The Heretic

“We didn’t much like the idea, you know,” said the sergeant. “Thursday school and all that.”

“Did you do it?” Abel said.

“Corning gunpowder beyond priming grain strength is a Stasis violation,” Maday said, “but we did as you suggested and held a seance with the Lady.” Maday smiled broadly, revealing three missing teeth. His mouth looked like a portcullis. “And what do you know, we all had a vision of the Fifty Days and Fifty Nights, her suckling baby Zentrum, even though she was dead in body. And we took it as a sign that sometimes there were exceptions, you know. That she’d told us that corning gunpowder beyond priming grain is a Stasis violation only in the Land. She came to me, she did, and told me not only to go ahead, but to keep it a bit damp to make the process go easier, just like you said before. Irisobrian provides.”

“The Lady provides,” Abel answered back. “Alaha Zentrum.”

Observe:

A line of men on a rock slab. They were sitting in the sun under broad-brimmed hats and makeshift head scarves and spending a day, all of it, every sunlit hour, carefully tap, tap, tapping at gunpowder with a pestle made of minie balls pounded together. Stones were too coarse grained, and rifle metal wouldn’t do. The lead gave no spark. One problem: this required using every minie ball in the cartridge box to make a useful-sized pestle. No more bullets for the duration.

Watch upon watch of sifting the powder, winnowing it like grain through linen gauze. Tap, tap, tapping it again.

The Lady provides patience, I guess, Abel thought.

Beliefs are what men fight for, Raj said. Laugh at the beliefs, maybe, but not at the believers.

By the second day, the tapping had worn shallow tanajas into the slab upon which the Scouts worked.

Weldletter and the sergeants loaded the powder into the cases, and Weldletter had his team set them out. They’d completed the task not long before the first echoes traveling up the canyon had let them know Abel’s troop was on its way.

“Tham Redlanders up coming!” shouted one of the other sergeants, Moreau. Abel’s attention snapped back to the present.

He dismounted and strode to the rim’s edge. Sure enough, the Blaskoye had stayed on the trail, had relentlessly pursued them up the canyon, expecting, no doubt to lock them in a corner and slaughter them. Whether or not they knew of the exit path Abel and his Scouts had taken, it wasn’t going to matter soon.

“Fire in the hole,” shouted another voice from below.

“Fire in the hole,” shouted another, and another.

Then the men burst out into the open on the path, fleeing from the conflagration they’d prepared in the canyon below.

Rising behind them, up into the sky, a single trail of gunsmoke, like a line drawn straight up into the sky. A sizzling sound accompanied the sight, like wind through tiny leaves.

Then, as Abel watched the gunsmoke line write itself out, it began to spiral, twist in two, then three directions, as if a giant invisible hand were losing control of a pen tip, and scrawling all over a papyrus tablet.

Suddenly, the end of the line exploded.

Analysis indicates one of the explosive canisters under-loaded, Center reported. Insufficiently placed and weighted, as well. This canister burned from its end up and made itself into the rocket we just witnessed.

A rocket? Abel thought. Like the ships that travel the stars?

Not quite.

Well, whatever it is, I like it!

Then he was back in reality. In the same instant that the rocket exploded, so did the canyon below Abel. The explosions were muted, heard from this position above the absorbing canyon walls, but from the great blanketing cloud that arose below, Abel knew they’d been powerful. Then he saw that the cloud had not been caused by exploding gunpowder at all, but by the avalanches those explosions had set off.

Weldletter had placed the explosive canisters in masterfully chosen locations. When the cloud settled, Abel saw that the pathway was sealed. What had been an escape path was now boulder-filled and impassable. It would take them at least a day, and leagues and leagues of travel, to backtrack and go around.

From below came the sound of gunfire and shouting men. The surviving Blaskoye were enraged. And completely ineffective. They could not come up. They would have to ride around.

“I veel find you, Dashiaaaaaaan,” came the loudest call. “I veel come for you. Dashiaaan! Dashiaaan!”

Abel realized Maday was telling him more, nattering on in the usual good-natured Scout’s litany of complaints. “Worked, thank the Lady. And us two days at it. I can’t say the men much liked sitting around taking mortar to the stuff. And then I had to tell them to unwrap their cartridges, too, that we needed it all, and that they’d be going home with only their bows to depend on. We’re plumb out of powder, Lieutenant.”

“Understood,” Abel said. He turned wearily back to his dont. “We also need to ride to water.”

“Weldletter says Ruddy Seep’s three leagues from here, but that’s what they’d expect.”

“Yes, you’re right.”

“A half day is that little sunken spring we passed on our way out, the one on the plain with the single tree.”

“We’ll go there.”

“Can you make it another half day?”

Abel shook his head to clear it. Good question, could he? Yes, but could the donts?

I guess we’ll find out how good Scout dont stock really is on this trip, he thought.

“We head for the single-tree spring,” he said. “Pass the word.”

He tried to climb back onto his dont, found he could not muster the strength the first time or the second.

But when he tried the third time, a hand reached down to help. The girl, Loreilei, held to the saddle with one hand, grabbed him by the sleeve with the other and pulled. Her strength was not great, but it was the little extra he needed. He slung his leg over and was on.

“Thank you,” he said to her, but she did not reply.

“Mount up!” he called out to all. “No rest for you sorry layabouts. I’ll get a day’s work out of you yet.” He nodded at his weary, but smiling, men.

His sergeants rode up beside him.

“On your command,” said Maday. “We’re ready.”

A good reconnaissance. There will be much to report to your father, said Center. I have almost reached my conclusions, as well. We have a chance now.

Good? said Raj. The boy circled the Blaskoye like J.E.B. Stuart for Lee, and you’re calling it good. I’d call it spectacular. I’m proud of the lad!

Abel grinned wearily in the saddle.

I also have reached a few conclusions, he thought.

And what are those, lad?

I know what I want now, Abel thought.

Rockets, Abel thought. I liked that. I want them. And those guns that load from behind you have been telling me about. No more of this awkward reloading when men are trying to kill us.

Yes, Center replied. With an invasion timeline now in place, variable cascade analysis indicates your conclusions are correct. It is time for tiered innovation if we are to survive beyond the next year. This must be done carefully. There will be setbacks. They will have to be dealt with appropriately, perhaps ruthlessly.

Abel was barely listening.

One more thing, he thought. There is one more thing I want. I don’t