Down to the Sea Read online

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”

  Togo plucked up a stem of grass and slowly twirled it into a knot.

  “It is always that way, Lieutenant. It is about power and survival. The world is not big enough for us all. One side or the other must give way. Their mistake was, they didn’t realize that by enslaving us, they had sown the seeds of their doom. They should have slain our ancestors on the spot the moment any of us came through the Portals. If they had, they would have owned this world forever and could live on it as they pleased.”

  “But they didn’t.”

  “And so now they will lose all. And frankly, I hope they all go to the devil, where they belong.”

  “General Hawthorne says that we must find a way to settle this without fighting.”

  “If you doubt me, go to that yurt that looks so exotic, and listen to what is being said within. Then you will no longer doubt.”

  They know something is happening, Jurak Qar Qarth thought, staring into his golden chalice of kumiss, which had been stirred with fresh blood.

  His gaze swept the yurt, which had been his home now for more than twenty passings of the year. Strange, it was hard to remember anything else, of a world of homes that did not move, of cities, gleaming cities, books, quiet places, sweet scents, and peace.

  Like the Yankees, I am a stranger here, but unlike them, I knew of wars in which entire cities burned from the flash of a single bomb, of fleets of planes darkening the sky, of ten thousand armored landships advancing into battles that covered a front of a hundred leagues. No, they do not know war as I know, as I could dream of it here if I but had the means.

  And that, he knew, was how this world had changed him. When he had come here he’d felt almost a sense of relief of having escaped alive from the War of the False Pretender, a war that was annihilating his world, turning it into radioactive ruin. At first, when his companion had seized the Qar Qarth’s throne of this primitive tribe, he had stood to one side, observing, almost detached from it all as if he were a student sent to watch.

  All that had changed, however, when it was evident that the new Qar Qarth had gone mad with his power and was leading the Bantag to doom. Plus, if he had not acted decisively, these primitives would have killed him as well.

  He had accepted peace to save them, and for a while he had even harbored a dream that somehow he could find a way to preserve them. He knew now that was folly.

  He looked over at his son, asleep in a side alcove of the yurt, and his chosen companion of the moment curled up by his side.

  My son is of them now, and I am but a stranger in this terrible land. My son dreams of glory, of the ride, of the return to what was.

  He looked down at the goblet, the foaming drink stained pink, and took another sip.

  And I have become like them as well, he realized. I have learned to hunt, the joy of the ride, even though the land is now limited, to listen to the chant singers, to gaze at the stars and tell tales of what lay beyond the stars while the fire crackled, the scent of roasted meat filling the air. And I have learned to eat of the flesh of cattle.

  If Hawthorne but knew of that, what would be the reaction? Their meal tonight, a lone prisoner snatched in a border skirmish, had been led in and sacrificed even though the true moon feast was not until tomorrow, but such niceties were no longer observed.

  They had slowly roasted the limbs while he was still alive, his mouth gagged so that his cries might not carry to the Yankees encamped nearby. Then the shamans had cracked the skull open, poured in the sacred oil, and roasted the brains while the victim still breathed, listening to his final strange utterances for signs from the gods and ancestors. The blood had been drawn off to flavor the drinks of the Qars and the Qar Qarth, a now precious brew that not so long ago even the youngest of cubs had savored.

  “The night is passing, Qar Qarth Jurak.”

  An envoy stood at the entryway to the yurt, the first glow of sunrise behind him. The guards of the Qar Qarth flanked him, ready to allow admittance, or, if ordered, instant death for any who dared to disturb him.

  He motioned for Velamak of the Kazan to enter.

  The envoy offered the ceremonial bow to the purifying fires glowing in their braziers to either side of the entryway and came forward, again inclining his head as he approached.

  “Stop the bowing and take a drink,” Jurak said, beckoning to the half empty bowl.

  The envoy picked up a goblet, poured a drink, and sat down on a cushion across from the Qar Qarth. Then he raised the cup in salute, following the ritual of dipping a finger in and flicking droplets to the four winds and the earth.

  “You’ve learned our customs well, Velamak,” Jurak said.

  “As an envoy such things are important”—he smiled knowingly—“in the same way you had to learn when first you came here.”

  Jurak stirred, not sure if there was some sort of hidden meaning here, but then let it pass.

  “I am curious,” Velamak continued, “about your world.”

  “Yes?”

  “The fire weapon.”

  “Atomics.”

  “Yes, that.”

  Jurak smiled. “And you want to know its secret.”

  “Think what you could do with such a thing.”

  “What we could do, or should I say, what the Kazan could do,” Jurak replied, his voice cool.

  “We do have some skills.”

  “That my people do not.”

  Velamak shifted, taking another sip, his gaze drifting to where Garva and his consort slept. “You must admit that when it comes to machines, your people are limited, whereas mine are not.”

  “I think, Velamak, that even for you such a weapon is beyond all of us,” he hesitated for a moment, “and I pray it always shall be.”

  “Even if our race is finally annihilated by the Yankees?” Jurak barked a laugh and sipped his drink. Before him was perhaps the answer to all his bitter prayers. Or was it a curse? he asked himself, remembering the old saying to never beg too hard of the gods, or they just might grant you your wish.

  Here was an envoy of the Kazan Empire, a realm across the Great Ocean that dwarfed anything imagined by the Horde riders or their human opponents. Here lay the true balance of power to this world.

  Here was the possible redemption of his people, a path to survival. Up until the meeting with Hawthorne he had harbored a thought that perhaps there was another way, to move north, and by so doing avoid completely what was coming. If there was to be war between the unsuspecting humans and the Kazan, let it come.

  Surprisingly, he did trust Hawthorne and his word. Twenty years of dealing with him had taught him that. Hawthorne believed in honor, even to a hated foe. He was haunted as well by a guilt that made him easier to maneuver. Yes, Hawthorne would go back to their Senate, would plead his case. There would be arguing, the Chin would cry yet again for final vengeance, the Nippon would refuse, and six months from now, when the grass of the steppes was brown, he’d return with a vague promise that he would try again next year.

  Equally evident was what Velamak was offering.

  “This half-life of radiation that you mentioned in our last conversation, what is it?”

  Jurak smiled. “The rate of radioactive decay. Do you understand what I speak of?”

  Velamak smiled and shook his head. “Perhaps those of my people who study such things do. Remember, I am just a messenger of the emperor.”

  “And a priest of your order,” Jurak added.

  Velamak said nothing.

  “Tell your people they need to achieve a fissionable mass through a controlled and uniform implosion.”

  He smiled as he spoke, knowing that the words were meaningless to the envoy but would be faithfully reported. Perhaps someone back in their capital would vaguely grasp the concept, but to make it a reality, would take far more than a nation that still used steam power to propel its ships and weapons.

  “Achieve that, and you can bum a city, a hundred thousand
die in an instant, a hundred thousand more die later from poisoning of the air. And no one can return to that place until the half-life of the fissionable material has resulted in a drop below fatal levels of radiation. Does that explain it?”

  Velamak gave him a cagey smile. “You talk in riddles.”

  “Not on my old world. Every student learned it. The question was how to make it. We were in the eighteenth year of the war of the Pretender before it was achieved by the False One’s side. A spy stole the secret and gave it to our side. On the day I left my world, eleven years later, more than five hundred such weapons had been made and exploded. Entire continents were wastelands. I got dosed at the Battle of Alamaka.”

  He rolled his sleeve to show a bum scar on his arm where the hair did not grow.

  “The warriors to either side of me were looking in the direction of the blast and were struck blind.”

  “A weapon that blinds, how fascinating.”

  “Not if you were there,” Jurak whispered.

  He remembered the way his tent companions had thrashed in their trench, eyes scorched to bloody pulps, while the blast and shock wave thundered over them. He recalled the terror of wondering if he had been fatally dosed. He had been ordered to shoot his blinded companions, since they would be a burden if allowed to live.

  Jurak sighed and took another drink. “I suspect someday I’ll find a lump or start coughing up blood and it will kill me at last.”

  “I suspect that even if you did know how to make this thing, you would keep it hidden from us.”

  Jurak smiled. “You can be certain of it.”

  “Even at the cost of the people you now lead?”

  “Believe me, Velamak, everyone dies in the end from it. Stick to the weapons you already know.”

  “Yet part of the reason I was sent here was to gain information so that we might have weapons to defeat the Yankees when the time came.”

  “And what time is that?”

  “When we are ready.”

  Again Jurak laughed. “We have been playing this game of words for months. You are torn apart by war. How many contenders to the throne are there?”

  “That doesn’t matter. In the end, the Kazan shall be reunited. We will destroy them with ease.”

  “Who is ‘we’? I suspect that this order of yours is far more concerned with its own advancement than any unity of the Kazan Empire or who is upon the throne at the moment. For all I know, you represent only your order and serve this distant emperor only with the left hand.” Velamak shook his head and laughed. “Very adroit.”

  “Don’t patronize me. I might be the ruler of a fallen clan, but I am the Qar Qarth, who can still field thirty umens of the finest cavalry in the world.”

  “We know that. It is one of the reasons we sought you out.”

  “And, oh, how we shall pay if war does come. There are forty million humans in the Republic. A million of them can be mobilized in a week. And we shall be the first target.”

  “The emperor never asked for you to sacrifice yourself.”

  “Nor would I. The emperor is how far away? Two hundred or more leagues by land to the sea. Then how far, a thousand leagues? Two thousand?”

  “Something like that. Remember, we knew of your defeat within months of its happening. If we had known your danger earlier, we would have sent aid. We have had twenty years to ponder this question and to prepare.”

  “And to fight amongst yourselves, thereby diverting your strength. Velamak, you have been here for months. Over the last week you have seen one of their leaders from a distance, their finest general.”

  “Small even for them.”

  “Call him that when he is leading a charge, as I once saw him do.”

  “I think you almost like him.”

  “I do, damn it,” he growled, and he poured another drink. “He has the ka, the warrior soul. It’s told among us how he alone killed more than thirty thousand Tugars in one night, breaking a dam that flooded their camp, sweeping away their elite umens. Some of us believe as well that he has the tu, the ability to read the souls of others.”

  “And that is why you forbid me to ride escort and reduced me to watching from a distance?”

  “Precisely.”

  Velamak nodded. “We know the tu and the ka. But I doubt if the humans have mastered it, at least their humans.”

  “Their humans?”

  “Ah, so I have piqued your interest.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Just that there is much of the Kazan I have still not told you.”

  “We’ve talked endlessly of this before, and it always seems that I learn precious little of you and your empire in reply.”

  “The less you know, the less you will reveal to the humans.”

  “Oh, yes, such as your foolishness in giving a revolver as a present to Ogadi of the White Taie clan.”

  Velamak stiffened. “I noticed it was missing shortly after I arrived in your camp. Ogadi was the one who escorted me here from the coast. He demanded a present for his efforts. I gave him a few gold trinkets, nothing that could be identified as not being of your Horde. I had hoped the revolver had been lost when fording a stream. Now I know different. He stole it.”

  He had never trusted Ogadi. Then again, he rarely trusted any of his Qarths. The damn fool.

  “They know of you, Velamak.”

  “Only a rumor.”

  “I think they know more. I could sense it from Hawthorne. The revolver was enough to cause concern, but he has seemed pressed these last few days, anxious, as if bearing more information than he would ever share with me. Perhaps one of their ships has finally located where you are.”

  “As I have already told you, we’ve met three of their ships. Primitive things, actually. They were defeated with ease, their crews annihilated.”

  “The humans are incessant, Velamak. You can’t stop every leak, every hole in that invisible wall you try to maintain while settling your own differences.”

  Velamak shook his head. “Only rumors. Remember, the ocean is as vast as your steppe, dotted with a thousand islands, archipelagos, and then our homelands. Yes, there are humans out there, some we have never located. They spread widely across the last twelve thousand years since the Portal to their world mysteriously opened up after being asleep since the Downfall. We have set them to our purpose when necessary, slain them when they didn’t fit, but never did we allow ourselves to become enslaved to our slaves as you did.”

  “Not I, those who came before me,” Jurak replied coldly. “Whatever. What I am saying is that in the years since we have learned of the rise of this human nation, we have maintained a zone of destruction on the islands where they might venture, leaving no trace.”

  “And again, why did you not just attack?”

  “To what gain at that moment? When the blow is to be struck, it must be annihilating, not a half measure. We knew we had gained a small edge on machines thanks to those from your world who had come through the portal nearly a hundred years back.

  “Our ships outgun them, our flyers are larger, our artillery is superior in all respects, as are our explosives. Still, what I have learned from you is so damn tantalizing. You speak of wireless telegraphs, these engines you call internal, the creation of light through wires, chemicals that kill, gases that kill, the making of diseases. By all the gods, what we would give for such knowledge.”

  “And yet I know of it but not how to make it happen,” Jurak said.

  “Precisely. Ten years of working on such things and no threat of the humans could ever matter to us.”

  “You have the edge you have, and that is it.”

  “Damn.”

  It was a curse not directed at him, but nevertheless he stiffened, sensing an insult. After twenty years as a Qar Qarth, his pride would brook no insult, either real or imagined.

  “No, you misunderstand,” Velamak said hurriedly. “I understand why. I know that our ship designers are working on this mechanism
called firing control, being able to judge a target from a great distance and aim correctly. The advice you gave us years ago on that still bears fruit. Our guns can shoot three leagues or more, yet at sea they are useless beyond two thousand paces. I understand that such a thing is being studied, but ask me to explain and I am useless. I understand that it is the same with you.”

  “I was but twenty years old when I became a soldier. Prior to that, I was a scholar interested in the writings of the ancients and their philosophies,” Jurak replied. “I knew to turn a knob and the light would come on so that I could read, but ask me to explain why the light came on and I had no idea.”

  “Still, what you have said we shall try to work upon.”

  “You arouse my curiosity about something.”

  ““And that is?”

  “Your humans. I know you feel disdain for the moon feast. I watched you closely this evening.”

  Velamak waved his hands indifferently. “Primitive, but interesting. I suspect you were far more disturbed than I would ever be.”

  Again Jurak bristled slightly, but then let it pass. “There is something different about your humans. I have heard rumors of it.”

  Velamak smiled. “Yes, they are different.”

  “And what is that difference?”

  “They are on our side.”

  “But you said you slaughtered those on the islands.”

  “Inferior ones. No, we are talking about those who have lived inside the empire, some of them for a hundred generations or more.”

  “And are they slaves? Do you feed upon them?”

  “At times, but that is inconsequential, and of no concern to them.”

  “Then what is this difference?”

  Velamak smiled. “The Shiv. We breed them. We breed them to match what it is we desire of them.”

  “And that is?”

  “A race of warriors. Bred the way you breed your horses. Those we do not select we slaughter or geld. Only the best continue on, generation after generation.”

  “By the gods. They could be the seeds of your own destruction.”

  Velamak smiled. “No. For it is the Order that controls them, and they have something you never gave your humans.”