Michael Stackpole - Of Limited Loyalty

Nathaniel looked at his companions. “Now I reckon the Prince, he’d like that troll out there.”

Makepeace nodded. “I do believe that rhino might dispute our taking it. I ain’t of a mind to shoot a beast just to drive it off.”

“I agree, Makepeace, but I surely do want to see how much damage our shots did. Don’t mind knowing I can crack a horn, but I want to see how much of the skull went with it.”

“And knowing how its guts is plumbed would be good.” Makepeace smiled. “Though I ain’t sure there’s much knowing of that to be done from what the rhino left behind.”

Kamiskwa pointed. “More valuable will be the plates and stones.”

“Cain’t get but one of them.”

“I think we can.” Kamiskwa pulled his medicine bag from within his tunic. “I have just the plan.”

Nathaniel, helping Makepeace load pieces of the troll onto a travois, shook his head. “I never would have reckoned that would work.”

Thirty yards away, Kamiskwa was unbuckling the rhinoceros’ headplate. To accomplish that, he’d taken a small pellet of dragon dung from his medicine pouch, crushed it with a handful of snow to make a muddy paste, which he spread over his hands and face. He circled around wide and approached the rhino from upwind, letting the breeze carry Mugwump’s scent to it.

The beast, which had been snorting and digging through the snow for meager mouthfuls of golden grass, had brought its head up. It sniffed the air, then trotted toward Kamiskwa, its shaggy stub of a tail wagging. It stopped when it caught sight of him, but started grazing again and didn’t seem fazed by his getting closer.

“It does beat all sense.” Makepeace shrugged and tossed a piece of what appeared to be liver onto the travois. “I do believe we have it all.”

Nathaniel gave a low whistle. Kamiskwa backed downwind of the rhino and rejoined them. Nathaniel half-expected the beast to follow him. They took to the woods, working their way along a path the rhino likely wouldn’t follow, and just after dark reached Plentiful.

Under Makepeace’s direction, and with the help of Hodge Dunsby and the men he brought with him, Plentiful had been rebuilt. They’d leveled off a hilltop and constructed a palisaded fort which commanded the entire valley. They’d also expanded the settlement’s graveyard and placed it toward the northeast end, well above the floodline. New homes sprang up between the two points, and had been built as small blockhouses that allowed for overlapping fire and mutual support.

What had once been a peaceful, religiously based town, had become a military encampment. Nathaniel wasn’t too certain how Arise Faith would have taken to that idea. Out of respect for him and Plentiful’s origins, the fort did include a chapel and services were held twice weekly. Yet the chapel’s steeple was manned around the clock, and watchmen kept their eyes peeled southwest for anything coming from the Westridge Mountains.

The three of them dragged the travois into the fort and to the structure where Makepeace made his home. They left the troll under the roofed-over sideyard, warmed and fed themselves, then returned to taking stock of the monster. Nathaniel and Makepeace put the bits back together as best they could. Kamiskwa came in behind them, measuring things and jotting them down in a notebook, just as Owen would usually do.

Once he’d collected some basic information, Kamiskwa retreated to the cabin and prepared to send a sundown message to the Prince. He drew the thaumagraph from a locked cabinet and set it up on Makepeace’s table. To Nathaniel’s eye, the device looked to be a boxy guitar, complete with hole, and fitted with ten strings, but absent a neck.

From a small drawer built into the side opposite the tuning pegs Kamiskwa pulled a flat, wooden tile. On it had been burned the image of a crown and below it a clock face. Kamiskwa slid that into a slot on the base where it became part of the device’s sounding board. That particular tile linked the device to the thaumagraph in Temperance, whereas others would link it to the one at Prince Haven, or at Count von Metternin’s home.

Nathaniel understood, in theory, how things worked. Each string represented a number from zero to nine; and all the messages were coded as numbers by matching words to a book or by using a grid to spell letters out. Only just beginning to be comfortable with writing, he left all the coding to Kamiskwa or Makepeace, both of whom had learned to read early on.

Kamiskwa began sending the message by plucking strings. It wasn’t much of a pretty song and wasn’t one that was going to get itself stuck in Nathaniel’s head. Once he’d finished sending part of the message, he’d repeat it. When he’d completed the entire message, he sat back. “Now we wait two days for a reply.”

Nathaniel frowned. “Ain’t no question what the Prince is going to say.”

Musical notes issued hauntingly from the thaumagraph. Kamiskwa turned a page in the thaumagraph journal and got ready to write. “Caleb, from the sound of it.”

“He saying anything useful?” Nathaniel thought it kind of queer that one could tell from the way the notes sounded who was plucking the strings. Kamiskwa sent messages with an easy rhythm, whereas Nathaniel’s messages came in fits and starts as he worked out what he should be sending. Bethany had a lighter hand. Caleb’s messages came fast, but sometimes haste introduced errors.

Kamiskwa shook his head. “Just a message to let us know they got our last.” He closed the journal. “You think the Prince will want us to bring this troll to him.”

“I reckon he’d rank this up there with that jeopard.” Nathaniel looked over as Makepeace opened the door. “Think we can get that thing back to the Prince?”

Makepeace stamped snow from his feet and closed the door behind him. “I kin rustle you up snowshoes and a sledge, that ain’t nothing. Most all the lakes is iced over, half the rivers, too. Storms coming in from the northwest. You ain’t moving for three days or more. Fighting that storm will kill you sure as anything.”

The watchman in the chapel belfry shouted, and something bellowed in the darkness. The three of them ran out and mounted the wall. They looked toward the mountains, hoping they didn’t see anything arcane from the site of the ruins. What attracted their attention, however, was a lot closer.

Nathaniel looked at Kamiskwa. “I reckon you got yourself a pet.”

The wooly rhino trotted toward the palisade and grunted. “If we could hitch him to the sledge, he could haul the troll, but if the wind shifted so he caught its scent, he would go mad.”

“That he would, I reckon.” Nathaniel thought for a second, and smiled. “Then again, I reckon I know a way we can fix that and have the Prince his specimen faster than anyone would think possible.”

20 March 1768 St. Martin’s Cathedral, Temperance Temperance Bay, Mystria

Brigadier General Ian Rathfield did not let the fact that his cavalry had not yet received their horses dampen his mood. He held his head high, standing there atop the Cathedral steps, with the Bishop and his family on one side and Prince Vlad and his family on the other. Ian drew his sword and snapped it straight up, letting the sun glint from the silvery steel. A heartbeat later his men did the same, the whisper of metal becoming a unified thunder which drew grasps from the crowd.

There on the government square three battalions of the Fifth Northland paraded. Their captains took them through a complicated series of marching maneuvers, each wordlessly signaled by the twist of an upraised sword. Cavalry normally hated parading without their mounts, but Ian had instilled in the Fifth a love of foot drill.