Of Chiefs and Champions Page 11

  Tiredly, she waved a hand. "Back there, along the trail. I marked our trail in ways that not even they could miss and told them to follow us as fast as they could. If we'd waited for them, we'd still be within a few miles of where we started, all of us."

  Arsen shook his head. "Not good, honey, not good. What if they don't make it in before dark, huh? Wandering around in those woods at night they could get seriously hurt or killed even, or at least thoroughly lost, and cost even more time."

  "It would serve them all right!" snapped Lisa, with heat. "I'd never thought I'd hear so much bitching, whining, and complaining from any three supposedly adult men than I got from John and Al and Greg—before they ran out of wind enough to talk, that is. It was a rough day, from start to finish, yes; but Rose and Kitty and Helen and Simon and Mike and I were doing it too, without a lot of senseless bellyaching. Why couldn't those three poor specimens?"

  She gestured at the snoring, pack-laden man. "You know, I've never liked Mike Sikeena. He's a fat, filthy-mouthed, always-horny Arab bastard, even more chauvinistic than you Armenians—and, believe me, that's saying something! Well, after today, I still don't like him, but by God I've got tremendous respect for him. If anybody suffered from today's exertions, it was him, I could see it, we all could, but not only did he not bitch and try to get us to carry his gear, he got up ahead of us and took turns with Simon breaking the trail wherever it was necessary—wheezing like a punctured bagpipe, sweat soaking him until he looked soggy all over, stumbling and falling and gasping filth in two or three languages, but keeping it up to here, where I called a halt."

  "And don't try telling me it's natural because he was a Marine, like you, Arsen; Greg Sinclair was too, and the last I heard of him, hours ago, he was moaning that if he didn't stop his heart was going to burst. Although, to give him a little credit, he was ahead of John and Al, at least."

  "Well," said Arsen, "it gets dark quick after the sun sets in these hills, and it's going to set soon, so I'd better see if I can find those three."

  But it was not necessary. Even as he started to climb back into the carrier, the three missing members of the party staggered to the brushy crest of one of the flanking hills and began to stumble and slide down to the vale.

  After he had projected the supplies and equipment into the vale, after most had had a hot, quickly eaten supper and had sunk wearily into slumber inside the big tent, Arsen, Lisa, and Rose sat or squatted outside in the night. The carriers that bobbed inches off the ground on three sides of them gave their soft glow of light, and their shields protected the three humans from the hordes of night-flying and crawling insects.

  "It's my fault," stated Arsen. "I didn't bother to take the time to think this scheme through, so frantic was I to help Squash Woman and her people. Of course, when I thought it all out, I only had the one carrier and the Class Three projector, and all that has now changed."

  "We, the three of us, are shortly going to climb into these carriers and go to the village, for some of those wounded are sure to die quickly if they don't get better medical treatment than I've been able to give them. I've got cases on cases of medical and surgical equipment and supplies and drugs stashed there, but I don't know what to do with most of them, while you two do."

  "Keep those silver caps on at all times. With them on, you can talk to and understand the Indians, without them you can't, it's that simple. Squash Woman is top dog. Her chief lieutenant and the leader of the few warriors she has left is a middle-aged man—her son, incidentally—named Swift Otter. The leader of the sixteen Creek warriors who left the Spanish to join us is Soaring Eagle."

  "Honey, whatever you do, don't underestimate these three people, think that just because they're primitive, they're dim-witted or childish. Yes, they live in a real stone-age technology, but they all are still smart as a whip."

  "When we get there and I've introduced you and gotten you set up and all, I'm going to find and mark out a place inside the palisade. Then, as soon as our friends here wake up and I've explained what's going to happen, I'm going to use the big projector to send them—tent and all—into the village."

  Lisa nodded. "Okay, but what about Mike Vranian and Haigh, back where we hiked from?"

  "Oh, they're on my mind, too, honey," he answered quickly. "I'm going back there and measure the sides of that crypt, then have the Creek warriors tear down enough running feet of the front palisade of the village to accommodate it, put in guider rods, then project it into place."

  When he saw her frown and, through the silver cap, read the thoughts flitting across the surface of her mind, he raised a hand and added, "And don't worry about the projection hurting Mike any worse than he already is, honey. Whoever projected us here was very sloppy about it. If it's done properly, projected things arrive as soft as a feather."

  CHAPTER THE SIXTH

  "What in the name of God is this contraption?" asked Sir Rupen, lifting a vaguely key-shaped object of copper, brass, and tin-plated iron from Sir Peter Fairley's cluttered desk.

  Pete sighed. "That there's a cannon primer, like what Bass's fleet is using now. One them letters you brought down here to me last week was from Walid Pasha asking me to send them some more of them, and I been studying that one at odd times trying to figger is it any way to make them simpler to make."

  "Show me how this thing works, will you?" said Rupen.

  Pete shrugged. "Sure thing, but we'll have to go out to the side yard where it's some small cannons. C'mon."

  "No, no, Pete." Rupen shook his head. "No need to burn up any powder. I'm good at visualizing. Just take this one down and tell me what the parts do."

  "Well . . ." Looking a bit dubious, Fairley picked up the primer and said, "You stick this tube down in the touchhole of the piece, see—it's made out of thin iron plate, but it's been tin-plated so's it won't strike sparks off a iron gun and set it off premature-like. And that there was Bass Foster's idea, too; the first ones I made up was all copper and brass and damn expensive."

  "Inside of the tube is a fast-igniting, fast-burning, hot-burning mix of real fine powder, plus a lot of little bitty pieces of pyrites and flints glued into grooves. This little ring is a pin that holds a steel spring compressed, and when the lanyard jerks it out, the spring unwinds real fast down the tube and strikes sparks off of the pyrites and all and they lights the powder mix and that fire sets off the touchhole priming and that sets off the main charge. Sounds screwy, I know, but it works about nineteen times out of ever twenty."

  "Thing is, putting them all together right so they'll have a decent chance to do their job right is damn tedious and takes up a hell of a lot of time my crews could be doing something else in, and God knows with all the irons I allus got in the fire, them and me is allus got a lot to do, too."

  "It's like I told Bass before he went to Ireland, after I'd showed these here primers off and showed all the gunnery officers of his ships how to use them right. I know damn good and well it's a easier, simpler way these used to be made in our world back 'bout the time of the Civil War, but I can't for the life of me remember. And I ought to, too, 'cause I was a muzzle-loading shooter, with a bunch was with the North-South Skirmish 'sociation, and we had us a reproduction six-pounder field gun and we shot it and most the time used primers we bought us from Dixie Gun Works in Tennessee or from Confed'rate States Armaments in Virginia."

  "But the thing is, I didn't really shoot that cannon but a few times, being more int'rested in rifles and all, then. And the little minichure cannon I had had such a little bitty touchhole that didn't nobody make primers for it, you had to use a portfire or a kitchen match, mostly."

  Rupen stretched out his booted legs and steepled his fingers, his elbows on the arms of his chair. "Pete, from your Skirmish days, do you possibly recall a man named Bagrat Ademian?"

  The Royal Cannon Founder frowned, wrinkling up his brows and moving his lips soundlessly as he repeated the name to himself a few times, then he brightened and said, "Sure! Sure thing, I
remember Mr. Ademian, yeah. He was a short, dark-headed, wiry little fella, and he was with the Skirmish a long time, too, right from the start, I think. Yeah, Ademian, Bagrat Ademian . . . wait a minute, your last name's Ademian, too, Rupen. You two any kin?"

  Rupen nodded. "Bagrat is my younger brother, Pete. He and I were the founders of Confederate States Armaments, Incorporated. And, yes, there is a much quicker and a much easier and less labor-intensive way to make cannon primers."

  "Goddam, I reckon!" expostulated Fairley. "If you know as much 'bout guns and all as Bagrat Ademian did . . ."

  Rupen flitted a smile. "I'd estimate that I probably know a good bit more about the making of them than he does, Pete. You see, he did the demonstration and selling and most of the shooting, true enough, but it was me who traveled to Europe and arranged for the manufacturers to produce them at reasonable prices—sat down with the designers and engineers and took old original weapons, related equipment, and antique accessories apart to measure and photograph and sketch and ascertain the compositions of the parts, judge their supposed functions, their failings, and the tolerances of the fully assembled weapons."

  "I helped to supervise the productions of prototypes, Pete, and tried to be around to take active parts in the testings of the new repros, whenever time permitted. Those cannon primers we sold, now, were made for us by an Italian firm, and each run of them was tested by firing blank charges from real, antique, bronze cannons—one of them an elaborate, beautiful thing, as much sculpture as weapon, from the sixteenth century, the other from the 1840s or '50s."

  He chuckled and grinned, remembering. "I did my utter damnedest to con that firm out of that Renaissance cannon, but they refused to part with it, and I don't blame them one damned bit, either. But, as I now recall, the cannon primers used the same basic compound as is used to make matches—phosphorus, sulfur, and a few other common chemicals, plus ground glass."

  "Rots of fucking ruck!" exclaimed Pete sourly. "It's a plenty of sulfur around here—it's used to make gunpowder, after all. But where the hell we gonna get us phosph'rus from, huh?"

  "As I remember," said Rupen slowly, thoughtfully, "phosphorus is obtained from either phosphorus-bearing minerals, rocks, or from bones or bone charcoal. I can't recall the exact process . . . but I'll bet Hal would. After all, he once was a chemist of a kind and I know that he practices what is here called alchemy, has a lab set up in his private apartments at Yorkminster."

  "Yeah? But Rupen, you know it good as me, that poor old bastard's allus as busy as a one-armed fucking paperhanger, too. When's he going to find time for one more thing to do, huh? Hell, man, he's even busier than me, most of the time. I bet he has to make a damn appointment to take him a shit, much less get him any sleep." Pete shook his head slowly in this expression of empathy and sympathy with and for the harried Archbishop of York, adding, as a practical afterthought, "B'sides, I don't know when I'd ever find or make me the time to get gussied up and go through all the crap and all it takes to get to see him to ask him about doing it, anyhow. So I reckon it's just another damn good, usable idea shot to hell. I thank you, anyway."

  "Don't give up so quickly, Pete," said Rupen. "If you'll just think about it, you'll remember what my principal function at Yorkminster is. I never have to go through channels to see Hal, unlike you run of common peons." He grinned. "Now, true, you may have known him longer, but I think I've come to know him better, in more depth, than do you. He seldom can resist a challenge of a scientific nature, you know. I can start working on him shortly after I get back, today, and I guarantee that within a week or so, he'll be making the time to see about solving this problem for you."

  "You'd do that for me, buddy?" asked Pete, a bit humbly. "Christ, I don't know how I can ever thank you enough, Rupen."

  Sir Rupen Ademian grinned wolfishly. "Yes, I'll do it . . . under the condition that when I feel the time to be ripe, you agree to use your own not inconsiderable powers of persuasion to win Hal over to something I want him to do. Perhaps you and Captain Webster, too?"

  Pete spat upon the palm of his stained, horny right hand and thrust it across the desk. "You got 'er, Rupen. You name the time and I'll do ever'thing in my power to get Hal to go 'long with it, whatever it is." He paused, then asked, "What is it, anyway? You don't have to tell me, of course, 'less you wants too. I'm just asking 'cause I know Buddy Webster'll ask me."

  Rupen stared at his hands. "It's Krystal Foster, Pete. You are aware what happened to her, where she is now?"

  Sir Peter looked sad. "Yeah, oh, yeah, Rupen. I heard she flipped out and Bass had her took to a hospital-like that some nuns runs in someplace north of here, near Thirsk. 'Course, I meant to try and go up and see her, but, hell, I ain't never got time to wipe my ass, hardly."

  Rupen shook his head. "It would've been a wasted trip anyway, Pete. The only way I got into the place was with a letter from Hal, and even then, I was made not at all welcome by that ice-cold, man-hating harridan who is abbess there."

  "And that abbess and her abbey are the base of the problem, Pete. I've got to . . . rather, we've got to try to talk Hal around to getting Mrs. Foster out of there . . . and soon."

  "She's not really nuts, then, Rupen?" asked Sir Peter. "So why did Bass have her locked up, then? Has he got him another woman? Is that it? I don't like to think dirty shit like that of him, but . . ."

  "Oh, she's certainly a disturbed woman, Pete, no doubt about that, and under the right circumstances, she could be quite dangerous. But even so, if she's forced to stay in that nunnery for much longer . . . well, let's put it this way, she will not survive the coming winter there, I'm dead certain of it." Rupen leaned forward and spoke earnestly, "Pete, that is not any kind of a hospital up there, not what comes to your mind when you think of the hospitals of our own world and time, it isn't."

  "Pete, that place is a generous slice of pure hell! Mrs. Foster is kept locked day and night in a stonewalled and -floored cell of a size of less than thirty-five square feet. It is unfurnished, has no provision for heating or lighting it, not even an arrow slit of a window. Her 'bed' is a stone trough filled with damp, moldy, very verminous straw, and she is not even provided a simple wooden bucket for her wastes."

  "The nuns speak much of how unceasingly they pray over and for the unfortunates in their charge, but they do little else for them, I think. Mrs. Foster is terribly malnourished, Pete, and knows like me that she will not live long in that place, under those wretched conditions. She has almost given up, and whenever she does, she'll go quickly."

  Sir Peter looked troubled. "Now wait a minute, Rupen. Much as I need your help on this primer business and all, I don't know. If Krystal is really buggy, like you and Hal says, and you say she could be really dangerous, too, then she's gone have to be locked up someplace and took care of. Maybe what we needs to do is find another nuns' place that ain't like the one up north is."

  Rupen grimaced. "Pete, as places like that go in this time and place, that hellhole is sumptuous; I checked it all out already. No, she pleads to be allowed to go home, to Whyffler Hall, and I think that's the answer, the ideal place for her. The old tower there is presently used for damn-all except storage, and even then only on the lower, more easily accessible levels; the higher ones are just rooms of antique furniture and dust and cobwebs now."

  "The sometime master suite up there could quickly be cleaned and refurbished, the door locks changed around to the outside, and such other changes made as are necessary under these peculiar circumstances. I have no doubt but that Sir Geoffrey can come up with some strong, sturdy, level-headed countrywomen who can care for Mrs. Foster and, whenever necessary, physically control her, or perhaps Hal could prevail upon that bitch of an abbess or another such to loan one or two nursing sisters experienced at dealing with the insane."

  Sir Peter nodded. "Sounds like a damn good plan to me, Rupen. Yeah, and I know Buddy will like it, too, 'cause don't neither one of us want Krystal to die, like Miz Collier and poor Sunshine did. So
we'll do whatall we can to help you talk Hal around, whenever you ready to do it, you just let me know, buddy. You heah?"

  "But, 'fore you leave here today, what you know that I don't 'bout rifled cannons? Is it any way to recut the rifling grooves so's the lints won't keep smoldering in the grooves right through a good swabbing and set off the next charge before it's full-rammed home? You think we could make musket caps, here? Shitfire, man, you a real godsend for us, Rupen."

  Don Felipe took the offered seat and drained off the entire cup of wine, gratefully, then commenced his report to his captain. "It is my opinion, Capitàn, that not only should we not plan to attack those upriver there, we should take exceeding pains to avoid them and the environs of their village. I lay in the brush across that river from that stockade for all of seven days observing through my long glass, and it has become my belief, on the basis of what I saw, that already are they too tough a nut for us to crack, unless we be prepared to lose many a tooth."

  Captain Don Abdullah respected Don Felipe as he respected few others of his motley force, which was why he had given this particular Spaniard the assignment to begin. Now, he said, "Help yourself to the wine, compañero, and pray continue."

  Don Felipe refilled his cup and drank off half of it, then said, "I don't know if I dare continue, Capitàn. I saw things up there that . . . well, let me say—swear on my sacred honor or upon relics, if you so wish it—that what I am about to say, to describe, concerns true things which my squires and I both saw, witnessed, not just lies, fanciful tales, or the result of some delirium."

  Abdullah nodded. "Your word is good enough for me, man. I've never known you to lie or heard that you did, you're too wise a knight to falsify or exaggerate a report, and you seem as rational to me as I am, myself. Say on, my friend."