Mitchell Smith: Kingdom River

The second book in the Snowfall Trilogy series, 2003

To the Kipchak Prince and Khan Evgeny Toghrul, Lord of Grass, Ruler Perfect of the Bering Strait Traversed, the Map-Pacific Coast, Map-California – and, lately, Conqueror of Map-Texas to the Guadalupe River and beyond.

Greetings from Neckless Peter, old man and librarian, who years ago, having been taken captive from my Gardens Town by naked savages – Border Roamers serving with your father's subsidiary forces – was privileged to tutor a brilliant boy in what we know of Warm-times gone, and their wisdom.

This boy has become you, my lord – and I, your recently assigned ambassador and agent to North Map-Mexico, take this opportunity to tell you that I quit.

'I quit.' Is it any wonder we get not only our written and spoken language from the books of centuries past, but even its casual slang – so neat, so pointed, so appropriate?

I am, of course, aware that your strangler's bowstring awaits any who disappoint you, and can only hope that a thousand miles of distance – and perhaps some slight regard you might still hold for your elderly tutor – will prevent a determined attempt at murder.

In any case, I can now say what I felt it unwise to mention to you before – so as not to increase an already understandable arrogance – which is that you were by far the most extraordinary intelligence I had ever encountered or ever expected to encounter, and as such were a joy to teach. I have not forgotten and will never forget sitting by the Meadow Fountain at Caravanserai with a quiet, slender boy whose eyes, black, glossy, steady as a spider's and slightly slanted beneath the folds of their lids, drank from the pages of every copybook I presented to him.

Your first question to me: What had happened to the countless thousands of Warm-time books now lost to us? You'd asked, and been saddened by my answer: "Burned, libraries of them, almost all those not eaten by centuries of winters. Burned with all knowledge of their miracles of learning – perfect medicines, the making of black bang-powder, the secrets of flying machines and laboring machines and thoughtful machines, as well as endless wonderful intricate tales… Almost all the books burned for warmth as their peoples' world collapsed beneath weather, and they and their children froze."

Yours proved to be a genius clear and encompassing as flowing water. And now, of course, driven by a ferocity that impressed even your late and quite ferocious father, that intelligence is causing our ice-weighted world to tremble, so only Middle Kingdom, and of course New England, might stand against you.

Do you remember the afternoon we read of Ancient-Alexander's life and conquests? We read it together in a spectacular copybook, a treasure copied from an original found in the ruins of Los Angeles. (- I trust, by the way, that the library at Caravanserai is being cared for. Over eight hundred copybooks. No moisture. There must be no moisture – and copying and recopying continuous. The books are all we have of Warm-times and civilization.) Do you remember how we yearned for an encyclopedia, that dreamed-of miracle of answers? Never found, alas; too wonderful as kindling.

We read of Ancient-Alexander, and you diagramed his battles with squid ink on wide sheets of the court's perfect paper. You refought those conflicts in your mind, your quill moving here and there… and finally decided how the Persian center might have been more suitably arrayed.

"Clumsy forces," you said of the Persians and their Greek allies, but gathered them together on your paper, set them in odd echelon… then waited for Ancient-Alexander and his Companions to make the inevitable charge.

"He would have beaten me at the Granicus," you said, "but at Issus, I would have destroyed him. There would have been no Gaugamela." And satisfied, you let the white sheets of paper, swarming with the inked lines and arrows of battles never to be fought, slip from your lap to the grass.

I will not forget those afternoons, lord, nor your love of Warm-time poetry – particularly the New England lady's. I could not stop for Death, so he kindly stopped for me… (How sad that those Map-Boston people have fallen to growing beasts in women's bellies.)

Remembering our rich days, why then do I quit you? And for the service of an upstart Captain-General of North Map-Mexico, Small-Sam Monroe, to whose camp you sent me as ambassador and spy?

First, I leave your service for his because I loved his Second-mother, Catania Olsen, as a friend, and because Small-Sam was born at Gardens, my home, when it was still tree green and full of families and fine weaving, all under the rule of the last great Garden Lady, Mary Bongiorno. So, I choose my future in honor of my past.

Second, I leave your service for his because while Small-Sam Monroe is a war-captain, and successful at it, I think he will not be only a war-captain, determined as you are to devour all our cold-struck continent, and so cause a barbarous age to become even more so.

You will be interested to hear that when I mentioned my intention to Monroe – to leave your service for his – he insisted I first complete the task for which you sent me, and forward to you a complete history, description, and report of the current essential military and economic matters of his overlordship. This report to be carried sealed and unread by him or any man of his, and delivered along with his personal apology for depriving you of an amusing servant… I'm not sure why 'amusing.'

He also refused to accept any report I might have made to him concerning you or the Khanate.

I believe you would like Sam Monroe – the 'Small-Sam,' I understand, has gone out of usage since his victories. He is a very interesting young man – your age, as it happens, within a year or two. He possesses a sort of informed, stony common sense, an interesting contrast to your brilliance.

I will miss you, my lord. You were an incomparable student… though I have felt more and more that I failed you as a teacher, to have left you with nothing but the determination to enforce your will across our world.

Once your servant, but no longer such…

Neckless Peter Wilson

The ravens had come to This'll Do.

Sam Monroe, Captain-General of North Map-Mexico – and commander of the army that, before this, had been called Never-Defeated – frightened birds here and there as he walked among the dead.