Charles Stross - The Merchant’s War

"I think... well, there's some stuff I need to pick up in Boston. And then I need to get back in touch with my relatives, but carefully. How about if I went with you? How long will you be gone?"

"At least a week; it's three days each way by train, and flying would attract the wrong kind of attention." He smiled lopsidedly. "Frankly, I'd be grateful if you'd accompany me. It'd strengthen my cover on the way out-we could traveling on our honeymoon-and if we arrived back together I could introduce you to the neighbors as someone from out west. Wife, sister, brother's widow, whatever. And, to be truthful, the three days out-one gets tired of traveling alone."

"Oh yes," she said fervently. "Don't I know it." It was traveling alone that got me into this mess, that courier run to Dunedin. That, and boredom, and wondering what Angbard was doing funding a fertility clinic - "Before we skip town, though. There are some things I left in my office, at the works. I really need to get my hands on them. Do you think there's any way I could retrieve them?"

"You left your relatives running the business, didn't you? Do you know if it's still going? Or if you'd be welcome there if it is?"

"No." She realized she was shaking slightly. "No to both questions. I don't know anything. I might not be welcome. But it's important." She'd left a small notebook PC locked in a drawer in her office, and a portable printer, and a bunch of CD-ROMs with a complete archive of U.S. Patent Office filings going up to the 1960s. In this world, that was worth more than diamonds. But there was something on the computer that was even more valuable to her. In a moment of spare time, she'd scanned her locket using the computer's web cam, meaning to mess around with it later. If it was still there, if she could get her hands on it, and if it worked- I'm free. She could go anywhere and do anything, and she'd had a lot of time to think about Mike's offer of help, back in the basement of Hogarth Villas. It wasn't the only option, but just being able to get back to her own world would be a vast improvement on her current situation. "I need to get my stuff."

"Would it be-" He licked his lips nervously. "It's not safe, Miriam. If they're looking for you, they'll look there."

"I know, I just need-" she stopped, balling her hands into fists from frustration. "Sorry. It's not your fault. You're right, it's risky. But it's also important. If I can get my things, I can also world-walk home. To the United Slates, that is. I can-"

"Miriam." He waited almost a minute before continuing, his voice gentle. "Your relatives know where you'd go. They might have established a trap there. Can you think of another way to get what you need?"

"Huh?" She took a deep breath. "Yes. Roger!"

"Roger?"

She leaned across the table and took Burgeson's hand: "I need to write him a letter. If the business is still running, he'll be working there. He's reliable-he's the one I used to send you messages-I can ask him to take the items whenever it's safe for him, and have a cousin deliver them to your shop when we get back." Erasmus pulled back slightly: she realized she was gripping his hand too hard. "Can I do that?"

He smiled ruefully as he shook some life back into his lingers. "Are they small and concealable?"

"About so big-" she indicated "-and about ten pounds in weight. They're delicate instruments, they need to be kept dry and handled carefully."

"Then we'll gel you some writing paper and a pen before we board the train." He nodded thoughtfully. "And you'll tell him not to take the items for at least a week, and to have his cousin deliver them to somewhere else, a different address I can give you. A sympathizer. In the very worst possible circumstances they will know that you've visited Boston, my Boston, in the past week."

"Thank you." The knot of anxiety in her chest relaxed.

He stood up, pushing his chair back. "It's getting on. Would you care to accompany me to dinner? No need to change-the carvery downstairs has no code."

"Food would be good, once I get my shoes back on," she said ruefully. "If we've got that much travel ahead of us I'm going to have to break them in-what are you going to Fort Petrograd for?"

"I have to see a man about a rare book," he said flippantly, offering Miriam her jacket. "And then I think I should like to take a stroll along a beach and dip my toes in the Pacific Ocean..."

More wrecked buildings, another foggy morning.

Otto, Baron Neuhalle, had seen these sights twice already in the past week. His majesty had been most explicit: "We desire you to employ no more than a single battalion in any location. The witches have uncanny means of communication, as well as better guns than anything our artificers can make, and if the entire army is concentrated to take a single keep, it will be ambushed. To defeat this pestilence, it will first be necessary to force them to defend their lands. So you will avoid the castles and strong places, and instead fall upon their weaker houses and holdings. You will grant no quarter and take no prisoners of the witches, save that you put out their eyes as soon as you take them into captivity, that they may work no magic. Some of the witches make their peasants grow weeds and herbs in their fields, instead of food. You will fire these fields and slay the witches, but you will not kill their peasants-it is our wish that they be fed from the stores of their former lords and masters. The witches seem to value these crops, so they are as much a target as their owners."

His horse snorted, pawing the ground nervously at the smells and shouts from the house ahead. Neuhalle glanced at the two hand-men waiting behind him, their heavy horse-pistols resting across their saddles. "Follow," he ordered, then nudged his mount forward.

Before the first and fourth platoons had arrived, this had been a large village, dominated by the dome of a temple and the steeply pitched roof of a landholder's house-one of the Hjorth family, a poor rural hanger-on of the tinker clan. Upper Innmarch hadn't been much by the standards of the aristocracy, but it was still a substantial two-story building, wings extending behind it to form a horseshoe around a cobbled yard, with stables and outbuildings. Now, half of the house lay in ruins and smoke and flames belched from the roof of the other half. Bodies lay in the dirt track that passed for a high street, soldiers moving among them. Shouts and screams from up the lane, and a rhythmic thudding noise: one of his lances was battering on the door of a suspiciously well-maintained cottage, while others moved in and out of the dark openings of lound-roofed hovels, like killer hornets buzzing around the entrances of a defeated beehive. More moans and '.creams split the air.

"Sir! Beg permission to report!"

Neuhalle reined his horse in as he approached the sergeant-distinguished by the red scarf he wore-and leaned towards the man. "Go ahead," he rasped.

"As ordered, I deployed around the house at dawn and waited for Morgan's artillery. There was no sign of a guard on duty. The occupants noticed around the time the cannon arrived: we had hot grapeshot waiting, and Morgan put it through the windows yonder. The place caught readily-too readily, like they was waiting for us. Fired a few shots, then nothing. A group of six attempted to flee from the stables on horseback as we approached, but were brought down by Heidlor's team. The villagers either ran for the forest or barricaded themselves in, Joachim is seeing to them now." He looked almost disappointed; compared to the first tinker's nest they'd fired, this one had been a pushover.

"I think you're right: the important cuckoos had already fled the nest." Neuhalle scratched at his scrubby beard. "What's in the fields?"

"Rye and wheat, sir."

"Right." Neuhalle straightened his back: "Let the men have their way with the villagers." These peasants had been given no cause to resent the witches: so let them fear the king instead. "Any prisoners from the house?"

"A couple of serving maids tried to run, sir. And an older woman, possibly a tinker though she didn't have a witch sign on her."

"Then give them the special treatment. No, wait. Maids? An older woman? Let the soldiers use them first, then the special treatment."

His sergeant looked doubtful. "Haven't found the smithy yet, sir. Might be a while before we have hot irons."

Neuhalle waved dismissively. "Then hang them instead. Just make sure they're dead before we move on, that will be sufficient. If you find any unburned bodies in. the house, hang them up as well: we have a reputation to build."

"The peasants, sir?"

"I don't care, as long as there arc survivors to bear witness."

"Very good, sir."

"That will be all, Sergeant Shutz..."

Neuhalle nudged his horse forward, around the burning country house. He had a list of a dozen to visit, strung out through the countryside in a broad loop around Niejwein. The four companies under his command were operating semi-independently, his two captains each tackling different targets: it would probably take another week to complete the scourging of the near countryside, even though at the outset his majesty had barely three battalions ready for service. It won't be a long war, he hoped. It mustn't be. Just a series of terror raids on the Clan's properties, to force them to focus on the royal army-and then what? Whatever Egon is planning, Neuhalle supposed. Nobody could accuse the young monarch of being indecisive-he was as sharp as his father, untempered by self-doubt, and deeply committed to this purge. Neuhallc's hand-men rode past him, guns at the ready: It had better work, he hoped. If Egon loses, Niejwein will belong to the witches forever.

The courtyard at the back of the house stank of manure and blood, and burning timber. A carriage leaned drunkenly outside the empty stable doors, one wheel shattered.

"Sir, if it please you, we should-" The hand-man gestured.

"Go ahead." Neuhalle smiled faintly, and unholstered the oddly small black pistol he carried on his belt: a present from one of the witch lords, in better times. He racked the slide, chambering a cartridge. "I don't think they'll be Interested in fighting. Promise them quarter, then hang them as usual once you've disarmed them." Just as his majesty desires. His eyes turned towards the wreckage. "Let's look this over."

"Aye, sir."

They'd cut the horses free and abandoned the carriage, but there was still a strong-box lashed to the roof, and an open door gaping wide. Otto dismounted carefully, kceping his horse between himself and the upper floor windows dribbling smoke-no point not being careful-and walked over to the vehicle. There was nobody inside, of course. Then the roof. The box wasn't large, but it looked heavy. Neuhalle's grin widened. "You, fetch four troopers and have them take this down. Place a guard on it."

"Aye sir!" His hand-man nodded enthusiastically: Neuhalle had promised his retainers a tithe of his spoils.

"There'll be more just like it tomorrow." There was a loud crack, and Neuhalle looked round just in time to see the roof line of the west wing collapse with a shower of sparks and a gout of flames. "And tomorrow..."

Just as the guard handed Erie back his mobile phone, it rang. "Hey, good timing!" The cop chuckled, Eric flipped it open, ignoring the man. It had already been a long day: back home it was about six in the evening, and he still had to fly back. "Smith here."