Chapter Three
Chapter Three
I
It was the first time they’d dined in the Great Hall since Raymond’s farewell at the end of his last leave over seven years ago. The chamber seemed even emptier than it had then. The walls were hung with family banners and tapestries, with a huge Imperial flag at the head. The six-meter long redwood slab table (brought from Earth by old Edwin) seemed lost in the middle of the huge flagstone floor. The three Hamiltons sat at one end, the Baron at the head.
“I’d like to propose a toast,” the Baron said at dinner’s end. He raised a cut crystal glass of Dayan Chardonnay. “To Castle Whitehall: see her victorious, happy and strong; long may she reign!”
Today the masons had finished the new east outer wall, securing the outer perimeter. A month ago, John Hamilton wouldn’t have thought the accomplishment would be something to brag about, but that was before his last visit to Castell City and the narrow escape he’d had during the food riots.
After that experience, John took the whole idea of self-defense much more seriously. He still doubted that the Castell mobs would ever travel far enough to test the gates of Whitehall; however, life on Haven was clearly growing coarser and meaner and would probably get a lot worse before it got any better—which it probably wouldn’t in his lifetime. Empires didn’t concern themselves with backward frontier outposts, not when the barbarians were fighting their way into the palace.
“Sitting in this great hall by ourselves is depressing,” Matilda said. “Couldn’t we have friends over the next time we dine in here?”
“Not a bad idea,” the Baron replied. “It’s just that today’s timing was bad. Most of our neighbors are either following our lead, fortifying their manors, or have left the area. The Klimoffs tried their hand at farming, gave up and moved back to the city, while the Chandlers have moved their estate to the Shannon Valley where it’s less populated and safer.”
Matilda chortled. “It doesn’t get much quieter than here.”
“If the city mobs find us, it won’t be quiet for long,” John told his sister.
“I suspect the Klimoffs will be back before long,” the Baron said, ignoring their outburst. “It appears that the authorities have lost control of the city. Half the police force has quit because they can’t feed their families on their pay. The other half barters their off-duty hours for food and goods, or rob the very shops they’re supposed to protect.”
“When is all this chaos going to come to an end,” she asked.
John and his grandfather exchanged looks. Mattie had a lot of her mother in her and not much of her grandmother; there was always a question as to how many unpleasant truths she could face without a breakdown.
“I expect we’ll have seen the worst of it when winter’s through,” began the Baron as the butler walked in.
“My lord, we have a visitor. Captain Mazurin of the Colonial Militia.”
“Send him in.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Captain entered, wearing a travel-stained cloak and field-gray uniform. He bowed to the Baron, then took the offered chair. The butler bowed and left the chamber.
“We have your first shipment, sir,” the Captain announced.
“Very good, Captain. Shall I give you the first chest now or later?”
“After we’ve unloaded the truck will be fine.”
“Excellent. If you and your men would like to spend the night, I’ll have the stewards prepare some rooms.”
The Captain nodded. “That would be most appreciated, Your Lordship. We could use the rest; it took us over a standard week to make the journey.”
The Baron frowned. At worst, the journey from Fort Fornova, which was just outside Castell City, shouldn’t have taken any longer than four Earth standard days by motor vehicle. “What took so long?”
The Captain sighed wearily. “The roads aren’t safe anymore—”
“Not even for armed men?!” John interrupted.
The Captain shook his head. “No. In many places the roads have fallen into ruin, or there are barricades to stop travelers. We had to fight off a bandit attack today.”
Matilda gasped.
The Captain grew more animated, now that he realized an attractive woman about his own age was interested. He told of an early morning ambush that had ended badly for the outlaws when they discovered that this isolated military convoy had an escort of three platoons made up of the Haven Volunteers.
“Hunting rifles and pistols aren’t much good when they’re up against assault rifles and rocket launchers. I might even have felt sorry for the—for the bandits, if we hadn’t discovered forty-odd women in the camp. Turns out they’d been kidnapping the wives and daughters of the small farmers they’d killed. Excuse me, ma’am,” he finished, nodding to Matilda.
“You can speak plainly, Captain,” she replied. “I’ve heard worse; it’s these times.”
“What did you do with these women?” the Baron asked.
“Some of them were determined to return to whatever was left of their homes, but we brought most of them with us. Couldn’t leave them unprotected—“
“I understand,” the Baron interrupted. From the exasperated look on his face, the Baron could see that the Captain was at his wit’s end over the women. It was certainly a dilemma that would have taxed even an older and more experienced commander.
The Baron smiled. “We’ll be happy to take in any of them who would like to stay here at Whitehall. If not, we can arrange transportation to any surviving relatives. Since we have an abundance of single men on the barony, I suspect the ones who stay will find themselves welcome.”
“Thank you, sir. I feel—well, responsible for them. But I wasn’t certain that I could answer for my men’s behavior all the way back to Fort Fornova—excuse me again, ma’am.”
“I think it’s time we menfolk excused ourselves for a bit of fresh air,” the Baron said, nodding to his granddaughter.
II
John followed the Captain and his grandfather out to the courtyard—what his grandfather liked to call the bailey. He wanted to know what the militia was delivering to Whitehall; the Baron had been very hush-hush over the matter. He certainly wasn’t going to waste his breath asking before his grandfather was ready to answer.
The courtyard spotlights showed a convoy of some twenty trucks and armored cars, some of them still disgorging militiamen. Hamilton saw bullet holes in the truck covers and a few in the flared skirts of the armored cars, as well as seven or eight men being carried on stretchers toward the dispensary. Captain Mazarin, he suspected, had played down the seriousness of their fight with the bandits.
Warden James Dunn was directing a dozen servants, who were loading sacks of grain into one of the trucks. John wondered if Mazarin was going to leave a platoon or two in exchange for the foodstuffs. The castle garrison—it was easier now to think in those terms—had over a hundred able-bodied men, most of them with a lifelong familiarity with hunting weapons. Maybe the militiamen were going to train them in infantry tactics—but, then, some of the older bodyguards were ex-Imperial Marines and the Warden himself was a former Regimental Sergeant-Major.
It wasn’t until the militiamen started wrestling heavy crates out of the back of another truck that his question was answered. Captain Mazarin cut one of the crates open and pulled out a Medieval-style armored helmet. John recognized the helm; it was a sallet, a late-Medieval style of helmet introduced when gunpowder was changing the face of battle.
When Mazarin finished unloading the crate, a dozen gleaming helmets stood in a row on the stone pavement. Now John had another question: Has my grandfather lost his blanking mind? Other than a costume ball, what other possible use was there for these out-of-date helmets? He could easily think of a hundred different things that would be more valuable in exchange for their precious grain stocks.
“Stand back!” Mazarin shouted, as he drew his sidearm and fired point-blank at the nearest helmet.
Sprooonnngg! The sallet jumped and tottered. John was unable to see where the ricocheting bullet went. He was too busy staring at the helmet, unmarked except for a tiny nick and a smear of lead.
“That’s our best durasteel alloy, Baron,” Mazarin said proudly. “It will stop anything short of a spent-uranium slug. Of course, a man can still be knocked down or even break something, if he’s hit in a limb. If he’s hit in the head, he’ll still have to worry about a concussion, whiplash or great murdering headaches. But any brains he has will remain in his head where God put them, instead of scattered all over the landscape!”
The Baron grinned like a proud father.
Someone else opened another crate and started laying out breastplates. A third crate held steel shoulder pieces—vam-something or other, he couldn’t remember just what they were called. He did remember that one wore some kind of padded garment under his armor, an “arming doublet,” he recalled.
“We had to build them a bit heavier than they did in the Middle Ages,” Mazarin said, “but the armor is ten times as strong. You’re not going to be turning cartwheels in these, but a fit man should still be able to run. We built them in six different sizes, so they’ll fit any average or large man less than thirty kilos overweight.”
The Baron smiled. “These will do; by damn, more than do!
Mazarin picked up a durasteel gauntlet, put it on and wiggled his fingers. “We’re also working on closer tolerance with computerized machine tools. We can do things the old Milanese and Nuremburg smiths never dreamed of. Here try this, Baron.”
He handed John Hamilton a gauntlet and a pen. Once John got used to the weight, he found that he could actually write with his armored glove on. He scribbled “Long Live the Empire” on a piece of paper, then removed the gauntlet and handed it to his grandfather.
The Baron cradled it in his arms as if it were a newborn puppy. “Tell Brigadier Cummings he has my undying thanks. He’s done far better with these than what I had expected. Anything I can do to repay him…”
“You’ve already more than repaid us, sir. The specie and food will keep the Volunteers paid and fed; if we can do that we can do a lot of other things. Now we’re independent, free of the Chamber of Deputies and Castell. Now that we’ve evacuated Fort El Alamein, we can concentrate our forces at Forts Fornova and Kursk. All our efforts to date would have been wasted, though, if we couldn’t meet the payroll or keep rations coming in.”
The Baron looked at the grim stone walls around them as if they showed him some other time or place. “I wish I could do more, Captain. Your militia may be the last hope for civilization on Haven. This stuff”—pointing to the armor—“is my insurance. Or the insurance for my grandchildren and their grandchildren and all the grandchildren to come, for God knows how long. If I’m wrong, they’ll pack it away and laugh at me as I used to laugh at the stories of Old Edwin the Hoarder when I was young. But, if I’m right, this may be all that lets my grandchildren have children.”
The Baron shook his head as if to clear it of cobwebs. “How many did you bring?”
Mazarin clearly wasn’t the kind of officer to leave details to his NCOs. He started reciting figures without referring to his belt computer. “A hundred and fifty durasteel sets of armor and five hundred cold-rolled steel sets. The cold-rolled steel won’t stop more than pistol slugs and shell or grenade fragments, but I suspect there’ll be enough of those flying around to make them useful.”
The next shipments would include another hundred durasteel sets of armor and a thousand steel sets, as well as fifty durasteel back-and-breast combinations. The final shipment would include fifty more complete durasteel sets of armor, five hundred durasteel helms and eight hundred more back-and-breasts, three hundred of them durasteel.
“Now, sir,” Mazarin said. “May I ask a question?”
The Baron nodded.
“Why so many sets of armor?” He lowered his voice. “As I understand it, you have less than a hundred men of fighting age.”
The Baron gave him a knowing smile. “We’ll have a lot more shortly, Captain. Once they’re all trained, I intend to build a real curtain wall, with towers, around Whitehall. Trust me, I don’t believe we’ll have any shortage of new recruits, either. Those steel suits are for my neighbors, or at least those neighbors who think they’re worth an alliance with House Hamilton. If we all stand together, shoulder-to-shoulder, we should be able to keep this end of the Central Valley peaceful.”
Mazarin shook his head. “I wish I could say you’re wasting your time. But I don’t think you are, nor would you believe me if I said it.” He frowned. “Come to think of it, I wouldn’t believe it myself.”