The girl hesitated an instant, then nodded back. It made sense. Next to Woodcarver, Pilgrim spoke better Samnorsk than any of them. As Woodcarver sat down, she took the dataset from Johanna and popped it open. Johanna glanced at the figures on the screen. She’s made notes. Her surprise didn’t have a chance to register, before the Queen was talking again—this time in the gobble sounds of interpack talk. After a second, Pilgrim began translating:
“Everyone please sit. Hunker down. This meeting is crowded enough as it is.” Johanna almost smiled. Pilgrim Wickwrackscar was pretty good. He was imitating Woodcarver’s human voice perfectly. His translation even captured the wry authority of her speech.
After some shuffling around, only one or two heads were visible sticking up from each balcony. Most stray thought noise should now be caught in the padding around the balcony or absorbed by the quilted canopy that hung over the room. “Vendacious, you may proceed.”
On the main floor, Vendacious stood and looked up in all directions. He started talking. “Thank you,” came the translation, now imitating the security chief’s tones. “The Woodcarver asked me to call this meeting because of urgent developments in the North. Our sources there report that Steel is fortifying the region around Johanna’s starship.”
Gobble gobble interruption. Scrupilo? “That’s not news. That’s what our cannon and gunpowder are for.”
Vendacious: “Yes, we’ve known of the plans for some time. Nevertheless the completion date has been advanced, and the final version will have walls a good deal thicker than we had figured. It also appears that once the enclosure is complete, Steel intends to break apart the starship and distribute its cargo through his various laboratories.”
For Johanna the words came like a kick in the stomach. Before there had been a chance: If they fought hard enough, they might recapture the ship. She might finish her parents’ mission, perhaps even get rescued.
Pilgrim said something on his own account, translating: “So what’s the new deadline?”
“They’re confident of having the main walls complete in just under ten tendays.”
Woodcarver bent a pair of noses to the keyboard, tapped in a note. At the same time she stuck a head over the railing and looked down at the security chief. “I’ve noticed before that Steel tends to be a bit over-optimistic. Do you have an objective estimate?”
“Yes. The walls will be complete between eight and eleven tendays from now.”
Woodcarver: “We had been counting on at least fifteen. Is this a response to our plans?”
On the floor below, Vendacious drew himself together. “That was our first suspicion, Your Majesty. But… as you know, we have a number of very special sources of information… sources we shouldn’t discuss even here.”
“What a braggart. Sometimes I wonder if he knows anything. I’ve never seen him stick his asses out in the field.” Huh? It took Johanna a second to realize that this was Pilgrim, editorializing. She glanced across the railing. Three of Pilgrim’s heads were visible, two looking her way. They bore an expression she recognized as a silly smile. No one else seemed to react to his comment; apparently he could focus his translation on Johanna alone. She glared at him, and after a moment he resumed his businesslike translation:
“Steel knows we plan to attack, but he does not know about our special weapons. This change in schedule appears to be a matter of random suspicion. Unfortunately we are the worse for it.”
Three or four Councillors began talking at once. “Much loud unhappiness,” came Pilgrim’s voice, summing up. “They’re full of ‘I knew this plan would never work’ and ‘Why did we ever agree to attack the Flenserists in the first place’.”
Right next to Johanna, Woodcarver emitted a shrill whistle. The recriminations dribbled to a halt. “Some of you forget your courage. We agreed to attack Hidden Island because it has been a deadly threat, one we thought we could destroy with Johanna’s cannons—and one that could surely destroy us if Steel ever learns to use the starship.” One of Woodcarver’s members, crouching on the floor, reached out to brush Johanna’s knee.
Pilgrim’s focused voice chuckled in her ear. “And there’s also the little matter of getting you home and making contact with the stars, but she can’t say that aloud to the ‘pragmatic’ types. In case you haven’t guessed, that’s one reason you’re here—to remind the chuckleheads there’s more in heaven than they have dreamed.” He paused, and switched back to translating Woodcarver:
“No mistake was made in undertaking this campaign: avoiding it would be as deadly as fighting and losing. So… do we have any chance of getting an effective army up the coast in time?” She jabbed a nose in the direction of a balcony across the room. “Scrupilo. Please be brief.”
“The last thing Scrupilo can be is brief—oops, sorry,” More editorializing from Peregrine.
Scrupilo stuck a couple more heads into view. “I’ve already discussed this with Vendacious, Your Majesty. Raising an army, traveling up the coast—those all could be done in well under ten tendays. It’s the cannon, and perhaps training packs to use cannon, that is the problem. That is my special area of responsibility.”
Woodcarver said something abrupt.
“Yes, Majesty. We have the gunpowder. It is every bit as powerful as Dataset says. The gun tubes have been a much greater problem. Till very recently, the metal cracked at the breech as it cooled. Now I think I have that fixed. At least I have two unblemished guntubes. I had hoped for several tendays of testing—”
Woodcarver interrupted, “— but that is something we can’t afford now.” She came completely to her feet and looked all around the council room. “I want full-size testing immediately. If it’s successful, we’ll start making gun tubes as fast as we can.” And if not…
Two days later…
The funniest thing was that Scrupilo expected her to inspect the gun tube before he fired it. The pack walked excitedly around the rig, explaining things in awkward Samnorsk. Johanna followed, frowning seriously. Some meters off, mostly hidden behind a berm, Woodcarver and her High Council were watching the exercise. Well, the thing looked real enough. They’d mounted it on a small cart that could roll back into a pile of dirt under the recoil force. The tube itself was a single cast piece of metal about a meter long with a ten-centimeter bore. Gunpowder and shot went in the front end. The powder was ignited through a tiny firehole at the rear.
Johanna ran her hand along the barrel. The leaden surface was bumpy, and there seemed be pieces of dirt caught in the metal. Even the walls of the bore were not completely smooth; would that make a difference? Scrupilo was explaining how he had used straw in the molds to keep the metal from cracking as it cooled. Yecco. “You should try it out with small amounts of gunpowder first,” she said.
Scrupilo’s voice became a bit conspiratorial, more focused, “Just between you me, I did that. It went very good. Now for big test.”
Hmm. So you’re not a complete flake. She smiled at the nearest of him, a member with no black at all in his head fur. In a kooky way, Scrupilo reminded her of some the scientists at the High Lab.
Scrupilo stepped back from the cannon and said loudly, “It is all okay to go now?” Two of him were looking nervously at the High Councillors beyond the berm.
“Um, yes, it looks fine to me.” And of course it should. The design was copied straight from Nyjoran models in Johanna’s history files. “But be careful—if it doesn’t work right, it could kill anybody nearby.”
“Yes, yes.” Having gotten her official endorsement, Scrupilo swept around the piece and shooed Johanna toward the sidelines. As she walked back to Woodcarver, he continued in Tinish, no doubt explaining the test.
“Do you think it will work?” Woodcarver asked her quietly. She seemed even more feeble than usual. They had spread a woven mat for her, on the mossy heather behind the berm. Most of her lay quietly, heads between paws. The blind one looked asleep; the young drooler cuddled against it, twitching nervously. As usual Peregrine Wickwrackscar was nearby, but he wasn’t translating now. All his attention was on Scrupilo.
Johanna thought of the straw that Scrupilo had used in the molds. Woodcarver’s people were really trying to help, but… She shook her head, “I—who knows.” She came to her knees and looked over the berm. The whole thing looked like a circus act from a history file. There were the performing animals, the cannon. There was even the circus tent: Vendacious had insisted on hiding the operation from possible spies in the hills. The enemy might see something, but the longer Steel lacked details the better.
The Scrupilo pack hustled around the cannon, talking all the time. Two of him hauled up a keg of black powder and he began pushing the stuff down the barrel. A wad of silkpaper followed the powder down the barrel. He tamped it into place, then loaded the cannon ball. At the same time, the rest of him pushed the cart around to point out of the tent.
