War Maid's choice

Chapter Twenty-One

“Now that’s impressive,” Leeana observed the next morning as Gayrfressa and Walsharno rounded a last bend and emerged in a clearing in the middle of a forest of towering pines.

“Aye, that it is,” Bahzell replied, and it wasn’t the simple agreement it might have been. Unlike his wife-and, oh, but that word tasted good in his thoughts! — he’d seen the plans, although the last time he’d actually been here, there’d been nothing to see but trees. He’d known exactly what to expect…and his expectations had fallen well short of the reality anyway.

The pine forest about them covered a stretch of gently rolling hills on either side of the Balthar River. Anywhere except atop the Wind Plain, they probably wouldn’t have been dignified with the name of “hills” at all. But they were high enough to be noticeable, heaved up by whatever long-ago cataclysm had diverted the Balthar from the Gullet, and they sloped steadily downhill to the southeast until they met the Bogs that diversion had created. The trees themselves were enormous, rising out of a gauzy layer of early mist the sun had yet to burn away, but they’d been cleared and the stumps had been rooted out from an area at least five hundred yards across.

That clearing wasn’t what had evoked Leeana’s comment, however. No, what she was looking at was the gaping hole at its center. That hole was a rectangle, sixty-five feet by thirty feet, sloping gently but inevitably downward into the lantern-lit depths at a three-degree angle. The last few yards, where it passed through clay and soil, were lined with brick and concrete, but beyond that it was bored out of smoothly polished stone, and a constant, gentle pressure blew out of it to greet them as they approached it.

“Why is there so much breeze coming out of it?” she asked.

“You’ll have to ask that of Serman, if it’s a complete answer you want,” Bahzell said wryly. “It’s often enough he’s tried to explain it to me, but I’ll not pretend I actually understand it. As nearly as I’ve been able to lay hands on it, even air is after having its own weight, and the thicker it is, the more it’s after weighing. And the air at the foot of the Escarpment is just a mite thicker than it is up here where you Sothoii are after living. So the weight as presses down on all that air down below is after squeezing it up through the tunnel.”

Leeana looked at him as if she suspected him of making sport of her, and Walsharno snorted.

‹ I was there when Serman explained it to him. All the times Serman explained it to him,› the courser told her. ‹ He got it pretty much straight. Of course, Serman is one of those two-foots who can’t seem to explain anything without numbers. Lots of numbers.›

‹ Which must have been dreadfully confusing for someone who can’t even read,› Gayrfressa observed to no one in particular. Walsharno ignored her rather pointedly, and the mare tossed her head in the equine equivalent of a laugh.

They’d continued towards the opening while they spoke, and now they halted as the score or so of hradani and dwarves laboring to build the brick housing which would protect the upper end of the tunnel from wind and weather-and especially from ice and snow, given Wind Plain winters-when it was finished looked up and saw them.

“Prince Bahzell!” one of the hradani called, laying aside his trowel and walking across to greet them. He wiped his powerful, calloused hands on his canvas work apron, then reached up far enough-it was a stretch, even for a Horse Stealer hradani-to clasp forearms with Bahzell. “Sure, and you might have warned us as you were coming,” he said with the informality of a member of Bahzell’s own clan.

“So I might, if I’d been minded to,” Bahzell agreed cheerfully. “But it was in my mind as how I might surprise you and your lads lazing around up here if it so happened you weren’t expecting me, Harshan!”

“Lazing around, is it?” Harshan grinned up at him. “Not so likely with Serman cracking the whip!”

“And a true terror he is.” Bahzell’s foxlike ears twitched with amusement. “Given the choice, I’d sooner face dog brothers than a dwarf with a schedule to meet!”

“You’d not find yourself alone in that,” Harshan said with feeling. His eyes drifted sideways to Leeana, and they might have widened just a bit over the gleaming bracelets clasped around her and Bahzell’s wrists, but he simply nodded courteously to her, then cocked an eyebrow at Bahzell. “And this lady would be?”

“Leeana Hanathafressa,” Bahzell replied. “My wife.”

It was the first time he’d said those two words out loud, and they tasted even better that way then they had in the privacy of his own thoughts.

Harshan’s ears flattened and he pursed his lips as if to whistle in astonishment, then visibly thought better of it.

“Congratulations, Your Highness,” he said, addressing Bahzell with atypical formality, and bowed deeply. “And to you, Milady,” he added, bowing to Leeana in turn. “May you be having many years together, and may your joy grow greater with each of them.”

“Thank you,” she responded a bit wryly. “But I’m no ‘milady,’ I’m afraid. War maids don’t have much use for titles.”

“Well, that’s as may be,” Harshan said in a more normal tone, his ears coming fully upright again, and smiled at her. “Happens hradani don’t much bother ourselves with such as that. You’ve wed Prince Bahzell, and that’s enough and more than enough for the likes of me. It’s not a thought as we’d like to be going to his head, but we’re a mite fond of him in Hurgrum, and if you’re his lady, then you’re after being our lady, as well. Which isn’t to be saying I’d not give good kormaks to see him explaining to his lady mother how it was he came to get himself married with nary a word to her at all, at all, as to how he meant to. I’ve no doubt she’ll be pleased to see you, Milady, but I’m thinking there’s a word or three as might just be singeing someone else’s ears.”

“I’ve no doubt of that,” Bahzell sighed philosophically. “But in the meantime, we’d best be moving along smartly if we’re to reach Hurgrum before nightfall.”

“Aye, so you had,” Harshan agreed, and bowed to Leeana again. “He can be a mite slow sometimes, Milady, but a sharp rap to the skull usually gets his attention. Mind you use something besides your hand, now, though! I’ve heard as how broken knuckles take time to heal.”

“I’ll remember that!” Leeana promised as Gayrfressa and Walsharno started forward once more.

The other workers looked up from the courses of masonry they were laying to nod or wave as they passed. Some of them called out greetings of their own, and then the coursers were into the steadily descending tunnel, and Leeana looked about her in amazement as Gayrfressa’s freshly shod hooves clattered on the stone floor.

“We heard rumors about this in Kalatha,” she said, “but I never could have imagined something like this! How long is the tunnel, Bahzell?”

“Just more than a league and a half,” Bahzell replied, and found himself looking at the tunnel through fresh eyes in the face of her amazement. “The tunnel head is after being the best part of five miles back from the Escarpment’s edge, and it climbs a mite over three feet in every hundred. I’d thought as how it would be shorter, but old Kilthan and Serman wanted a shallower grade, and as Chanharsa was after doing all the hard work, we let them have their way.”

“I can see why some of Father’s critics thought he was out of his mind to even contemplate this.” Leeana shook her head. “Even seeing it, it’s hard to believe it’s real!”

“Oh, it’s real enough to be going on with, lass!” Bahzell chuckled. “And it’s a mite hard for someone as grew up in Hurgrum to believe, as well. Though not so hard, in some ways, as having a lake lapping up against the edge of town!”

Leeana nodded, but she was still looking at the tunnel as if trying to take in its reality. She asked Gayrfressa to move closer to one of the square channels cut into the tunnel’s floor and the mare obliged. Gayrfressa was clearly doing her best to look unimpressed, taking the enormity of the engineering project in stride, but Bahzell’s ears twitched with gentle amusement as he sensed her true reaction. She was just as taken aback by its sheer scale as Leeana.

Leeana peered down into the channel, then looked back at Bahzell. It was dim in the tunnel, with the entrance shrinking steadily into a brightly lit dot behind them. The light level was low enough for the gleam from Gayrfressa’s right eye socket to be clearly visible, but the lanterns and regularly spaced air shafts gave more than enough illumination for a hradani’s eyes to see Leeana’s raised eyebrows.

“There’s two of the biggest waterwheels ever you’ve seen down yonder ahead of us,” he told her, “and when all’s finished, it’s them as will move the wagons up and down the tunnel.”

“How?” Leeana asked wonderingly, and he snorted.

“Would it happen you’ve seen one of the dwarves’ ‘bicycles’?”

“Not really,” Leeana admitted. “I’ve seen drawings of them in some of Father’s books, though.”

“And were those drawings good enough to be showing you the chain as drives the back wheel for them?”

“Yes,” she said slowly. “Surely you don’t mean-?”

“That I do,” he said wryly. “Mind, it’s a cable they’re using, and not a chain, but I’d not have believed even dwarves would come up with such. It’s trees I’ve seen-and not saplings! — less thick than it is, and they’ll have one of them in each channel, when they’re done. And each of them the better part of nine miles long, to boot.”

Leeana pursed her lips in an unconscious echo of Harshan and shook her head.

“It’s a mite much when it comes at you all in one go,” Bahzell said cheerfully, “but if there’s one thing I’ve found, it’s that dealing with such as Kilthan has a way of stretching a man’s mind. And it’s a sound enough idea, once you’ve had time to be looking at all the edges and angles.” He shrugged. “Even as gentle as this slope is,” he waved one hand at the tunnel about them, “a wicked hard task it would be for horse or mule or even ox to be dragging freight wagons up it. Or down it, come to that, when the weight’s against them. It’s not too very close together you’d want to be hooking wagons to any cable, even one as stout as Kilthan’s, but each of them will move a sight faster than any team could. And any wagon as is cleared to be passing through the tunnel in the first place will be fitted with an emergency brake as will stop it dead if the cable breaks.”

“And how long would it take them to repair the cable if it did break?” Leeana asked shrewdly, and he chuckled.

“Aye, you’ve put your hand on the meat of it, haven’t you just? But Kilthan’s an answer for that, too. Either cable can run in either direction, so if it happens as one of them breaks, the other can still be moving wagons up and down at half the rate while repairs are made. And if it should happen as both of them break-which, I’ll have you to understand, Kilthan swears is a thing as could never happen to something his engineers had the designing of-wagons could still be moving with teams, after all. Not such big wagons, and not with such heavy loads, but enough to be keeping the tunnel open. And it’s not the entire cable they’d have to replace, either. It’s made in sections as can be spliced in or cut out, and not a one of them is more than a hundred feet long, so it’s likely enough they’d have it fixed almost as quick as Kilthan’s after claiming.”

“Well,” Leeana said after a moment, “I’d always heard dwarves had a way with stonework and machinery. To be honest, though, I always thought the tales had to have grown in the telling. Apparently I was wrong.”

“As to that, I’m thinking as how one day you’d best come with me on a visit to Kilthan in Silver Cavern. I’ll not call this a minor undertaking, lass, but the Dwarvenhame Tunnel, now-that’s after being an impressive little trip.”

Even the long, northern summer’s day had drawn to a close by the time Bahzell and Leeana reached Hurgrum. The western horizon was a pile of blue cloud against a sea of copper coals as the sun disappeared at last, and lanterns and streetlamps gleamed along the embankment which had been erected to protect the city of Hurgrum from the rippling blue waters of the lake of the same name. They glowed against the gathering dark like lost stars, their reflections dancing on the nighttime mirror of the lake, and the sound of gentle wind and moving water filled the world.

The Hangnysti River had been dammed well downstream from the city, but the water it had impounded stretched at least five miles above Bahnak’s capital, as well, and Kilthandahknarthas’ engineers had designed and constructed the embankment along the lake’s western shore-over six miles long, thirty feet wide, and twenty feet high-not simply to protect the city but to serve as the foundation and base for the huge docks and the warehouses they would serve when the Derm Canal was finished, as well. Not that there wasn’t already quite a lot of traffic on the lake. As they approached the roadway along the crest of the dam, Bahzell, Leanna, and the coursers had seen the sails and running lights of work boats and barges of bricks and mortar and other construction supplies moving north, up the lake towards the Balthar, while still others moved south, laden with supplies for the Ghoul Moor expedition.

Now, as they rode out across the dam itself, Leeana shook her head in fresh bemusement. That dam was broad enough for two of the enormous freight wagons to pass abreast along its top, and it was a single, seamless-looking expanse of gleaming white stone.

“More of the dwarves’ ‘concrete’?” she asked Bahzell, and he laughed. She cocked her head at him, and he shook his own head.

“No, that it’s not,” he said wryly. “Mind you, it’s what I was after expecting when Da first showed me the plans. But Kilthan and Serman were of the opinion as how that wouldn’t be strong enough. It’s stone, lass. Solid stone, top to bottom.”

“What?” Leeana blinked, then turned in the saddle, surveying the bridge. It had to be at least a mile in length, she thought, and it rose the better part of thirty feet above the land behind it-closer to forty, where it crossed the riverbed.

“Stone,” she repeated carefully, turning back to Bahzell, and he flicked his ears at her.

“Stone,” he agreed. She still looked skeptical, and he shrugged. “The bedrock’s not so very far down hereabouts, which comes as no surprise to those as spend their lives plowing the rocks and finding places to be sticking seeds between them.” He grimaced. “It’s not such wonderful crops we Horse Stealers manage to grow, Leeana, and not for want of trying. There’s things the Axemen can be teaching us where that’s concerned, and Father’s teachers from amongst them showing our farmers how it’s done, but it’s never farmland like Landria’s or Fradonia’s you’ll see in Hurgrum. Still and all, there’s some good in almost anything, I’m thinking, and it wasn’t so very deep a trench Serman had to be digging before he hit rock. He ran it clear across the river valley, and after he’d finished, and after he’d built a wooden form betwixt one side and the other, my folk and his were after spending a full year entire filling it with gravel and crushed rock. A mortal a lot of sweat it took us, but once we’d done, why, Chanharsa and two more sarthnaisks told all that loose rock as how it was one solid piece, and it decided as how it’d best take their word for it. It’s as solid as the East Walls themselves this dam is, lass.”

Leeana drew a deep breath, thinking very carefully about what he’d just said, then exhaled.

“You know, Father had more than a handful of dwarves in the West Riding when he hired them to make his new maps. I didn’t see much of them, but they seemed pleasant enough. Polite. Yet I always had the feeling that, despite their courtesy, they were looking down their noses a bit at Hill Guard and Balthar. Now I suppose I see why.”

“Were they now?” Bahzell smiled at her. “Well, I’m thinking you’ve probably the right of it. Still and all, for all their way with rock and metal and earth, they’ve not the least notion of woodworking, farming, or horses. And it’s in my mind as how most of the world is after offending their notion of neatness and order. They’ve a way of burrowing through rock and stone and bidding it do as they say, but I’m thinking they’ve less skill when it comes time to deal with things as they can’t command.”

Leeana nodded, but her expression was still bemused, almost awed, as they continued across the mighty dam. Stout stone bridges crossed the thundering spillways, and the spray rising chill and damp from below only drove home yet again the audacious scale of the project Prince Bahnak and his allies had undertaken.

The coursers’ hooves thudded on heavy wooden timbers as they crossed the drawbridge spanning the barge locks built into the Hurgrum end of the dam. One of the supply barges destined for Trianal’s expedition had just passed through them and headed down river, and the water level in the lock chamber was thirty feet lower than in the lake above it. There were two sets of locks, actually-cavernous affairs with canyon-like sides, extending well out into the new lake-and once the entire route from Derm to the Spear was open, each set of locks would pass four or five barges at a time.

Bahzell had been home often enough to see all of the mammoth construction as a work in progress, yet he’d been away long enough between visits to be constantly surprised by how much things had changed during his absences. Now, as he and Leeana rode along the top of the embankment (sarthnaisk work, like the dam itself), he found himself looking down on Hurgrum from above, seeing the new houses spreading out far beyond the original city wall as the town in which he’d been raised expanded by leaps and bounds. It was hard for him to imagine, even now, what was going to happen to Hurgrum’s size and wealth when it became the essential anchor and transfer point for all of the trade which would pass through those new docks and spacious warehouses. Despite the way Bahnak’s capital had already grown, some of his fellow Horse Stealers obviously found their prince’s predictions difficult to credit, but Bahzell had seen the Purple Lords’ capital of Bortalik. He knew firsthand how much wealth passed through that city every year, just as he knew his father had actually understated his own predictions because none of his people would have believed the numbers he and Kilthan and Tellian were truly projecting.

‹ He’s an impressive man, your father,› Walsharno said quietly as he and Gayrfressa started down one of the several ramps leading from the embankment’s crest into the city proper.

“Aye, so he is,” Bahzell agreed. “And a patient one, too.”

“Really?” Leeana gave him a crooked smile. “Is that the truth? Or are you just trying to encourage me before I meet the rest of your family?”

“Well, as to that,” Bahzell gave her a smile of his own, “no doubt you’ve heard as how any father is after getting wiser and wiser as his son gets older?” She nodded, and he chuckled. “I’ll not say my Da’s gotten one bit wiser as I’ve grown older, but this I will say-he’s gotten a sight more patient than ever I realized he was when I was after finding every way as how I could try his patience.” He shook his head, his smile turning into a grin. “It’s a rare wonder, I’m thinking, that ever I had the chance to finish growing up at all!”

‹ Really? › Walsharno’s ears flicked in amusement. ‹ I wasn’t under the impression that you were particularly “ grown up ”!›

Bahzell laughed, but then his ears pricked as a hradani woman-tall, even for a Horse Stealer-in the green surcoat of the Order of Tomanak rose from the bench under one of the streetlamps at the ramp’s foot.

“So, here you are…at last,” she observed, folding her arms and looking up at him. “Taking your own sweet time about it, were you?”

“And it’s a joy as ever to be seeing you, too, Sharkah,” Bahzell replied mildly. He dismounted and cocked his ears at his older sister. “And would it happen as there’s a reason you’re biding here in the dark?”

“Oh, it’s not so dark as all that yet,” Sharkah replied, and opened her arms to him. He embraced her, hugging her tightly, and tall as she was, her head scarcely topped his shoulder as she hugged him back. There was nothing fragile about that hug, though, and ribs less substantial than Bahzell’s might not have survived it.

She gave him one last squeeze, then stepped back with a smile.

“As for how it happens I’ve been sitting here this last hour or so,” she said, “Harshan decided as how it might not be so very bad an idea to use one of Baron Tellian’s pigeons to give Da and Mother a wee bit of warning. Not”-she added innocently-“that I’ve the least idea at all, at all, what that warning might have been, of course.”

“And you a servant of Tomanak.” Bahzell shook his head. “It’s amazed I am that himself hasn’t fetched you a smart rap for such a fearsome lie as that!”

“I’ve no doubt he was too busy clouting someone else about the head and ears to be bothering with such as me,” she told him, and cocked her head with a quizzical smile as Leeana swung down from Gayrfressa’s saddle beside Bahzell.

“And this-” Bahzell began, but Sharkah snorted a laugh.

“You’ve no need to be telling me that, little brother! I told you Harshan’d sent word ahead. And even if he’d done no such thing, I’ve eyes in my head, you know!”

Bahzell’s ears pricked, but then he looked down, following his sister’s gaze, and shook his head. The bracelets about his and Leeana’s wrists had begun to glow-softly, at first, but steadily brightening, the opals shining like bright, tiny moons in the gathering evening.

“So you’re the woman as was daft enough to take him on,” Sharkah said, reaching out to Leeana. “It’s glad I am someone was, but truth to tell, I’m wondering if you truly looked before you leapt!”

“Oh, I looked more carefully than you might think,” Leeana replied. “And to be honest, I think I did fairly well out of it.”

She smiled as Sharkah clasped arms with her. Leeana Hanathafressa had never met the woman who could make feel petite…until now. But Sharkah Bahanksdaughter managed it quite handily. She was at least eight or nine inches taller than Leeana, and broad-shouldered for a woman even in proportion to her height. The hand-and-a-half sword sheathed across her back was nowhere near the size and weight of Bahzell’s massive blade, but Leeana suspected most Sothoii men would find it uncomfortably heavy even as a two-handed weapon.

Sharkah, obviously, did not.

“I’ve met your Da,” Sharkah said, releasing her forearm. “You’ve the look of him. And although I’m thinking he might not be wishful of admitting it to you, he was fair bursting with pride when he spoke of you.” Her teeth flashed in a white smile under the street lamp. “It might be as how he was of the mind that one scapegrace daughter might appreciate another!”

“I believe I may have heard a little something about you, too,” Leeana acknowledged. “Something about stubbornness and sword oaths, I think.”

“I’ve no least idea what it possibly could be as you’re talking about,” Sharkah said, and then raised an eyebrow at Bahzell as he stepped back a full pace from her.

“Pay me no mind,” he told her. “It’s just stepping clear of the lightning bolt I am.”

Sharkah laughed, then looked back at Leeana.

“I’m thinking we’ll deal well together, you and I, Sister,” she said, “and anyone as could get this fellow”-she jabbed a thumb in Bahzell’s direction-“into harness will be coming as a welcome surprise to Mother and Da. So why don’t we just be taking you off to meet the family?”