so sailors raced to do this or that, and climbed to shift the sails… It seemed to Martha as if the ship, that had been drowsing, now sprang awake. The Mischief leaned and leaned with its swollen canvas, until the great port-side steering skate lifted from the frozen river. And in a long, curving reach, the great ship took course to the northwest, running angled to the wind.

It was the fastest that Martha had gone anywhere.

And remained the fastest into a sunny middle of the day. The Queen, leaning on the port rail, was eating a cold sausage and one of the ship's brittle biscuits – Martha had already finished hers – when the lookout called, "Deck there! More dead'ns!" And a moment later: "Nothin' she can't run over."

The Mischief skated from perfect ice, bright as snow-dusted mirrors, onto a field of the dead… its massive blades cracking shallow sheets of frozen blood, rumbling, jolting first over heaps of fallen fur-cloaked men, and horses – then one… then another rank of East-bank infantry slain, their burnished green armor beautiful in sunshine. This armor bent and broke as the ship sped over.

The Queen stared out over the rail. "My boys," she said – then turned and called, "Stop! Stop! One moved! Captain, stop, there are wounded there still alive!"