Charles Stross - The Merchant’s War

Mike forced himself to stand up. He'd been crouching for so long that his knees ached-and the nervous apprehension wasn't helping, either. What have I gotten myself into? It seemed to be the story of his life, these days. He shifted his weight from side to side, restoring the circulation in his legs, then took a step through the undergrowth around the big oak tree.

There was a sharp cracking noise, a moment's vibration as if a bowstring the size of a suspension bridge had just been released, and an excruciating pain lanced through his left leg, halfway between ankle and knee. He gasped with agony, too shocked to scream, and began to topple sideways. The serrated steel jaws buried in his leg were brought up sharply by the chain anchoring them to the oak tree, and dug their teeth into his shattered leg. Everything went black.

An indeterminate time later, Mike felt an urgent need to spit. His mouth hurt; he'd bitten his tongue and the sharp taste of blood filled his mouth. Why am I lying down? he wondered vaguely. Bad thought: In his mind's inner eye his leg lit up like a torch, broken and burning. He drew breath to scream, and a hand covered his mouth. "O'Neil, get me a splint. Lower leg fracture, looks like tibia and fibula both. Fleming, I'm going to slick a morphine syrette in you. Don't worry, we'll get you out of here. Fuck me, that's a nasty piece of work." The hand moved away from his mouth. "Here, bite this if it helps." Something leathery pushed at his lips. Mike gritted his teeth and tried not to scream as the bones grated. "I'm going to have to get this fucker off you before we can splint your leg and get you out of here." A tiny sharpness hit into his leg near the searing agony. "How does it... eh. Got it. This is going to hurt-"

A sudden flare of pain arrived, worse than anything that had come before. Mike blacked out again. I The next time he woke up, the pain had subsided. That's better, he thought drowsily. It was comfortable, lying down on the ground: must be the morphine. Someone was lugging at his leg, lifting and moving it and tying stuff tightly around it. That was uncomfortable. Something told him he ought to be screaming his head off, but it was too lunch effort right now. "What is it?" he tried to ask aloud, but what came out was a drunken-sounding mumble. "You stuck your foot in some kind of man trap. Spring-loaded, chained to the tree, scary piece of shit. It broke your leg and chewed up your calf muscles like a hungry great white. Fuck, why didn't nobody tell us these medievals had anti-personnel mines?" Hastert sounded distinctly peevish, in a someone's-going-to-get-hurt way. "Now we're going to have to carry you."

"Don't- " Mike tried to say. His mouth was dry: but h felt okay. Just let me lie here for a couple of hours, I'll fine, he heard himself thinking, and tried to laugh at his own joke. The darkness was florid and full of patterns, retinal rod cells firing in aimless and fascinating fractals to distract him from the pain. Medieval minefield, medieval minefield, he repeated over and over to himself. Someone grunted and dragged his arm over their shoulder, then heaved him upright. His left leg touched ground and he felt light-headed, but then he was dangling in midair Shark bite. Hey, I'm shark bait. He tried not to giggle, Be serious. I 'm in enemy territory. If they hear us...

There was a wall. It was inconveniently high and rough! random stones crudely mortared together in a pile eight feet tall. He was floating beside it and someone was grunting, and then there was a rope sling around him. That was rough as it dragged him up the side of the wall, but Hastert and O'Neil were there to keep his leg from bumping into the masonry. And then he was lying on top of the wall which was bumpy but wide enough to be secure, and on the other side of it he could see a dirt road and more walls in the darkness, and a couple of shadowy buildings.

His mangled leg itched.

Consciousness came in fits and starts. He was lying on the muddy grass at the base of the wall, staring up at the sky. The stars were very bright, although wisps of cloud scudding in from the north were blotting them out. Someone nearby was swearing quietly;. He could hear other noises, a rattling stomping and yelling like a demonstration he'd once seen, and a hollow clapping noise that oddly familiar, pop-pop, pop-pop-hooves, he realized. What do horses mean?

"Fuck." The figure bending over him sounded angry and confused "O'Neil, I'm going to have to call four-oh-four on Fleming. Cover-"

What 's he doing with the knife? Mike wondered dizzily. the hoofbeats were getting louder and there was a roar: then a rattling bang of gunfire, very loud and curiously flat not the crack of supersonic bullets but more like high caliber pistol shots, doors slamming in his ears. There was a scream, cut off: something heavy fell across him as an answering stutter of automatic fire cut loose, O'Neil with his AR-15. Who's trying to kill whom, now? A moment of ironic amusement threatened to swallow Mike, just as a second booming volley of musket fire crackled overhead. Then there was more shouting, and more automatic fire, stuttering in short bursts from concealment at the other end of the exposed stretch of wall: we climbed the wall right into a crossfire!

He tried to focus, but overhead the stars were graying out. one by one: shock, blood loss, and morphine conspired to put him under. But unlike the others, he was still alive when the Clan soldiers covering the escape of their leaders from the Thorold Palace reached the killing zone and paused to check the identity of the victims.

Angbard's bad day started out deceptively, with a phone call that he had taken for a positive development at first. It was not until later, when events began to spin out of control, that he recognized it for what it was-the very worst disaster to befall the Clan during his tenure as chief of external security.

This week his grace was staying on the other side, in a secluded mansion in upstate New York that he had acquired from the estate of a deceased record producer who had invested most of the money his bands had earned in building his own unobtrusive shrine to Brother Eater. (Not that they used the Hungry God's true name in this benighted land, but the principle was the same.) The heavily wooded hundred-acre lot, discreet surveillance and security fittings, and the soundproofed basement rooms that had once served as a recording studio, all met with the duke's approval. So did the building's other-side location, a hilly bluff in the wilds of the Nordmarkt that had been effectively doppelgangered by a landslide until his men had tunneled into it to install the concealed exits, supply dumps, and booby-trapped passages that safely demanded.

Of course the location wasn't perfect in all respects- in Nordmarkt it was a good ten miles from the nearest highway, itself little more than an unpaved track, and in its own world it was a good fifty-minute drive outside Rochester-but it met with most of his requirements, including the most important one of all: that nobody outside his immediate circle of retainers knew where it was.

These were desperate times. The defection of the duke's former secretary, Matthias, had been a catastrophe for his personal security. He had been forced to immediately quarantine all his former possessions in the United States, the private jet along with the limousines and the houses: all out of reach for now, all contaminated by Matthias's insidiously helpful management. He had holdouts, of course, the personal accounts held with offshore institutions that not even his secretary had known about-Duke Lofstrom had grown up during a time of bloody-handed paranoia, and never completely trusted anyone-but by his best estimate, it had cost him at least one hundred and twenty-six million dollars. And that was just how much it had cost him, as an individual. To the Clan as a whole, this disaster had cost upwards of two billion dollars. It was not beyond the realm of possibility that some of the more angry or desperate cousins might try to take their share out of his hide.

Events started with a phone call shortly after 11p.m. Or rather, they started with what passed for a phone call where the duke was concerned: although he received it on an old-fashioned handset, it arrived at the safe house by a circuitous route involving a very off-the-books patch into the local phone company exchange, dark fiber connections between anonymous Internet hosts, and finally an encrypted data call to a stolen mobile phone handset. Angbard, Duke Lofstrom, might write his personal correspondence with a fountain pen and leave the carrying of mobile phones to his subordinates, but his communications security was the best that the Clan's money could buy.

When the phone rang, the duke had just finished dining with the lords-comptrollers of the Post Office: the two silver-haired eminences who were responsible for the smooth running of the Clan's money-making affairs to the same degree that he was responsible for their collective security. The brandy had been poured, the last plates removed, and he had been looking forward to a convivial exploration of the possibilities for expansion in the new territories when there was a knock on the dining room side door.

"Excuse me," he nodded to his lordship. Baron Griben ven Hjalmar, causing him to pause in mid-flow: "Enter!"

It was Carlos, one of his security detail, looking apologetic. "The red telephone, my lord. It's ringing in your office."

"Ah." The duke glanced at his dining companions: "I must apologize, perforce, but this requires my immediate attention. I shall return presently."

"Surely, sir." Baron ven Hjalmar raised his glass: "By all means!" He smiled indulgently.

The duke rose and left the table without further ado. On his way out, Carlos took up the rear. "Who is it?" he asked as soon as the dining room door had closed behind them.

"The officer of the day in the Thorold Palace has just declared an emergency. The signal is Tango Mike. He crossed over to report in person. He's on the phone now."

The duke swore. "Who is he? On the duty roster?" The officer of the day was the Clan member entrusted with ensuring the security of Clan members in their area, and he would not cross over to the other world to make a report-effectively abandoning their post, if only for a few minutes-without a very good reason.

"I believe it's Oliver, Earl Hjorth."

The duke swore again. Then they were at his office door. He picked up the telephone before he sat down. "Put him through." His face fell unconsciously into an odd, pained expression: Oliver was a member of his half-sister's mother's coterie, an intermittent thorn in his side-but not one that he could remove without unpleasant consequences. What made it even worse was that Oliver was competent and energetic. If it wasn't for Hildegarde's malign influences, he might be quite useful... "Good evening, Baron. I gather you have some news for me."

A quarter of an hour later, when he put the phone down, the duke's expression was, if anything, even more stony. He turned to stare at Carlos, who stood at parade rest by the door. "Please inform their lordships ven Hjalmar and Ijsselmeer that I deeply regret to inform them that there has been a development that requires-" He paused, allowing his head to droop. "Let me rephrase. Please inform them that an emergency has developed and I would appreciate their assistance, in their capacity as representatives of the Post Office board, in conducting a preliminary assessment of the necessary logistic support for execution of the crisis plan in the affected areas. Then bring them here." He sighed deeply, then looked up. "Go on."