Smythe’s plan, once Tor figured it out, was actually pretty clever. The gloves he’d just put on passed something through the shield he wore that made his skin burn where the hands were directed. He had to squirm away from the pain. It would have been all right, except for the other eight men, all clad in black, dull colored clothes that looked like heavy canvas, kind of like what the special students at the school wore for some of their exercises. They just stepped out of panels in the walls of all things. Not all of them had the pain gloves, but two did. It was enough to leave him trapped in a triangle of agony. They could hurt him, or rather, make him burn, but they didn’t have a way through the shield itself physically. Small favor, since those gloves really hurt.
He fought for a moment as the men tried to grab him, wondering what other tricks they’d have, perhaps something to steal the air from around him? He could get a little air from about three feet away, but if they used even one of his own air chokes, he’d be stuck.
Apparently someone had been taking notes, because three of the men had them and the other three had lances he’d built the template for that would have gone through his shield if he hadn’t already upgraded. He managed to get in one good breath before the air went away, burning skin stealing oxygen from his system much faster than normal. He had to get air, and fast too. The poisoning had really lowered how long he could hold his breath, by about half he figured, and it hadn’t been that great a talent before. If he had half a minute before he started to black out, it would be a surprise. Not really knowing what would happen, he triggered the Not-flyer and rose above the ground a bit. Being busy attacking him, no one really seemed to notice Tor getting taller until he jammed his right hand forward and smashed into the three men blocking the hallway in front of him at about forty miles per hour. At least they were in the choke field with him.
Horrible plan though. You don’t really ever think about how much fun breathing is, until you can’t.
Nifty thing about the way he’d constructed the shield he wore, if he touched the ground any force hitting him would go directly into the earth. If he flew or in this case floated a little, any form of impact did its level best to go right back into what ever hit him. Now if he was hovering in place that didn’t really do much. It just meant that he didn’t get knocked around a lot. But, if he was moving fast and hit something that wasn’t, that changed the equation. In this case the men that tried to bar his way flew to the side except the one directly in front of him, who flew straight back until Tor hit him a second time, hard, spinning the black clothed stranger halfway around.
The move got him out of the range of all the effective weapons and while the lances should have worked at the distance he was at, they didn’t go through his shield at all.
Yay, forethought.
Near the end of the hallway, a good two hundred feet away from the original point of attack, Tor spun and dropped the field that kept him up in the air. He had to in order to use his right hand to dig into his inner pants pocket for his own remaining weapons. He felt a little silly for giving Smythe, who’d turned out to be his enemy and an evil man, the explosive weapon like that.
Not because he thought the man would try to use it. If he did that they just all died.
No, it was just that someone that would attack another person in the middle of a fairly civil discussion like that, especially since it was obviously a premeditated assault, wasn’t exactly stable either. Well, nothing for it now. After all, going back that way meant pain and burning again. He got his own force lance out, probably the same type these men carried, from the way they were trying to use it, spraying it back and forth, throwing objects at him in the stream generated.
He returned fire.
Connie and Richard had run away, or possible had been pulled to safety. Either was possible. What they were thinking ordering a needless attack like this he didn’t know. As the men closed with him, weapons raised, ready to fire, if not doing so already. Tor sprayed the whole hallway from left to right. It knocked people down pretty rapidly. They seemed to be wearing shields, but either they weren’t very new ones, or if they were, the shields weren’t made by him. Good. It made the next bit easier.
When he had as many of them as possible taken down, four of the nine seemed about what he could manage at once spread out as they were, because they stood up too fast for more, he rushed them full speed, using the new field to hover just over the floor. Way faster than he could run. Bodies flew again as he hit. At the door he found Counselor Smythe standing in the way, hands raised, burning pain coming off of them, so he hit the man with the direct beam of the lance, knocking him out the door.
The stumbling and flailing of the large older man would have been either sad or funny, depending on the situation, if it wasn’t so dire in the moment. The man had set the military on him. Commando’s it seemed. Who the hell did that? He was a seventeen year old kid for god’s sake. Tor wasn’t even particularly dangerous. What was he going to do, run away at them?
The thought made him laugh out loud, since that was pretty much what he’d actually done.
“Run away!” He called out, as if it were his battle cry.
Even after knocking them down he heard their foot falls behind him, closing fast. Tor pinned the man’s head to the ground with the force lance as he closed with him. It couldn’t have been comfortable at all. Smythe had tucked the explosive device into his left front pocket, which would probably be impossible to get to, depending on the type of shield he had on, he knew. When Tor moved slowly though, his right hand passed. It felt like reaching through thickened mud.
Finally, just as the first of the military men got to him with their pain devices and air chokes, he got it and pulled it slowly from the field. Yes, he couldn’t breathe and was in pain the whole time, the air thick and hard to move through… that didn’t matter though. All that did was making sure a madman didn’t have his super-weapon.
The big difference now, other than that he was armed with a weapon they couldn’t match again, was that he was outside. Rules against it or not, if you tried to kill him, he was going to try and run away, even if that meant flying.
Run away!
The motto came back again clearly. Kolb really knew his business Tor decided, having drilled that into him so forcefully for years. Trying to fight the army meant eventual death, but this… He started to fly straight up when he heard the yelling. The relief from pain was almost instant as he rose, like cool water caressing his tender flesh. Air sucked into his lungs hard, making him cough due to the force of it. That hurt too, but it felt better having the air than not.
“Stand down!”
He couldn’t see who was yelling it at first, but after a few seconds twenty black and purple clad Royal Guards rushed the courtyard pointing weapons. At first he thought they were trying for him, so he rose to a few hundred feet, ready to bolt. Instead they pointed them at Smythe and his men, who dropped their own weapons in an orderly fashion. Tor didn’t go anywhere, but also didn’t let himself be lulled into a sense of security.
It would have been a very convoluted trick to try and pull, using the Royal Guard to make him feel safe from the military, then everyone attacking him, but the royals did things like that. It was like they couldn’t enjoy a victory if it didn’t have six layers of intrigue or difficulty built in.
Finally Richard and Connie came back out, and so did Rolph. They didn’t yell up at him or anything, but they all looked, and finally Rolph waved to him. Tor lowered to about twenty feet so they could all talk, hoping it really wasn’t just another trick.
“Hey, so, guys… What the hell? One minute were having a nice, if slightly heated conversation about how to handle some shady merchants, the next, military guys come out of the walls? What kind of a set up is that? Or do you want me to believe they just live in the walls and pop out on command? If they were Royal Guards I might have bought that excuse, but military commandos living at the palace full time? I think not.” Tor shook his head broadly so everyone could see it.
Smythe stood on the ground, unarmed, or at least without his interesting gloves, looking angry. Well, he wasn’t alone in that, was he? Tor landed, holding the explosive device in his right hand. The man didn’t cringe away, but did speak as if he wasn’t right there again.
“I told you that he was unstable sire! Look at him, holding us all hostage. Ready to kill us if we don’t accede to his demands! We should have killed him when we had a chance. Now who knows what he’ll do?” The man looked smug instead of scared, which frightened the hell out of Tor. He shook after all that and felt a pressing need to use a restroom, but this man looked angry, and then smug, about something? When technically Tor had just won the little skirmish, at least if it was judged by the criterion of his not dying.
“In general people that try to assassinate other people without good cause, and fail, don’t act like the cat that had all the cream Smythe. Do you think that you’re winning anyone over by claiming that the guy that handed you a weapon as a good will gesture not three minutes before you launched an attack is the unstable one?”
He obviously did because he smiled then.
“Oh, I think I’ve proven my point well enough.”
Tor shrugged. Maybe he had at that.
“Well, if your point is that you’re off your rocker and a dick-head, I think you’re doing just fine. Did you have some other point? Because notice, I didn’t set you up with an appointment with a death squad when everyone else was having a conversation about what to do. God, haven’t you ever heard of venting? Didn’t you think that Rich was going to come pat me on the back and tell me to stop being an a-hole and that Connie was going to give me a hug and I’d back down with some minor face saving gesture from Debri house? Haven’t you noticed, in all of this, that, no matter how hurt I’ve felt, how injured I’ve been, I’ve never, ever, seriously injured, much less killed anyone? What — the fuck — is wrong with you?”
Tor put the dangerous device back around his neck for safe keeping, then crossed his arms and glared at the military counselor. He wanted to tap his foot at the guy, but figured that would be a little too farm wife to be taken seriously just now. After a minute of silence Tor looked at the King.
Hands going out, palms to the sky Tor gave the man a puzzled look. “Did he at least ask your advice before doing this? Cause if you told him to kill me, that kind of puts an end to our friendship. It’s a hard and fast rule of mine. I just made it up right this moment, but you know, it really makes sense don’t you think?”
“He didn’t let me in on it at all. I wouldn’t have authorized it if he had let me in on it either. I’m not very pleased right now Smythe. Consider yourself under arrest and confined to your rooms until the council hears this. What happens then will depend a lot on what your exact orders were to these men.”
So, Tor wondered out loud, had Smythe been the one really behind trying to have him killed then? Or maybe this council if they were responsible for the man? No one seemed to know. It was really a grand situation. Tor shrugged.
“So, I kind of need to get out of town now I guess, and not tell anyone where I’m going either. I can’t keep fighting the whole military by myself, not forever. You saw how well these guys did and there were only eight of them. They even used my own weapons against me! The ones I gave you for safe keeping Rich. Not to attack me with. That’s not a small point either. Kind of ticks me off to be honest. I can’t be safe anywhere can I?” He tried not to pout about it, but the idea hit him hard. What little sense of security he’d had was gone now. Tor couldn’t even go home, because Two Bends was even less ready to fight off an attack than this place was. At least here the army, presumably at least, wouldn’t attack innocent people to try and get to him.
That… would have worked.
If they’d grabbed the King and Queen or… Or even some serving girl or man that he didn’t know, maybe Burks or Laura the cook… He would have had to give up to protect them, even if he knew the bad guys were going to kill him. Thank god they hadn’t thought of that yet. He needed to get clear, fast.
Richard walked over and patted the shield behind his shoulders, nothing connected of course, but the gesture was right. “Don’t be silly Tor. I can assure you that this won’t happen again, and at the very least any new threat will be novel.” He smiled and nodded to his wife. “Connie will see to your safety from now on, at least while you’re here. That way if anyone dares try to attack you, we can simply execute them out of hand. It’s one of the Queen’s rights you know, the writ of full protection. Even I can’t breach it. It’s actually the only law that I can legally be put to death for breaking. I’ll have it announced now, if you wish dear?”
“Do it.” The Queen’s voice was steely and hard. She glared at Smythe as she said it and the man actually winced. It sounded like a bigger deal than Tor would have thought.
A vision filled his mind for a moment, of him being ambushed by more black garbed military men and the Queen suddenly jumping out and doing battle with them. It involved a lot of swirling of skirts and hair pulling. Possibly some biting. Not that the woman wouldn’t know how to protect herself for real, she was probably better trained than he was, it was just funnier the way he thought of it.
Smythe certainly didn’t like the idea at all, so maybe she was more dangerous than Tor thought?
“Your majesty! I assure you such extreme measures aren’t needed…” The older man said, his cream and yellow colored robes drifting slightly in the breeze.
Connie glared again, but it was the King that spoke.
“Obviously they are. In my entire reign, no one at this palace has been attacked while a guest here. Not in my name at any rate. Now my own staff is taking it on themselves to decide who should be assassinated? I think not. Guards, please escort the counselor back to his rooms and ensure that he stays there pending the decision of the council.”
Tor just stood, not really knowing what was happening. Queen’s protection? So was he being adopted as a pet or something? He had to ask out loud, because he kept coming up blank on this. It had never, at least to his recollection, been covered in the little schoolhouse in Two Bends. Everyone gave him a look that he interpreted as “silly bumpkin” but that didn’t tell him what he needed to know.
“So what is it? This Queen’s protection. Don’t I get to know before I accept it? Because if it means I have to become a eunuch or something I think I’d rather just go hide out in the woods.” After all, just because women didn’t like him, that didn’t mean that he couldn’t have sex ever, did it? There were professionals for that kind of thing, and really, it wasn’t like he was disfigured or diseased so if he had the money, they might not say no. The ones in the Capital had seemed willing enough and were even nice to him when he told them he didn’t have the money at the time. That they worked for gold was, well what made them professionals, right? Everyone worked for coin. He wasn’t that awful… was he? The idea left him feeling a bit dirty, an artifact of his early upbringing, but it was something to cling to at least.
Rolph ducked his head and turned away. After a few seconds of shaking shoulders Tor got that the big guy was laughing at him, but no one else spoke. What he needed right now was… Varley. She’d tell him what this was. Eye narrowing he asked where the girl was, so that he could get some answers. Rolph finally got his laughter, if not his face, under control enough to explain.
“Tor, it’s not that big of a thing, just, well historically speaking the Queen’s protection has only been used to protect the Queen’s lovers from a jealous husband. So if they announce this it will basically be taken as everyone admitting that you and mom are, you know, together.”
Ah. Tor frowned. Well he wouldn’t let her do it, would he? Let them do it. He had too much respect for them both, for all of them, to let that happen. Even if they didn’t like him at all. Connie’s name couldn’t be linked to someone like him, he told them, his voice going soft. Then he went inside the guest house to get his luggage. Running off and hiding would be way easier with some gold on hand, plus he had his working supplies and some things he promised to do, like those rivers for Afrak and building a wall for Ellen Ward.
When he walked out everyone else had gone into the palace, so at least there wouldn’t be a scene. He took it as a sign that everyone kind of approved of his plan. Well, at least they weren’t going to insist on his ruining Connie’s good name. Better he die alone and forgotten than that, right?
The only real problem was that it was starting to get dark and he didn’t have anywhere planned to stay yet. Really, even though there were supposed to be some good inns around the Capital, he had no clue where they were at all, or even what such a thing might look like from the outside. He’d never stayed at such a place, even while traveling to school.
Debbie might have been willing to put him up in the little back room for the night, but tracking trouble to her door would be poor repayment for her previous kindness. Maybe he could camp outside the city for the night and then figure things out in the morning? He used the Not-flyer to get to the main gate, but the guards wouldn’t let him out. They claimed he wasn’t a prisoner, just that he hadn’t been given permission to leave.
Right. Permission? To leave? He needed permission to leave now? Who needed permission to leave? Oh, right. Prisoners.
This whole situation was just getting ridiculous. It took Tor about thirty seconds to set everything up, moving slowly, pretending to just check the luggage, and acting like he was about to go back to the guest house. Then, guards watching as if they expected him to explode at any moment, or try and fight his way out, Tor simply rose into the air and left.
Permission indeed. Did the morons not realize he could fly?
He got about an hour north before he had to land because he was losing the light. Landing in the dark was just too dangerous, even in the flat wasteland he found himself. He set up a little camp, really wishing he’d thought to buy a blanket or bedroll while he’d been in town. His shield would protect him from attack, not all, as he’d just learned, but most. His skin still felt burned and sore, but that wasn’t anything to major. He’d had worse sunburns. Still, it had hurt enough to distract him, which had been the plan he guessed.
The temperature wouldn’t be a problem, warm enough still for sleeping even if he didn’t have a device that made that a moot point. He even had lights for safety and comfort in his case. But nothing he had would keep him off the ground at all. Or, and this was a real enough consideration as the day wore on, hide him while he relieved himself. All the camping out he’d ever done before was in the woods. This area was wide open, dry and scrubby looking, with a lot of exposed rock, some of it red and very flat on top. On the good side, no one seemed to live out here either, and even if anyone flew over they wouldn’t be able to see him in the middle of the night.
The idea hit him all at once. He had equipment that would let him make a sturdy little shelter and lights that would let him see well enough to work. All he had to do was find the little stream he’d though he saw before he landed and he’d have almost everything he needed. Then again, working in the dark would be hard, even if he used his artificial lights. Instead he decided to just wait until morning. Then he could see about building a proper shelter.
If anyone owned this land, they obviously didn’t care a lot about it, and really, how long would he be there anyway? He didn’t even have food or anything and doubted he could find any out here. Of course as far as Tor knew he wasn’t kicked out of the Capital or anything, so maybe he could go there for supplies? It might work, for a while at least. He curled up and tried to use his arm as a pillow. It didn’t work very well, being too hard and bony for comfort. Sleep didn’t come for a long time, but it did arrive, finally, after several hours of pitch blackness.
When morning came and Tor sat up he had a horrible crick in his neck, it hurt just to try and look to the right, as if someone had kicked him in the neck as he slept. It might have been damage from the fight the day before. If him running around being hit with weapons like that was to be considered such, but whatever it was, it couldn’t be counted as fun. He got up and walked towards where he thought the stream might be, feeling tempted to just fly the distance, but realizing that getting too lazy wouldn’t help his health long term, he needed to walk, and even, if he could manage it, run, as much as possible to recover what he’d lost, especially if he was going to have to fight commando squads now. Flying was better than nothing, but he couldn’t just float around all over the place if he wanted to keep himself from falling apart.
The water wasn’t that far away, and as he lay on the bank scooping it into his mouth, tasted clean and pure. First he needed to get some kind of shelter, a roof and four walls would do, it didn’t have to be fancy, or even large. There was just one of him after all. How much did he really need? He paced out a square that was twenty by twenty paces or so and marked the corners with some rocks he’d found. There were no trees, which felt wrong and a little off-putting to him, but he wasn’t here permanently anyway, so worrying about it would be a waste of time.
The soil was a red brown dirt that was dry, except for right by the water. The lack of trees at least meant that he didn’t have to deal with roots in the soil, so he used one of the excavation rigs to spray the dirt out of the square he’d marked off and then used the compressor to turn the floor and the inner walls into a hard red black “tile” about a foot thick. Actually he couldn’t decide if it was red-black or a deep brown black. It was kind of pretty either way. Shiny and a little like glass. This made a solid and not too ugly pit about six feet deep. Laughing he realized that he hadn’t put in any stairs, so he had to fly out of it and use dirt from about fifty feet away to add the needed steps near where he wanted to put his door. Tor could have used the dirt he’d piled up from the inside of the hole, but he wanted to save it all for the walls and roof, didn’t he?
Then he used that dirt to make the walls, which went up about eight feet, so that it would look like a proper house from the outside, if little. Not that tiny really, since it was about a fifty foot square at the base, big for one fairly small person.
Tor had just been comparing the size to the palace of all things. Because that made sense. A hastily constructed mud hut was exactly like that.
Tor snorted, but kept working.
The walls went up easily enough. He made them extra stout; because the compressor was preset to make sheets of solid earth about a foot thick. Hard as stone and waterproof, it turned dirt into a good working material, which looked more like fine, shiny stone than mud at least. The door was a bit of a problem, because he didn’t have any wood, or way of making hinges, so Tor formed a hallway that shifted back and forth three times instead. That way no one would just walk in by accident, or see him changing clothes, but it didn’t take any other materials like wood or metal, to make. It would also let air in and out, which was important. The structure was tight at the seams and that could foul things fast if people were breathing inside.
The roof turned out to be the biggest issue of the day.
He was able to make thick roof plates easily enough, and it didn’t take long for him to figure out that using a cargo float would work to get it up into place. He had to fly to do it, but only to roof height, so it wasn’t too big of a deal. His still shaky hands were a problem, but by going slow he balanced the huge thing on the top of the slanted roof after only a half dozen or so tries.
When he turned the float off, tied in place with a pieces of string to the stone, the whole slab slid right off the roof and hit the ground with a huge thud. The impact was so hard that Tor could feel the ground move, even from his position about four feet up in the air. Of course the string broke, letting the plate fall to the ground where it ended up with the whole thing laying on top of it.
It took about half an hour to get it back in the air, and another hour to figure out that if he put dirt in place on the top of the wall all the way around carefully, he could use the compressor to tack it on before letting the field go and then pack the paper thin seams that were left with dirt and seal those as well. That took most of the morning and a bit of the early afternoon. Then he just had to finish sealing the ridge line of the roof by packing it with dirt several times, building up a smooth, but flat, top line.
So he had a house now, the shell of one at least. No food and no running water yet, but that could be dealt with, if he hurried. Tor just put the chests inside, emptying his work and clothing chest, and setting all the materials on the ground, then took about twenty gold and tucked it inside his shirt in a small canvas bag. He did make a point of washing up as best he could in the stream before he headed back into the Capital. It wouldn’t do to have people think he was dirty after all. Had to uphold the good name of quasi-fugitive trolls everywhere, didn’t he?
It was a dark thought, worse, it wasn’t true. He wasn’t that bad looking. He looked like his brothers, who were all fine enough that they got their share of attention in the little village, and his older brother Taler had even managed to find a fairly cute wife. Tor should be about in the same general league, right? Not a troll.
He tried to tell himself this for a while, but found his thoughts floating back to the fact that he must be, or that he might be stupid, or ugly, or both, and too stupid to know it? Heh, well, he figured, living out here, even if it was just for the time being, meant that there was no one to judge him. Now if he just could to get into town without scaring anyone and get a few supplies it would be fine.
The flight was uneventful, he landed by the gate they normally came in by, which was the nicest one, near the good neighborhoods, if the ones farthest away from the palace. It wasn’t that Tor was hiding; it was just that he wanted to get established at least to the level of having a real camp, before telling everyone where he was. Some running water, a chair or two. Maybe a nice, thick, defensible wall… Some weapons capable of defending against the King’s army, or a few errant commando squads. That kind of thing.
His shopping took a long time, not because it was hard to get places, but honestly, he really didn’t know where to find the shops at all. Finally, floating slightly above the ground, wearing his old students uniform Tor had to finally give in and ask an old woman if she knew where he could find the central market.
She seemed nice enough looking, gray haired, wearing clothing that was dun colored and sturdy, rather than flashy and meant to impress. She was taller than he was, even with the extra four inches the Not-flyer gave him and though she looked at the air under his feet she didn’t comment on it directly, at first. Instead she smiled and winked, then mentioned it.
“I’m not sure if floating in the air will get you past the military recruiters, but it’s a noble attempt none the less. That must have cost you a pretty penny. Tor-shoes aren’t they? Like the Prince has? I just heard about them yesterday myself. Still, if my recollections of the last war are right, you’d be better off just waiting about a year. They get desperate enough for bodies to fill the ranks against the Austrans and they’ll be willing enough to pretend twelve is a short fourteen.”
It took an act of will for Tor not to simply sputter at her.
“Um, I’ve been out of town since last night, but, what? There’s a war? I swear there wasn’t when I left!” Had they gone and messed things up that much already?
“Oh, well, that would do it. The Austrans haven’t attacked yet, but they declared war last night. Whole kingdoms in an uproar, surprised you haven’t heard about it. Kind of out of the blue too. No “incident” to get things going, just a declaration of their intent to come at us. Guess they got bored again? Anyway, the markets where the main recruiting is going on for the Capital. Makes it a pain to get any shopping done, boys rushing off to die like they are. If you’re wise you’ll take my advice and wait though. No one will think less of you for reaching your growth first.”
Taking a deep breath Tor tried to figure out what to do. God, a war. He hadn’t even heard that Austra was making moves like that at all. Well, the first thing he needed to do was get with Debri house and make sure they knew to keep up with the military contracts… No. First he needed to talk to Rich and Connie. If they could be spared to talk to him at all. This was no time for him to be running around being needy any more.
Dropping into a trance he forced himself to relax and put everything that had happened aside. All of it. If they needed him, if he could do anything to be of help, he’d do it. Tor could bake, or run messages if nothing else. True, Smythe wasn’t his best friend right now, but they’d just have to get past their little situation and get to work anyway. If the man wanted to waste his time killing Tor, then he was too stupid to be in charge of the military and while the man wasn’t his buddy, he hadn’t really seemed like a moron. Maybe a bit misguided? Well, they’d deal. It was war after all.
It took nearly an hour for him to get to the palace, he was making good enough time, way better than he would have in a carriage, but he kept getting lost on the winding streets and had to stop several times when crowds of people holding impromptu rallies to support the troops got in his way. When that happened he just cheered and sang along with the people as he walked through the crowd, if he could understand the words to whatever it was they were singing at all. A lot of the people had gotten drunk already and weren’t exactly chanting words as much as grunting along in rough time with the others. Most were just made up chants about how evil and bad the Austrans were. One of them was actually pretty lewd, and listening to housewives chant about the sexual inadequacy of Austran men made him blush and laugh at the same time.
Given everything Tor expected trouble at the gate and decided that he’d just camp out as best he could until someone came through that could take word inside for him. Tovey or someone he knew had to come through eventually, and when they did he’d try to get their attention, if anyone was even speaking to him right now. He didn’t think he’d be in trouble, well, maybe a fine for flying inside the city limits, but leaving to protect Connie’s good name probably wasn’t a capital offense yet, even if he hadn’t been given permission to go. The guard eyed him nervously for a second, a younger man, but one that he’d seen before at least.
“Excuse me, I’m Torrence Baker, Um, Countier four Lairdgren, maybe a Squire still, possibly not, sometimes people call me Tor? Anyway, I know that it’s probably too much to ask to be let in, but would it be possible to get a message to-” Before he could finish the young man smiled and started blowing a whistle. It was a loud thing, enough to hurt his ears and he was standing a good ten feet away. The poor guard must have been doing hearing damage to himself. He made three short, sharp bursts on it.
“One moment sir,” was all that he said.
Well, Tor figured that if he’d just called in the military to attack him again, at least the guy was being more polite about it than Smythe had been. While the whistle was off-putting, it wasn’t a sneak attack. Instead of the military in their all black outfits, or even the black and purple of more Royal Guard, Varley ran out of the palace. Actually, she didn’t run at all, she floated over, faster than could have been run in the dress she wore, by about four times.
“Tor! Good, we didn’t know where you were. There’s a huge meeting, I’m supposed to check people out at the gate. If I don’t know you, you don’t get in. This is Tor, Kevin, he’s all right. He should be the first name on the list?”
OK’d by a Princess or not, Kevin, the gate guard, checked the papers in his little guard shack and nodded. “Yes, Princess Veronica, he’s right here; Torrence Baker, Tor, Countier four Lairdgren, Squire of Kolbrin, Troll of Galasia, ambassador pro-tem Afrak. With a note that says I shouldn’t point out how short or young he looks or imply that he looks younger than his stated age of seventeen, even though he clearly does. Please come in sir.” The guard smiled at him.
Tor stuck his tongue out at the man, who actually chuckled at the move.
His empty trunk following him, he floated alongside Varley, getting her to go a little bit slower than they could have so that he could ask questions. She answered quickly, her voice sharp but not unkind.
“Um, you’re just the ambassador pro-tem, basically that means “for now”. That way you can go and set up the rivers and things you promised without needing anyone else to guide you around from here. It saves on people and really, I think dad kind of wants to stuff a young looking boy down their throats that they’ll have to be polite, too. They have some trouble with men being in power at all there.” Varley smiled at him.
“And the Troll of Galasia crack?” He asked, walking quickly, giving her a sideways glance.
She just shrugged.
“Sounds like something Alphie would have put in, doesn’t it? I’ve heard worse nicknames though. Makes you sound kind of manly, doesn’t it? I’ll take you to the meeting room. Everyone else, our people here, are already in there making preparations. Well, that and bickering about things. I can’t go in with you. I mean I could, no one would stop me, but I won’t. No one will listen to me and sitting there trying to take notes on what people are arguing about is boring. If you need me I’ll be sitting by the front door with a book.”
She leaned in and tried to kiss him on the cheek, but was blocked by the shield he had turned on. “You know Tor, it makes it a lot harder to connect with people if you live behind a shield all the time. Things aren’t that dangerous. We have guards and walls you know.” Her delicate arms crossed over her small chest, which, Tor noticed absently, wasn’t all that small any more. The girl wasn’t just getting taller, but starting to fill out. She flipped her long auburn hair back slightly and gave him a look that had to be a impersonation of her mother. If it wasn’t then she really needed to get out of the palace more often, because it was almost eerily good.
Tor stuck out his tongue and laughed.
“Really, you should wear your own shield all the time right now, yes, except when you want to kiss someone, I suppose. But I’ve found that having a shield but not using it is about the same as being kicked down stone steps from behind.” That Trice may have done that, well, he managed to keep the tears from his eyes at least. Right, there was a war. No worrying about her right now.
Varley chuckled and raised her eyebrows at him, then winked.
“Alright, I’ll wear my shield more, if you’ll drop yours when I want to kiss you. Deal?” She smiled and tapped her foot impatiently.
“Um, sure?”
Gesturing at him, she waited for him to drop his shield and then kissed him on the lips for about half a minute. He blinked. It was a good kiss, if incredibly improper. She did slap on her own shield when she finished at least, giggling a bit. Blushing he walked through the council chamber door without saying anything after getting his own shield on.
Stone steps and all that, he reminded himself.
The door was heavy, thick wood that was carved with a series of rectangles and stained a flat brown color. In this building where almost everything was a piece of art, this single door looked almost plain. That probably served to show how important it really was. The door handle was iron, pitted with use and age. It turned with a creak and he had to muscle the door open a little. Before it was all the way open Tor double checked to make certain his shield was on, focusing on the field pattern itself so that he wouldn’t risk shutting it off by mistake. He didn’t really know what to expect on the other side after all.
It was chaos.
Or at least the slightly raised voices that could be heard before the door opened were a lot louder. No one was fighting physically, yet, but there was finger pointing and accusations of unpatriotic sentiment. Richard sat at the head of the table with Rolph to his right hand side and the Queen to his left, all looking pretty regal. That made sense, it being in their job description. They’d all probably had lessons in it. Next to Rolph, in a dress too pretty for the room, sat Karina. Her face wasn’t bored, actually managing to look engaged for once, making good eye contact with one of the large, scary men that sat around yelling. He wasn’t a good looking fellow particularly, huge, shaggy bearded, dark, ferocious and rather emphatic as he pointed at a map.
“Here! It’s isolated, close enough to the Capital for troops to be summoned in an emergency, but far enough away that no one will worry about a military take over. It’s the perfect spot!” The place on the map was about fifty miles closer to the Capital than where his little house was, but almost lined up with it otherwise.
What it was the perfect spot for, Tor couldn’t tell from the shouting at first. It sounded like something minor enough, a training base for the military flyer corps. That there was a flyer corps at all was news to him. It probably was a good place for the base, open and with few trees for novice recruits to crash into, except that some things would be hard to come by there. He walked over and pointed to the map, about thirty miles to the right of where the man had been indicating originally.
“Here. There’s water for one thing. You’ll still have to ship in all your food of course, but you can harden the soil into a holding tank with a run off, so the local area won’t suffer from too much loss of water if you’re careful. The soil works with the compaction process well enough. I was just out here,” He pointed over and up by the little stream he’d built next to which didn’t even show on the brittle looking brown paper.
“Yesterday and today working with it. I used excavators to make a small cabin, earlier today.”
Tor snorted loudly and shook his head.
“Of course half of the time it took was because I didn’t know how to put the roof on. More than half really. I don’t know who owns the land, but hopefully they won’t mind a new cabin, because I don’t think it’s going anywhere for a while. It’s at least as hard as stone.”
The man stared at Tor for about fifteen seconds, far too long to be comfortable. Then he reached over to the map and slid the green marker over near the river were Tor had pointed.
“Good point, water. So here then.” His voice had calmed down a lot once someone else in the room seemed to be supporting him at least a little.
The Prince looked forward and nodded.
“I own all that area, pretty much a wasteland, but if you want to use it for a base, that’s no big problem. No trees for building materials… you tried out the system that uses dirt, and turns it into stone you say?” Rolph had seen the excavators and compactors already, even played with them a little, so Tor figured that this restatement of what he’d just said must be for someone else’s benefit. Possibly everyone else, he realized. Why would they know about it at all yet?
Around the people there were sixteen other people, some of them he recognized, Like Counts Ford and Rodriguez. Count Derring sat across the table; a huge oval thing made of real wood that must have been the roughest hewn thing in the whole palace. If it had even been sanded at any point it would have been a surprise and by the cut marks in the wood, real metal tools had been used in its making, not cutters. Either incredibly old or a reconstruction piece worth thousands of gold.
A few people he knew and a lot he didn’t. Tovey gave him a short nod, encouraging him to speak about the building he’d been doing? It seemed a strange topic for a war council but if that’s what they wanted…
For some reason Burks, the servant from the guest house that had been so helpful to him, also sat at the table. Maybe he was there to run errands or something? If so, they couldn’t get a more reliable person for the task.
Why not? They tasked a Princess with meeting people at the gate, even nobodies like him, so why not have a trusted person sit in the room to help out at need?
“That’s right,” he waived his hands in the air as he described things. “It’s fast, using cargo floats I put up a shelter that will probably last a few hundred years short of someone with an explosive weapon going after it. Think of it like large heavy stone. It has a solid foundation and everything. The process is, well, let me short hand it and if anyone wants to see it, or even try it out, for themselves I can arrange that. It takes dirt, pretty much whatever is there and separates out any wet components, bits of leaves, animals or anything else like that, then it compresses it on the primary level until it turns into a single block or sheet, depending on how you set the device. Those are two separate steps, so the excavators can be used for any digging or earth moving really. I was thinking of making a more controllable compression unit so that the soil could be used to make other things, tables, chairs, beds and the like. Even wash tubs, cisterns and pipes for water, its water proof, so it will work. I created the original process for sewers that won’t break down for a long time.”
At least three of the people stared at him and stopped speaking; at first he figured it was because he was too young and unknown to be bothered listening too or something but then one of them started nodding.
“Yes…” It was a long drawn out word from a large man with a halo of white hair around a bald pate who looked like he hadn’t shaved in at least two days.
“If we can really do all that, then… It would work. We could have a training base up in weeks instead of half a year or more. How soon can we get these tools in place? How much will it cost?”
“Um,” Tor said, feeling brilliant as he tried not to stammer in front of all these intimidating people. “Well, how many units are needed? That’s probably the real issue here. The rest can be taken care of as we go. Technically the price is set by Sorvee House for the earth movers. No one holds the compressors yet. I’m keeping those back for Sorvee, if they prove out with the other unit.”
Several of the people shuffled papers. They weren’t all men, three women sat around the table as well, all dressed in flying clothes, so Countesses probably if it really was as hard as all that to get a hold of a flying rig. That made some sense, they probably all were Counts, Countesses, or some kind of high councilor. Tor noticed that Smythe was there too, but wearing simple black clothing, rather than his personal cream and yellow uniform. The man nodded to him, but didn’t do so much as frown, more focused on the people around him it looked like to Tor.
Fine with him, these giants could take the attack next time while he led the retreat. He could spend some time practicing his battle cry for it, like some of the royal combat giants had done at school when they were goofing off.
It was one of the women that spoke, which didn’t surprise Tor that much. That she was one of the younger ones did, a little. Not that he cared personally, but he thought that the Counts would. Apparently not. They all went silent for a minute while she spoke, which they hadn’t been for anyone else so far, including the Prince.
“We have two thousand men ready to deploy for flight training as soon as possible, but the flying devices are coming in slower than projected, we only have half of those already with another two hundred coming before the end of the next month. Realistically speaking, if we have one of these units for excavating for every fifty men in the first group, which should be about eleven hundred strong, including support staff and trainers, that should be sufficient for our needs at that location. So… Twenty-two, plus an equal number of those other devices that turn dirt into rock.”
Tor looked down at the table. They had that few flying rigs? The military was getting most of them! Shouldn’t they have at least a hundred times that? No wonder they were freaking out about him wanting to shut down the production even for a few months. Well, maybe he could help fix that then. Why hadn’t anyone mention it to him before?
“Um, well, I can have that made up… by tomorrow afternoon, if I can get some gear brought in? I kind of came into town today to do some shopping, but then heard about all this and came here instead, I need food and some bedding, pillows, that kind of thing, it will make mass copy work a lot easier.” This next month would suck if he wasn’t very careful. Tor plunged ahead anyway. There was a war and his kingdom needed everyone to do what they could, even nobodies like him.
“Then it will take most of the next month to get another thousand flying rigs together. I mean, that’s if I have to do the shields too? I’m guessing those haven’t been coming in any faster?” He looked at Richard who gave him a shocked look, and shook his head no.
Of course not.
Was Debri house just stockpiling them to keep the price up or was that really the best that they could do? If it was, no wonder field devices always cost so much. He’d kind of wondered at that before himself. It wasn’t easy work for him, especially the builds, but it didn’t seem like anything that should cost hundreds of golds per unit either. But maybe it really was? The thought was a bit scary, to tell the truth.
The room had gone silent for some reason, except for Rolph who looked at him and smiled.
“What all do you need to get this done?”
It wasn’t a lot, just food, some soft things that would get him off the ground and maybe someone to make sure he had water and food and, if possible, a latrine dug. He could do it himself, he’d been planning to when he got back actually, put in a whole building for the purpose. He’d have liked to have something more proper, but he didn’t know how to put together a septic system or a sewer.
Count Thomson stood up suddenly.
“I’ll take care of the supplies. Copper for templates too? That seems more efficient than silver. We should send out a group with him, call his new house the primary location and get the first sectioned trained to use the new devices as fast as they come out. Do we have anyone that has experience with the new excavating devices yet? Other than Tor, he’s… going to be busy.” The voice was deep, possibly deeper than it had been before if that was possible.
For once Tor had an answer even though the question was unexpected.
“Yes. They’re using them in Galasia to rebuild their sewer system. They should have people that have almost daily practice with them. Get with, ah, let’s see, Baron… I want to say second or third, Ferdinand Gala? He should know who to go to, at least I handed the gear I made for them directly over to him.”
They decided to send a group of people back with him, which, oddly enough, included Rolph since he insisted and, as he pointed out, already knew the job of caring for a working Tor. It meant that Tor had to sit down and make up a batch of cargo floats without using a template first, just to move all the supplies and gear they needed. It worked, but took an extra hour at least. The fields were a bear to make at the best of times, and having to work from memory didn’t help at all. Actually, it kind of surprised him that he managed it, all that practice copying seemed to have a real pay off in this case.
Three hours later they were all landing at the little place Tor had started the day before. It didn’t, he knew, look like much. But it was water tight and sturdy, and while the color was an almost black, the man in charge, a captain in this new flying service, said that white wash was cheap enough and painting made a decent punishment detail.
“Or training, if people are flying while trying to paint with a brush. Hitting the roof and what not. Really it’s the same kind of coordination you need to target with a weapon while hovering.” He pantomimed the needed technique holding both hands out and pretending to paint the air.
This got a laugh, but no one doubted that it would be interesting to try. Possibly deadly, but the flyers corps wasn’t meant to be a bunch of wimps, worried about little things like death overly.
Tor did the first two batches of excavators before dinner, which was mildly warmed bread and cheese with some dried fruit. No one but Tor and one other man could really cook, and even warming something over a fire was pretty much out, because there was so little fuel to be found. So they’d need to make ovens too. Well, it was doable. He’d just work that in between the flying rigs, the shields and the rivers and extra powerful excavators for Afrak. No problem.
Sleep was a sign of weakness anyway, right?