Strandpiel 57
Oorlogsdromme
V1.1, revisions. Incorporating a kind suggestion concerning care of your crossbow.
Ideas:-
As always: during the working week, lots and lots and lots of inspiration particles about Things That Might Happen Next and how they could fit into the general plot.
Hoping to wrap up Book One of Strandpiel with at most one more chapter, having set up lots of threads to pick up in Book Two….
The City of the Ingyonamazi, The Zulu Empire:
Ruth N'Kweze sat in her own familiar chair, in her own familiar office, glad to be back from a few dreadfully interminable weeks spent at the Royal Kraal. Learning how to be a Queen was taking it out on her. There wasn't even a correspondence course in Queening, or a sympathetic female monarch nearby who she could ask to be apprenticed to. She was having to learn it as she went along. She wondered about making an approach to somebody who she thought was sensible but hardly knew; although she felt any approach to Queen Magrat of Lancre would be a terse one-word "HELP!" Hardly diplomatic…
Ruth breathed out. She turned to Sissi N'Kima. It would be a relief to be doing normal everyday things again, the sort she had been delegating to Sissi in her absence. Things like managing an Army and running a growing city. Ordinary things.
"So what's new, Sissi?" Ruth asked. Her assistant smiled slightly, ran a finger around the rim of the surgical support collar she still wore around her neck, some time after the fight that had nearly crippled her, then consulted the clipboard she carried.
Ruth took in the sight of a Zulu indunala, dressed in conventional uniform and adornments as befitted her rank, who was otherwise consulting a clipboard of notes and issues to be brought to her employer's attention. It was, Ruth thought, a nice visual metaphor for the changes she was bringing about in Zulu society. The best of both continents, the Centre, and Howondaland. And her neck should have completely healed by now, after Igorina's surgery. She shouldn't be wearing that collar. If things aren't knitting as they should, I'm going to have to talk to Igorina about it. Maybe with the other thing…
Sissi cleared her throat, then raised an issue. Ruth frowned.
"Fifty-seven." she said, thoughtfully.
"Fifty-seven." Sissi confirmed.
Ruth steepled her fingers. She should not have been surprised about this. The feasting and celebrations after Nipho's presentation and Naming As The Heir had lasted long into the following day. She reflected that she should be surprised there were not going to be more, in fact. Her own impis were female; Denizulu had brought a lot of fit and healthy male soldiers to her city. And now, a month or two down the line, she was being confronted with an inevitable consequence.
"Send word to my husband." Ruth said. "Permission is granted for fifty-seven women of my impis to marry. It is right there should be a mass wedding. The husbands will of course need to be present."
"Which means another mass celebration afterwards." Sissi said. "And then a month or two after that…"
"And in a few months' time." Ruth said. "how many future soldiers for the Empire will arrive into this world?"
"Forty-three, at the last confirmed count." Sissi said. Ruth nodded.
"Women who are pregnant and begging leave to marry. Write a decree for me, Sissi: Lionesses who are to have cubs may step down from the active impi with honour and my blessing. But let it be known they will go to the reserve impi and are charged with keeping up their skills and fitness and are subject to recall. You know, the usual. Oh, and the children, if daughters, are mine to claim for this impi. They train in the youth impi when old enough. Women wishing to marry who are not yet pregnant: they may have leave to travel to their husband's family, as is custom. But afterwards they return here to resume duty."
"I'm on it." Sissi said. "By the way, recruitment's up and we should be able to cover for the losses. How was the Royal Kraal, by the way?"
"Unspeakable." Ruth said. "I'm of a mind to move everything here when I succeed. If I'm Queen, people come to me in a place of my choosing. Not the other way around."
"Indaba at three, Highness?"
Ruth nodded.
"Get everybody here. Lots to discuss."
Furtive Forth Street, Ankh-Morpork
Furtive Forth Street was an otherwise unremarkable side street, not nearly narrow enough to be called an alley but stretching it if you were to call it a street, just off the Street of the Accountants. Space for clerical and accountancy firms in the city centre was limited: a relatively new business had to take what it could. It was well-kept, well-swept, and in the manner of financial districts everywhere in the Multiverse, exuded a discreet sense of more prosperity going on than the occupants would care to acknowledge with mere surface impressions. Small accountancy businesses and firms were based here, each with its own client list. SR Management Services was one among many, advertising itself with a discreet brass plaque just by the door. Next to the ones that confirmed Thieves' Guild dues were paid up and that the Guild of Assassins took a discreet interest in the ongoing security of the place.
Just inside the door, Shauna O'Hennigan manned the reception desk. She was smartly dressed in a fairly new business suit – surprisingly smartly, to the surprise of those who had hitherto only ever seen her approximately filling out a school uniform, which, in the approved Official School Rebel style, she had taken care to look only just on the acceptable side of rebelliously scruffy.
Shauna sighed and took care that the copy of Modern Young Woman was concealed underneath the desktop blotter. This kind of thing was understood – Claire in the main office was a devotee of Quirm-Match – but it was best not to be too blatant about it in front of the customers, Shauna, you have to look professional.
She considered her new life. Doctor Johanna had ensured she was kitted out on expenses, and that had been a nice touch. She conceded the clothes really did look good. Sek knew how much it had cost. Well, not entirely true. I could look it up. Claire does the overheads of running this place.
Shauna considered the pros and cons of leaving school and working for a living. She got four dollars a week, she reminded herself. Twice what the usual run of jobs for a sixteen-year old school leaver might usually pay. It was worth putting up with, for four dollars a week. But feck, it could get tedious. Staffing the desk, sending Clacks message out as directed, receiving incoming mail and clacks flimsies and seeing the right people in the back office got their mail, receiving clients, seeing they got tea or coffee as per preference, being professionally nice to people, smartening up her language – Doctor Johanna had been insistent about that - not exactly the most glamorous introduction to the exciting world of business and finance.
And the people in the main offices. They were Doctor Johanna's former Assassins' School students, mainly. Ones who left after the general education and didn't go on to become Assassins proper. Shauna considered that. Four years mainly spent getting an education in the usual things. You could then leave the Assassins' School and go on to other schools and colleges, rather than spend another three years learning all the other stuff the Assassins taught. The people who did the other work here had gone on to do things like Law, and Accounts, and Tax. Doctor Johanna had kept in touch and when she set this place up, had asked a few people if they'd like to work for her, bring their skills to her.
They were okay, Shauna considered, even if none of them had been brought up in slums in Dimwell and their backgrounds were different to hers. That was a bit of a gulf to bridge.
She had asked her employer about this. Doctor Johanna had considered this for a moment and had asked if this worried her.
"Well… faith, they're all from what you might call better backgrounds and so on…" Shauna had said. "Don't get me wrong, they don't look down on me or anything, but it makes me feel like I stick out like a sixth finger or something. Slum kid from Dimwell."
Doctor Johanna had smiled broadly.
"A streetwise slum kid from Dimwell." she had said. "You weren't socially edventeged. You didn't go to an expensive prep school end then to the Essessins' School. Your beckground is different. You bring something different to the office. I want somebody in there who hes a different way of looking et things. I believe you will see things they will overlook. Thet is for the good."
And, two or three months on and still largely stuck on the front desk, Shauna wondered when she'd get to do other things, move on from being the Office Junior. Claire, the Quirmian woman, had turned out to be okay. Shauna had been in awe of the impeccably dressed and austere-looking Quirmian woman in black, the one who radiated a sort of capable efficiency, the one who appeared to be, in some indefinable way, in charge. She was the only one in there who was a full Assassin, the only one who had gone the distance and graduated. Shauna reasoned there had to be one. Shauna had resolved, on first impressions, to do everything as well as possible and on time, so as not to invoke Claire's displeasure. She felt this would not be advisable.
But Claire had, in small increments, started showing support and even a sort of mentoring friendliness to Shauna. It all went to prove that appearances deceived. Claire had approved that Seven-Handed Sek's had taught a basic conversational Quirmian to its girls, and had begun passing over her copy of Quirm-Match to Shauna to look at. It was a lively blend of news, gossip, celebrity profiles, and nice big illustrated iconographs with minimal captions. Like Tepidity or Wotcha!, only in Quirmian. Shauna appreciated the gesture. Her Quirmian was improving, too.
Claire had turned out to live on Spa Lane too. Shauna had wondered where she had seen her before. Apparently Number Four Spa Lane was owned by Madame Emmanuelle, Doctor Johanna's neighbour. Madame Emmanuelle, who Bekki called Auntie Emmie, and the mother of those maddeningly gorgeously good-looking lads Manni and Pippi, rented it out to people. Claire explained that La Comptesse, one of her former teachers, knew how hard it was to find an affordably-rented place in Ankh-Morpork and she was kind enough to rent cheaply to fellow Quirmians in the big city, preference given to Assassin graduates with jobs at the Guild. There were eight currently living there, Claire had explained, all of us Assassin graduates.(1)
"Ah." Claire had said. She kindly patted Shauna's arm. "I believe, ma petite, you may be finding it irksome to be the office junior, la mignonne. Look upon it in this manner. Doctor Smith-Rhodes does nothing without reason. I suspect you are being tested right now. This is her way of getting you to apply self-discipline and resolve to your working life. To learn good habits. To perform fairly boring and repetitive tasks well and on time and without complaint, for however long it takes. My advice to you is to stick with it and endure. I believe she may have other things planned for you, but this to you is the, how shall we say, c'est l'ananas dans le bol de fruits."
Shauna grinned.
"The pineapple in the fruit bowl."
Claire smiled.
"I could never remember the Morporkian words for fruits. Your task, cherie, is to eat the whole pineapple. Underneath that, the tastier fruits. Framboises, peut-etre."
Shauna understood this. She then offered to set up a tea-tray.
Later in the day, a uniformed Watchwoman walked in.
Shauna decided on a little bit of dumb insolence to lighten the day; visits from the Watch needed to be announced. Even this visit. She spoke into the intercom, then grinned to herself as Jeremy, the principal accountant, came racing into the reception area. He had the usual look of well-groomed worry that an accountant always has on his face when told the police have arrived. Shauna liked seeing this.
"How can we help you, Officer?" he inquired.
The Watchwoman nodded to him.
"This isn't a business call, sir." she said, politely. Jeremy relaxed.
"Or else Inspector Pessimal would be with me." she added. Shauna and the watchwoman looked at his face. This sort of thing lightened the day up. A visit from Inspector Pessimal, as every accountant knew, was bad news.
Then Rebecka Smith-Rhodes grinned at her old schoolfriend. They'd spent schooldays winding up their teachers like this. It was nice to revisit old skills.
"Got an hour off for lunch." she said. "If they can spare you for an hour. Up for it, Shauna? My treat."
Onverwacht Plaas, Piemberg, Rimwards Howondaland.
Captain Olga Romanoff accepted the courtesy iced tea from her hostess and stood back as the letter she had delivered was read. Knowing broadly what it said, she looked impassive as Barbarossa and Agnetha Smith-Rhodes shared the news from Ankh-Morpork. They shared the news concerning their grand-daughters with approval, laughter and the occasional shaken head. Then Barbarossa sat up straight and roared with surprise. He read to the end. Agnetha looked suddenly serious and grave.
Her husband strode to the door and onto the stoep, and began roaring commands. Olga glanced out of the window; farm workers, both white and black, were running to do things, the easy pace of the day suddenly stepping up by several orders of magnitude. After a while, a horseman was seen galloping off. A couple of the farm goblins were running to the Baas. Olga heard him dictating a clacks message. Her Vondalaans was not perfect, but she heard snippets, names, and the instruction ride here. Indaba. Four o'clock.
Agnetha shook her head.
"I'm not going to esk you if it's true or not." she said. "If Johanna is convinced and she is telling us to prepare, thet makes it definite."
Olga wasn't surprised to see the older woman go to the weapons rack, select a crossbow, and test the mechanism. This was a frontier outpost: everybody fought, if there was a need. Weapons were immediately to hand, for one thing. And she was looking at the mother of Johanna and Mariella Smith-Rhodes, she reminded herself.
Agnetha raised the weapon to her shoulder and sighted it out of the window towards an imagined target. Olga recognised competence and experience, and decided she'd fat rather be standing alongside Agnetha and not in front of her, in the event of a need to fire any actual shots.
She nodded. Olga had seen that sort of nod before. It meant trouble for somebody. Then the weapon was returned to the rack. Olga remembered long-ago weapons training, from a forester who worked for her father who was charged with ensuring an ample supply of game for hunting and for the table, and who in winter sought to keep wolves and bears at a respectful distance. It is a common error, my Lady, to test the mechanism of a weapon by dry-firing it with no bolt. Seek to avoid this, as it stresses the mechanism. Only fire it if there is a quarrel loaded, and seek to fire it safely at a chosen target.
"I think I hed better sharpen my machete." Agnetha remarked, to nobody in particular. "Heven't seriously used it in years. It's been quiet around here. Until now."
Then she turned to Olga.
"When Andreas hes stopped running around being the Kommandant end he comes back indoors. You hed better tell us what you know, Olga. We need to make a plen."
Spa Lane, Ankh-Morpork
Ruth Smith-Rhodes-Stibbons made a miniscule adjustment to a cog-wheel and tested the mechanism again. Wheels clicked and the hands on the main clock-face turned. A group of imps clustered on her worktop watched with grave focused intent. Ruth turned to a notepad that was full of complicated-looking calculations, and compared what she read on the pad to what the mechanism in front of her was telling her. She re-checked her calculations. She frowned. They didn't teach this sort of maths in School, or at least not to a class of nine-year old girls. She'd had to work a lot of it out for herself, from first principles and with a little help from Daddy. But she was sure of her calculations. Therefore the Device needed a little more fine-tuning. Getting the transmission right, and the interplay between the main device and all the other things slaved to it, was going to take a little more work. Maybe a five-eighths cogwheel with eleven teeth on it, as opposed to twelve, to keep the gearing ratio as accurate as it could be… and a wormgear there, longer and with a closer spiral…
She sighed and put the Device down. A lot of the things she needed couldn't be bought in shops. She was having to improvise, to adapt other things, and that was going to take work. She'd have go back to first principles and maybe even create a cogwheel with eleven regularly spaced teeth, from scratch. A brass disc of the right size and some delicate work with a fine needle file, or something. Or maybe I could etch it in acid, that would be faster, but Mummy doesn't like me playing with chemicals.
"Not quite right." she said. "It's losing seven minutes between the Hub and the Rim at Backspindle and that's making a plus or minus of up to seventeen minutes throughout the Great Year, so it's only going to tell accurate relative time four times a Great Year. I'm going to have to think about this."
Ruth put the mechanism down and decided to do something else for a while. She smiled at some of the new imps she'd got from Daddy.
"Ritchie? Jimmy? Let's have another go at the Guitar, shall we? We'd better do this downstairs in the music studio. People complain when it gets loud."
Ruth and her attendant Imps descended to the music studio. An advantage for Ruth, in that her room was built above the old mews garage, was that when the coaching mews had been rebuilt as a music studio, a spiral staircase had been added into the design that directly connected the two. She could therefore move freely between her two passions, unseen and unsupervised by her parents.
And after a while there was indeed noise, but inside a soundproofed music studio. Her parents had been definite about the soundproofing.
Necros Coffee Shop, Peach Pie Lane, Ankh-Morpork
Several members of Shauna's Gang, now cast into the world of work, met for a sandwich and a coffee in Necro's. The former convent schoolgirls compared notes about their respective post-education destinations and traded tales of woe.
"Not so bad." Shauna O'Hennigan said. "They might be the sort of book-smart people who wouldn't last five minutes on a street in Dimwell, but they're okay, I suppose. Just got to be nice to the clients and try not to fecking say "feck" when I talk to them, then send the feckers upstairs to discuss their investment portfolios with the suits. How about you, Joyce?"
Joyce shrugged. She was doing a post-school training diploma course with the Guild of Seamstresses. People tended to look sideways at her when she said this. But, as she said, people tended to go into a Guild with a family connection and nobody gives you odd looks if your dad's a plumber and you go into plumbing, so what's so strange? Mum's a Seamstress, Mrs Palm thinks I've got the aptitude, so I'm doing a course at the Technical School on Sheer Street.
"Well, they always need people with the right skills." Joyce said. The expression on her face hinted that she was daring people to look funny at her. "You know. Administration. Management. The bars and the catering operations don't run themselves. Procurement. Somebody's got to buy in and replace the jiggly little leather things, and who do you think prices out the racks and chains in the bondage dungeons?"
"Estates and facilities management." Bekki said. "If you run a House of Repute, somebody has to see the roof doesn't fall in. And you can't have people suing for personal injury if the rack in the BDSM dungeon falls apart."
"Exactly right." Joyce said. "And as I keep pointing out to people, Mrs Palm stipulates a minimum age of eighteen for anyone wanting to do the other thing. Doesn't look right if she takes sixteen-year olds straight out of school for that. Which is a relief as I'm in two minds on that. Haven't ruled it out, though. Mum does alright at it."
There was a pause.
"So how's life in the Peelers?" Shauna asked.
Bekki smiled.
"It keeps me off the streets." she said.
"Or flying over them." Janey pointed out. She was now at the Lady Sybil, training for nursing, specifically working with deaf people. Janey had grown up interpreting the world for a deaf mother; she was good at this.
Bekki stroked the brand-new Arm Of Service patch on her tunic. It denoted a pig, on a broomstick, wearing a pointy hat. AMCWAP underneath stood for "Ankh-Morpork City Watch Air Police". The Air Watch had agreed that if they were going to be called the Flying Pigs, they should seize the phrase and make it theirs. Bekki knew that within a few weeks she would be passed out with another Arm of Service patch: this would denote a stylised flying horse, rearing on a blue ground, with the motto "HUC VENIMUS, IN QUOLIBET" (2) underneath. The Pegasus Service. Only seventeen women wore that badge. It made them an élite within the Air Police. The regular Air Watch was a stage on the journey for her.
"I like it." Bekki said. "I get to fly a lot."
She indicated the Watch-issue broomstick leaning on the wall behind them. She carried a pocket omniscope in her tunic; if it sounded its alarm buzz, she knew, it meant responding to the call and getting airborne in seconds. Her father and Victor Tugelbend had helped adapt this bit of technomancy for the Watch. At the moment the shaped fragments, originally from a shattered omniscope mirror, and the happy accident that had enabled the wizards to realise that the fragments would forever remain connected to each other(3), were rare and precious. Only selected Watch personnel had got them, and the wizards were temperamentally opposed to breaking another mirror to create more. But every pilot in the Air Police had one. With the help of the university's extelligence, the thinking machine HEX, each Air Police and Pegasus Service pilot could talk directly to a duty Watchman in the Control Tower at the Air Station. Bekki had been told, when hers had been issued, that there would be trouble if she lost it. Olga Romanoff had been very definite about that. She wondered if the pocket omniscopes worked over seriously long distances. She hadn't been told that yet.
"Of course, going any further means passing a few more training courses." Bekki said. She shuddered. The thing about the Pegasus Service wasn't so much the long-haul flights. She and Boetjie were bonded. She loved and trusted her mount. It wasn't the diplomacy thing, although she and Sophie were soon going to be sent for interview with Vetinari so he could assess his two new pilots.
It was this business of working out what the bloody time was going to be when she got there. It was a blind spot. She just couldn't get her head round it.
"Not arrested any of me brothers yet?" Shauna asked. "You're slipping, Bekki!"
They fell back into banter and high spirits.
The City of the Ingyonamazi, The Zulu Empire:
"I addressed my men. Impi by impi."
Ruth looked at her husband, with unforced respect and, she was now forced to admit, with a little love. General Denizulu marshalled an army of eight thousand. He was possibly the single most powerful military leader in the Empire, and Ruth was very grateful his loyalties were to her. Between them they were absolutely sure of an army of at least twelve thousand. And there were lesser indunas and princes who had signalled which way their loyalties would fall in the event of conflict; indirectly they could call on fifteen thousand more, even if some of those loyalties were suspect and uncertain.
"I gave my men a choice. If there were men in my command who sincerely believe they cannot serve a woman as Paramount, or men who have searched their hearts and can no longer serve a General who gives his loyalties to a woman as Paramount, then they are free to leave, now, with honour and without censure. Collect your families and you have till midnight tomorrow to depart from my service. I cut the bonds."
"And how many chose to go?" Ruth inquired.
Denizulu shrugged.
"One hundred and ninety-four. To be honest I expected more. Afterwards I made all men of all ranks swear a new oath of loyalty. To Mpandwe for as long as the king lives. Then to his commanded successor, the Queen-Regent, and then to Prince Nipho, the Heir. All swore without hesitation."
And my brother's ranks swell by another two hundred." Ruth said.
Denizulu shrugged.
"This way I lose men who are not mine to command. My ranks are strengthened because the whisperers and the malcontents are gone. And, Great Wife, I took the chance to insert into their number several who are still loyal to me. The Crown Prince will receive them without adequately checking. I will receive reports from the heart of his camp. He will accept a senior indunula who was publicly seen to have an argument with me, after which I expelled him from my indaba. That man will no doubt be taken into your brother's indaba. But he remains one of my most loyal men. And he will then report to me on what he hears."
Ruth smiled.
"Thank you, husband." she said, sincerely. She turned to another of her commanders.
"Zoya. Your cavalry range far and wide in training?"
Her cavalry commander grinned back.
"Da, Princess. My horsewomen go to where good grazing is to be found, and in this season the best grass is to be found near rivers. While the horses graze in this season, that which passes for winter here, they will patrol and admire the scenery. If the men of your brother's armies are also to be seen along the river, they will find them and send word."
Ruth smiled at the Cossack woman who commanded and trained her cavalry. Zoya Zlatovachniya boasted that the women in her command were not quite as good as Cossacks, but they were getting there. They could get a message back from the border country to Ruth inside a day. Relay stations and fresh horses had been strategically located.
"If they get better, and they will, I may need to send petition to the Council of the Atamans and beg recognition for a new Horde to be welcomed to the Cossack people." Zoya added.
Ruth smiled. She'd heard about Cossacks. People who fought like that and who thought like that – and she had a couple of dozen Cossacks now, training and leading her cavalry – were good to have.
She turned to the other white-skinned officer in her command.
"How's the artillery coming along, Marianne?"
Marianne de Meniere, energetic and Quirmian and a product of a School of Military Engineering, grinned widely.
"I assure you, ma reine, that the new Scorpions will be fit for active service inside a month."
Ruth smiled. A Scorpion was a large ballista, a super-sized crossbow. She had got the idea partly from seeing the weapon carried by Sergeant Detritus of the Watch, and had also seen what a single automated crossbow had done to a charging impi at the Battle of the Tobacco Farm. Ruth could now deploy nine of them, in addition to the other things Marianne had designed, built and trained people to use. And the best of it was that the Zulu Empire's last attempt to employ any sort of artillery had ended up as such an unmitigated disaster, in every possible way, that the Empire had never seriously tried again.(4) Until now. She had a massive head-start. Even if other warlords, having seen what her cavalry had been capable of in battle, were now trying to raise their own. Let them. It takes years to make good cavalry. I've had a few years.
Chakki N'golante cleared her throat. Ruth looked over to her.
"Chakki?" she invited.
"There's an obvious danger, Ruth. We know from certain sources that an obvious attack route into White Howondaland is along the Ulunghi Bend. We can also be sure that word has been passed to people on the other side, who also have an interest in maintaining the peace there, for them to step up their patrolling and observing."
Chakki didn't spell it out. People on the other side meant the Smith-Rhodes family, a power on the White Howondalandian side who had their family home there. Ruth had ensured they'd been tipped off, in fact.
"They're going to be looking for anything out of the ordinary on our side of the river. For the first time, our cavalry are going to be seen there. Only in small patrol groups. But the whites know what we did in Muntab. That's going to worry them."
Ruth nodded.
"Yes. We need to make absolutely sure we don't end up sparking anything off. Or provoking them to attack us. That's important. I need to get a message out – through intermediaries, obviously – that my cavalry are just there to patrol and watch. It's not a prelude to my starting anything aimed at them. There are cavalry regiments close by on their side, aren't there? Lancers, as I recall. Light, fast, deadly and generally officered by hot-headed idiots. Zoya. Stay on our side at all times. And no first strike. You can fight if they attack you, obviously. But try to avoid that."
"Da." Zoya said, nodding agreement.
And at the end Ruth was thinking that she really, really, needed to spend some time with Nipho. Just to be a mother, nothing else. But before that, there was one last thing to do…
"Sissi. Your neck is taking longer to heal than anyone expected?"
Sissi ran her finger around the inside of the collar again. Ruth watched her movement.
"Yes. Igorina and Igor told me necks are tricky. They need special care and take longer."
Ruth was quiet for a few moments. Then she said
"Look, it's just turning into December. Between you and me, Father is going down faster than people thought. It's likely I'll be Queen sometime between June and August."
There was another silence while both pondered what this meant.
Ruth broke the silence. She was looking out of the window, Sissi noted. In the direction of the Royal Kraal. Then she turned to Sissi again.
"By June, the rivers run low. They can be forded on foot. That's when it's all going to start happening, as my dear brother is not likely to make any move until Father is safely dead. Which means we've got possibly six or seven months. Chakki can handle things here for that period but I will need you back then. And you need to be near the best medical help in the world. I'm sending you to Ankh-Morpork, Sissi. You're going back to School again."
Onverwacht Plaas, Piemberg, Rimwards Howondaland.
The group of people gathered at the Smith-Rhodes plaas, mainly male but with a scattering of women, looked grim and resolved. Olga Romanoff assessed them. Fairly typical frontier farmers, characteristic Boers, dressed in variations of what was almost a uniform in varying colours of khaki-drab, some wearing bandoliers of spare crossbow bolts. The youngest were in their twenties, the oldest must have been getting on for eighty, the average age late forties or fifties. Olga was in no doubt that in defence of their homes and families, they'd be formidable fighters. A similar sort of rag-tag citizens' army had once taken on Ankh-Morpork in its still-mighty Imperial decline. And won, hands-down. The slapping they'd delivered had resonated around the whole Disc and one by one, Ankh-Morpork's residual Imperial possessions had fallen from its grasp. Olga reflected that these people had collapsed an Empire. They were not to be disregarded.
She had listened, only imperfectly grasping the Vondalaans, as Barbarossa Smith-Rhodes had passed on the news he'd received from a very well-placed daughter in Ankh-Morpork. The men, the accepted officers and leaders of the Volkskommando, had listened intently and silently.
Olga had grasped the volkskommando way instantly. It was a sort of military democracy in which the two most senior members were elected by their peers after much debate and argument, often fuelled with beer and klipdrift. After that, the Kommondant and his Veldskornet were as absolutely in charge as any regular army colonel and major. In the case of the Piemberg volkskommando, these two roles were taken by Barbarossa Smith-Rhodes and his oldest son Andreas, a man built along the same lines as his father, whose hair and full beard were still the vivid family red. He was known as Baby Barbarossa to distinguish him from his father.
Olga felt at home here. It was like being among Cossacks, who elected their Ataman and the lesser Hetmans, often amongst much vodka-fuelled debate, but then followed their chosen leaders with absolute fidelity.
"Mevrou Ceptain Olga." Andreas said, with a mixture of respectful deference and familiarity, as if not sure how to deal with her. He was speaking Morporkian, which she appreciated. "I know this information came from my bigsister in Ankh-Morpork. I know Johanna hes good sources of information. I must esk you: are there things you are able to speak, which she felt she could not commit to paper? She hinted es such."
"Ja." Olga said. "It is good information. I am not absolutely free to say from where. But I believe it to be correct in every respect. Between those of us in this room, I may say this, and based on my personal acquaintance with her I know this to be truth: the Princess, who is soon to become a Queen, is to be trusted. She has no intention of war with your country."
Olga paused, and added:
"Excuse me. I am here in the uniform of Ankh-Morpork and I represent Ankh-Morpork here. That also shapes what I may officially say and I hope this is understood. But speaking in my married name of Olga de Kockamaainje I should correct that last sentence: I believe, honestly so, that the soon-to-be-Queen has no intention of invading or provoking war with our country. This became my country when I married a Boer. It is definitely the country of my son and daughter in our home outside Pratoria."
This statement provoked smiles and words of approval. Olga relaxed a little: they'd hear her out now.
"This nation is built on successive layers of immigrants from elsewhere, after all. It welcomes people from outside. It welcomed me. I am happy about that. But my job is to work for the government of Ankh-Morpork. And this I must tell you: Lord Vetinari is aware of a potentially serious situation on this border. He understands that a people who are attacked inside their own country by an enemy have a right to defend themselves. But he asks: do not let this become an all-out war that can destroy everybody, Zulu and Vondalaander alike. Apply restraint."
There was a silence. Olga wondered how these people were likely to respond to Ankh-Morpork making suggestions as to how they should deal with a threat. They'd once fought a fairly conclusive war to point out Ankh-Morpork could not direct their lives…
"Sy is reg." a voice said. She's right.
Olga relaxed. It was Agnetha Smith-Rhodes who had spoken. And these men listened to her.
"If it comes to it, we fight." Agnetha said. "Es we have done many times before. End whet follows is the usual round of raid end counter-raid, until we get tired of it and fall back to the border. Then we bury our dead, end we rebuild burnt-out farmhouses, end we support a new crop of widows end orphans. Ja, we fight if we are ettecked. But speaking for the women end the children of our land, we cen do without the things thet heppen efter thet first fight. There will be restraint."
Olga noted the other women in the room, women who had also fought Zulus and were therefore entitled to be here, nodding their support. The men were getting this.
"Lord Vetinari also, respectfully, suggests the following ideas for your consideration. That for now, this remains unofficial and is dealt with by the concerned citizens of the border area. Who he is aware constitute a citizens' militia for active self-defence. Now is a good time to train newcomers in the disciplines of patrolling and observing, for instance, and for existing personnel to refresh their skills. He suggests a Zulu corps of three thousand spears is hard to conceal and may be visible from some distance away. Observation posts in the hills overlooking the river may prove useful. If such an army approaches then is the time, perhaps, to involve the regular armed forces…"
Vetinari had also said that the moment a large regular military force starts getting paranoid about the possibility of an invasion, it will make its presence known, and there is a danger its commanders might either jump at shadows, or else consider that if we hit them first, preferably on their side of the border, it will pre-empt a threat. Generals do so like to find reasons to justify their positions. And if a total of four thousand regular White Howondalandian soldiers abruptly leaves its barracks and advances to its border, that is the sort of thing that might worry the Zulu Empire into responding. These things, Captain Romanoff, have a habit of escalating out of control, even if the political leadership on both sides genuinely does have good intentions. So let us try to keep them out of the equation for as long as possible, if we can.
Olga carried on steering the debate, as Vetinari had advised. It seemed like the best thing to do.
Out of time. One last chapter to follow.. damn, I keep saying this. But just to keep the flow going and to set up Book Two, where Bekki goes to Howondaland and eventually walks into trouble….
1(1). Yes. Another Homage to an obscure (outside France) TV show: long-running cult-status French sitcomLes Filles d'a coté, "the Girls Next Door". Taking the three Filles, Claire, Magalie and Fanny, and their male counterparts, and re-casting them as Assassins… let's see where this one goes. (Next door are Daniel and Marc, the gym they attend is run by an affable Camp Gay called Gérard, and there is the comic relief provided by Georgette and Charly. Let's make all eight Assassins in a house-share situation…)
(2) Seriously dog-latin; "WE GO ANYWHERE, ANY TIME"
(3) see The Last Hero, by Terry Pratchett
(4) to my tale Gap Year Adventures, in which the Zulus discover fire and water do not mix easily.
Notes Dump:
I like this: found the Wikipedia article on S and L space. I'll spare you the maths, but it begins:
In mathematics, S-spaces and L-spaces are certain topological spaces, believed to be dual to each other in some sense. An S-space is a regular topological space that is hereditarily separable but is not a Lindelöf space. An L-space is a regular topological space that is hereditarily Lindelöf but not separable.
It had been believed for a long time that S-space problem and L-space problem are dual i.e. if there is an S-space in some model of set theory then there is an L-space in the same model and vice versa – which is not true.
We all know about L-Space. If you don't, re-read your Discworld. In other fics I speculated that there is an S-Field that connects all staffrooms and teachers' lounges in all the multiple dimensions of space and time. I now have the theoretical proof…
One of those random ideas. In Discworld magic, the eighth son of the eighth son of a wizard is a Sourceror. So what is the name – and the possible talent – of the eighth daughter of the eighth daughter of a Witch? This is going to bug me. The idea is that if Nanny Ogg has had fifteen children, what if number eight was a girl (and therefore a natural witch) who then went on to have at least eight of her own – and number eight was a daughter too. How would the Sourceror thing work with Witches?