Kingdom River Read online

  KINGDOM RIVER

  BOOK TWO OF THE SNOWFALL TRILOGY

  By

  MITCHELL SMITH

  Version 1.0

  Copyright © 2003 by Mitchell Smith

  ISBN: 0-765-34058-5

  Concern has been expressed by the National Science Foundation that possible alterations of Jupiter's orbit, following successive major cometary impacts, may affect the earth's orbit — slightly, but still decisively — and so change the annual patterns of our planetary weather.

  Associated Press, May 16, 2006

  Article in Bloomington Times-Tribune

  Bloomington, Indiana, May 17, 2006

  Had this latest — and most severe — ice-age taken an age to arrive, instead of only decades, enough preparation might have been possible to spare those hundreds of millions who froze in the north... those hundreds of millions who starved in the south. Might have spared us, as well, four — now almost five — barbaric centuries, with what remains of civilization learned, like our language, from those relatively few books surviving.

  New Harvard Yard, Cambridge,

  Massachusetts. Commentaries

  Introduction

  To the Kipchak Prince and Khan Evgeny Toghrul, Lord of Grass, Ruler Perfect of the Bering Strait Traversed, the Map-Pacific Coast, Map-California — and, lately, Conqueror of Map-Texas to the Guadalupe River and beyond.

  Greetings from Neckless Peter, old man and librarian, who years ago, having been taken captive from my Gardens Town by naked savages — Border Roamers serving with your father's subsidiary forces — was privileged to tutor a brilliant boy in what we know of Warm-times gone, and their wisdom.

  This boy has become you, my lord — and I, your recently assigned ambassador and agent to North Map-Mexico, take this opportunity to tell you that I quit.

  'I quit.' Is it any wonder we get not only our written and spoken language from the books of centuries past, but even its casual slang — so neat, so pointed, so appropriate?

  I am, of course, aware that your strangler's bowstring awaits any who disappoint you, and can only hope that a thousand miles of distance — and perhaps some slight regard you might still hold for your elderly tutor — will prevent a determined attempt at murder.

  In any case, I can now say what I felt it unwise to mention to you before — so as not to increase an already understandable arrogance — which is that you were by far the most extraordinary intelligence I had ever encountered or ever expected to encounter, and as such were a joy to teach. I have not forgotten and will never forget sitting by the Meadow Fountain at Caravanserai with a quiet, slender boy whose eyes, black, glossy, steady as a spider's and slightly slanted beneath the folds of their lids, drank from the pages of every copybook I presented to him.

  Your first question to me: What had happened to the countless thousands of Warm-time books now lost to us? You'd asked, and been saddened by my answer: "Burned, libraries of them, almost all those not eaten by centuries of winters. Burned with all knowledge of their miracles of learning — perfect medicines, the making of black bang-powder, the secrets of flying machines and laboring machines and thoughtful machines, as well as endless wonderful intricate tales.... Almost all the books burned for warmth as their peoples' world collapsed beneath weather, and they and their children froze."

  Yours proved to be a genius clear and encompassing as flowing water. And now, of course, driven by a ferocity that impressed even your late and quite ferocious father, that intelligence is causing our ice-weighted world to tremble, so only Middle Kingdom, and of course New England, might stand against you.

  Do you remember the afternoon we read of Ancient-Alexander's life and conquests? We read it together in a spectacular copybook, a treasure copied from an original found in the ruins of Los Angeles. (— I trust, by the way, that the library at Caravanserai is being cared for. Over eight hundred copybooks. No moisture. There must be no moisture — and copying and recopying continuous. The books are all we have of Warm-times and civilization.) Do you remember how we yearned for an encyclopedia, that dreamed-of miracle of answers? Never found, alas; too wonderful as kindling.

  We read of Ancient-Alexander, and you diagramed his battles with squid ink on wide sheets of the court's perfect paper. You refought those conflicts in your mind, your quill moving here and there... and finally decided how the Persian center might have been more suitably arrayed.

  "Clumsy forces," you said of the Persians and their Greek allies, but gathered them together on your paper, set them in odd echelon... then waited for Ancient-Alexander and his Companions to make the inevitable charge.

  "He would have beaten me at the Granicus," you said, "but at Issus, I would have destroyed him. There would have been no Gaugamela." And satisfied, you let the white sheets of paper, swarming with the inked lines and arrows of battles never to be fought, slip from your lap to the grass.

  I will not forget those afternoons, lord, nor your love of Warm-time poetry — particularly the New England lady's. I could not stop for Death, so he kindly stopped for me... (How sad that those Map-Boston people have fallen to growing beasts in women's bellies.)

  Remembering our rich days, why then do I quit you? And for the service of an upstart Captain-General of North Map-Mexico, Small-Sam Monroe, to whose camp you sent me as ambassador and spy?

  First, I leave your service for his because I loved his Second-mother, Catania Olsen, as a friend, and because Small-Sam was born at Gardens, my home, when it was still tree green and full of families and fine weaving, all under the rule of the last great Garden Lady, Mary Bongiorno. So, I choose my future in honor of my past.

  Second, I leave your service for his because while Small-Sam Monroe is a war-captain, and successful at it, I think he will not be only a war-captain, determined as you are to devour all our cold-struck continent, and so cause a barbarous age to become even more so.

  You will be interested to hear that when I mentioned my intention to Monroe — to leave your service for his — he insisted I first complete the task for which you sent me, and forward to you a complete history, description, and report of the current essential military and economic matters of his overlordship. This report to be carried sealed and unread by him or any man of his, and delivered along with his personal apology for depriving you of an amusing servant.... I'm not sure why 'amusing.'

  He also refused to accept any report I might have made to him concerning you or the Khanate.

  I believe you would like Sam Monroe — the 'Small-Sam,' I understand, has gone out of usage since his victories. He is a very interesting young man — your age, as it happens, within a year or two. He possesses a sort of informed, stony common sense, an interesting contrast to your brilliance.

  I will miss you, my lord. You were an incomparable student… though I have felt more and more that I failed you as a teacher, to have left you with nothing but the determination to enforce your will across our world.

  Once your servant, but no longer such...

  Neckless Peter Wilson

  KINGDOM RIVER

  CHAPTER 1

  The ravens had come to This'll Do.

  Sam Monroe, Captain-General of North Map-Mexico — and commander of the army that, before this, had been called Never-Defeated — frightened birds here and there as he walked among the dead.

  A messenger-pigeon had reached Better-Weather, and he'd come, down with headquarters' Heavy Cavalry, come quickly, but still arriving two days too late. Troopers of the Second Regiment of Light Cavalry lay scattered through high grass for almost a Warm-time mile down the valley from Please Pass.

  Sam Monroe walked through tall brown stems still brittle from last night's frost. Death had come in Patchy-fool Autumn, the eight-week summer ended two weeks before.
Dead troopers lay here and there, almost hidden in the grass except where low mounds of the slain showed — Light Cavalry's hide-and-chainmail hauberks hacked by the imperial cataphracts' battle axes.

  More than three hundred dead within sight of his encampment on the near hill, and dozens more lying out of sight to the east, where the village stood, ridden down as they'd spurred away. It seemed to Sam Monroe there would certainly be at least four hundred dead, when totaled.

  Though the villagers had been spared the empire's usual rapes and murders, valuable squash and pumpkin fields had been trampled, their last harvest destroyed. Farms had been burned or battered — pine-plank buildings feathered with the cataphracts' arrows, doors smashed in, the furnishings axed for campfires.

  The valley fields were quiet now, excepting only a raven's occasional croaking, only the dawn wind's murmuring through the grass. A cold wind, almost freezing, with Daughter Summer dead. Sam's soldiers believed Lady Weather would be weeping sleety tears for her, as Lord Winter came walking south from the Wall.

  The imperials' commander had already recovered his killed and wounded, taken them back south through the pass, heading farther south of the Sierra Oriental to what would certainly be a triumph in Mexico City for the Empire's first victory against the North.

  Not a great battle — only a clash of cavalry along a mountain border. But Sam Monroe's army had lost it. The charm of always winning was broken.

  The Heavy Cavalrymen not digging john-trench, tending horses, or guying tents, were watching from the hill as he walked through the grass from corpse to corpse; Sam could feel them watching.... He knew so many of the dead. A small army was full of familiar faces — even though the chill afternoons had still been warm enough to spoil these, begin to swell them with rot in the army's brown wool and leather.

  He knew a number of these troopers — and all the officers, of course. He'd saluted them in battle many times as they'd poured past him to trumpet calls in a flood of fast horses, shining steel, and banners.

  Sam walked through the grass, visiting this one… then another. The women were the worst. If it hadn't been for the women, he would not be weeping. They lay, slender bones broken, soft skin sliced, faces — some still beautiful — astonished at their deaths. Where bright helmets had been beaten away, gleaming drifts of long hair, black, red, and golden, lay in broken grass.

  He visited the dead for a Warm-time hour, then went back up the hill as the picks and shovels were brought down to bury them.

  Two Heavy Cavalry corporals were posted as guards just beyond ear-shot of his tent (wonderful Warm-time phrase, 'ear-shot'). They saluted as he passed. Sam saw Margaret had brought his breakfast to a camp table by the tent's entrance.

  "Sir, please eat." She stood watching him. "Done is done." A favorite saying of hers.

  "The wounded?"

  "Mercies found the last of them, eleven WT miles east. They've started bringing them in." She saw the question in his face. "Fifty-three, sir. And Ned Flores. He lost a hand… left hand."

  Sam sat at the table. The breakfast was scrambled chicken eggs, goat sausage, and tortillas — almost a Warm-time breakfast out of the old copybooks, except the sausage would have been pig, the tortillas toasted bread with spotted-cow butter.

  "You have to eat."

  He took a sip of hot chocolate. "Thank you, Margaret."

  Margaret turned and marched away, her boots crunching on the last of morning's frost, her rapier's length swinging at her side.

  Margaret Mosten, old enough to be an older sister, always served his breakfasts. Always served every meal. She would come riding up to his horse, on campaign, with jerk-goat or crab apples for his lunch. Boiled water, safe from tiny bad-things, for his leather bottle. No food came to him, but from Oswald-cook by her hand.

  Her predecessor, Elder Mosten, smelling something odd in chili, had tasted Sam's dinner once along the northern border by Renosa, then convulsed and died.

  "To you — only through me," his eldest daughter, Margaret, had said, then resigned her captaincy in Light Infantry, and come to Sam's camp to take charge of it with a much harder hand than her father's had been.

  Though that fatal chili's cook had hung, Margaret had ridden back to Renosa, inquired more strictly, and left four more hanging in the square — the cook's wife for shared guilt, and three others for carelessness in preparation and service.

  "That many," Sam had said to her when she returned, "and no more."

  "The cook and his wife were for that dinner;" Margaret Mosten had answered him, "the others were for our dessert."

  So, as with many of his followers, the burden of her loyalty leaned against Sam Monroe, weighed upon him, and tended to make him a short-tempered young man, everywhere but the battlefield.

  He could take bites of the breakfast tortilla, but the sausage and eggs were impossible. He must not — could not — vomit by his tent for the army to see.

  "Too young," they'd say. "What is Sam, twenty-six, twenty-seven? Too young, after all, for a grown man's work. All that winning must have been luck."

  And Sam Monroe would have agreed it had been luck — the good fortune of having the Empire's old, incompetent generals for enemies; the good fortune of having fine soldiers to fight for him; and what had seemed the good fortune of being born with battle-sense.

  But battle-sense had led to victories; victories had led to ruling. And ruling had proved a crueler field than any battleground, and weightier duty.

  It seemed to Sam, as he tried to eat a bite of eggs, that his will, which he had so far managed to extend to any necessary situation — as if a much older, grimmer, and absolutely competent person stood within him — that his will, his purposes, had turned him into that someone else, a man he would never have liked and didn't like now.

  The proof lay beneath the hill, in dead grass.

  But even that grim and forceful person had not come forth this morning to eat goat sausage and eggs.

  Margaret came back, her sturdy bootsteps quieter; the light frost was melting under the morning sun.

  "Sir...." With official business, "sir" was all the Captain-General required. Sam had early decided that honorifics promoted pride and stupidity; he had the south's imperial examples.

  "The brothers," Margaret Mosten said.

  "Lord Jesus." He ate a bite of sausage to show he could, then took deep breaths to quiet his belly. The Rascobs had to be spoken with, but a little later would have been better. "Will they wait?"

  "No," Margaret said. "And it would hurt them to be told to."

  That was it for the sausage. Sam took another deep breath and put down his two-tine fork — silver, a spoil from God-Help-Us. "I'll see them."

  "You should finish your eggs."

  "Margaret, I don't want to finish the eggs. Now, send them up." Odd, when he thought about it. Why 'send them up'? The camp was on high ground, but level. His tent was only 'up' because he gave the orders.

  Different bootsteps, stomping. The Rascobs appeared side by side and saluted — a fashion that had settled in the army after the early days in the Sierra. It was something all soldiers apparently loved to do.

  The brigadiers, Jaime and Elvin Rascob, were twins, scarred and elderly at fifty-eight — both tall, gray-haired, gray-eyed, baked brown and eroded by weather. Elvin was dying of tuberculosis, caused by poison plants too small to see, so he wore a blue bandanna over mouth and nose as if he were still a young mountain bandit and sheep-stealer.

  "We just rode in." Jaime Rascob's face was flushed with rage. "And saw what comes of sending Light Cavalry where infantry should have gone."

  "Told you, Sam," Elvin said, the south's blue cotton fluttering at his mouth. "Heavy Infantry to hold the pass — Light Infantry to come down the hills on them. Would have trapped those imperials, maybe killed them all. Told you." Dying, Elvin was losing courtesy.

  "Ned thought he could deal with them." Sam stuck his fork in the eggs and left it there.

  "Ned Flores is
a fool kid-goat — a Light-Cavalry colonel! What the fuck does he know about infantry situations?" Courtesy lost entirely.

  "It was your fault, sir." Jaime's face still red as a rooster's comb.

  "Yes, it was my fault." Sam looked up at two angry old men — angry, and dear to him. "Scouts reported only a few hundred imperials, and from the careful way they came, with no great force behind them. So, it seemed to me that Light Cavalry, with room to run east if they had to, could handle their heavies without our infantry to lever against. I was wrong."

  "Three hundred dead," Jaime Rascob said.

  "That's incorrect. It will be nearly four hundred."

  "Goodness to Godness Agnes..." Elvin, through his bandanna — certainly a Warm-time copybook phrase. "Almost three out of every four troopers dead. And we told you!"

  "Elvin — "

  "Jaime, I'm just saying what everybody knows." A statement definite, and with the weight of years as well, since he and his brother were each old enough to have been their commander's grandfather.

  Squinting in morning sunlight, Sam pushed his breakfast plate a little away. The smell was troubling.

  A mistake. He noticed the colonels noticing; an exchange of glances. He picked up his fork, ate a bite of eggs, then another. Took a sip of chocolate. "Do we know the cataphracts' commander?"

  "Voss says it was likely one of the new ones, probably Rodriguez." Jaime didn't sound convinced, though the Empire, slow at everything, had begun to allow promising younger officers commands. Michi Rodriguez was one of those 'Jaguars.'

  "Whoever," Jaime said, "he whipped Flores with just six hundred heavy horse."

  "Less."

  "Not less, Elvin," his brother said. "Three squadrons, at least."

  Elvin didn't argue. Any argument with Jaime Rascob ended only after a long while.

  "Still a damn shame." Elvin cleared his throat behind the bandanna. "We could have bottled them in Please Pass, maybe killed them all."

  Sam chewed a bite of sausage and managed to swallow it. "My decision to let them come through. My decision to send only Light Cavalry down to deal with them. My fault." The breakfast was hopeless — one more bite and he would be sick for all the camp to see. The young Captain-General, who'd never failed, vomiting his breakfast while troopers rotted in the mountain grass.