The Books of the Wars (19 page)

Khallerhand had only two hundred men with him, but their knowledge of the Ship's innards allowed them to momentarily defeat Coral's People and hold the forward third of the
Victory
firmly in their grasp for over a week.

At this time, Coral thought that too many potential workers were being lost in what the People of Gateway were calling "the Meatgrinder"; they were also filling the Ship with what many would call ghosts, and a cursed Ship would just not do.

So the section held by the rebels was simply shut up. Iron plate was welded over all entrances, armed guards set around them, and the rebellion was allowed to consume itself; the bodies of plague victims were sealed in with Khallerhand just to make sure. A year later the plates were knocked off and, after the stench had been cleared out, work resumed on that area.

Besides the crude ballad, the only memories of that brief but gallant stand were the occasional black-robed skeletons or rusted guns that workers turned up in obscure corners or in virtually forgotten passages.

Khallerhand had fought and died, not to preserve any high ideas or grand schemes of universal reawakening, but just to retain possession of the god that he had built; there was no difference between him and those of his colleagues who joined Coral; they had all deified the Ship long before the Grand Revolution. Khallerhand had simply adjudged the Techno class, himself specifically, fitter than this upstart Coral to guide the building of the
Victory.
But the song and the sketchy, embroidered tales eventually filtered out into the rest of the World, and it is one of the minor ironies of the history of the Ship that Khallerhand was feted by many as the first true enemy of the Ship.

Relieved of the pretense of conforming to the Admiralty's secret schemes, the full resources of an awakened Caroline were channeled openly and totally into the Yards. Along with the new power came new people, a flood of refugees from the misery of the World. Gateway soon burst its old limits and occupied the highlands; the elegant gardens and houses of the Technos were quickly being replaced by shoddy, crowded tenements and narrow streets. Gateway became the largest, richest city in the World, perhaps greater than any that the First World had built.

The great roads leading north and east to the mines and petroleum wells trembled daily under the weight of monstrous trucks. Lights were strung all over the steel scaffolding around the Ship; around-the-clock shifts were instituted.

Years after the Grand Revolution, when the spirit of that battle was cooling, Coral began to leak ominous prophecies about the jealous and hostile World. "Border incidents," never of much concern before, were now noted by the Government with increasing gravity. Gateway's one pre-revolutionary newspaper, the
Herald,
was now joined by two more Government organs,
Truth
and
The Home-Word.

The World was a horrible enough place by itself; one hardly needed the strange, anguished animal howlings that the night winds lifted from the west and from beyond the encircling mountains to know that. Now the normally apathetic and crude international relations began to assume the organized horror that haunted the most remote of the Black Libraries. The People of Gateway and the Caroline Empire began to see a barbed ring of hatred being drawn about them. Nations whose existence had been previously limited to quaint legend were now said to be gathering armies against them. The World envied the Caroline and her Ship with a passion that exceeded their love of the First World, and it was out to steal or destroy both the Ship and the Empire. The World, Raud, Enom, the Dresau Islands, Svald, New Svald, the Maritime Republics, Karindale became the all-inclusive "they"—murderers of children, maddened beasts, enemies of the Ship. When the People looked to the east they saw, along with the liquid glint of dragons' eyes, the harsh shine of steel and mail. Stars became signal lamps; wanderers, penitents and lone hunters were the skirmishers for the numberless hordes of the World.

This atmosphere intensified until, seven years after the Grand Revolution, the People's Government uncovered a plot involving a third of the nations of the World in a suicidal assault on the Yards to destroy the Ship with an atomic bomb, or Black Pill as the World called it.

It was this incident, raising the ultimate specter of the Pill, which Coral used to justify his "Program of Security." The first phase was the rounding up of all suspected traitors; there were more of them than anyone could have suspected!

The purge ended, Coral issued his Spring Decrees, part two of the Program. With these fiats the Caroline Empire embarked on a period of activity and growth unmatched since the end of the First World—others, curiously, used Salasar for the comparison. The Army, whose command structure had been obliterated by the Revolution, was swollen to monstrous proportions. Oddly, the men were armed with the crossbows and swords of the World instead of the weapons from the Armories; those weapons had been recalled by the Government after the defeat of Khallerhand. Only a specially recruited elite force had modern guns; those that were left over were either fed into Gateway's furnaces for the Ship or positioned along the border of the Empire. Coral called this last measure an "iron ring from which the People of the Ship could march forth to defeat the World if we are so challenged, and an invincible bastion to which we may always retreat should that eventuality arise."

The Decrees revealed that a huge collection of plans had been discovered in a neglected corner of the rooms below the Yards. Right on the heels of this announcement, Coral said that three riverboats had just brought to the Yards complete plans for the construction of the Ship. Exactly where these boats might have first sailed from was not asked, since everyone assumed that the evil old Admiralty had had the plans secreted away and they had only now been found.

As a result of this almost exhausting succession of discoveries and new programs, Coral announced that the Ship would be ready for launching within seventy-five years, less than half the time allotted by the Admiralty.

Coral spoke of all these things from the unfinished prow of the Ship, his white-robed body almost lost against its vastness but for the sun spotlighting him through a break in the clouds. It had been during the annual celebration of the beginning of the Ship. Below him flew the white and silver of the Empire, the single star still upon it; nearby were the personal flags of the various dignitaries and the subject nations of the Empire. This had been an especially grand day, for the completion of the Ship had finally been brought within the span of a single lifetime; some said that the beginning of the universe could not have been so grand, and others said that
this
was the beginning.

As Coral descended from the Ship, the sun setting, flags and bands all snapping out their own music, and the crowds howling their acclaim, the Tyne Fortress, unnoticed by most, sent forth another one of its missiles toward the barren west. Coral stopped and stared at it, an odd expression on his face. He waited until the rocket had passed above the clouds, then he looked earthward to the blood red sun. "Say goodbye to our star; we shall not be looking on its cruel face for very much longer!" he said for the benefit of those around him. An aide smiled and would have patted Coral on the back, but he thought the better of it and let his lord pass.

Two years after the announcement of the Decrees and the Security Program, the new Army of the Empire—exceptional only in its numbers and spirit—began the decades-long People's Wars that were to swallow more than a third of the World before they were through.

As the regiments marched from Gateway, from the Tyne garrisons, from Caltroon, and from a hundred lesser places, the men of the Armories followed them with their great weapons and rooted Coral's "iron ring" to the sterile soil of the World.

The Empire Army carried none of these terrible machines when they left, but at least they found enormous confidence in having those guns protecting their backs. The incongruity of siege guns that were able to plant half a ton of explosives seventy miles away being guarded by horsemen with crossbows and swords bothered no one; in fact, most thought it rather romantic.

The final years which separated the beginning of the People's Wars and the ultimate launching of the Ship go by many names. The one given by the lords of Enom is the best: the Burning Time. The two fires, one in the east and one in the west, grew together with agonizing slowness.

In numbers, the Dresau's allies were somewhat less than the Empire. If Coral boasted that the Empire's forces were unparalleled anywhere in human history, he was conceded to be correct. The East found its distinction in comparing their armies with those of the First World, if not in equipment then at least in temperament.

Where the Empire sent forth a faceless tide of its own ruthless citizens, the East assembled a host as diverse as the nations that had contributed to it. Black, red, silver, gold, blue; eagles, dragons, griffins, stars glittered and shone on their shields and banners. Woodland hunters from Raud, hidden from mortal sight by their green and brown cloaks until the silver of their long swords shimmered in enemy eyes; the mountain lords of Enom, befurred and hung with mail and morning stars, their flags of enameled mail, for the gales of their homeland instantly shredded mere silk; short sea-folk from New Svald and the Maritime Republics, looking woefully lost on solid land; tall, quiet marines and guardsmen from the Dresau Islands' new land army, taking obvious pride in their First World guns and vehicles.

A full three score of nations, a thousand tribes, numberless men, wanderers, outcasts, loners who found a grim comfort under the East's rainbow flags and devices—all stood back from the raging fires of the People's Wars, saving what they could but being careful not to waste their strength; all the time, falling back, waiting, preparing, forging new weapons, reforging the broken ones until forty percent of their lands were in Empire hands.

On a day in early summer the last cloudy block of control material was lifted from the Yards and fitted into its appointed place within the Ship; the People looked around themselves and saw that the Ship was finished.

They crowded unbidden out of Gateway and up into the mountains. The Fortress launched another of its endless rockets. The People could only see the
Victory,
shining more beautifully than God in His youth, filling the Yards and reducing even the Sea to comparative nothingness.

Coral stood among them, prouder than anyone. He had not died, and the People had come to associate his impossibly long life and continuing vitality with the same powers that had helped them build the
Victory.
Even the occasional, whispered hint of Coral's possible divinity was greeted by responsive minds.

They watched throughout the day. At that distance no structural seams were visible; the Ship looked as if it had been cast from a single piece of white gold. Night came and presently the moon rose; still the People of the Ship sat atop the mountains. After a while it happened that the silver reflection of the moon upon the Sea traveled from the horizon to the foot of the Yards, mounting the Ship on a titan's scepter. They returned to their homes and waited.

The thought occurred to some that the only people who might have been able to fly the Ship would have been the grandsons of the Technos. When confronted by this question, Coral smiled benignly and told them to trust in the wisdom of the Builders.

To the east, the Army was encountering new successes; they did not yet know of the Ship's completion. Aside from that the Empire was silent for a week.

In the first hours of some morning a hatch opened on top of the
Victory,
and, at seven second intervals, small, dart-like aircraft emerged and flew off to the east, south, and north. No one had built such machines and nothing like them had been brought up from the Yards; the Ship must have made them and therefore the People knew that it was good.

Ten thousand of these darts left the
Victory
during that day, the night, and the following day. One circled over the Yards and Gateway while others vanished in the bright summer air.

Then peace once again, this time only until the dawn of the third day.

Then a huge, booming voice crashed down upon the whole of the known World; majestic and overpowering it was, filling every corner of creation with its glory and triumph. The voice came from the darts, positioned over all of the World, giving voice to the same words at the same time. Rolling like divine thunder the voice spoke these words: "I am the Ship! Come to Me, you children of sadness and pain! I am the Ship! Come to me, for the green and cool quiet of paradise, of Home awaits you and your sons!"

Many looked to their neighbors, or to their wives, or to their children, and gathering a few precious things, started walking east, drawn by the stories and the voice to the Tyne delta. Others looked about them, and into themselves, and sat down to just cry softly and watch their fellows march away. Still others, appearing sadder than all the rest, looked to their guns; the Burning Time was about to end.

The Caroline Army also heard the voice and joyously sheathed their swords. They had built a road from the Yards and from the Caroline into the heart of the World; now this Empire seemed hardly worth the effort. They struck their camps and withdrew.

Now, finally, the dreaded hosts that Coral had spoken of appeared around the whole of the Empire, doubtlessly bent on destroying it in its finest moment. But the People smiled at each other because it was too late.

Admiral of the Fleet Pendred's grandson had neither the personal brilliance nor the time his ancestor had to ascend to such a high rank. When the silver object appeared over Duncarin with its great voice calling him to the Ship, he was the chief gunnery officer on board the
Havengore.

Eighty years his Grandfather had said it would take, and almost eighty years it was! Beneath Pendred floated a
Havengore
that had recaptured much of its original power. Her great guns had been restored, her turbines were of new steel, and the rust was gone from her armor. In opposition to the diseased white of the Empire, the cruiser and her two smaller consorts had been repainted a glistening black.