A Bandit Accountant
Chapter Three Quarters of Twelve
Scene Two: Deadly, Playing Chicken
Later that night, Vir threw down Denario's travel bag between his own oversized pack and Alaric's padded duffel. He helped himself to Denario's food, too. He gave two handfuls of Denario's goat jerky to his sergeant.
“Not bad. Putting him between us?” Alaric glanced around at the other bandits as he chewed. “Fair enough, chief.”
“I don't need ye to tell me that. I can see how they are.”
“Yes, sir.” The sergeant stiffened a little.
“Don't get all offended, either. I only got four sergeants and yer the best. When I'm gone, yer to be captain.”
“Sir? I don't ...”
“Seriously, Alaric. There's no one else who's up to it. Can ye imagine Sergeant Kaspir becoming the chief?”
Alaric chuckled. But a moment later, he lay down on his bedroll in silence. The funny thing was, as young as the blond sergeant seemed, Denario had to agree with Vir. Alaric was a man who the other men admired. There seemed to be ample reason for it, too.
Denario laid out three spare shirts as a sort of blanket. He didn't mind using his bag of accounting books as a pillow, either. He felt amazed that he still had all of his tools.
“Why is this place between you two so good?” he asked them.
“So none of the other men get the idea to kill ye.” Vir set himself down without a blanket. He looked weary and, for the first time in all of the days that Denario had known him, not entirely alert.
“Oh.” Denario didn't want to go to sleep with that thought. He lay awake worrying about it for a minute. Then he stole another look at the message from Pecunia. I am fine, Lash. Mrs. Figgins is a darling. I hope you're doing well, wherever you are. Mistress Pecunia De Loreli Von Glaistig, Church of the Goat.
It was beginning to dawn on him that although Pecunia cared for him, she hadn't exactly sent a love note. She didn't mention their prospects of marriage. She didn't talk about him setting up practice near Ziegeburg. She didn't even say the word 'love.' Well, he'd figure out something for her anyway. He folded the pink paper and slipped it into his shirt pocket. Since the pocket was underneath a layer of chain mail, that was a chore.
“Do you really have a betrothed?” the sergeant asked him after a while. “Vir said you did. Was that a note from her that you just read? Did it come to you by magic?”
“Do you like magic?” Denario asked.
“It's useful.” Alaric cocked his head and considered. “I suppose I like it better than most.”
“Hmph.” Denario folded his thin arms. His chain mail made a sound like rough snake skins rubbing against each other. “The wizard in Hogsburg called her a sorceress. But he's wrong.”
He threw his head back on the pillow of books and nearly hurt himself. Next to him, the sergeant half sat up, apparently interested.
“Ach, people always say things like that about older women.” He waved his hand so dismissively that Denario realized Alaric must have heard something similar about an elderly mother or grandmother in his life. Although there was another possibility. Because Alaric was a handsome fellow. Maybe there had been a mature woman interested in him romantically.
“Yes, she is a bit older than I am.” He could admit that. He imagined Pecunia's smiling face, her blonde, curling locks. She still looked reasonably youthful. And her teeth were perfect. “Her first three husbands died.”
“Three?” Alaric whistled.
“Yes.”
The sergeant was so silent that it became conspicuous. After a while, he laid his head back down on his pack.
“Are you still thinking about being captain?” Denario asked him.
“Oh, maybe a little.” There was a faint, bitter laugh in the darkness. “It's a stupid tradition to have the chiefs come from the same bloodlines.”
“You could do the job, though, if you had to.”
“Not as well as Vir does.”
“No, but … well, he's something special, isn't he?” Denario listened for a moment, his arms still folded because they were so hard to move in their armor. He heard a deep snuffle, which was a pretty sure sign that Vir was asleep. “I thought he was some kind of ox wrestler or hog butcher when I first met him. But he's so fast. I mean in his mind, not just his body. I don't know what to make of him. He's shrewd.”
“He was a farmer.”
“What?”
“He was a ox wrestler and hog butcher once. You were right. He had a great way with cows, I hear.”
That gave Denario an idea. He rolled over on one elbow, his back to the captain, his face a foot from Alaric tired, half-closed eyes.
“What happened to him three years ago?” he whispered.
Alaric sounded like he was holding his breath. Denario waited as patiently as he could.
“I'll let him tell ye that,” the young sergeant concluded. “Or not, as pleases him.”
“Okay.” Denario knew better than to persist. “You know, for a moment there, you sounded like him.”
“He's a good man.”
“He thinks no one likes him.”
There another long silence in the conversation. Alaric did a lot of careful thinking, it seemed, or Denario was posing tough questions. Maybe he only had himself to blame for the long wait.
“You're going to leave us, accountant.” It was an accusation.
“I have to. I have to save the counting house.” This time, Denario didn't leave the conversation hanging. “You know, I can't figure out where Vir learned about this military training if he grew up as a farmer. He's really good. He works at it more than the knights in the Court of Oggli. And they're professionals.”
“We're getting to be professionals, too, in our way.”
“I can tell. Say, I didn't get the full story of the battle of Archer's Lament. You told Vir about your men. But you didn't talk about yourself. Someone said you were the last man to pass through into the magic.”
“The lament wouldn't be as much use to us if the Raduar walked in acting all suspicious. So I was trying to lead them in at a run.”
“It must have worked. And then you charged them with your cudgels?”
“Yes. But not me, actually.”
“You didn't fight?” That would explain why he hadn't talked about it.
“My sword turned into a chicken, you know. When I bent down to pick up my stick, I fumbled it because I wanted to hold onto the chicken in case it turned back to a sword during the fight. I didn't have time to chase after my club before the lead Raduar was on me.”
“Oh no. You had to fight unarmed?”
“No, I was still holding the sword.”
“But it wasn't a sword. It was a chicken.” Maybe it was a supernatural chicken but, still, Denario knew that no one could beat a man to death with a bird. Then he doubted his judgment. After all, he was no expert soldier. And if anyone could do it, it was these Mundredi.
“I had it by both legs.”
“You wouldn't really have a chance. Would you?” The count's troops in Oggli wouldn't even have tried, he knew. They had too much pride in their sword play. A good sword was the mark of an Oggli gentleman – not a chicken. Oh, definitely not.
“It was a pretty fair fight.” Alaric held up his right arm. In the ruddy firelight, Denario could make out gouge marks on his vambrace. It looked like a pointed beak had sunk deeply into the leather armor. There had been more than a dozen blows. The two men must have swung hard at each other for a while. “After all, he had a chicken, too.”
Next: Chapter Nine, Scene Three
Stories on life, death, enlightenment, zen buddhism, religion, philosophy, stoicism, meditation, daoism, kindness but not meekness, and samsara.
Sunday, October 23, 2016
Sunday, October 16, 2016
Not Even Not Zen 53: A Bandit Accountant, 9.1
A Bandit Accountant
Chapter Three Quarters of Twelve
Scene One: Rich for Bandits
The sunset over the hills made Denario rise to his feet. He stretched. His body felt refreshed from his brief rest. He was surprised to feel healthy despite the hard bandit life he'd been leading. He'd had to nap on a rock, which he'd never dreamed of doing back in Oggli. Of course, it had helped that he hadn't been pressed into manual labor as Vir had done to most of his men. Instead, Denario had been treated as if he were wounded. He supposed he got away with it because of the bandage on his head.
The other two fellows who were allowed to rest looked awful. They dozed or lay unconscious under the nearby maple tree. The thinner, older fellow had lost four of his front teeth.
A flock of starlings darted by overhead. Denario followed their pattern. They settled into a grove of distant trees downslope that were part of Archer's Lament. There were birds of all sorts here. Denario was paying more attention to them now that he understood the residual magic. He wondered if any of the avian bloodlines were descended from arrows or spears that had mated after they became magical birds. They would have been able to do that while they lived within the confines of Archer's Lament. Maybe some weapons had lived out entire lives there, half a century ago, when the lament was larger.
“I can see the borders of the lament,” he announced.
“How?” Vir had been standing ten yards away and paying him no attention. But he turned. His voice was gruff. Denario knew him well enough now to realize that this was the chieftain's default attitude toward his underlings. He didn't accept anyone's claims about anything. He demanded proof.
“Numbers,” said Denario. He pointed at the ridges of trees. “More birds of a flock land inside the border of the lament than outside. If you watch the next flock settle in, you'll see it, too.”
“Why would that be?” Vir squinted at where Denario had pointed. So did two of the soldiers next to him.
“Don't make no sense,” said the smallest of the Mundredi.
“I think there must have been some pigeons, crows, finches, starlings, and whatnot that stuck around in the original borders for a long time. They laid eggs. Another generation grew up in the lament. Now, those children and grandchildren come back here to where they were born.”
“Hah!” Vir laughed. “Okay, that part sounds outlandish but it's possible. I still can't believe they show you the border.”
“What's so funny?” A distant voice called up to them.
Denario gazed down to Alaric and his troop. They were climbing the hill toward him. Alaric's men had looted their enemies and buried three Mundredi casualties in the soil of the lament. Behind Alaric, four soldiers pulled sledges of weapons and armor. They puffed and sweated but they smiled. Victory had been kind to them. For soldiers, they were rich.
Vir explained Denario's bird theory. All of the enlisted men chuckled. To Denario's surprise, the sergeant didn't find it funny. He stopped, hands on hips, and gave Denario a respectful nod.
“The magic of being a living creature affects our weapons, I can tell you that,” he said. He shielded his eyes from the sun and scoured the treelines. “I wouldn't be surprised if the magic keeps affecting the still-living. Every damn arrow we looted is useless. The flights are off somehow.”
“Th' sergeant's right,” said one of the men. “I'd swear that my spear twitches in my hands, sirs.”
All of the Mundredi within hearing made warding signs over their hearts. It wasn't just Vir who was superstitious, then. The entire tribe of tribes seemed to think of supernatural forces as a realm inhabited by gods and priests rather than the way Denario thought of it – as a loose tradition of semi-science guarded by the bedraggled sorts of wizards you saw sitting next to you at the local ale house.
“It was damn brilliant move, Alaric.” Vir's reassured them. His praise was rare. That made it welcome among the rank and file. They could be sure that their sergeant had done the right thing because their chief had just said so. “You showed good troop discipline. You managed to keep the right distance between you and your pursuers for nearly two days.”
“Sir,” replied Alaric, stiff with pride. His men stood a little taller, too. “Thank you, sir. Anyway, I can see how the accountant may be right. It would be a handy thing if we could see the borders of the magic, especially if no one else could.”
The thought made Vir smile. He nodded and, since there were no more flocks of starlings to watch, he led the Mundredi in dividing the spoils. He had them lay out particular packages and pieces of armor on the ground. It took more than half an hour to accomplish this part of the process. The wounded soldiers woke up and made a cooking fire while it was going on. The whole time, the captain and sergeant seemed to maintain their awareness of the sky.
Finally, a flock of crows appeared. They were traveling up from the south and chose to rest in trees on the south side of their hill. After only a minute of rest, they took off again. They headed straight for the borders of Archer's Lament.
Vir and Alaric turned to watch. Soon, all of the Mundredi did the same, even the ones who didn't know what was going on. Denario thought the crows would land in a grove of firs, which was precisely where the starlings had gone. But in some way known only to birds, they sensed the presence of the other flock. The crows veered away from the starlings just before they landed. They weaved a few trees westward to settle in a grove of willow-oaks. As before, they seemed to line up with about two-thirds of them in the borders of the magical grounds.
“Eighteen on the lament side,” Denario counted along the imaginary line he guessed was the border into the occult. “Nine on the closer side. That's what I think.”
“What do you say, Alaric?” Vir asked. The rest had fallen into confused whispering.
“Gods be damned. Right on the border, I'd say.”
Vir gave Denario an appraising look.
“Eighteen to nine. That's about two out of three, then.”
It's exactly that, Denario refrained from saying.
“Did the starlings land about the same?”
“Yes.” This time, one of the men who had been watching the first time backed up Denario's idea.
“Okay, well done. Now we know a little extra. We can spot the area from a distance.” Vir walked around the campsite, hands locked behind his back. “But that's enough fooling around. Return to your cooking, men.”
The Mundredi surprised him by sitting down to eat a dinner before they divided their loot.
“It's like I said last month,” Vir told them when he had a bowl in his hands. “We're not leaving any of this stuff behind. I'm done with awarding loot that you lot are too lazy to carry. So it's all mine, understand?”
To Denario's shock, the men nodded as they ate, even the scariest-looking ones like Moritz and the other oversized bruiser called Reinhard. They were quite a lot taller than the captain. Moreover, they and the other bandits pushed and punched one another nearly all of the time as they worked. They were an argumentative bunch. It seemed astonishing that they didn't contradict their leader.
“Good.” Vir scowled. “Now, that said, I'm thinking to award a few bits and pieces of my loot to those what deserve it.”
Most of the men took that in stride. The blonde, hulking Reinhard and the equally massive Moritz, though, sat up straighter. They must have known they had come off well during the battle.
To Denario's mild surprise, Vir started things off by telling the story of his travels from Hogsburg to Archer's Lament. He'd already apprised his sergeant of the basics but apparently he wanted the entire group to know in detail. He described aspects of their journey that Denario had missed. In Haph Bad, for instance, he'd loaded his cart with a cache of hidden weapons and armor. In Three Gods, he'd paid the temple with the pennies that Denario had earned by carrying sacrifices to the priest.
Vir became quieter and more thoughtful as he discussed the hike to Fort Fourteen. He allowed as to how he'd felt suspicious of Klaus and Piotr. He wasn't sure which one of them might turn against him until the instant that Piotr shot his friend. At hearing that, Vir's soldiers, who had been draining their canteens of beer, stood up and raised their fists. Mostly, the fist were holding weapons.
“Traitor!'” they shouted. Then they fell to calling Piotr worse names, if there were any worse. It was minutes before the roar died down.
“He may be sneaking around and following us now,” Vir told them. “Although I've been looking for him and I've seen no sign yet.”
“Why would he hurt Klaus?” was the plaintive wail of one of the men. Denario guessed he had been a friend of the victim. “Why did Piotr turn against us? Did the Raduar take his family hostage?”
“No. Piotr's family was killed in a raid by Baron Ankster's men.” Vir dismissed the notion. It occurred to Denario that Vir must have spies among the Raduar the way they did among the Mundredi. That explained why he didn't want to drive them out of his lands. He must have known from them that he had reasons to be suspicious of Klaus and Piotr and probably others in his band, too. “All I can think is, Piotr figured that the Raduar were going to win.”
“But since you've come, we're taking our lands back from them.”
“That's true. But we've had to avoid the main force of the Raduar so far. For us, this fight today was a big battle. We took out some of their best fighters. Even the accountant got one.”
That got laughter. Denario could tell that most of the men thought that their boss was making a joke.
“Thing is,” he continued. “These men were from just two Raduar tribes, the Killimar and the Juttari. There must be a couple hundred other tribes involved in their rabble rousing. We need to recruit more from our own. That's the only way we'll get enough men to face down the Raduar and put a stop to their slaughter.”
“But we're better than them,” Moritz protested. “We don't need numbers.”
“Man for man we're better.” Vir put down his bowl. He sat on the rock next to Denario, elbows on his knees. “They're good with swords, maybe, but not much else. They haven't worked with heavy shields. That's why I've been pushing ye. Ye lot are stronger now. And ye know how to use all of yer weapons. We've even got ourselves better armor than we've had since the empire.”
Every man around the campfire grunted or voiced their assent.
“And now I'm going to give some of ye better than ye already got. Some of them Raduar chieftans have got real armorers.”
“We need to kidnap one,” interjected Alaric.
“Someday.” The captain gave them a grim smile. “Meanwhile, we'll take what we can steal from caravans, our enemies, and other such folk.”
The sergeant lifted the biggest chain shirt they'd taken. It wasn't quite big enough for Vir, Reinhard, or Moritz. That illustrated how much the Mundredi needed an armorer who could at least adapt and repair what they had.
“Now,” began Vir. “I'm going to start by giving a few things to yer sergeant. He'll make his gifts from there.”
Vir, in fact, proceeded to divide up loot in the way he'd told Denario he did. The best armor went to Sergeant Alaric, who put on a chain shirt that made him look like a prince. He got awarded a few other pieces, too, mostly by weight. Then he was told he could take some valuables. He chose fancy packets of food and a silver-handled dagger. The Raduar tribesmen had carried no money on them. Denario found it a depressing but unsurprising fact.
Alaric was told to give out awards to his best fighters. The sergeant called forward Reinhard, Moritz, and a short, tough-looking fellow named Gannick. He let them pick out a few items each in turn. Telling the tale of their fighting was part of the ceremony, it seemed. Everyone admired Moritz's strangling, Reinhard's longstaff work, and Gannick's ability to snap mens' necks.
“'Taint nothing,” said Gannick, quietly and modestly. He seemed like such a likeable fellow. If Denario had passed him on the streets of Oggli, he'd have figured he was a peasant farmer, the kind who bought the first round of drinks for his friends and didn't worry about getting paid back. “It's just like the captain taught us. Anyway, when they're thin, they're no trouble.”
Denario covered the back of his neck for a moment.
Alaric gave out a few other awards, mostly weapons to men who had proved they could use them. Then, hands on hips, he scowled at the heaps of armor laid out on the grass.
“Better to carry some of this on our clothes than to keep it all on the sledges.”
“Aye,” Vir nodded. “We've got more mail shirts than we'll like to lug around, for sure.”
“I don't suppose my uncle Yuri will have finished stitching those two ring pieces together for you.”
“Probably not.” The captain touched the largest fishmail piece with the toe of his boot. “Bet we could get something for Reinhard and Moritz from stitching the biggest of these, though. Reinhard's got just leather now and he's a big target. He needs better.”
“My uncle is just too slow. Vir, we need to grab real armorer.”
“A raid for one?”
“Yes. Even then, Yuri tells me that the Raduar smithies aren't as good as those in the Ankster castle. We need one from Blockhelm, Ankster, or maybe the Kilmun.”
“I've heard about the Kilmun armorers. They use magic. That can turn bad. Anyway, they're too far away to be practical.”
“If you had money,” Denario couldn't resist pointing out, “you could hire an armorer.”
Vir gave him a stern look. Everyone hushed for a moment and Denario thought he might feel the back of the captain's hand. These bandits seemed to expect it. He caught a few expectant smiles on their faces.
“Despite ideas like that,” Vir growled. “The accountant's been useful in his way. Any of this mail fit on him?”
“Sure.” The sergeant pointed to one of the ringed shirts that wasn't rusted at all. “Let's put that short one on the accountant. It's a good size.”
“No!” shouted one of the men who hadn't been awarded anything yet. He'd been been the one to complain about his spear acting like it was alive. “He's not even one of us! And what did he do? I saw him. He was hiding behind our captain when those cowards came running his way. He didn't do any work.”
“He just pulled some kind of trick.” The agreement came from another man who hadn't been awarded booty. Denario agreed with him, too. He knew he didn't need a mail shirt. It would weigh him down on the way to Oggli and it would be worse than useless in the city.
“Why is he even still here?” said Moritz. “Fritzie and Burtram are dead. Dead! And Niles. And Klaus, too. And Piotr is gone, the traitor. But this waldi is still here. Why?”
“Here's here because fights dirty,” replied Vir. “And he was luckier than Klaus. That's the long and short of it. Luck and smarts. He may be a bit of a coward but not without reason.”
“Did he do anything?”
“Killed a man. Saved my life.”
“Him?” Moritz got to his feet and pointed. Denario felt ashamed although, as far as he could remember, he hadn't done anything terribly wrong. He felt like he must have done, though. “If he did, we need to know. And you've paid him back many times over, I'll bet.”
Denario had to nod in agreement. He tried to say a few words to that affect but no one heard him. The rank and file members who hadn't been honored yet all started shouting. Reinhard and Gannick, who had been acknowledged as heroes by Alaric, seemed to join different sides. Gannick stood next to Alaric. He spoke calmly but sternly to Reinhard, who raised his voice in response.
It was Moritz who, in pointing at nearly everyone, dared to point his finger at Alaric. The sergeant saw the gesture coming and stepped into it so that the big man hurt himself. Moritz's teeth showed as he winced.
In an instant, Vir's arms pushed between them. He moved his soldier and his sergeant apart.
“Moritz,” he said. “Get the shirt and give it to the accountant. It's too small for anyone else. Then let's get on with the rest of it.”
The big man paused. He had appeared ready to strike but the captain's intervention gave him time to think.
“Sir,” he said. “You say he killed his man.”
“Yes. And he tried to kill Piotr.”
That made Moritz rub his chin. His thoughts seemed to take a while to reach a conclusion.
“Good for him, then.” He nodded.
“Come on, captain,” demanded Reinhard. “We've seen the way he waggles a spear. How did this little fellow hurt anyone?”
“Poison.” Vir sighed. His men gasped. Denario felt surprised by their reactions. After all, they had just beaten their opponents to death with cudgels and staves. Nevertheless, most of them seemed shocked.
The captain had to spend a minute or two describing what Denario had done in battle. Most of them had seen the tripline, of course, but they considered it a child's trick, not worthy of imitation. They reacted with superstitious horror to the idea of a poison dart. They laughed at how Denario had nearly been killed, too, because he hadn't finished off the man that Vir had left wounded on the ground.
“Serves ye right,” mumbled one of the wounded. He was the older fellow with the missing teeth. He gave Denario an evil squint.
For some reason, Vir worked backwards in the story to Denario's idiotic charge at Piotr. It was the only part that the men seemed to respect.
“Next time, thrust from up underneath,” said the same wounded man.
“Yeah,” Gannick agreed. “You're small. Learn to push up into the gut.”
For about a minute, Denario suffered a barrage of advice that he couldn't possibly follow. Didn't they understand who he was? He'd never learned to kill farm animals or hunt wild game or any of the other skills they took for granted. Denario would have bet that a farm hog would kill him, not the other way around, whether he had a weapon or not.
The advice dissolved into laughter when Moritz picked up the smallest chain mail hauberk and tossed it to Denario. The weight of it bowled him over.
“Heh.” Even Vir chuckled. “It'll be easier to carry over your clothes, accountant. Don't matter too much, though. We'll see you off soon enough.”
“What? You're letting him go?” shouted Alaric.
“Ye hear what everyone thinks,” Vir answered in a mild tone. He probably couldn't be heard by anyone but his closest soldiers. Denario was at the ground near their feet, though, and Moritz wasn't far away either. “They don't like the way he fights.”
“Or doesn't fight.”
“Or doesn't, yes. Why would ye want to keep him, sergeant?”
Denario could see that Alaric felt an accountant was useful somehow. The young officer was willing to hold Denario captive, in fact, to make him help the Mundredi cause. It was lucky for Denario that no one else felt that way.
“It's like you keep saying.” Alaric leaned over Denario as he spoke. Denario started to get to his feet. “We've got to save the villages. The people depend on us.”
“Fair point.” Vir nodded. “But I'm letting him go.”
“Good riddance,” said Moritz. He seemed to regret saying anything, a moment later. But he made himself go on under the glare of the captain. “Well? He's a poisoner and a cheat.”
Denario finally stood. The weight of the chain mail shirt was like a full load of wood in his arms. Wearing it for long seemed out of the question, no matter what anyone said. Vir gestured toward Denario as he staggered.
“Look, men,” he called in a loud voice. The bandits stopped chuckling. “This here is a city bred accountant. Take a close look. Do you think he'd be alive if he fought honorably?”
They all studied him. Denario felt very small.
“Sir, he hasn't been trained hardly at all and yet he's made it through, what, three battles?” Alaric pointed backwards to the Archer's Lament. “I think there are other ways he could be useful, too. With Yannick gone to Fort Dred, we don't have many folks with their letters and numbers. That's probably why we've never figured out a way to see Archer's Lament before. And we can make him stay. He won't get anywhere without us.”
“That's too close to the truth,” said Vir. He gave Denario a look like he was measuring up the accountant in a way that used no math. “All of it. And ye know that I don't care about any of this 'honor' stuff, don't you?”
“Yes, sir,” Denario croaked.
“I could make you stay.”
“Sir. Five boys, sir.” He clutched the mail shirt to his chest so hard that his knuckles turned white. It was all Denario could think to say. He had five boys depending on his income to survive. And Vir knew it.
“Look at him.” Vir pointed to Denario's face. Moritz started to smile. “Look, even now, he's thinking of fighting me. See?”
All of the men laughed. Denario's ears turned red.
“Yeah, that's funny. He's got five apprentice accountants. That's what he's talking about. And he wants to do the right thing, to go keep them from starving to death.” Suddenly, the veins on the captain's neck stood out. He turned on the men who were la ughing. “Are any of ye man enough to do that? Any of ye?”
They fell silent, stunned.
“He's the youngest of ye lot and he's puny but he's ready to stand up for his family. Are ye?”
One of the shorter men, Gannick, had the presence of mind to stammer, “Y-yes, sir.”
“Are ye?” Vir called to the other men.
The rest of his soldiers stood to attention. It shouldn't have looked like much because they were a raggedy lot dressed in spare bits of armor stolen from who knows where. But Vir had given them muscles. Their bodies had force.
“Yes sir!” they shouted.
“Right then, we got business to do.” Vir rubbed his mustache. “If we can drop off the accountant in a town on our way, fine. If not, too bad for him. But we're letting him go.”
He turned to Alaric and added, “That's final.”
“Yes, sir.” The sergeant's shoulders slumped. Denario sighed with relief but he did it with his mouth closed.
Next: Chapter Nine, Scene Two
Chapter Three Quarters of Twelve
Scene One: Rich for Bandits
The sunset over the hills made Denario rise to his feet. He stretched. His body felt refreshed from his brief rest. He was surprised to feel healthy despite the hard bandit life he'd been leading. He'd had to nap on a rock, which he'd never dreamed of doing back in Oggli. Of course, it had helped that he hadn't been pressed into manual labor as Vir had done to most of his men. Instead, Denario had been treated as if he were wounded. He supposed he got away with it because of the bandage on his head.
The other two fellows who were allowed to rest looked awful. They dozed or lay unconscious under the nearby maple tree. The thinner, older fellow had lost four of his front teeth.
A flock of starlings darted by overhead. Denario followed their pattern. They settled into a grove of distant trees downslope that were part of Archer's Lament. There were birds of all sorts here. Denario was paying more attention to them now that he understood the residual magic. He wondered if any of the avian bloodlines were descended from arrows or spears that had mated after they became magical birds. They would have been able to do that while they lived within the confines of Archer's Lament. Maybe some weapons had lived out entire lives there, half a century ago, when the lament was larger.
“I can see the borders of the lament,” he announced.
“How?” Vir had been standing ten yards away and paying him no attention. But he turned. His voice was gruff. Denario knew him well enough now to realize that this was the chieftain's default attitude toward his underlings. He didn't accept anyone's claims about anything. He demanded proof.
“Numbers,” said Denario. He pointed at the ridges of trees. “More birds of a flock land inside the border of the lament than outside. If you watch the next flock settle in, you'll see it, too.”
“Why would that be?” Vir squinted at where Denario had pointed. So did two of the soldiers next to him.
“Don't make no sense,” said the smallest of the Mundredi.
“I think there must have been some pigeons, crows, finches, starlings, and whatnot that stuck around in the original borders for a long time. They laid eggs. Another generation grew up in the lament. Now, those children and grandchildren come back here to where they were born.”
“Hah!” Vir laughed. “Okay, that part sounds outlandish but it's possible. I still can't believe they show you the border.”
“What's so funny?” A distant voice called up to them.
Denario gazed down to Alaric and his troop. They were climbing the hill toward him. Alaric's men had looted their enemies and buried three Mundredi casualties in the soil of the lament. Behind Alaric, four soldiers pulled sledges of weapons and armor. They puffed and sweated but they smiled. Victory had been kind to them. For soldiers, they were rich.
Vir explained Denario's bird theory. All of the enlisted men chuckled. To Denario's surprise, the sergeant didn't find it funny. He stopped, hands on hips, and gave Denario a respectful nod.
“The magic of being a living creature affects our weapons, I can tell you that,” he said. He shielded his eyes from the sun and scoured the treelines. “I wouldn't be surprised if the magic keeps affecting the still-living. Every damn arrow we looted is useless. The flights are off somehow.”
“Th' sergeant's right,” said one of the men. “I'd swear that my spear twitches in my hands, sirs.”
All of the Mundredi within hearing made warding signs over their hearts. It wasn't just Vir who was superstitious, then. The entire tribe of tribes seemed to think of supernatural forces as a realm inhabited by gods and priests rather than the way Denario thought of it – as a loose tradition of semi-science guarded by the bedraggled sorts of wizards you saw sitting next to you at the local ale house.
“It was damn brilliant move, Alaric.” Vir's reassured them. His praise was rare. That made it welcome among the rank and file. They could be sure that their sergeant had done the right thing because their chief had just said so. “You showed good troop discipline. You managed to keep the right distance between you and your pursuers for nearly two days.”
“Sir,” replied Alaric, stiff with pride. His men stood a little taller, too. “Thank you, sir. Anyway, I can see how the accountant may be right. It would be a handy thing if we could see the borders of the magic, especially if no one else could.”
The thought made Vir smile. He nodded and, since there were no more flocks of starlings to watch, he led the Mundredi in dividing the spoils. He had them lay out particular packages and pieces of armor on the ground. It took more than half an hour to accomplish this part of the process. The wounded soldiers woke up and made a cooking fire while it was going on. The whole time, the captain and sergeant seemed to maintain their awareness of the sky.
Finally, a flock of crows appeared. They were traveling up from the south and chose to rest in trees on the south side of their hill. After only a minute of rest, they took off again. They headed straight for the borders of Archer's Lament.
Vir and Alaric turned to watch. Soon, all of the Mundredi did the same, even the ones who didn't know what was going on. Denario thought the crows would land in a grove of firs, which was precisely where the starlings had gone. But in some way known only to birds, they sensed the presence of the other flock. The crows veered away from the starlings just before they landed. They weaved a few trees westward to settle in a grove of willow-oaks. As before, they seemed to line up with about two-thirds of them in the borders of the magical grounds.
“Eighteen on the lament side,” Denario counted along the imaginary line he guessed was the border into the occult. “Nine on the closer side. That's what I think.”
“What do you say, Alaric?” Vir asked. The rest had fallen into confused whispering.
“Gods be damned. Right on the border, I'd say.”
Vir gave Denario an appraising look.
“Eighteen to nine. That's about two out of three, then.”
It's exactly that, Denario refrained from saying.
“Did the starlings land about the same?”
“Yes.” This time, one of the men who had been watching the first time backed up Denario's idea.
“Okay, well done. Now we know a little extra. We can spot the area from a distance.” Vir walked around the campsite, hands locked behind his back. “But that's enough fooling around. Return to your cooking, men.”
The Mundredi surprised him by sitting down to eat a dinner before they divided their loot.
“It's like I said last month,” Vir told them when he had a bowl in his hands. “We're not leaving any of this stuff behind. I'm done with awarding loot that you lot are too lazy to carry. So it's all mine, understand?”
To Denario's shock, the men nodded as they ate, even the scariest-looking ones like Moritz and the other oversized bruiser called Reinhard. They were quite a lot taller than the captain. Moreover, they and the other bandits pushed and punched one another nearly all of the time as they worked. They were an argumentative bunch. It seemed astonishing that they didn't contradict their leader.
“Good.” Vir scowled. “Now, that said, I'm thinking to award a few bits and pieces of my loot to those what deserve it.”
Most of the men took that in stride. The blonde, hulking Reinhard and the equally massive Moritz, though, sat up straighter. They must have known they had come off well during the battle.
To Denario's mild surprise, Vir started things off by telling the story of his travels from Hogsburg to Archer's Lament. He'd already apprised his sergeant of the basics but apparently he wanted the entire group to know in detail. He described aspects of their journey that Denario had missed. In Haph Bad, for instance, he'd loaded his cart with a cache of hidden weapons and armor. In Three Gods, he'd paid the temple with the pennies that Denario had earned by carrying sacrifices to the priest.
Vir became quieter and more thoughtful as he discussed the hike to Fort Fourteen. He allowed as to how he'd felt suspicious of Klaus and Piotr. He wasn't sure which one of them might turn against him until the instant that Piotr shot his friend. At hearing that, Vir's soldiers, who had been draining their canteens of beer, stood up and raised their fists. Mostly, the fist were holding weapons.
“Traitor!'” they shouted. Then they fell to calling Piotr worse names, if there were any worse. It was minutes before the roar died down.
“He may be sneaking around and following us now,” Vir told them. “Although I've been looking for him and I've seen no sign yet.”
“Why would he hurt Klaus?” was the plaintive wail of one of the men. Denario guessed he had been a friend of the victim. “Why did Piotr turn against us? Did the Raduar take his family hostage?”
“No. Piotr's family was killed in a raid by Baron Ankster's men.” Vir dismissed the notion. It occurred to Denario that Vir must have spies among the Raduar the way they did among the Mundredi. That explained why he didn't want to drive them out of his lands. He must have known from them that he had reasons to be suspicious of Klaus and Piotr and probably others in his band, too. “All I can think is, Piotr figured that the Raduar were going to win.”
“But since you've come, we're taking our lands back from them.”
“That's true. But we've had to avoid the main force of the Raduar so far. For us, this fight today was a big battle. We took out some of their best fighters. Even the accountant got one.”
That got laughter. Denario could tell that most of the men thought that their boss was making a joke.
“Thing is,” he continued. “These men were from just two Raduar tribes, the Killimar and the Juttari. There must be a couple hundred other tribes involved in their rabble rousing. We need to recruit more from our own. That's the only way we'll get enough men to face down the Raduar and put a stop to their slaughter.”
“But we're better than them,” Moritz protested. “We don't need numbers.”
“Man for man we're better.” Vir put down his bowl. He sat on the rock next to Denario, elbows on his knees. “They're good with swords, maybe, but not much else. They haven't worked with heavy shields. That's why I've been pushing ye. Ye lot are stronger now. And ye know how to use all of yer weapons. We've even got ourselves better armor than we've had since the empire.”
Every man around the campfire grunted or voiced their assent.
“And now I'm going to give some of ye better than ye already got. Some of them Raduar chieftans have got real armorers.”
“We need to kidnap one,” interjected Alaric.
“Someday.” The captain gave them a grim smile. “Meanwhile, we'll take what we can steal from caravans, our enemies, and other such folk.”
The sergeant lifted the biggest chain shirt they'd taken. It wasn't quite big enough for Vir, Reinhard, or Moritz. That illustrated how much the Mundredi needed an armorer who could at least adapt and repair what they had.
“Now,” began Vir. “I'm going to start by giving a few things to yer sergeant. He'll make his gifts from there.”
Vir, in fact, proceeded to divide up loot in the way he'd told Denario he did. The best armor went to Sergeant Alaric, who put on a chain shirt that made him look like a prince. He got awarded a few other pieces, too, mostly by weight. Then he was told he could take some valuables. He chose fancy packets of food and a silver-handled dagger. The Raduar tribesmen had carried no money on them. Denario found it a depressing but unsurprising fact.
Alaric was told to give out awards to his best fighters. The sergeant called forward Reinhard, Moritz, and a short, tough-looking fellow named Gannick. He let them pick out a few items each in turn. Telling the tale of their fighting was part of the ceremony, it seemed. Everyone admired Moritz's strangling, Reinhard's longstaff work, and Gannick's ability to snap mens' necks.
“'Taint nothing,” said Gannick, quietly and modestly. He seemed like such a likeable fellow. If Denario had passed him on the streets of Oggli, he'd have figured he was a peasant farmer, the kind who bought the first round of drinks for his friends and didn't worry about getting paid back. “It's just like the captain taught us. Anyway, when they're thin, they're no trouble.”
Denario covered the back of his neck for a moment.
Alaric gave out a few other awards, mostly weapons to men who had proved they could use them. Then, hands on hips, he scowled at the heaps of armor laid out on the grass.
“Better to carry some of this on our clothes than to keep it all on the sledges.”
“Aye,” Vir nodded. “We've got more mail shirts than we'll like to lug around, for sure.”
“I don't suppose my uncle Yuri will have finished stitching those two ring pieces together for you.”
“Probably not.” The captain touched the largest fishmail piece with the toe of his boot. “Bet we could get something for Reinhard and Moritz from stitching the biggest of these, though. Reinhard's got just leather now and he's a big target. He needs better.”
“My uncle is just too slow. Vir, we need to grab real armorer.”
“A raid for one?”
“Yes. Even then, Yuri tells me that the Raduar smithies aren't as good as those in the Ankster castle. We need one from Blockhelm, Ankster, or maybe the Kilmun.”
“I've heard about the Kilmun armorers. They use magic. That can turn bad. Anyway, they're too far away to be practical.”
“If you had money,” Denario couldn't resist pointing out, “you could hire an armorer.”
Vir gave him a stern look. Everyone hushed for a moment and Denario thought he might feel the back of the captain's hand. These bandits seemed to expect it. He caught a few expectant smiles on their faces.
“Despite ideas like that,” Vir growled. “The accountant's been useful in his way. Any of this mail fit on him?”
“Sure.” The sergeant pointed to one of the ringed shirts that wasn't rusted at all. “Let's put that short one on the accountant. It's a good size.”
“No!” shouted one of the men who hadn't been awarded anything yet. He'd been been the one to complain about his spear acting like it was alive. “He's not even one of us! And what did he do? I saw him. He was hiding behind our captain when those cowards came running his way. He didn't do any work.”
“He just pulled some kind of trick.” The agreement came from another man who hadn't been awarded booty. Denario agreed with him, too. He knew he didn't need a mail shirt. It would weigh him down on the way to Oggli and it would be worse than useless in the city.
“Why is he even still here?” said Moritz. “Fritzie and Burtram are dead. Dead! And Niles. And Klaus, too. And Piotr is gone, the traitor. But this waldi is still here. Why?”
“Here's here because fights dirty,” replied Vir. “And he was luckier than Klaus. That's the long and short of it. Luck and smarts. He may be a bit of a coward but not without reason.”
“Did he do anything?”
“Killed a man. Saved my life.”
“Him?” Moritz got to his feet and pointed. Denario felt ashamed although, as far as he could remember, he hadn't done anything terribly wrong. He felt like he must have done, though. “If he did, we need to know. And you've paid him back many times over, I'll bet.”
Denario had to nod in agreement. He tried to say a few words to that affect but no one heard him. The rank and file members who hadn't been honored yet all started shouting. Reinhard and Gannick, who had been acknowledged as heroes by Alaric, seemed to join different sides. Gannick stood next to Alaric. He spoke calmly but sternly to Reinhard, who raised his voice in response.
It was Moritz who, in pointing at nearly everyone, dared to point his finger at Alaric. The sergeant saw the gesture coming and stepped into it so that the big man hurt himself. Moritz's teeth showed as he winced.
In an instant, Vir's arms pushed between them. He moved his soldier and his sergeant apart.
“Moritz,” he said. “Get the shirt and give it to the accountant. It's too small for anyone else. Then let's get on with the rest of it.”
The big man paused. He had appeared ready to strike but the captain's intervention gave him time to think.
“Sir,” he said. “You say he killed his man.”
“Yes. And he tried to kill Piotr.”
That made Moritz rub his chin. His thoughts seemed to take a while to reach a conclusion.
“Good for him, then.” He nodded.
“Come on, captain,” demanded Reinhard. “We've seen the way he waggles a spear. How did this little fellow hurt anyone?”
“Poison.” Vir sighed. His men gasped. Denario felt surprised by their reactions. After all, they had just beaten their opponents to death with cudgels and staves. Nevertheless, most of them seemed shocked.
The captain had to spend a minute or two describing what Denario had done in battle. Most of them had seen the tripline, of course, but they considered it a child's trick, not worthy of imitation. They reacted with superstitious horror to the idea of a poison dart. They laughed at how Denario had nearly been killed, too, because he hadn't finished off the man that Vir had left wounded on the ground.
“Serves ye right,” mumbled one of the wounded. He was the older fellow with the missing teeth. He gave Denario an evil squint.
For some reason, Vir worked backwards in the story to Denario's idiotic charge at Piotr. It was the only part that the men seemed to respect.
“Next time, thrust from up underneath,” said the same wounded man.
“Yeah,” Gannick agreed. “You're small. Learn to push up into the gut.”
For about a minute, Denario suffered a barrage of advice that he couldn't possibly follow. Didn't they understand who he was? He'd never learned to kill farm animals or hunt wild game or any of the other skills they took for granted. Denario would have bet that a farm hog would kill him, not the other way around, whether he had a weapon or not.
The advice dissolved into laughter when Moritz picked up the smallest chain mail hauberk and tossed it to Denario. The weight of it bowled him over.
“Heh.” Even Vir chuckled. “It'll be easier to carry over your clothes, accountant. Don't matter too much, though. We'll see you off soon enough.”
“What? You're letting him go?” shouted Alaric.
“Ye hear what everyone thinks,” Vir answered in a mild tone. He probably couldn't be heard by anyone but his closest soldiers. Denario was at the ground near their feet, though, and Moritz wasn't far away either. “They don't like the way he fights.”
“Or doesn't fight.”
“Or doesn't, yes. Why would ye want to keep him, sergeant?”
Denario could see that Alaric felt an accountant was useful somehow. The young officer was willing to hold Denario captive, in fact, to make him help the Mundredi cause. It was lucky for Denario that no one else felt that way.
“It's like you keep saying.” Alaric leaned over Denario as he spoke. Denario started to get to his feet. “We've got to save the villages. The people depend on us.”
“Fair point.” Vir nodded. “But I'm letting him go.”
“Good riddance,” said Moritz. He seemed to regret saying anything, a moment later. But he made himself go on under the glare of the captain. “Well? He's a poisoner and a cheat.”
Denario finally stood. The weight of the chain mail shirt was like a full load of wood in his arms. Wearing it for long seemed out of the question, no matter what anyone said. Vir gestured toward Denario as he staggered.
“Look, men,” he called in a loud voice. The bandits stopped chuckling. “This here is a city bred accountant. Take a close look. Do you think he'd be alive if he fought honorably?”
They all studied him. Denario felt very small.
“Sir, he hasn't been trained hardly at all and yet he's made it through, what, three battles?” Alaric pointed backwards to the Archer's Lament. “I think there are other ways he could be useful, too. With Yannick gone to Fort Dred, we don't have many folks with their letters and numbers. That's probably why we've never figured out a way to see Archer's Lament before. And we can make him stay. He won't get anywhere without us.”
“That's too close to the truth,” said Vir. He gave Denario a look like he was measuring up the accountant in a way that used no math. “All of it. And ye know that I don't care about any of this 'honor' stuff, don't you?”
“Yes, sir,” Denario croaked.
“I could make you stay.”
“Sir. Five boys, sir.” He clutched the mail shirt to his chest so hard that his knuckles turned white. It was all Denario could think to say. He had five boys depending on his income to survive. And Vir knew it.
“Look at him.” Vir pointed to Denario's face. Moritz started to smile. “Look, even now, he's thinking of fighting me. See?”
All of the men laughed. Denario's ears turned red.
“Yeah, that's funny. He's got five apprentice accountants. That's what he's talking about. And he wants to do the right thing, to go keep them from starving to death.” Suddenly, the veins on the captain's neck stood out. He turned on the men who were la ughing. “Are any of ye man enough to do that? Any of ye?”
They fell silent, stunned.
“He's the youngest of ye lot and he's puny but he's ready to stand up for his family. Are ye?”
One of the shorter men, Gannick, had the presence of mind to stammer, “Y-yes, sir.”
“Are ye?” Vir called to the other men.
The rest of his soldiers stood to attention. It shouldn't have looked like much because they were a raggedy lot dressed in spare bits of armor stolen from who knows where. But Vir had given them muscles. Their bodies had force.
“Yes sir!” they shouted.
“Right then, we got business to do.” Vir rubbed his mustache. “If we can drop off the accountant in a town on our way, fine. If not, too bad for him. But we're letting him go.”
He turned to Alaric and added, “That's final.”
“Yes, sir.” The sergeant's shoulders slumped. Denario sighed with relief but he did it with his mouth closed.
Next: Chapter Nine, Scene Two
Sunday, October 9, 2016
A Nerd in a Warrior Culture - Eight Chapters
A Bandit Accountant
Chapter Thirty-Two Minus Thirty-One
Chapter Root Two Squared
Chapter Two Pair
Chapter Full Hand
Chapter Half Dozen
Chapter Fourth Prime
Chapter Two Cubed
Chapter Thirty-Two Minus Thirty-One
- Scene One, Fired
- Scene Two, Something Does Not Add Up
- Scene Three, One to the N Ponies
- Scene Four, A Tip on Poison
- Scene Five, A Desperate Game
Chapter Root Two Squared
- Scene One, Going Fourth
- Scene Two, Speak to the Point
- Scene Three, Fallen
- Scene Four, Friends Like These
- Scene Five, Another Plan
- Scene One, A Bargain Purchase
- Scene Two, New Shirts
- Scene Three, Lucky Find
- Scene Four, Lucky Miss
- Scene Five, Holy Larceny
- Scene Six, Strange Footprints
Chapter Two Pair
- Scene One, Deadly Aim
- Scene Two, Fair Trade
- Scene Three, Space to Breathe
- Scene Four, Familiar Words
- Scene Five, A Foolish Gamble
Chapter Full Hand
- Scene One, Arrested Developments
- Scene Two, New Locks
- Scene Three, Interview with the Butcher
- Scene Four, Hidden Message
Chapter Half Dozen
- Scene One, Revealing Dawn
- Scene Two, A Well-Informed Captain
- Scene Three, The Attack
- Scene Four, An Escape
- Scene Five, Another Escape
Chapter Fourth Prime
- Scene One, A Pleasant Stroll
- Scene Two, Lessons from the Butcher
- Scene Three, Lessons from the Master
- Scene Four, A Token of Affection
- Scene Five, Precise Aims
Chapter Two Cubed
- Scene One, Wrong Darts Again
- Scene Two, Imprecise Aims
- Scene Three, Pudding Nap
- Scene Four, More Lessons from the Butcher
- Scene Five, That's the Job
- Scene Six, Archer's Lament
- Scene Seven, End of a Short Trip
Saturday, October 8, 2016
Being Geek in a Warrior Culture - Eighth Chapter
A Bandit Accountant
Chapter Two Cubed
Chapter Two Cubed
- Scene One, Wrong Darts Again
- Scene Two, Imprecise Aims
- Scene Three, Pudding Nap
- Scene Four, More Lessons from the Butcher
- Scene Five, That's the Job
- Scene Six, Archer's Lament
- Scene Seven, End of a Short Trip
Sunday, October 2, 2016
Not Even Not Zen 52: A Bandit Accountant, 8.7
A Bandit Accountant
Chapter Two Cubed
Scene Seven: End of a Short Trip
The next day, Denario thought of a lot of things he could do to stay safe from the Raduar. Most of them involved hiding behind Vir, running away, or somehow getting back home as fast as possible.
But in his rough, demanding way Vir was trying to help. He stopped their hike to train Denario at every excuse. When the two of them refilled their canteens at a stream, they trained so much that they got thirsty, drank, and had to refill again when it was over. By noon, the wind picked up but the breeze couldn't dry out the sweat from Denario's shirts and leather hauberk. His body had never worked like this before. Vir made them eat bread on the march. That was all the lunch they would get, Denario guessed.
After the bread was put away and the sun had passed its peak, they crested their second large hill of their hike. Near the top, blue jays traded warning songs with brown warblers. The sun pressed down hard enough to made Denario's skin hurt. There wasn't much shade. The trees were maple and poplar, short and young, with lots of grass between them.
Suddenly, Vir hissed, “Get down.”
Denario's body reacted before his mind had time to ask questions. His legs kicked out behind him and he flopped down in the grass.
“What is it?”
“Folks are coming up the slope.” Vir stared straight down the opposite side of the hill that they'd climbed. “Someone's got a sunrise shield. It's the Raduar. Damn.”
“How many?”
“At least three. And they saw us. Ah, crap, get up. Get your spear ready.”
Denario groaned. His arms were tired from the constant lessons. His feet ached and his legs seemed to have passed into a state of permanent trembling. A grunt escaped him as he tried to push himself up off ground. He managed it but it was far, far harder than it should have been.
He rose in time to catch a glimpse of two tall, strong men in armor. He thought he glimpsed the helmet of a third. All three were headed down the prominence they'd crested a couple hundred yards away on the other side of the hill. They were in a position to see Denario, too. One of them was carrying a golden shield and wearing a brown chestplate. That one pointed with his sword. All three kept marching toward Vir and Denario. In a moment, they passed out of sight. Denario had no doubt that they were headed up the hill with murder on their minds.
Behind them came another Raduar, a straggler with no shield.
“Four,” grunted Vir. “They'll be on us soon, too.”
“Vir, the numbers are against us. Can't we just run?”
“No. They'll hunt us down. Anyway, I can see more men coming up from behind.”
“Oh, gods.” Denario squinted at the grassy prominence. Sure enough, there were a couple more bandits. “One has blonde hair beneath the helmet.”
“His armor looks familiar.” Vir squinted at the tall figure.
“Yes, I think ...”
“It's Alaric! That's his clan sign on the breastplate. Hah. He must have won. Don't you see? These are the last of the Raduar coming for us then. We've got a chance to finish the battle.”
“Could we talk to them? Maybe they'd surrender.”
“Don't be a fool. They only came this far because they swore oaths to kill me. And here I am. I'll take the two on the left,” said Vir, deadpan. He meant it. “Ye handle the one on the right. Slow him down. That's all ye need to do. My men are charging up the hill behind, remember. They'll catch the straggler, more than likely. All ye have to do is hold out.”
“Sure. Fine.” Denario was starting to panic. He could feel unwanted nervous energy pouring into him. His hands were trembling. His mind felt clouded. He could barely think of how to stand with a spear.
“Hold out,” Vir repeated.
He was going to die. Denario knew it with complete certainty. He knew that the bandit chief knew it, too. Denario had gotten his run of good luck and now he was about to have bad luck. But he couldn't fight well enough to survive even thirty seconds of misfortune against these bandit tribesmen who had trained with weapons all of their lives. He was completely outmatched.
The utter certainty of death made him think better. Abruptly, he threw down his spear.
“What are ye doing?” Vir shouted. “Ye'll get us both killed.”
Denario danced like a fool to remove his travel pack, the one with the loot from the gamblers. There was a ball of string in it somewhere. He tossed it down next to his spear and started digging into it frantically.
“How much time before they can see us again?” he shouted.
“Not even a minute.”
But Denario had the string. He ran to the nearest tree in front of him, tied a loop around the trunk, ran to the next, tied a loop there, and left the ball behind the second tree. He didn't even have time to cut it.
Vir hopped from foot to foot as he watched. He had the angriest grin on his face that Denario had ever seen.
After he dropped the string, Denario ran back to his spear.
“Yer crazy.” Vir added a few choice words of sacrilege. “Truly crazy. Well, get yer spear point up. Get it up! Here they come!”
The Raduar crested the hill at a walk. Their heads were no more than sixty yards away when they came into view. How Vir had known they were about to appear was beyond Denario. At any rate, the three men in front looked worn. That gave Denario hope that they'd be inclined to surrender. One of them was covered, head to toe, in white feathers. The feathers had been pinched by the creases of his splint-mail armor so that some of them stuck out in jaunty tufts. But he grinned when he saw Vir and Denario. That made him look a bit like a maddened rooster. He pointed his sword at Vir. Behind him, the other two nodded and grinned, too. Their weapons came up, axe and mace.
“Hey, uh, good fellows,” Denario began. The Raduar looked like they were about to charge. “Don't you want to talk?”
“It's him!” the leader shouted. He dug his toes into the dirt and ran toward Vir.
The three warriors let out a blood-curdling war cry. Denario had been right about them being tired. They took ten or fifteen yards to get up to speed. But when they did, they loomed close, fast. These were men who had been born to size and strength. They were utterly confident of their ability to kill. Probably they'd had a lot of experience doing that.
Denario's hands felt wet. He cringed with the spear in his grasp. His fingers clenched so tight on it that his hands looked as white as bones.
The leader hit the tripline first. Before he could fall, his closest companion ran into him. They went down together. The man behind them hit the string, too, about three feet to their left, and he nearly managed to stay upright. He hopped three steps forward, tumbled with the broken tripline wrapped around his ankle, and rolled to a stop in front of Vir's feet.
That turned out to be a bad place for him to be.
Next: Chapter Nine, Scene One
Chapter Two Cubed
Scene Seven: End of a Short Trip
The next day, Denario thought of a lot of things he could do to stay safe from the Raduar. Most of them involved hiding behind Vir, running away, or somehow getting back home as fast as possible.
But in his rough, demanding way Vir was trying to help. He stopped their hike to train Denario at every excuse. When the two of them refilled their canteens at a stream, they trained so much that they got thirsty, drank, and had to refill again when it was over. By noon, the wind picked up but the breeze couldn't dry out the sweat from Denario's shirts and leather hauberk. His body had never worked like this before. Vir made them eat bread on the march. That was all the lunch they would get, Denario guessed.
After the bread was put away and the sun had passed its peak, they crested their second large hill of their hike. Near the top, blue jays traded warning songs with brown warblers. The sun pressed down hard enough to made Denario's skin hurt. There wasn't much shade. The trees were maple and poplar, short and young, with lots of grass between them.
Suddenly, Vir hissed, “Get down.”
Denario's body reacted before his mind had time to ask questions. His legs kicked out behind him and he flopped down in the grass.
“What is it?”
“Folks are coming up the slope.” Vir stared straight down the opposite side of the hill that they'd climbed. “Someone's got a sunrise shield. It's the Raduar. Damn.”
“How many?”
“At least three. And they saw us. Ah, crap, get up. Get your spear ready.”
Denario groaned. His arms were tired from the constant lessons. His feet ached and his legs seemed to have passed into a state of permanent trembling. A grunt escaped him as he tried to push himself up off ground. He managed it but it was far, far harder than it should have been.
He rose in time to catch a glimpse of two tall, strong men in armor. He thought he glimpsed the helmet of a third. All three were headed down the prominence they'd crested a couple hundred yards away on the other side of the hill. They were in a position to see Denario, too. One of them was carrying a golden shield and wearing a brown chestplate. That one pointed with his sword. All three kept marching toward Vir and Denario. In a moment, they passed out of sight. Denario had no doubt that they were headed up the hill with murder on their minds.
Behind them came another Raduar, a straggler with no shield.
“Four,” grunted Vir. “They'll be on us soon, too.”
“Vir, the numbers are against us. Can't we just run?”
“No. They'll hunt us down. Anyway, I can see more men coming up from behind.”
“Oh, gods.” Denario squinted at the grassy prominence. Sure enough, there were a couple more bandits. “One has blonde hair beneath the helmet.”
“His armor looks familiar.” Vir squinted at the tall figure.
“Yes, I think ...”
“It's Alaric! That's his clan sign on the breastplate. Hah. He must have won. Don't you see? These are the last of the Raduar coming for us then. We've got a chance to finish the battle.”
“Could we talk to them? Maybe they'd surrender.”
“Don't be a fool. They only came this far because they swore oaths to kill me. And here I am. I'll take the two on the left,” said Vir, deadpan. He meant it. “Ye handle the one on the right. Slow him down. That's all ye need to do. My men are charging up the hill behind, remember. They'll catch the straggler, more than likely. All ye have to do is hold out.”
“Sure. Fine.” Denario was starting to panic. He could feel unwanted nervous energy pouring into him. His hands were trembling. His mind felt clouded. He could barely think of how to stand with a spear.
“Hold out,” Vir repeated.
He was going to die. Denario knew it with complete certainty. He knew that the bandit chief knew it, too. Denario had gotten his run of good luck and now he was about to have bad luck. But he couldn't fight well enough to survive even thirty seconds of misfortune against these bandit tribesmen who had trained with weapons all of their lives. He was completely outmatched.
The utter certainty of death made him think better. Abruptly, he threw down his spear.
“What are ye doing?” Vir shouted. “Ye'll get us both killed.”
Denario danced like a fool to remove his travel pack, the one with the loot from the gamblers. There was a ball of string in it somewhere. He tossed it down next to his spear and started digging into it frantically.
“How much time before they can see us again?” he shouted.
“Not even a minute.”
But Denario had the string. He ran to the nearest tree in front of him, tied a loop around the trunk, ran to the next, tied a loop there, and left the ball behind the second tree. He didn't even have time to cut it.
Vir hopped from foot to foot as he watched. He had the angriest grin on his face that Denario had ever seen.
After he dropped the string, Denario ran back to his spear.
“Yer crazy.” Vir added a few choice words of sacrilege. “Truly crazy. Well, get yer spear point up. Get it up! Here they come!”
The Raduar crested the hill at a walk. Their heads were no more than sixty yards away when they came into view. How Vir had known they were about to appear was beyond Denario. At any rate, the three men in front looked worn. That gave Denario hope that they'd be inclined to surrender. One of them was covered, head to toe, in white feathers. The feathers had been pinched by the creases of his splint-mail armor so that some of them stuck out in jaunty tufts. But he grinned when he saw Vir and Denario. That made him look a bit like a maddened rooster. He pointed his sword at Vir. Behind him, the other two nodded and grinned, too. Their weapons came up, axe and mace.
“Hey, uh, good fellows,” Denario began. The Raduar looked like they were about to charge. “Don't you want to talk?”
“It's him!” the leader shouted. He dug his toes into the dirt and ran toward Vir.
The three warriors let out a blood-curdling war cry. Denario had been right about them being tired. They took ten or fifteen yards to get up to speed. But when they did, they loomed close, fast. These were men who had been born to size and strength. They were utterly confident of their ability to kill. Probably they'd had a lot of experience doing that.
Denario's hands felt wet. He cringed with the spear in his grasp. His fingers clenched so tight on it that his hands looked as white as bones.
The leader hit the tripline first. Before he could fall, his closest companion ran into him. They went down together. The man behind them hit the string, too, about three feet to their left, and he nearly managed to stay upright. He hopped three steps forward, tumbled with the broken tripline wrapped around his ankle, and rolled to a stop in front of Vir's feet.
That turned out to be a bad place for him to be.
Next: Chapter Nine, Scene One
Sunday, September 25, 2016
Not Zen 189: Flood of Wisdom
"Two inches of rain in an hour," she said. "It's the beginning of the hurricane."
"You again? Stop calling." Aidan lifted his head from his pillow. He grabbed the edge of a blanket that had escaped while he slept to pull it up under his collarbone.
"Well now, you're the council member, not me," said Margaret. "I have to call you for action. When I was a member, I voted to build flood locks for the creek downtown. Then you won the election. And you changed my vote."
"Margaret," he said. If he'd been more awake he might have teased her with one of her nicknames. None of them seemed to bother her, anyway. A groan escaped him. He sounded sleepy to his own ears. "The locks were a shady enterprise from the beginning. They amounted to half the town's budget. The money went right to your friends."
"It's not that big a town, honey," the older woman said. "I'm friends with everyone."
He sighed, said goodbye, and hung up. It was dark. He glanced at the night out his window but not at his clock. He didn't want to know what time she'd woken him. For a moment, he studied the spatters against his pane. They didn't look like much. He listened. The drumming against his roof only sounded like rain. Perfect weather for staying in bed, he thought. He closed his eyes.
Aidan didn't mind constituents, not even his former council rep, calling him during the day. In fact, he sort of liked Margaret. She was like having a second, crankier mother. But waking him up in the middle of the night was too much.
"Sheesh." He rolled into the blankets. A moment later, he squeezed shut his eyes.
Again, his phone started to make noise. This time it was one of his friends. He recognized the ring. It was what they'd chosen for their secret code. How much time had passed? The rain sounded different. The wind had picked up. In fact, it was howling. He blinked at the clock. It was 5:30 in the morning already. The air smelled thick and damp.
"Is this important?" he grumbled as he picked up the line.
"Of course it is," Leticia snapped back. Her voice sounded rough. She had probably just woken up. She was always moving a little earlier than him. "The center of town is starting to flood."
"Ugh." He tried to sit up. "Hold on. There's nothing we can do about, is there?"
"I don't know. Folks are trying." She huffed. "It could be a problem. Another council member got up early. He's building a sandbag dike in front of the library."
"Which councilman? Margaret?" No, it couldn't be her. She wasn't on the council anymore. Leticia was aware of it. She wouldn't make the mistake.
"It's Francis," she said.
"Damn it." Francis Ipswitch was an old, short, pudgy man who the younger generation had failed to unseat in the last election. It seemed totally unfair. Everyone suspected Francis of being as corrupt as the rest. But no one could prove it. No one could prove anyone against anyone in this town, it seemed. The man had even been investigated twice by his allies. That purge had ended more than a decade ago. No payments for votes had been uncovered. And the public had forgiven Francis.
"Are you getting up?"
"I'm already up." Aidan's feet hit the floor. His right elbow knocked aside the comforter. "See you at the library."
"Are you going to join him?"
"No." He was certain he didn't want that even if it was the politically smart thing. Francis was a smug bastard. He'd voted to build the locks. All of the old guard had. They weren't going to let Aidan help them without making him admit they'd been right.
"Then what?"
"Who do we know who has sandbags?" A picture started to form, a plan of action. He rubbed his chin.
"I'll ask around."
"Okay, have them meet me downtown." His eyes went to his closet. In theory, he had boots in there somewhere. He hadn't worn them in years. He had work jeans, too, sitting at the bottom of a dresser drawer. "What's the building next to the library?"
"Across? A church."
"No, I mean downstream of the library is a clinic. But it's low-lying. That's going to be hard to save. Upstream is something else."
On the other end, Leticia paused. Her mental map of the infrastructure was better than his.
"About half a block up, there's the fire house," she concluded.
"Perfect. As you find folks with connections to sandbags, have them meet me there."
The next half an hour moved so quickly that Aidan felt later as if he woke up in front of the firehouse with a sandbag in his hands. Raindrops smashed his face despite his expensive raincoat with its practical rubberized hood. Swirling winds seemed to drive the water everywhere. But the worst was the sandbag itself. The delivery truck driver was a construction foreman. He was twice Aidan's age, half Aidan's size, a short, thin man, and he got out of his truck and watched Aidan pick up the sandbag with a sense of anticipation.
He was waiting for his councilman to drop it. That's what it was. Immediately, Aidan sensed why. The bag was slippery. It was heavy. The truck driver reached into the flatbed, hauled one out, and shifted it with ease. He tossed it over his shoulder. Then he waited for Aidan.
Aidan readjusted his grip. The sandbag kept slipping. Why did this fellow keep waiting and watching?
"Where to, boss?" the man finally said.
"Oh." Aidan flushed. "The other side of the building, near the river. I don't know much about building levees, though."
"Me neither." The gray-haired fellow chuckled. He tugged on the bill of his cap and squinted as if the brim and a grimace together might keep out some water. He strode toward the open doors of the firehouse. "Who does? It's not like we have a chance to practice."
That's true, Aidan thought. He felt the pressure ease from his shoulders. The sandbag slipped. He dropped it into the inch of water around his boots, stooped, and picked it back up before the truck driver could turn around.
Over the course of the next hour, more drivers showed up with more sandbags and tarps. One of them knew how to use the tarps and supervised the stacking and wrapping. The levee, only two feet high at this point, seemed too porous to have an effect. The firehouse's raised floor got soaked. Leticia McCulley and a crew of the downtown office staff arrived to carry more bags. They were the younger staffers, Aidan noticed. One construction crew chief showed up with a truckload of horrible, drenched sand and a passenger seat filled with canvas sacks.
"Make your own," he said. He came from a small construction company that hardly ever did business with the city because of deliveries like this.
On the other hand, although he was pot-bellied, bald, smelly, and late, he was here. He was willing to try. On the side of the new council members seemed to be a lot of folks who had opposed the old guard. Some of them had fought the council for twenty years. They'd been locked out of the town business. That included the owners of two construction companies.
Francis Ipswitch, in comparison, seemed to have the three of the biggest construction crews on his side, the most reliable ones. He had a lot of experienced volunteers, too, including members from multiple churches. The library's sandbag dike looked professional. Aidan glanced to it every now and then to check his own progress. He tried to copy Francis's design but narrower, to save time, and taller.
Once when he looked in the direction of the library, he saw a familiar figure striding his way through three inches of water. Margaret Cheney had dressed sensibly in double-overcoats. Her boots looked tall but fashionable. Only her hair color and the wobble in her step showed her age. Aidan worried for a moment that she would fall in the overflow of the river, shallow as it was on the sidewalk.
"What are you doing?" she called as she approached.
"What does it look like?" he said. "We're saving the fire house."
"Why?" She leaned close. Her voice didn't carry very strongly over the gale. "They drove the fire engines out. There's not much equipment on the ground floor. If you want to save something besides the library, try the health clinic."
"Do you think we can do that?"
"Well, no." Her attitude retreated to being motherly for a moment. "It's too far below the river level. The water is two feet high in it already even with the dike at the library sheltering it. But if you can't stand helping Francis, for gosh sakes, you could at least have your people help the doctors and nurses in the clinic move their equipment to the top floor."
"They've already done most of that. I'll stick with the fire house, thanks."
She stomped her feet in exasperation but she didn't harangue him. Margaret seemed too tired as well to bother the fire house volunteers, at least not while Aidan was watching her. She moved from spot to spot behind the sandbags. The makeshift wall had stopped being porous. It guided away at least a foot of the river overflow. Of course, more water was headed downstream to the library. The library system seemed to be able to withstand it.
Margaret offered advice to the baggers and builders. She said hellos to the people that she knew. As she would have been happy to point out, that was nearly everyone. At the end, she announced she would have her nephew deliver coffee to the fire house as well as to the library.
"She's good," Leticia observed as Margaret left.
"Yeah. But she saw that we're pulling sand from the brick foundry. Francis's group and ours are both draining the same resource."
"Do you think she'll stop it?"
"The last guy from the brickyard said they're pretty much out anyway." He shrugged.
"Why does a foundry have sand?" Leticia's gaze narrowed. She knew there had to be a technical reason.
"No idea." It didn't matter at the moment.
Aidan had run for office on an anti-corruption platform. So had most of his political friends, Leticia included. Although they hadn't been able to unseat a majority of the established members, they'd taken three positions. That was enough of a voting block to put a halt to the crooked deals including this one. It would look awful to the town, though, if the flood locks turned out to have been necessary.
He mentioned the problem to select members of his crew but they already had it in mind. They knew they had to save as much of the downtown as they could. It was a race to get the sandbags up. Unfortunately, it wasn't simply a contest with the older folks at the library. They had to match pace with the river, too.
In the hour after dawn, the water had risen a couple of inches. By midday, it rose at a rate of a foot an hour. It started catching up to the progress they'd made. To make matters worse, the crew ran out of tarps. Those were essential to keep the structure from letting in water. One of the young men waded downstream and slogged back with a bundle of tarps. Where could they have come from? They had to be from the rival effort at the library. Aidan opted not to say anything.
In another hour, though, the sandbag wall started tilting.
"We've got to double the thickness," someone shouted over the winds.
"Can we?" Aidan yelled back. Next to him, Leticia shook her head. She didn't think they were going to make it.
During the morning, Aidan had directed everyone to take breaks. That had practically been his entire job, standing on the back porch of the fire house, telling people to join different teams, seeing who was tired, and telling them to rest. He stopped doing that. They needed everyone to move all out, now. They had too much progress to make and probably not enough time to do it. Doubling the thickness of the wall might not be possible before the flood reached the top of the sandbags.
They dug into the task. Some did it literally. There was a pile of dumped sand on the steps of the firehouse. A woman and two men shoveled it into bags. Other workers ran the bags out to the levee. Letitia accomplished bits and pieces of complementary chores while she held conversations via an emergency phone that was also a radio. Outside, over the wind and rain, she announced there would be no coffee. Apparently, someone's truck had gotten stranded on a hill and it couldn't come down into the water.
Aidan paused to look through the windows of the fire house and out through the open doors to the other side. The silt-filled waters flowing over the road looked to be two feet deep. He couldn't see the sidewalks. Aidan realized that he'd lost track of the flood progress. That was because the temporary dike had been working. In the areas not protected, the river had overflowed its banks by forty yards on either side.
"We're sending the flood right into the library," someone groaned.
Aidan glanced downhill. The assessment seemed to be true. The fire house project was directing water to the north face of the library building, where its protective sandbag wall was at its lowest. Everyone froze for a moment as they reacted to the announcement. Then they returned to their work. What else could they do? It was too late to join the two levee walls.
"We should stop," Leticia hissed in Aidan's ear. She smelled less like her usual perfume and more like river and rain now. He supposed they all did.
"Why?"
"We're not going to save the fire house. Anyway, it's not worth saving. But the library has a shot. They built a thicker wall down there, right from the beginning. We shouldn't send water to their weakest point. They stopped building it high on that side because they thought we'd protect them."
"Crap." He knew it was true.
Everyone on his team kept moving. They used up most of the free sand. The thin, grey-haired foreman that Aidan met in the early morning grabbed a broom. He used it to sweep the fire house steps for loose dirt and mud. He would only get another bag or two out of it.
A woman outside one of the windows, despite standing in the overflow up to her knees, used a shovel to dig up the strip of lawn between buildings. She was dumped the wet soil into a wheelbarrow that kept threatening to drift away in the current. That was innovative.
"Give the library a call. Warn them."
Leticia rolled her eyes. But she called. She didn't want to order anyone to stop, either.
A minute later, the library crew sent out a pair of workmen. Aidan could see them scramble from position to position with shoulder-loads of sandbags. But they were too late. The river, directed by the levee in front of the firehouse, had already crested the top of the library dike. Those workmen could only toss more on top and hope. But they were up to their knees on a strip of land that should have been dry.
Someone on the radio screamed at Leticia. She held the handset an arm's length away. After a few seconds, she turned it off. Her eyebrows rose.
"They're retreating," Aidan murmured.
Behind the failing north wall of the library's dike, the men who had topped off the sandbags tried to back up. For a few minutes, they worked on a second wall, an extension of the library's brick facade. But they didn't have enough time to build it high. Hurrying, one of the workers hopped over the new row of bags. He tripped and fell.
The man's white t-shirt disappeared. His entire body sank under the water. He must have fallen into a hole, Aidan thought.
"Come on," Leticia said. She must have been watching, too. They’d been dividing their attention between their own crew and the library.
The missing man stayed under until his partner floundered over the him, followed by a third man, the short and chubby Francis Ipswitch. Francis and the larger fellow pulled their fallen companion out of the mud and swirling water. Then, without a glance upstream, they retreated into the library. As Francis opened the rear door to the building, Aidan could see that the river water was already inside. The library had been lost.
Leticia said some bad words. She tucked the radio into her pocket and shifted a half-full sandbag. The fire house was out of sand.
Fifteen minutes later, the fire house levee started to topple. Aidan saw it coming. He yelled for everyone to get out of the way. Others hollered the same warning. They scrambled for safety. Only one woman didn't seem to notice the tilting wall. Leticia grabbed her by the arm and pulled her through the back fire house door as the levee broke open. The top pair of half-bags gave way. Then water pushed on that section of the dike like a child poking a finger into a bowl of candy. All of the pieces moved.
In another minute, everyone in the fire house had to retreat up the stairs to the second floor.
As one of the foremen observed, they were trapped. Aidan hadn't thought about it but he was relieved to see that the fire crew slept here, normally. There were cots. He spent a half-hour organizing the area into shape to accommodate everyone. Some of the folks were happy to lie down even if no one could manage to crack a smile.
Aidan was thinking of resting on a cot himself when Leticia took a call. She strode toward him, waved him over, and they sat in the corner by the window.
When the call finished, Leticia closed her eyes. She leaned her head back against the wall. For a moment, her lips trembled as if she were going to cry. He started to reach out to her. But he hesitated. Even now, in rough work clothes, she seemed smartly dressed. He'd always felt a little intimidated around her.
"Was that the police?" he asked.
"No." She turned her head toward the window. "That was the library."
"Oh." He felt awful. Margaret and Francis had to be blaming him for the disaster. "Are they okay?"
"Yeah. Margaret knows someone who knows someone in the Coast Guard of all things, so there's going to be a chopper coming." Leticia wiped her cheek. "It'll drop a rope ladder. We can climb."
"Good," he breathed. "Actually, great."
"She says she blames you for the library."
"Of course." He nodded to himself.
"Francis got everyone to promise not to blame you publicly."
"What?" He lifted his head. For a moment, he studied his friend's face. "Why not?"
"Apparently he thinks you honestly tried to save the fire house."
"Okay, okay." He was trying to figure this out. "I did that."
"Except for the honestly part." Leticia lifted her hand as if she were going to smash the radio against the window sill. Instead, she took a deep breath. She lowered her hand. "It was so stupid. Of me, I mean. But you, too."
"How can you say that? We made the same decision that they did over there!"
"No." Leticia's round, brown eyes focused on him. "Francis took a risk because he thought he could save the library. You decided to compete with him. Those are different."
"They're the same tactic."
"You are so into your heavy rationalization mode." She made a rude sound with her lips. "I used to think you were smart."
"I used to think so, too, until this job." He pulled his legs up to his chest and ran his hands through his hair.
"Well, me, I've had some realizations, last night and today." Her voice softened. "I thought you were making our council strategy decisions. That's because you won your race. I lost mine. But you know, for the last six months it's been me. I've set up the votes."
He nodded. "Yeah, that's pretty much true."
"For a while, I saw you as the hero in my story, not me. That was wrong. I was making the choices. Me. And I needed to have my heart right to make the right decisions. I didn't."
Aidan had no idea what to say. He'd always been the best at finding the right words and coming up with the winning arguments. He'd been a captain on his debate team. He found himself remembering, though, that Leticia had been on the same team, a year older than him, stronger and more sharp-witted than the boys. In the year that she'd been a leader while he'd been a backup, they'd won the state championship.
"Are you saying your heart isn't in the right place?" he asked.
"It is now, I think. Is yours? Aidan, by now you ought to know that how you try to achieve a goal affects the outcome. You can't achieve something without the right motivation."
"That's totally crap." He saw the obvious hole in that argument. "I wanted to stop this town's corruption. It was a vague motivation and it probably wasn’t up to your standards. But I crushed it. I ran for town council and won."
"Why have you never seemed happy about it, Aidan? Mostly, you've been angry. Before you won, you talked about how you wouldn't be like other the other council members. But when you were losing to Margaret, you took money from businesses to secure the seat. You owed your vote to a real estate developer just like you said you wouldn't."
"You can't say things like that," he countered. "There was no vote trading. Besides, Leticia, I followed your guidance."
"I gave bad advice. You accepted it. And as soon as you took the money, you defeated your goal. Because your real goal wasn't to win. It was to win honestly."
He hugged his legs tighter to his chest for a moment, suddenly very tired.
"That's the same mistake as today, really," she continued. "You didn't mean to flood the library. Neither did I. Only we didn't have pure intentions. That's what made for our bad decisions."
"Even if we didn't know what we were doing," he said, leaning back. "Give us a break. Our choices weren't much different from theirs."
"It's because we didn't know what we were doing. It's because we had political intentions, not practical ones. Those are the things that made it different. Look at how it turned out. Look at the choices we made along the way to this," she gestured to the lower third of the window and the overflowing river below them, "this really crappy conclusion. Our wrong thinking went into every little decision and every consequence."
Finally, he brought himself to put his hand on hers. He pleaded, "We'll improve. I’ll have better intentions. You know I will."
She nodded but she pulled her hand back, leaving him with a hand on her knee. It took him a moment to realize it. Then he started to pull away. Before he could move, her fingers returned. They locked onto his. She held his hand against her body.
"You again? Stop calling." Aidan lifted his head from his pillow. He grabbed the edge of a blanket that had escaped while he slept to pull it up under his collarbone.
"Well now, you're the council member, not me," said Margaret. "I have to call you for action. When I was a member, I voted to build flood locks for the creek downtown. Then you won the election. And you changed my vote."
"Margaret," he said. If he'd been more awake he might have teased her with one of her nicknames. None of them seemed to bother her, anyway. A groan escaped him. He sounded sleepy to his own ears. "The locks were a shady enterprise from the beginning. They amounted to half the town's budget. The money went right to your friends."
"It's not that big a town, honey," the older woman said. "I'm friends with everyone."
He sighed, said goodbye, and hung up. It was dark. He glanced at the night out his window but not at his clock. He didn't want to know what time she'd woken him. For a moment, he studied the spatters against his pane. They didn't look like much. He listened. The drumming against his roof only sounded like rain. Perfect weather for staying in bed, he thought. He closed his eyes.
Aidan didn't mind constituents, not even his former council rep, calling him during the day. In fact, he sort of liked Margaret. She was like having a second, crankier mother. But waking him up in the middle of the night was too much.
"Sheesh." He rolled into the blankets. A moment later, he squeezed shut his eyes.
Again, his phone started to make noise. This time it was one of his friends. He recognized the ring. It was what they'd chosen for their secret code. How much time had passed? The rain sounded different. The wind had picked up. In fact, it was howling. He blinked at the clock. It was 5:30 in the morning already. The air smelled thick and damp.
"Is this important?" he grumbled as he picked up the line.
"Of course it is," Leticia snapped back. Her voice sounded rough. She had probably just woken up. She was always moving a little earlier than him. "The center of town is starting to flood."
"Ugh." He tried to sit up. "Hold on. There's nothing we can do about, is there?"
"I don't know. Folks are trying." She huffed. "It could be a problem. Another council member got up early. He's building a sandbag dike in front of the library."
"Which councilman? Margaret?" No, it couldn't be her. She wasn't on the council anymore. Leticia was aware of it. She wouldn't make the mistake.
"It's Francis," she said.
"Damn it." Francis Ipswitch was an old, short, pudgy man who the younger generation had failed to unseat in the last election. It seemed totally unfair. Everyone suspected Francis of being as corrupt as the rest. But no one could prove it. No one could prove anyone against anyone in this town, it seemed. The man had even been investigated twice by his allies. That purge had ended more than a decade ago. No payments for votes had been uncovered. And the public had forgiven Francis.
"Are you getting up?"
"I'm already up." Aidan's feet hit the floor. His right elbow knocked aside the comforter. "See you at the library."
"Are you going to join him?"
"No." He was certain he didn't want that even if it was the politically smart thing. Francis was a smug bastard. He'd voted to build the locks. All of the old guard had. They weren't going to let Aidan help them without making him admit they'd been right.
"Then what?"
"Who do we know who has sandbags?" A picture started to form, a plan of action. He rubbed his chin.
"I'll ask around."
"Okay, have them meet me downtown." His eyes went to his closet. In theory, he had boots in there somewhere. He hadn't worn them in years. He had work jeans, too, sitting at the bottom of a dresser drawer. "What's the building next to the library?"
"Across? A church."
"No, I mean downstream of the library is a clinic. But it's low-lying. That's going to be hard to save. Upstream is something else."
On the other end, Leticia paused. Her mental map of the infrastructure was better than his.
"About half a block up, there's the fire house," she concluded.
"Perfect. As you find folks with connections to sandbags, have them meet me there."
The next half an hour moved so quickly that Aidan felt later as if he woke up in front of the firehouse with a sandbag in his hands. Raindrops smashed his face despite his expensive raincoat with its practical rubberized hood. Swirling winds seemed to drive the water everywhere. But the worst was the sandbag itself. The delivery truck driver was a construction foreman. He was twice Aidan's age, half Aidan's size, a short, thin man, and he got out of his truck and watched Aidan pick up the sandbag with a sense of anticipation.
He was waiting for his councilman to drop it. That's what it was. Immediately, Aidan sensed why. The bag was slippery. It was heavy. The truck driver reached into the flatbed, hauled one out, and shifted it with ease. He tossed it over his shoulder. Then he waited for Aidan.
Aidan readjusted his grip. The sandbag kept slipping. Why did this fellow keep waiting and watching?
"Where to, boss?" the man finally said.
"Oh." Aidan flushed. "The other side of the building, near the river. I don't know much about building levees, though."
"Me neither." The gray-haired fellow chuckled. He tugged on the bill of his cap and squinted as if the brim and a grimace together might keep out some water. He strode toward the open doors of the firehouse. "Who does? It's not like we have a chance to practice."
That's true, Aidan thought. He felt the pressure ease from his shoulders. The sandbag slipped. He dropped it into the inch of water around his boots, stooped, and picked it back up before the truck driver could turn around.
Over the course of the next hour, more drivers showed up with more sandbags and tarps. One of them knew how to use the tarps and supervised the stacking and wrapping. The levee, only two feet high at this point, seemed too porous to have an effect. The firehouse's raised floor got soaked. Leticia McCulley and a crew of the downtown office staff arrived to carry more bags. They were the younger staffers, Aidan noticed. One construction crew chief showed up with a truckload of horrible, drenched sand and a passenger seat filled with canvas sacks.
"Make your own," he said. He came from a small construction company that hardly ever did business with the city because of deliveries like this.
On the other hand, although he was pot-bellied, bald, smelly, and late, he was here. He was willing to try. On the side of the new council members seemed to be a lot of folks who had opposed the old guard. Some of them had fought the council for twenty years. They'd been locked out of the town business. That included the owners of two construction companies.
Francis Ipswitch, in comparison, seemed to have the three of the biggest construction crews on his side, the most reliable ones. He had a lot of experienced volunteers, too, including members from multiple churches. The library's sandbag dike looked professional. Aidan glanced to it every now and then to check his own progress. He tried to copy Francis's design but narrower, to save time, and taller.
Once when he looked in the direction of the library, he saw a familiar figure striding his way through three inches of water. Margaret Cheney had dressed sensibly in double-overcoats. Her boots looked tall but fashionable. Only her hair color and the wobble in her step showed her age. Aidan worried for a moment that she would fall in the overflow of the river, shallow as it was on the sidewalk.
"What are you doing?" she called as she approached.
"What does it look like?" he said. "We're saving the fire house."
"Why?" She leaned close. Her voice didn't carry very strongly over the gale. "They drove the fire engines out. There's not much equipment on the ground floor. If you want to save something besides the library, try the health clinic."
"Do you think we can do that?"
"Well, no." Her attitude retreated to being motherly for a moment. "It's too far below the river level. The water is two feet high in it already even with the dike at the library sheltering it. But if you can't stand helping Francis, for gosh sakes, you could at least have your people help the doctors and nurses in the clinic move their equipment to the top floor."
"They've already done most of that. I'll stick with the fire house, thanks."
She stomped her feet in exasperation but she didn't harangue him. Margaret seemed too tired as well to bother the fire house volunteers, at least not while Aidan was watching her. She moved from spot to spot behind the sandbags. The makeshift wall had stopped being porous. It guided away at least a foot of the river overflow. Of course, more water was headed downstream to the library. The library system seemed to be able to withstand it.
Margaret offered advice to the baggers and builders. She said hellos to the people that she knew. As she would have been happy to point out, that was nearly everyone. At the end, she announced she would have her nephew deliver coffee to the fire house as well as to the library.
"She's good," Leticia observed as Margaret left.
"Yeah. But she saw that we're pulling sand from the brick foundry. Francis's group and ours are both draining the same resource."
"Do you think she'll stop it?"
"The last guy from the brickyard said they're pretty much out anyway." He shrugged.
"Why does a foundry have sand?" Leticia's gaze narrowed. She knew there had to be a technical reason.
"No idea." It didn't matter at the moment.
Aidan had run for office on an anti-corruption platform. So had most of his political friends, Leticia included. Although they hadn't been able to unseat a majority of the established members, they'd taken three positions. That was enough of a voting block to put a halt to the crooked deals including this one. It would look awful to the town, though, if the flood locks turned out to have been necessary.
He mentioned the problem to select members of his crew but they already had it in mind. They knew they had to save as much of the downtown as they could. It was a race to get the sandbags up. Unfortunately, it wasn't simply a contest with the older folks at the library. They had to match pace with the river, too.
In the hour after dawn, the water had risen a couple of inches. By midday, it rose at a rate of a foot an hour. It started catching up to the progress they'd made. To make matters worse, the crew ran out of tarps. Those were essential to keep the structure from letting in water. One of the young men waded downstream and slogged back with a bundle of tarps. Where could they have come from? They had to be from the rival effort at the library. Aidan opted not to say anything.
In another hour, though, the sandbag wall started tilting.
"We've got to double the thickness," someone shouted over the winds.
"Can we?" Aidan yelled back. Next to him, Leticia shook her head. She didn't think they were going to make it.
During the morning, Aidan had directed everyone to take breaks. That had practically been his entire job, standing on the back porch of the fire house, telling people to join different teams, seeing who was tired, and telling them to rest. He stopped doing that. They needed everyone to move all out, now. They had too much progress to make and probably not enough time to do it. Doubling the thickness of the wall might not be possible before the flood reached the top of the sandbags.
They dug into the task. Some did it literally. There was a pile of dumped sand on the steps of the firehouse. A woman and two men shoveled it into bags. Other workers ran the bags out to the levee. Letitia accomplished bits and pieces of complementary chores while she held conversations via an emergency phone that was also a radio. Outside, over the wind and rain, she announced there would be no coffee. Apparently, someone's truck had gotten stranded on a hill and it couldn't come down into the water.
Aidan paused to look through the windows of the fire house and out through the open doors to the other side. The silt-filled waters flowing over the road looked to be two feet deep. He couldn't see the sidewalks. Aidan realized that he'd lost track of the flood progress. That was because the temporary dike had been working. In the areas not protected, the river had overflowed its banks by forty yards on either side.
"We're sending the flood right into the library," someone groaned.
Aidan glanced downhill. The assessment seemed to be true. The fire house project was directing water to the north face of the library building, where its protective sandbag wall was at its lowest. Everyone froze for a moment as they reacted to the announcement. Then they returned to their work. What else could they do? It was too late to join the two levee walls.
"We should stop," Leticia hissed in Aidan's ear. She smelled less like her usual perfume and more like river and rain now. He supposed they all did.
"Why?"
"We're not going to save the fire house. Anyway, it's not worth saving. But the library has a shot. They built a thicker wall down there, right from the beginning. We shouldn't send water to their weakest point. They stopped building it high on that side because they thought we'd protect them."
"Crap." He knew it was true.
Everyone on his team kept moving. They used up most of the free sand. The thin, grey-haired foreman that Aidan met in the early morning grabbed a broom. He used it to sweep the fire house steps for loose dirt and mud. He would only get another bag or two out of it.
A woman outside one of the windows, despite standing in the overflow up to her knees, used a shovel to dig up the strip of lawn between buildings. She was dumped the wet soil into a wheelbarrow that kept threatening to drift away in the current. That was innovative.
"Give the library a call. Warn them."
Leticia rolled her eyes. But she called. She didn't want to order anyone to stop, either.
A minute later, the library crew sent out a pair of workmen. Aidan could see them scramble from position to position with shoulder-loads of sandbags. But they were too late. The river, directed by the levee in front of the firehouse, had already crested the top of the library dike. Those workmen could only toss more on top and hope. But they were up to their knees on a strip of land that should have been dry.
Someone on the radio screamed at Leticia. She held the handset an arm's length away. After a few seconds, she turned it off. Her eyebrows rose.
"They're retreating," Aidan murmured.
Behind the failing north wall of the library's dike, the men who had topped off the sandbags tried to back up. For a few minutes, they worked on a second wall, an extension of the library's brick facade. But they didn't have enough time to build it high. Hurrying, one of the workers hopped over the new row of bags. He tripped and fell.
The man's white t-shirt disappeared. His entire body sank under the water. He must have fallen into a hole, Aidan thought.
"Come on," Leticia said. She must have been watching, too. They’d been dividing their attention between their own crew and the library.
The missing man stayed under until his partner floundered over the him, followed by a third man, the short and chubby Francis Ipswitch. Francis and the larger fellow pulled their fallen companion out of the mud and swirling water. Then, without a glance upstream, they retreated into the library. As Francis opened the rear door to the building, Aidan could see that the river water was already inside. The library had been lost.
Leticia said some bad words. She tucked the radio into her pocket and shifted a half-full sandbag. The fire house was out of sand.
Fifteen minutes later, the fire house levee started to topple. Aidan saw it coming. He yelled for everyone to get out of the way. Others hollered the same warning. They scrambled for safety. Only one woman didn't seem to notice the tilting wall. Leticia grabbed her by the arm and pulled her through the back fire house door as the levee broke open. The top pair of half-bags gave way. Then water pushed on that section of the dike like a child poking a finger into a bowl of candy. All of the pieces moved.
In another minute, everyone in the fire house had to retreat up the stairs to the second floor.
As one of the foremen observed, they were trapped. Aidan hadn't thought about it but he was relieved to see that the fire crew slept here, normally. There were cots. He spent a half-hour organizing the area into shape to accommodate everyone. Some of the folks were happy to lie down even if no one could manage to crack a smile.
Aidan was thinking of resting on a cot himself when Leticia took a call. She strode toward him, waved him over, and they sat in the corner by the window.
When the call finished, Leticia closed her eyes. She leaned her head back against the wall. For a moment, her lips trembled as if she were going to cry. He started to reach out to her. But he hesitated. Even now, in rough work clothes, she seemed smartly dressed. He'd always felt a little intimidated around her.
"Was that the police?" he asked.
"No." She turned her head toward the window. "That was the library."
"Oh." He felt awful. Margaret and Francis had to be blaming him for the disaster. "Are they okay?"
"Yeah. Margaret knows someone who knows someone in the Coast Guard of all things, so there's going to be a chopper coming." Leticia wiped her cheek. "It'll drop a rope ladder. We can climb."
"Good," he breathed. "Actually, great."
"She says she blames you for the library."
"Of course." He nodded to himself.
"Francis got everyone to promise not to blame you publicly."
"What?" He lifted his head. For a moment, he studied his friend's face. "Why not?"
"Apparently he thinks you honestly tried to save the fire house."
"Okay, okay." He was trying to figure this out. "I did that."
"Except for the honestly part." Leticia lifted her hand as if she were going to smash the radio against the window sill. Instead, she took a deep breath. She lowered her hand. "It was so stupid. Of me, I mean. But you, too."
"How can you say that? We made the same decision that they did over there!"
"No." Leticia's round, brown eyes focused on him. "Francis took a risk because he thought he could save the library. You decided to compete with him. Those are different."
"They're the same tactic."
"You are so into your heavy rationalization mode." She made a rude sound with her lips. "I used to think you were smart."
"I used to think so, too, until this job." He pulled his legs up to his chest and ran his hands through his hair.
"Well, me, I've had some realizations, last night and today." Her voice softened. "I thought you were making our council strategy decisions. That's because you won your race. I lost mine. But you know, for the last six months it's been me. I've set up the votes."
He nodded. "Yeah, that's pretty much true."
"For a while, I saw you as the hero in my story, not me. That was wrong. I was making the choices. Me. And I needed to have my heart right to make the right decisions. I didn't."
Aidan had no idea what to say. He'd always been the best at finding the right words and coming up with the winning arguments. He'd been a captain on his debate team. He found himself remembering, though, that Leticia had been on the same team, a year older than him, stronger and more sharp-witted than the boys. In the year that she'd been a leader while he'd been a backup, they'd won the state championship.
"Are you saying your heart isn't in the right place?" he asked.
"It is now, I think. Is yours? Aidan, by now you ought to know that how you try to achieve a goal affects the outcome. You can't achieve something without the right motivation."
"That's totally crap." He saw the obvious hole in that argument. "I wanted to stop this town's corruption. It was a vague motivation and it probably wasn’t up to your standards. But I crushed it. I ran for town council and won."
"Why have you never seemed happy about it, Aidan? Mostly, you've been angry. Before you won, you talked about how you wouldn't be like other the other council members. But when you were losing to Margaret, you took money from businesses to secure the seat. You owed your vote to a real estate developer just like you said you wouldn't."
"You can't say things like that," he countered. "There was no vote trading. Besides, Leticia, I followed your guidance."
"I gave bad advice. You accepted it. And as soon as you took the money, you defeated your goal. Because your real goal wasn't to win. It was to win honestly."
He hugged his legs tighter to his chest for a moment, suddenly very tired.
"That's the same mistake as today, really," she continued. "You didn't mean to flood the library. Neither did I. Only we didn't have pure intentions. That's what made for our bad decisions."
"Even if we didn't know what we were doing," he said, leaning back. "Give us a break. Our choices weren't much different from theirs."
"It's because we didn't know what we were doing. It's because we had political intentions, not practical ones. Those are the things that made it different. Look at how it turned out. Look at the choices we made along the way to this," she gestured to the lower third of the window and the overflowing river below them, "this really crappy conclusion. Our wrong thinking went into every little decision and every consequence."
Finally, he brought himself to put his hand on hers. He pleaded, "We'll improve. I’ll have better intentions. You know I will."
She nodded but she pulled her hand back, leaving him with a hand on her knee. It took him a moment to realize it. Then he started to pull away. Before he could move, her fingers returned. They locked onto his. She held his hand against her body.
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