'Highness?'
The Prince matched his stride as they headed to the front of the estate. 'Let me ask you… No, no, let me tell you: You are a clever man. No need to deny it or hide it. You have a goal. You have a reason for coming here, one beyond your orders. You're too smart to be looking at this as a grand adventure-though you do realize it will be the greatest adventure of your life. There is something more there.'
Owen shivered. The image of his beloved Catherine swam into focus. 'Yes, Highness.' He almost continued speaking. He almost told the Prince his reason, but in glancing to the side, he saw a steely glint in Vlad's eyes that told him whatever it was, it was unimportant.
'Mark my words, Captain Strake. Your mission and its successful completion will be the first step in determining the future of the world.' The Prince's eyes narrowed. 'There will be many who do not want you to succeed, but for the sake of the world, you must.'
Chapter Five
April 27, 1763
Bounty Trail
Temperance Bay, Mystria
O wen stopped by the Benjamin River to wash wurm-mud off his clothes. His jacket and waistcoat had gotten the worst of it, so he scrubbed them as best he could, and washed the grime from his boots. He splashed water over his breeches and, after removing his shirt and boots, waded into the river to clean the rest of him.
Whereas others might have been disgusted, Owen smiled. He almost shouted out happily, but refrained. The unspoiled wilderness didn't need his voice disturbing it.
All the stories he'd heard and read about Mystria had not prepared him for the pure delight of the land. In just one day he'd seen so much. There will be many more strange adventures before I am home again.
A crashing in the brush off to his left brought him around. He swam back to shore and reached for the horse pistol. Owen brought the gun up, his thumb resting on the firestone. He looked toward the sound, steadying the pistol with his left hand. Images of stalking jeopards filled his mind.
Idiot. That predator would be the whisper of death.
There, thirty yards away, a massive beast on long legs emerged from the brush and onto a small sandbar jutting into the river. Brown in color save for its long, buff muzzle, its head was crowned with a huge rack of thick antlers. Its stubby tail and brown ears flicked about. The creature surveyed the riverside, then cropped some of the grasses growing at river's edge.
Owen lowered the pistol and released the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. At that range he couldn't have hit the beast. No matter. Such was its size that a single lead ball wouldn't bring it down. Even a jeopard might think twice.
The monster looked in his direction for a moment, then ambled into the river and swam across the deep center channel. Once it had its feet under it again, the creature strolled toward the far shore, nibbling as it went. It never cast a glance back.
Owen shivered, not so much out of draining fear, as the pure joy of seeing something so different. Yes, it distantly resembled the sort of deer his father and uncles hunted on the family estate, though much bigger. The deer were another product of the estate, more cattle than wild beasts. This, on the other hand, wandered boldly across the countryside as if it were a king.
Definitely regal and apparently fearless.
He almost turned back to the Prince's estate to ask after it, but if that became his pattern, he'd never get back to Temperance before nightfall. He grabbed up his wet clothes, wrung them out as completely as he could, then went back to his horse. He draped the red coat over the back of his saddle, fitting the tails around his horse's tail, and pulled the damp waistcoat back on.
Riding back toward Temperance, Owen looked again at the countryside. The Prince's words resonated in him, so he began his work immediately. If the war on the Continent was to spill over into Mystria, armies would somehow have to be brought together in a cohesive manner and set to battle. It was his job to find a way for that to happen.
Within the first mile, several things became readily apparent. Owen had marveled at, and doubted, the feat of marksmanship that brought the jeopard down. That a man could kill a target at a hundred yards, even with a rifle, strained credulity. Even granting it was during the winter, when trees had been stripped of foliage, Owen wondered how the hunter had even seen the target at that range.
The forests he rode through-and it was all forest save for swaths cleared around small farms or the occasional meadow-barely let him see thirty yards. The beast he'd seen at the river could have been moving through the woods parallel with him, and he'd never see it. He might hear it, but manage a clean shot? Impossible.
The trail slithered through the countryside and doubtless had its origin in a game trail which many feet expanded. In places where water seeped up, or flowed down from hillsides, the road should have been impassible. In those spots, people had cut trees to shore up the road. They laid eight-foot lengths of log across the path, providing a modicum of stability in what would otherwise have been a marsh of stinking black mud. His horse preferred riding around the makeshift bridges when possible. The logs themselves showed some signs of wagon- wheel wear.
Though caution had been taken in the wettest areas, the rest of the road hardly remained dry. Men and horses might be able to tolerate little uphill jogs and downhill runs, but a team of oxen pulling a cannon or a supply wagon would never make it. The single virtue of fighting in the Low Countries had been a system of well-maintained roads that made transport easier. Here, moving troops and supplies would be a nightmare.
Unbidden came the memories of the last campaign on the Continent. The rain had fallen for days over roads better than this track, reducing them to mud. The Mystrians had taken to the hardship better than most. It struck Owen now that might have been because the only way they could feel superior was by refraining from complaint while their Norillian betters wailed and moaned. And the Mystrians hadn't had any qualms about setting their guns aside to pick up axes and shovels to clear routes and shore up roads.
But this countryside would take a battalion or more of laborers to widen roads and build bridges. While that would make troop movement easier, it made surprise impossible. Reaching an advantageous position from which one could engage the enemy was important. If the enemy could tell from which direction you were coming, chances were they would occupy that position before you ever could.
Of course, that is putting winter before fall. Owen had to wonder if there were any suitable battlefields in all of Mystria. The farms he'd ridden past might have, at most, a dozen acres cleared and most had little more than two. That would be enough ground for a battalion to fight, but battalions do not decide battles.
Aside from the cleared fields making a quilt of the countryside, most of the land was far from level. Farmers had terraced some spots, but mostly left hillsides for cattle and sheep to graze. And the ground was filled with stones, as evidenced by those gathered to form walls at the fields' edges.
No, the land was decidedly inhospitable to war. But I will find a way around all obstacles.
Another shiver shook him. He wanted to put it down to a damp vest and the coming dusk, but a profound wave of isolation washed over him. His wife, his beloved Catherine, had always said that he could find a way around all obstacles. She'd intone the words with reverence, and smile at him in a way that made him feel like a god striding the earth.
He shook his head, smiling. I so hope you are right, darling, for the sake of our future.
The sense of isolation bled into caution as the world darkened. He drew the horse pistol and weighed it in his hand. Heavy dark wood, brass fittings binding the steel barrel to stock and brass for the stonelock, the pistol was standard issue for cavalry soldiers. Owen's thumb fell naturally to the blue firestone at the barrel's base.
While Owen was considered a very good shot among his peers, the pistol would avail him little against the hazards of Mystria. He could easily bring the pistol to bear on an enemy, invoke the spell that would ignite the brimstone and thereby propel the lead ball at his target. But that horned creature, or the jeopard, would shrug off such a shot.
And so his mission loomed before him, gigantic and possibly insurmountable, just like Mystrian fauna. If he
