Sword of the Bright Lady (49 page)

That was what Christopher was doing, spending money he didn't have, a trick no other lord could match. The increase in demand was making everybody rich, at least until he had to figure out how to pay it all back.

“You have strange ideas,” Lalania said, looking at him carefully.

He winked. “You're not the first person to tell me that.”

27.

BOOT CAMP

Once the first dozen guns had rolled off the assembly line, Christopher started a boot camp, calling the entire draft for five weeks of training in a rotating schedule that saw fifty or more boys in the village at any given time. The village would have crumbled under so much teenage energy, but for Karl.

Karl was born to be a leader. Instinctively he assigned the boys in batches to the mercenaries and handed out prizes to the teams that performed best. Their eyes on the gold, the men drove their charges mercilessly. The boys hated them blackly, of course, but all Karl got was worship.

He treated the original crop like subalterns, junior officers, and eventually they became them—extensions of Karl's hands, eyes, and ears. Christopher watched as Karl stole the army, turning it into his own, and said nothing.

The boys had to share rifles for the first class. Christopher was frantically trying to get production up. The smiths didn't understand why until he showed them his other drawings. Rifles wouldn't be enough.

The days slipped into autumn, unnoticed. The chaos of the drill yard turning slowly into order drowned all other signals of passing time. Christopher trained with them, too—all the skills Karl thought they would need to know. They all had to be able to drive a wagon, cook a meal, bind a wound, pitch a tent, build a fort, and a hundred other things they would have to do on their own from now on. Of course, most of that they could already do, the bulk of them being farm boys used to self-reliance. The cooking was the one real sticking point.

“We're not taking a bunch of women to cook for us,” Karl told them. “And you can't walk home to your mama's every night for dinner. So unless you want to starve, pay attention.”

His lecture didn't take until he forbade Helga's girls from cooking for a week, and it was learn or go hungry.

But mostly Karl taught them to work together, to trust each other and their officers. Out of random boys he made teams, squads, platoons, finally . . . an army.

And then there was quiet, except for the cool autumn winds, the boys gone home for the harvest break. Christopher found himself in the fields, like everyone else. Backbreaking labor, but he was stronger now than he had been when he first came to this world. It had shaped him, kneaded him like dough to a different consistency. Only when the trees turned red and gold did he remember that he was once a subtly different person, a man whose life included more than horses, men, and guns. He held a crimson maple leaf in his hand and thought of scarlet hair.

What was she doing now? What must she think? Was it years or months before they declared you dead—not just missing, but gone, irretrievably lost to the people who once loved you? He had not reached for a phone at the sound of a bell, tried to put leftovers in the fridge, or stretched his hand out for the light switch in ages. Eight days a week wasn't funny anymore, just an easy workweek.

He could not remember what chocolate tasted like.

It was with relief that he welcomed the next class of boys, plunging once more into the task at hand.

“You're lucky,” he told them. “Some of you will become gunners.”

They didn't know what the word meant yet, but they got excited anyway.

The boys, of course, loved the cannons. Boys everywhere, for all of history, have always loved cannons. Even the mercenaries could be found hanging around the range during practice time. Christopher wished Gregor were here to give his assessment of the weapon's utility, but Karl's gleam of approval would have to be enough.

Later, Karl demonstrated his wisdom and intimate knowledge of the battlefield with nothing more than an approving twitch of his eyebrows. Christopher grinned to himself, ignoring the whooping boys. The boys and men were thrilled merely with the new toy, but Karl understood it was more than merely another way to go bang.

“Layers,” he said to Christopher that night, during dinner in the chapel. The stone room had become the center of a building, as wooden extensions sprouted around it. Helga ran a whole crew of young women now, and with shameless hypocrisy kept them from fraternizing with the troops. But she still ate dinner at the officers' table, along with Svengusta. Christopher wanted that, needed that sense of family, of home. The mercenaries were transformed from hardened veterans into polite but taciturn guests by the mere presence of Helga.

“You have layers,” Karl explained. “At long range you use the cannon. At medium range you use the rifles. At close range, you use the grenades.” The rifles also came with bayonets, for extreme close-range work, but that was a weak weapon. As weak as those silly short spears he'd made the boys carry, what seemed like so long ago.

“We'll still get slaughtered by cavalry,” Christopher said. “Unless they break and run.” Cavalry was his nightmare, his constant nagging thorn.

“Cavalry is not that popular amongst the monsters,” said one of the mercenaries. He was the one with the third Apprentice rank, so the others deferred to him automatically. They called him Bondi, but Christopher had never figured out if that was a name or a title. “Some kinds don't even have any.”

“Ulvenmen don't need it,” said another. “They can run like the Dark on their own. Begging your pardon, miss,” he added, apologizing to Helga for his coarse language.

“Our best bet is a wall,” Christopher said. “That's why I stress fortifying so much. If they have to stop, even for a second or two, we can break their rush and then we have a chance. So we should always strive for a defensive position.”

“Yes,” Bondi agreed, “that's what we should do, all right.”

Christopher stopped himself before he corrected the mercenary. He appreciated the solidarity, but these men weren't actually going to go to war with him.

But Karl was silent and pensive the rest of the meal.

Winter came on, inexorable, inching up on them day by day. Christopher had withdrawn as much as possible from his businesses in town, preparing for his departure. The shops could not look to him for problem solving very much longer. His visits to town were only social now.

Tom had come to him, a few weeks ago, in desperate straits. He wanted an advance on his salary for the next few years so he could buy a house. It was an unexpected request from the severely competent young man, especially since Christopher had already given him so many well-earned raises. He agreed only because he could pay in bonds, although printing money on demand gave him a queasy feeling.

“I'm not in a position to be a bank, though, so don't tell anyone else,” he told the young man.

“Pater, they'll just think you're sweet on me. They won't expect you to do the same for them.” Tom grinned at Christopher's lack of political savvy.

Christopher laughed back at him.

“But I am sweet on you, Booming Tom Fool. Isn't everybody?”

“So it would seem,” Tom said with uncharacteristic sourness. But he didn't explain.

Now Christopher was having dinner in Tom's fine new house and meeting his girl for the first time. She wasn't very articulate, and she was obsequious to a fault, afraid to meet his eyes. But she was a good cook, thank goodness, so he could honestly praise the meal.

“She's not used to royalty,” Tom explained when she cleared the dishes and left them to have a manly ale.

“Neither am I.” Christopher looked around the spacious room. “It's a nice house you have here. Am I really paying you that much?”

Tom laughed. “Yes, Pater, you are. But you'll not regret it when you're out there in the field, freezing your arse off. You'll think of Tom, warm and snug in his fine house, and be glad somebody is getting the use of all your money.”

“As long as your wagons come running when I whistle, I won't begrudge you a warm bed.” They'd built a whole fleet now, and Fingean had hired a crew.

“Too warm, perhaps,” Tom said, and then Christopher understood.

“You have to look out for Fae for me,” he told the young man, baiting him. “Protect her from Flayn.” Although this seemed unnecessary. The wizard had apparently decided to pretend Christopher and his people didn't exist. “Try to keep her honest on the books. And make sure she doesn't get into trouble with any young men, get in over her head or anything like that.”

Tom turned a different shade. Red, Christopher suspected, although in the firelight it was hard to be sure.

“A little double dipping?” Christopher said quietly.

“A lot. Enough that a man might have to buy a house three sizes too large to make up for.”

“Be careful,” Christopher said sadly. He hated to see people make wrecks of their lives. “Her veins run pure ice. She'll break your heart in the end.”

“It's not my heart she's breaking,” Tom said. “But I'll not fail you, Pater, you needn't worry about that. I can keep my hens out of your shoes well enough. There will be no egg on your feet.”

Christopher had to trust him, just as he had to trust Jhom, and Fae, and all the people who would stay behind and manage his industrial empire while he was far, far away. He would depend on them utterly: a technological army required constant deliveries of ammunition, spare parts, and new equipment. If they failed him, he would die; if the guns failed him, he would die; if the monsters turned out to be immune to bullets, he would die. Sticky feet hardly seemed like a sufficient metaphor.

And then it was here. Impossibly, it was all over. The training, the preparing, the building—all done. Christopher felt like something had been stolen from him, because, of course, it had. He'd spent a year of his life doing this. And now it was all being taken away. His shops, his employees, would all be gone; distant memories while he slogged around in mud and blood, trying not to be eaten by monsters for three years.

Draftees did not get leave.

Fingean and his wagons would have to be regular visitors, resupplying him wherever he was stationed, and carrying letters, although few of his employees could read. But he would not see home again for three long years.

Home. The word reminded him of why he was doing this in the first place. He went back to packing.

The village was overflowing with boys. The last training class had ended that week, and the others were streaming in, getting ready for the march to Kingsrock. His pasture was full of tents, his buildings were stacked six feet high with the materials of war, and every barn was stuffed with horses. Karl had been buying horses all winter. They needed two horses for every wagon, and a wagon for every one of the platoons, plus another wagon for luck. They needed a horse for each platoon's cannon and ten horses for scouts. That added up to a lot of horses.