March Upcountry

“You should be flat on your back, Cord,” Roger said with another headshake.

“I grow weary of lying about like a worm,” the Mardukan countered. “How, what?”

“Not one to be distracted, are you?” Roger smiled. “I was wondering how the Marines handle it. How they handle the fear and the death. Not just ours, God knows I got enough Marines killed here. But the Kranolta. We’ve ended them as a tribe, Cord. Piled them up against the wall as if they were a ramp. They . . . don’t seem affected by that.”

“Then you have not eyes, Young Prince,” the shaman countered with a grunt. “Look at young Julian. Your people, too, have the laughing warrior who hides his pain with humor, as did our Denat, he who I lost to the atul. Always he faced danger with laughter, but it was a shield to the soul. I’m sure that he jested with the very atul as it ate him. Or young Despreaux. So young, so dangerous. I am told that she is beautiful for a human. I don’t see it myself; she lacks . . . many things. Horns for one. And her shield is that face like a stone. She holds her pain in so hard it has turned her to a stone, I think.”

Roger tilted his head to the side and played with a stray lock of hair. “What about . . . Pahner? Kosutic?”

“Ah,” Cord grunted. “For one, you notice that though they are capable warriors, they control from afar. But mostly they have learned the tricks. The first trick is to know that you are not alone. While I was in the cavern still, Pahner came to visit, to see the wounded, and we talked. He is a font of wisdom is your captain. We talked of many things but mostly we talked of . . . song. Of poetry.”

“Poetry?” Roger laughed. “What in the hell would Pahner be doing talking about poetry?”

“There is poetry and poetry, my Prince,” the shaman said with a grunt. “Ask him about ‘The Grave of the Hundred Dead.’ Or ‘Recessional.’ Or ‘If.’ ” The shaman rolled over to find a more comfortable position. “But ask him in the morning.”

“Poetry?” Roger said. “What in hell would I want with poetry?”

“Eleonora?” Roger asked. The chief of staff was on her way to another of the numerous meetings she had arranged with the Voitanese forces. She apparently considered herself a one-person social reengineering team, or at least the best equivalent available. She was determined that when she left, the Voitanese would have the strongest governmental structure available to the situation. Since that was probably a rational oligarchy it fit in well with the Voitanese plans.

“Yes, Ro . . . Your Highness?” she asked hurriedly. Her pad was almost overloaded with notes and there were only a few days left to get everything in place. Whatever Roger wanted had better be quick.

“Have you ever heard of a poem called ‘The Grave of the Hundred Dead?’ ”

The chief of staff stopped and thought then consulted her toot. “The name is familiar, but I can’t quite place it.”

“Or ‘Recessional.’ ” Roger’s brow wrinkled but he couldn’t think of the other. “Or something like ‘If?’ ”

“Ah!” the historian’s face cleared. “Yes. That one I have. Why?”

“Uh,” Roger stopped, caught. “Would you believe Cord recommended it?”

O’Casey laughed merrily. It was a twinkling sound that Roger realized he had never heard. “Not without some sort of body transference, Your Highness.”

“I think he heard of it from someone,” Roger explained stiffly.

“Set your pad,” she said with a smile and transferred the file.

There was a blip and Roger looked at the translation remark on his pad. “You keep it on your toot?” Roger asked, surprised.

“Oh, yes,” O’Casey said as she started back down the path. “I love that poem. There are very few pre- space poets that have even one poem known. Kipling has to be right up there with the Earl of Oxford. You might see Captain Pahner. I believe Eva said he has the collected works in his toot.”

Warrant Officer Dobrescu tossed the chunk of reddish ore from hand to hand as he gazed up at the towering wall of red and black.

And, lo, the answers come clear, he thought.

The last two weeks had been good for the company. The troops had been given time to rest and get some separation from the terrible losses inflicted in the battle. Since Voitan was going to be held by “friendly” forces, Captain Pahner had decided to leave all of their dead. If they made it through alive, they would come back for them. If they fell along the way, these Marines, at least, would be honored.

The Voitanese had opened a vault in their own catacombs, which had been looted by the Kranolta. The sepulcher had been the resting place of the city’s royal guards before its fall, and there were still a few of their bones moldering in the back. The Marines had been bagged but not burned and laid to rest along with their brethren. Sergeant Major Kosutic, as the only registered chaplain in the company, had performed the ceremony, and if any of the Marines had objected to their honored dead being prayed over by a High Priestess of Satan, they hadn’t mentioned it.

The pause had also given the wounded time to recover, and a regimen of heavy eating and bed rest had done wonders. All but the most critically injured were back on their feet and training, and, from a purely selfish point of view, it had given Dobrescu time to scratch a few itches.

The first itch had to do with the local steel. The point had been made again and again that only the “water steels” made in Voitan were of the finest quality. That steels from other areas, even if processed in what they thought was the same way, did not possess the “spirit” of Voitan’s Damascene steels.

The second itch had to do with the Mardukan biology. Something had been bugging him ever since they landed and ran into D’Nal Cord, and the downtime and necessity of working on Mardukan wounded, as well as human, had given him the opportunity to do a little studying. What he’d discovered would startle most of the company, but the warrant thought it was hilarious. He hated it when people made assumptions.

Time to go watch some people cringe, he thought with an evil smile.

“So the steel has a high percentage of impurities,” O’Casey said. “So what?”

“It’s not just that it has a high percentage,” Dobrescu said, consulting his pad. “It’s what the impurities are.”

“I don’t know what this ‘impurity’ is,” Targ said.

“That’s going to be difficult to explain,” Eleanora said with a frown. “It involves molecular chemistry.”

“I’ll give it a shot,” Roger said. “Targ, you know how when you first smelt the ore, you get ‘black iron.’ The brittle stuff, right?”

“Yes,” T’Kal Vlan agreed. “It’s what was given to Cord’s tribe, that broke so easily.”

“You have to remelt it,” Cord put in. The wounded Mardukan was seated behind Roger, as was proper, but stretched out on cushions to save his ravaged legs. “Very hot. It’s hard and expensive, which is why black iron is cheaper.”

“Okay,” Roger went on. “Then when you heat it in a crucible, ‘very hot,’ as Cord said, you get a material that’s gray and very easy to work.”

“Iron,” Targ said. “So?”

“That’s what we call ‘wrought iron,’ and it actually is almost pure iron. Iron is a molecule. Black iron is iron with carbon, which is what’s in charcoal, mixed into it.”

“What about steel?” T’Kal Vlan asked. “And why do I think we need an ironmaster here?”

“Somebody else can explain it later,” Roger said with a laugh. “The point is that iron is a pure element, a kind of molecule. Is that sort of clear?”

“I hear the words,” Targ replied, “but I don’t know their meaning.”

“That would be hard to really explain without teaching you basic chemistry first,” Dobrescu said. “You’re just going to have to take our word for most of this and I’m not sure how much you can do with it.”

“The point is that steel is also iron with carbon in it,” Roger said. “But less carbon, and heated to a much higher temperature.”

“That much is well known to our master smiths,” Targ said, with a human-style shrug. “Yet mere heat and