Of Limited Loyalty

Chapter Forty-four

17 March 1768 Slow Creek Richlan, Mystria

Nathaniel crouched with Makepeace and Kamiskwa on the crest of a wooded hill. A light breeze carried down from the north across the snow-choked valley to where they waited, blowing their scent far to the south. The light snow clung to their buffalo robes and fur hats, helping to further conceal them. Each man wore double-layered mittens with white rabbit fur on the outside, and a slit thumb that gave them access to their rifles’ firestones.

Nathaniel nodded to Makepeace, who smiled happily. Makepeace had seen odd tracks on a patrol to the southwest of Plentiful. He’d described what he thought had made them, but neither Nathaniel nor Kamiskwa believed him. They’d all bundled up and headed out, hoping to backtrack the trail before the snow obliterated it. None of them had expected to see what lay in the little valley below.

Makepeace had been right in that the tracks had been made by a wooly rhinoceros. It was fully grown, making it about half-again as large as Peregrine. Its horn had to be three and a half feet long if an inch, and its thick brown fur was more than enough to insulate it from a March storm. What they’d not expected, however, was a harness holding a copper plate tight to its head. The harness fitted blinders over its eyes, and held a fist-sized stone set in the middle, which looked for all the world like a firestone.

More impressive than that was the creature riding the rhino.

Nathaniel had seen one of them before, in a quick glimpse, in the Antediluvian Temple. Ten feet tall as measured against the rhino’s horn, it had ram’s horns of its own and a shaggy white coat. Its thick build matched it to Makepeace, if he’d been stretched up, out, and back. Fur shaded its eyes the way it would on a sheepdog, but the black claws on its hands reminded him more of jeopards than dogs. It wore a brown leather girdle and strap that ran from hip to shoulder and back behind, with shiny copper fittings. A flattened warclub with obsidian blades jutting from each edge dangled at its right hip, and it bore a stone-tipped spear in its left hand. Another leather strap bound a copper plate to the creature’s forehead, set with a stone that matched the one on the rhino.

Kamiskwa tapped Nathaniel on the shoulder, pointed to the rifle, and raised an eyebrow.

Nathaniel frowned. He figured the target was about a hundred twenty yards out, which would have been beyond the rifle’s range save for all the green powder training he’d done over the winter. Prince Vlad had told him what was really going on, and he’d helped train members of the Northern Rangers. The new magick pushed his rifle’s range out far enough, and made a killing shot possible at nearly a hundred yards. Ain’t a single bullet going to kill that beast.

He shook his head.

Kamiskwa shucked his buffalo robe and warclub, then pulled off his tunic. He touched a new tattoo on his left breast, right next to where his medicine bag dangled from a cord around his throat. The tattoo was of a bear paw, yet the large pad had only been done in outline. In the middle of it had been drawn an open eye design. Kamiskwa covered the image with his hand, and when he pulled it away seconds later, the paw remained, but the eye had closed. He picked up his warclub, and worked his way to the right, moving from tree to tree, and down the hillside toward the valley.

Makepeace moved out the other way. Nathaniel waited until Makepeace had paused behind the bole of a tree and brought his rifle to bear before he moved forward. He advanced ten yards and took up a similar firing position. Makepeace then advanced, ranging a bit further out. Nathaniel continued his descent until he reached a fallen log approximately eighty yards from his target. The wind was blowing across his line of fire, but came light enough that he wouldn’t have to compensate too much.

Kamiskwa broke from cover, screeching at the top of his lungs. Snow sprayed up with each step-steps which slowed as the Shedashee waded into a deep drift. He held the warclub aloft in one hand, and paddled at the snow with the other.

The troll looked in his direction, then the rhino began to gallop. The rider couched the spear as a lance. Snow flew up and back. The stones in the harnesses blazed with green intensity as the rhino charged. The creature plowed through the drifts as if they were no more substantial than fog.

Nathaniel measured the range with a practiced eye, then invoked the spell to ignite brimstone. Prince Vlad had directed him to think of something hot and burning. Most men thought of embers or the dull, red glow of iron fresh from the forge. Nathaniel allowed as how those things were hot, but he went for something else, something suitable to the winter. He recalled the burning pain of frostbitten fingers slowly warming up, and pumped that through the firestone, adding in, for good measure, the murderous rage he’d been experiencing at the time of that particular recollection.

Makepeace fired a half-second before he did. The man’s bullet flew true, hitting the troll high in the chest. It struck with enough force to rock the creature back and tip the spearpoint up.

Nathaniel’s rifle bucked against his shoulder. The bullet sped out, but the troll’s reaction to Makepeace’s shot had shifted Nathaniel’s target. He’d been aiming for the throat, hoping to hit higher or lower than that. The troll’s being knocked back lowered its head just enough that Nathaniel’s shot slammed into its forehead, directly over the left eye. It snapped the leather strap, but the bullet ricocheted to the side, chipping off half of the troll’s horn.

With the rhino thirty yards away and in mid-charge, Kamiskwa dove to the left. Nathaniel and Makepeace each levered their rifles open and reloaded, forcing themselves to calmly complete a ritual they’d done hundreds of times before. Nathaniel refused to look at the rhino and trusted to his brother’s ability to get clear. If he let worry interfere, he’d never get his rifle loaded for the shot that could save Kamiskwa’s life.

He levered his rifle’s breech closed, then sighted on the rhino.

Just in time to see the beast rear up and hurl the troll from its back. Churning up a cloud of snow, the rhino turned quickly and ducked its head. The horn came up, and the troll flew again, all limp-limbed, the forehead plate clattering against the whole horn. The rhino attacked the troll again and again, ripping great holes in its torso, then finally trotted off to the side, snorting out great jets of steam. Its course took it upwind of the troll’s corpse, which stank of musk and bile, then the rhino shook its head and cleaned its horn in the snow. It pawed at the ground and began to graze peacefully a minute later.

Nathaniel worked his way back up the hill to recover Kamiskwa’s gear and met him halfway to the valley floor. Makepeace joined them. The Shedashee pulled his clothes on, but refused to indicate that he’d felt the cold at all.

Nathaniel looked at his companions. “Now I reckon the Prince, he’d like that troll out there.”

Makepeace nodded. “I do believe that rhino might dispute our taking it. I ain’t of a mind to shoot a beast just to drive it off.”

“I agree, Makepeace, but I surely do want to see how much damage our shots did. Don’t mind knowing I can crack a horn, but I want to see how much of the skull went with it.”

“And knowing how its guts is plumbed would be good.” Makepeace smiled. “Though I ain’t sure there’s much knowing of that to be done from what the rhino left behind.”

Kamiskwa pointed. “More valuable will be the plates and stones.”

“Cain’t get but one of them.”

“I think we can.” Kamiskwa pulled his medicine bag from within his tunic. “I have just the plan.”

Nathaniel, helping Makepeace load pieces of the troll onto a travois, shook his head. “I never would have reckoned that would work.”

Thirty yards away, Kamiskwa was unbuckling the rhinoceros’ headplate. To accomplish that, he’d taken a small pellet of dragon dung from his medicine pouch, crushed it with a handful of snow to make a muddy paste, which he spread over his hands and face. He circled around wide and approached the rhino from upwind, letting the breeze carry Mugwump’s scent to it.

The beast, which had been snorting and digging through the snow for meager mouthfuls of golden grass, had brought its head up. It sniffed the air, then trotted toward Kamiskwa, its shaggy stub of a tail wagging. It stopped when it caught sight of him, but started grazing again and didn’t seem fazed by his getting closer.

“It does beat all sense.” Makepeace shrugged and tossed a piece of what appeared to be liver onto the travois. “I do believe we have it all.”

Nathaniel gave a low whistle. Kamiskwa backed downwind of the rhino and rejoined them. Nathaniel half-expected the beast to follow him. They took to the woods, working their way along a path the rhino likely wouldn’t follow, and just after dark reached Plentiful.

Under Makepeace’s direction, and with the help of Hodge Dunsby and the men he brought with him, Plentiful had been rebuilt. They’d leveled off a hilltop and constructed a palisaded fort which commanded the entire valley. They’d also expanded the settlement’s graveyard and placed it toward the northeast end, well above the floodline. New homes sprang up between the two points, and had been built as small blockhouses that allowed for overlapping fire and mutual support.

What had once been a peaceful, religiously based town, had become a military encampment. Nathaniel wasn’t too certain how Arise Faith would have taken to that idea. Out of respect for him and Plentiful’s origins, the fort did include a chapel and services were held twice weekly. Yet the chapel’s steeple was manned around the clock, and watchmen kept their eyes peeled southwest for anything coming from the Westridge Mountains.

The three of them dragged the travois into the fort and to the structure where Makepeace made his home. They left the troll under the roofed-over sideyard, warmed and fed themselves, then returned to taking stock of the monster. Nathaniel and Makepeace put the bits back together as best they could. Kamiskwa came in behind them, measuring things and jotting them down in a notebook, just as Owen would usually do.

Once he’d collected some basic information, Kamiskwa retreated to the cabin and prepared to send a sundown message to the Prince. He drew the thaumagraph from a locked cabinet and set it up on Makepeace’s table. To Nathaniel’s eye, the device looked to be a boxy guitar, complete with hole, and fitted with ten strings, but absent a neck.

From a small drawer built into the side opposite the tuning pegs Kamiskwa pulled a flat, wooden tile. On it had been burned the image of a crown and below it a clock face. Kamiskwa slid that into a slot on the base where it became part of the device’s sounding board. That particular tile linked the device to the thaumagraph in Temperance, whereas others would link it to the one at Prince Haven, or at Count von Metternin’s home.

Nathaniel understood, in theory, how things worked. Each string represented a number from zero to nine; and all the messages were coded as numbers by matching words to a book or by using a grid to spell letters out. Only just beginning to be comfortable with writing, he left all the coding to Kamiskwa or Makepeace, both of whom had learned to read early on.

Kamiskwa began sending the message by plucking strings. It wasn’t much of a pretty song and wasn’t one that was going to get itself stuck in Nathaniel’s head. Once he’d finished sending part of the message, he’d repeat it. When he’d completed the entire message, he sat back. “Now we wait two days for a reply.”

Nathaniel frowned. “Ain’t no question what the Prince is going to say.”

Musical notes issued hauntingly from the thaumagraph. Kamiskwa turned a page in the thaumagraph journal and got ready to write. “Caleb, from the sound of it.”

“He saying anything useful?” Nathaniel thought it kind of queer that one could tell from the way the notes sounded who was plucking the strings. Kamiskwa sent messages with an easy rhythm, whereas Nathaniel’s messages came in fits and starts as he worked out what he should be sending. Bethany had a lighter hand. Caleb’s messages came fast, but sometimes haste introduced errors.

Kamiskwa shook his head. “Just a message to let us know they got our last.” He closed the journal. “You think the Prince will want us to bring this troll to him.”

“I reckon he’d rank this up there with that jeopard.” Nathaniel looked over as Makepeace opened the door. “Think we can get that thing back to the Prince?”

Makepeace stamped snow from his feet and closed the door behind him. “I kin rustle you up snowshoes and a sledge, that ain’t nothing. Most all the lakes is iced over, half the rivers, too. Storms coming in from the northwest. You ain’t moving for three days or more. Fighting that storm will kill you sure as anything.”

The watchman in the chapel belfry shouted, and something bellowed in the darkness. The three of them ran out and mounted the wall. They looked toward the mountains, hoping they didn’t see anything arcane from the site of the ruins. What attracted their attention, however, was a lot closer.

Nathaniel looked at Kamiskwa. “I reckon you got yourself a pet.”

The wooly rhino trotted toward the palisade and grunted. “If we could hitch him to the sledge, he could haul the troll, but if the wind shifted so he caught its scent, he would go mad.”

“That he would, I reckon.” Nathaniel thought for a second, and smiled. “Then again, I reckon I know a way we can fix that and have the Prince his specimen faster than anyone would think possible.”