"Cahul is calling for help," Barry said as Klaus waved him into his office.
Klaus blinked and then scowled. "Already?" This was understandable. Barry had hardly reached Mechanicsburg from the negotiations when the courier caught up with him, and he'd turned around and come straight to Castle Wulfenbach. "What's going on? And why is this the first I - oh, never mind, of course they wrote to you."
Barry slung himself into a chair and handed over the letter. "They want more squid. Or fewer, possibly. The Duke of Taraclia has sent an army of them."
"He's attacking one of our allies," said Klaus. "I made the consequences of that quite clear. There's no need to simply increase Cahul's defences."
"I was assuming we'd show up with them," Barry said. While the growing Wulfenbach military was not reassuring to everyone and the Heterodyne one had rarely reassured anyone at all outside Mechanicsburg and its immediate surroundings, the promise of active defence was a definite selling point for many of their new allies. "Ah. Right. You'll be planning to keep Taraclia."
"Yes. Depending on the situation, he may get to remain in place as a vassal." Attacking people with an army of squid wasn't promising, but enough Sparks who were otherwise sensible rulers had moments of attacking people with monsters that Barry could see why Klaus wasn't entirely ruling that out.
"You know, I thought at some point you said you were tired of leaving lunatics in charge with a promise to do better next time," Barry said, lightly teasing.
"A promise to do better next time or else is different," said Klaus. "Anyway, we can decide what to do with him after we've taken the town. It shouldn't be too hard if we take the Jägers, squid - yours excepted - aren't usually efficient fighters."
"They are difficult to adapt for land combat." Barry frowned slightly, thinking. "We'll want to be careful about the townspeople."
"I do try to avoid hurting civilians," said Klaus. "If we give them time to get out or take shelter and then take the army out fast they should be in minimal danger."
"I was including the army."
Klaus gave him an incredulous look. "You can't fight a battle without hurting the opposing army."
"I know that, but we can try to minimise it. This probably isn't their idea." And wasn't this usually Klaus's argument?
"I'm not suggesting we don't ask them to surrender. I'm saying if they don't surrender then they're going to have to take the consequences of that."
"And I think we can come up with ways to make the fight less lethal."
"At considerable risk to our own troops," said Klaus, frowning. "Fighting someone who is trying to kill you when you're not trying to kill them is extremely dangerous."
"I know, we've done it before," Barry said drily.
"And it made us less effective than we could have been, with the time and the risks we took on that," said Klaus. "And this time it's not just a risk to us."
"Part of the effect we were after was keeping people alive!" Barry said, then stopped and inhaled slowly. Klaus was not wholly wrong. Admit that part. "I'm not disputing that it was slower and more dangerous." But even if it had allowed them to reach more towns over time, he didn't think less care would have been an improvement on balance. "On the other hand, this time we're bringing a lot more force to bear. Which also means we'll be taking an army inside the town itself, so even if the army gives us enough trouble to require killing them, I want nonlethal options for anybody who's just in the way, inadvertently or not."
"Inadvertently I'll grant you, but anyone deliberately getting in our way is actively fighting us whether they have a gun in their hands or not."
"And at that point it'll be because we're invading their town."
Klaus hesitated for a moment, then his eyebrows drew together. "Invading their town is necessary, and getting our troops killed doing it isn't. What would you suggest as an alternative?"
"Well, it helps that Jägers are hard to kill," said Barry, sitting back a little. And just when had he started assuming he could send Jägers into battle in a town and tell them to try not to kill people? "And I've seen the battle clanks you're working on; they're miles past Beetle's already."
"The clanks are one thing. The Jägers are hard to kill but not impossible to hurt." Klaus considered that, then sighed. "Although with you here there's very little that can't be fixed."
That didn't mean the injuries didn't matter, but the rest still did too. "That's true, although I'm really not trying to be cavalier about it. They're also very good." Barry paused, thoughts veering off in a more technical direction and then taking a quick swerve into directly practical concerns. "And I might have some ideas we should give them a chance to practise with before we arrive."
Klaus gave him a look. "Did you just assume you'd won this argument and go straight into working out how we could do it your way and still have it work?"
"I've been working out how to do it my way since I got the letter," Barry said, then had to admit, "But yes, I suppose I did."
"...I'll take a look at your ideas," said Klaus, rubbing his forehead. "If they seem like they'd work we can try it, the Jägers won't want to do something you don't agree to anyway. But if this results in too many casualties we're doing it my way next time."
Agatha had seen this gymnasium before. It was one of the ones designed for Jägers, which meant they had even less hope of managing to climb anything than in the ones meant for adults. Today the floor was white and slightly shiny and there was a machine with a big spray nozzle sitting on a vaulting horse.
Tarvek poked at the floor with an inquisitive toe. "It's slippery."
"Ooh. Like ice skating," said Agatha. She'd been ice skating last winter — they'd stopped in a small village and Uncle Barry had made ice skates for her and all the kids that didn't already have them. She didn't have her skates with her, but maybe it would be the same? She decided to experiment and stepped out, trying for the long, gliding steps she'd made on the frozen lake. At first she thought it was the same, and turned to grin at Gil and Tarvek who were watching impressed from the doorway, but in a moment she found out it wasn't quite like ice skating. Without the friction of a blade on ice, melting a straight track, her feet could go sideways as well as forward. One went out from under her and she fell on her bottom, more jarred than hurt. "I'm okay," she said quickly, pushing herself back up carefully on hands and knees, twisting to look at the boys over her shoulder. "Come and try it."
Tarvek edged out of the doorway with a frown, concentrating not worried, touching the wall with one hand while he imitated Agatha's movements. Gil took a few steps back and Agatha was just about to tell him it wasn't really hard when he ran forward and took a flying leap into the gym, knees bent to keep his centre of gravity low as he skidded across the floor grinning wildly. He made it across most of the room before falling over and sliding shoulder first into the wall with a thud.
"Gil!" Tarvek shouted and let go of the wall to try to run to him, predictably falling over himself and winding up floundering forwards on hands and knees.
Gil rolled over and sat up, face twisted between pain and laughter.
Tarvek stopped, still on hands and knees and bellowed, "Haven't you got the sense of a Jägermonster?"
"They're not stupid!" Agatha said, because those were her Jägers, as she skated across to help Gil up.
"Hey!" Gil protested, realising she'd defended the Jägers and not him.
Tarvek flopped face down in his arms, glasses askew. "Promise you won't ever do that again."
Gil, half holding the wall and half Agatha, managed to get to his feet rather than pulling her off hers, and grinned at Tarvek. "If you stop clinging to the wall and try this properly."
"I'm not clinging, I'm practising," said Tarvek with dignity. He clambered to his feet and skated to the centre of the room with a few graceful steps, shooting a triumphant glance at Gil.
Agatha giggled.
The squid the Jägers hacked at, rough and messy. Tentacles anchored them, entangled them, reduced their normal darting patterns to hacking and clawing, stopped them going to each other's aid, but for all that that the rubbery flesh parted under swords and claws and if it was messy it wasn't leaving the Jägers with much more damage than wrenched limbs and puncture wounds, occasional patches of skin stripped away in long grazes. Most of the blood they came away covered in was blue.
Barry had more sense than to try to close with a squid with merely human strength (Klaus was a different question and irritatingly hard to keep track of), but death rays aimed at the heads left the tentacles writhing uncoordinatedly and added a surreal odor of seafood to the battlefield atmosphere. He had enough distance to be mostly out of it when they reached the first squid with modified ink, which sprayed a black mist into the air instead of puddles. The edge of it made him cough but also gave him enough information to start improvising a quick neutralising agent, spritz the area as a test, and then fall back to the chemical wagons to start a bigger batch. The next batch of squid had emphasised the cohering properties of the ink; in water this might have made an effective decoy, but here Barry mostly ended up charging around ungluing Jägers who had been caught in it and wishing he'd thought to put glue guns on his own kraken.
Although, he thought, ducking a large chunk of tentacle as one of them boiled up under the nearest land squid, perhaps the burrowing blades were enough after all.
The town was different. Inside the town people poured out. Trained soldiers, some of them, others confused farmers and craftsmen clutching at their sharpest tools, reacting to an invasion of their homes. The Jägers stopped at the edge of the town, heads tipping towards one another, conferring. He heard growling laughs here and there and suppressed a sigh — this was Jägers not trying to be intimidating — before lifting his megaphone.
"This is Barry Heterodyne," he announced. The projection system picked up the signal from the megaphone, and his voice echoed over the city from the airships ringing it. "We are here to liberate you. Throw down your weapons and you will not be harmed. Come out of the city and you will be protected." He wanted to protect them anyway, but he couldn't guarantee their safety in the middle of combat.
Inside the town some people dropped their weapons, started to shuffle forward looking around them, and then took courage at noticing their neighbours doing the same and started to stride.
"Leave the town and I will turn you into squidapeds!" yelled a voice from inside the town, wild and on the edge of laughter. "My soldiers will kill you if the Jägers don't eat you first!"
"Oh for God's sake," Barry snapped, "they don't actually eat people, and we aren't going to turn you into anything you don't ask for. But if you're currently somewhere safe, stay there until we can get to you, your Duke clearly can't be trusted with you."
People hesitated, cowed by their Spark, some ran back to their dropped weapons. But others looked at each other and threw theirs down, and then as the voice yelled, "Soldiers!" started to run.
The Jägers moved apart, letting the people flow through them like water. A horn rang out somewhere and then half the Jägers moved into a more complete circle and half of them were gone, bounding from windowsill to windowsill and onto the roofs of the city.
Barry stuck the megaphone back on his belt and ran for the ladder to one of the smaller airships, where Klaus turned out to be already aboard. "There you are. You could have shouted at them from here, you know."
Barry snorted. "I was busy. I'm surprised we didn't have to pry you out of there."
"I kept out of the glue," Klaus said blandly.
The smaller airships turned inward and began criss-crossing over the city, dodging the occasional upward barrage. Some doused the Duke's soldiers and streets in slick liquid, leaving the soldiers slithering helplessly and the more agile (and prepared) Jägers to attack from above or cheerfully skate over the cobblestones. Some served as decoys. And this one headed directly over the Duke's castle and let Klaus and Barry down in rope harnesses onto the roof.
Getting into the castle was relatively easy, familiar and almost fun; the Duke had not guarded it heavily from above, and they both had plenty of practice sneaking past guards, or sneaking up on guards and rendering them unconscious with minimal risk by various basic or creative means. And even though the ones at home weren't actually intended to kill him, Barry had never been able to shake a slight and irrational suspicion that most other Sparks who made deathtraps weren't really putting their all into the design process.
Klaus identified the logic of the floor plan (the Duke had logic to his floor plan, which always helped, although Klaus also had an astounding ability to follow the unrelated jumps between mashed-together purpose in some haphazard pieces of architecture, and had once laughed so hard he had to sit down when Bill mentioned being impressed) and they made their way toward the inner sanctum. Conscious of the risks being taken in the battle outside, they went only a little slower than if there was a doomsday device on countdown. It increased the chances of being surrounded after the fact, but of course, by then they'd have the Duke.
The Duke had retreated here by now, or had never left; they could hear the voice now and it was the same one that had threatened the townspeople. "You've been listening to Heterodyne stories," the Duke sneered. "What are you afraid of?" There were probably several reasonable and accurate responses to this. Nobody volunteered them. "They're fiction! They're exaggerated!" Something crashed inside, and there was a faint sizzle. Barry could picture the sweep of the Duke's arm, the arc and shatter of glassware off the bench and something corrosive splashing on stone. It probably had not endeared him to anyone on that side of the room. "Are you expecting them to just materialise inside here?"
One day, some Spark or another was going to give them a perfect line like that and actually be prepared for them to take the cue. So far even Lucifer Mongfish hadn't managed it yet. Barry kicked the door in.
Klaus flashed past him and had hoisted the Duke by the back of the neck before anyone else had a chance to move. Barry hastily narrowed the beam on his sleep gun and dropped the guards who were in a position to fire on Klaus from behind, then covered the other half of them, smiling faintly, as they looked uneasily from him to their captive lord to their fallen fellows.
"Put down your weapons," Klaus said evenly.
"Shoot them," the Duke snarled. Barry arched an eyebrow at him and hefted the sleep gun.
The remaining guards evaluated the situation and obeyed Klaus.
That taken care of, Barry scanned the rest of the room hastily to mark likely traps. Klaus was holding the Duke just out of reach of a cord attached to something presumably unpleasant in the ceiling... several likely-looking levers in various parts of the room... There was one apparently unarmed man, or at least unweaponed - a jester in motley, standing at the back of the room with all four arms folded, looking wary. Barry gave him an extra sliver of attention, perplexed; he wasn't acting like a guard and was making no effort to be a distraction-
The man's eyes flicked to the Duke, and burned. Oh.
He wasn't there for function or friendship. He was the only modified human Barry had seen here. The Duke had retreated with his prize experiment.
Barry fought down the familiar flare of temper to a smoulder, an old battle; weary, but he knew he'd be sorry if he lost it. "Surrender," he said to the Duke, "and we-"
"Barry." Klaus interrupted. "Don't make promises we can't keep."
Barry stopped, jarred. "What did you think I was going to offer him?" They had left the question of what to do with the Duke until they had more information. The unhappy jester and the squidaped threat were evidence of experimenting on his own people. Barry scanned the voice projection system. Pressed a button, frowned, flicked a switch and it was active. One more chance. "Tell your people to surrender. We won't harm them."
Klaus lowered the Duke slightly, although not to the point that he could actually reach anything. The Duke's head came up; he fixed burning eyes on the jester and howled, "Activate the self-destruct mechanism!"
Barry pressed the muzzle of the sleep gun to the Duke's head and fired. Then held his breath for a few seconds, listening for any hint of something actually activating. The jester met his eyes and shrugged minutely.
Barry leaned over the projection system. "Sorry about that. This is Barry Heterodyne." His own voice came in distantly from outside. "We have your Duke and his Castle. Unless you particularly want to turn your backs on the Jägers and try to rescue him, I advise you to lay down your weapons now."
When he looked up, the jester was bending over one of the guards, checking for a pulse. He straightened, looking more analytical and less unnerved. "He's not dead."
Barry raised his eyebrows. "It's not a death ray. What's your name?"
"Boris Dolokhov." The man glanced down at himself and added, with a bitter twist to his mouth, "I am a librarian," as if daring them to laugh.
"I could use a librarian," Klaus said without batting an eye. There were reasons Barry couldn't stay exasperated with him for very long. "Do you want a new job?"
Boris stared at him as if unsure whether to take this response seriously.
"He means it," Barry said. "I think you'd prefer his library to mine. It doesn't talk back."
"I would very much like nearly any job that does not involve juggling," Boris said, still sounding rather suspicious. "I did not want to be a jester."
"Don't you know any Heterodyne stories?" Klaus asked blandly. "The position of comic relief has been filled."
Barry covered his eyes. "And yes, that is his idea of a joke."
Boris almost smiled.
The room where the injured Jägers gathered was as much victory party as infirmary. None of them had died, and the most seriously hurt were grinning with gritted teeth as their friends offered drinks, jokes, and congratulations to take their mind off it. Barry didn't keep them waiting long, although he was a tiny island of pensive quiet, politely declining drinks and lightly toasted squid kebabs until he was done and humming to shut out the raucous noise around him as he worked. When this continued past the most serious injuries, however, the silence started to spread a little.
"Hoy," said Maxim, as Barry extracted a squid-claw from his knee. "Hyu dun look happy. Der battle vent pretty good, yah?" He sounded just a touch worried.
Barry blinked at him and tried to shake off the melancholy. He pitched his voice to cut and carry through the room - not a hard task when he suspected nearly everyone in it had just turned an ear their way. "All of you did great."
"So vot's wrong?" Maxim asked, head cocked to one side, looking far more concerned about Barry's mood than his own injury.
Barry bit down a flippant answer along the lines of Klaus didn't tell you I always sulk after battles? and said, "It... always bothers me to have people getting hurt on my behalf."
Maxim gave him a completely bewildered look and then looked at the other Jägers as if one of them might know what Barry was talking about. "Ve iz meant to do dot," he said.
"Iz kind ov der point ov haffing an army," Dimo said from somewhere behind Barry.
Barry gave the claw a slight twist and it slid free from the joint. He took a moment to press the heel of his hand against his forehead before flicking the magnifying lenses into position on his goggles and scrutinising the claw to check for missing bits, or anything more solid than blood that it might have snagged on the way out. "Yes, well, I'm not very good at that yet," he muttered. "And I did ask you to take added risks to avoid killing people. Which, again, you did very well." There had been deaths; Barry had made it clear this wasn't an 'at all costs' situation and the Jägers weren't stupid. But there hadn't been very many.
Maxim winced, ears twitching slightly because they couldn't really flatten, and then smiled at the praise. "Ve spent three years underground because der Red Heterodyne vanted bat sandviches. Hyu don't got to feel bad about asking for tings."
Barry mostly smothered a laugh and dropped the claw into a specimen tray. Nice to know 'keep your opponents alive where feasible' was at least considered no more unreasonable than 'let's stay in this cavern, I want to eat bats.' It wasn't easy to out-eccentric his relatives. He squeezed an analgesic gel into the wound and pressed a sonic wand to it, analysing the resulting echoes. "Good, no loose bits. Try to take it easy for at least six hours after it closes up." He started wrapping Maxim's knee in a bandage, partly as a reminder that the injury was there even if the pain was gone. "I don't... exactly. It's basically what Bill and I asked of everybody we fought alongside, and I still think it was better to do it this way. You made it possible to do it this way. It still bothers me when you get hurt."
"Ve dun like each odder gettink hurt," said Dimo, squeezing his shoulder now he wasn't half way through fixing Maxim. "But ve like der fightink und der vun goes vit de odder."
Maxim nodded, eyes bright. "Ve'd rather be hurt den left behind."
It was easier to grin and say the blood spilt was worth it when it was his blood, but this was possibly not a sentiment he should really share with the Jägers. It did help to be reminded that this wasn't a case of dragging people into fighting for a cause they didn't believe in. (Which he'd done on occasion, usually with Sparks slightly less recalcitrant than the Duke.) Okay, their interest in the cause was perhaps secondhand, but they wouldn't be Jägers if they weren't willing to fight, or for that matter to take insane risks for the sake of the House of Heterodyne, and they really did want to come.
It was still his responsibility to worry about the risks to them and the cost of victory, but he didn't have any business moping about the cost of victory when the people who'd actually paid it wanted to celebrate. "I'll keep that in mind," he said. "I am immensely proud of all of you, just so you know." Barry drew a deep breath and then grinned at them as he finished cleaning up and moved on to his next patient. "And I'll tell everybody who didn't crowd in here as soon as I've finished up."
Barry joined Klaus and the Jägergenerals about an hour into the victory party, smelling vaguely of antiseptic. (Given they were surrounded by Jägers and alcohol, Klaus assumed he actually reeked of it.) "Effryvun all right now?" Øsk asked.
"Should be. I want to check on everybody who got a lungful of squid mist again tomorrow morning just to be sure." Barry poured himself a drink and then stood up again, grabbing a skewer of calamari and everyone's attention, and told the Jägers he was proud of them. As he should be at this point, Klaus thought, although if Barry had warned him first he might have put in earplugs.
They eventually left the Jägers to their own devices and ended up back in Klaus's study. "So," Barry said, "what do you want to do with the Duke?"
"Imprison him," said Klaus. "If we give him enough bits and pieces to play with he may not even try to escape very much."
Barry blinked. "That almost sounds like you mean to imprison him in a lab."
"Why not? It would keep him busy and may even be useful," said Klaus. "What did you intend to do with him?"
"I'm not sure I was going to be that nice," Barry said drily. "What on Earth did you think I was going to offer him?"
"...I'm not sure. But you were never particularly ruthless before." Bill and Barry had sometimes decided to reform Sparks by bringing them along - they hadn't had the resources for imprisonment, but between them the Heterodyne Boys had succeeded in being incredibly overwhelming which somehow had almost the same effect. In situations where that hadn't been an option...Klaus had dealt with it. He wondered now what they would have done if he hadn't, or what they'd done on those occasions when he had been elsewhere. He'd always felt oddly like he needed to protect their innocence, as if they weren't powerful Sparks from a long line of warlords and capable adventurers besides.
"Sometimes I'm not sure you realised that actually took effort," Barry muttered. "I was going to say we'd let him live."
"You would have done that regardless," Klaus pointed out.
"He didn't know that. And I lied to Boris." At Klaus's mildly puzzled look, Barry added, "It's a death ray if you turn it up all the way."
"That's not exactly surprising. You and Bill always did have a tendency to add death rays," said Klaus. Including a Death Ray Room at the Great Hospital which had been boarded up by pragmatic but unquestioning Mechanicsburgers as soon as it was built. "Although I always wondered if they were meant to be decorative, since I don't recall you actually using them." Except accidentally a few times, once leading to their building a wall building machine to repair a University Laboratory. They'd managed to track it down again before it turned much of Beetleburg into a maze.
"Well, we tried to avoid having to," Barry said. "Though I suppose some of them were rather pretty."
"The aesthetic appeal of death rays aside," said Klaus, "I don't think I ever considered that you might. I'm sorry I assumed -" Sorry he assumed what? That Barry was more innocent than he actually was? Less practical? "- that you were making promises beyond the obvious without consulting me."
"I probably shouldn't have been promising not to kill him without consulting you either," Barry said, "unless I was going to take him home with me and I'm not entirely sure making him listen to Castle Heterodyne's suggestions would be kinder." Klaus was fairly sure that was a joke, but it didn't quite sound like one.
"You can assume I intend to take prisoners, at least as a first resort," said Klaus. "For future reference."
"Good to know." A wry look. "I did assume it was more of an option now."
"And you don't object to my plans for him?" It was worth checking.
Barry shook his head. "No. And knowing you, Boris won't ever have to look at him again."
"The airship's certainly big enough for me to arrange that."
"Certainly true." A minute pause. "How did the casualty rates end up outside the Jägers?"
"For our side or theirs?" Klaus asked, and then shook his head. That had been unfair. "Not any higher than expected. The Jägers took the brunt of it, in the hand-to-hand fighting, a lot of the human combatants on our side were gunners. A higher proportion might have been hurt, but with those tactics we had less on the field to begin with."
Barry tipped his head to one side. "Were you satisfied?"
Klaus sighed. "They were," he said. Protecting Jägers from their Heterodyne - he was insulting them and Barry just thinking it, probably. "I can't complain on grounds of damage to my troops, and the Jägers...did save a lot of lives, in all honesty. On balance I might consider it worth it even if they weren't so happy about it."
"I didn't ask anything of them that we hadn't asked of you," Barry said. "Or any number of other people."
"I know," Klaus admitted. He was the one who had suggested Barry should talk to the Jägers, he'd wanted Barry to accept they wanted to please him. But he'd been thinking it would lead to Barry willingly placing them under his command, not retaining command over half his army and using it. Maybe he was just a little jealous. Especially since Barry's tactics really had worked. "I am satisfied."
Barry nodded. "I am taking you seriously, you know," he said. "I'm... not going to insist on this when it would put us at a serious risk of losing." Although he looked a little pained about it. "And I'm not treating the risk to the Jägers as trivial."
"That's good to know," said Klaus. "I didn't think you were, precisely, the second part at least. You never treated the risk to anyone as trivial."
Barry smiled wryly. "I do try not to. Even when they are having fun."
She had a letter. From Barry Heterodyne. It wasn't the first one, but there had been few enough that Donna was still delightedly astonished all over again every time. She was also pretty sure she was giddy for more personal reasons than being starstruck.
A courier ship dropped it off just after dawn; she made herself wait until lunchtime to read it, lending gleeful anticipation to her morning's work, and then hung up the hot protective apron and gloves, washed off the sweat, and finally opened and unfolded the letter. At which point Cousin Yvette arrived on her round of lunch delivery. She set down a little loaf of fresh bread from her bakery - scooped open, filled with lentils and chanterelles and drizzled with clarified butter - and then nearly draped herself over Donna's shoulder. "Ooh. A love letter!"
"Get off," Donna said, laughing. "You don't want to meet all your other customers smelling of the forge. And it's not exactly a love letter." At least, it wasn't the sort of sweet nothings Yvette and her husband constantly exchanged when he was travelling. She and Barry were still getting to know each other and had exchanged letters several times now; the topics ranged from news to philosophy, biography, music, literature, and each party's latest scientific or engineering breakthroughs. Sometimes in the same paragraph.
Yvette winked exaggeratedly at her and went her way. Donna rigged a quick system of holders and mirrors so she could read and eat at the same time without risk of smudging the letter, and settled in.
A small principality to the east had begged for help, and Barry and Klaus were taking the Jägers against the Duke who'd attacked it. He's using land squid, Barry wrote, a few pages in, but I've had a look at them and while they are understandably frightening to their targets, I don't think they'll be any match for either our mechanical squid or the Jägers. It's very easy to lose efficiency when adapting an aquatic form for dry terrain, and harder to make up for it the more you stick to the original biology. I'm more concerned about reaching his capital and what we'll have to do to whatever army he has there.
He wasn't worried about winning, she noted. She doubted he would be if he and Klaus were going alone rather than with the resources of a growing empire and a small army of Jägers. Just about how much damage they'd have to do in the process. Actually, come to think of it - she waggled a small lever to return to the first page of the letter and check its date. Days before - well, it hadn't been an emergency courier! The battle was likely to be done by now.
By the way, not wanting to take advantage of your good nature, I have taken the liberty of calculating your percentage of the proceeds from the squid factory, to reflect your design and technique contributions. So far the new blades have found little challenge in rock, sticky clay, or heavily armoured clanks. Donna goggled at the amount (not enclosed: the courier didn't have enough of a reputation yet to risk carrying valuables). She'd counted herself lucky to have a chance at the machines there, let alone the company. She'd have done it for that alone. But she had to admire the care about treating her fairly. And apparently somebody was paying well for squid clanks.
She hadn't made it any farther before Yvette's eldest, Jaya, came racing up. "Cousin Donna! There are Jägers. I bet they're looking for you!"
Donna blinked, chewed, and swallowed a mouthful of bread. "I'll come and be found, then."
There were Jägers, six of them, hanging around the centre of the town. Most people had gone indoors and were nervously peering out from between shutters. The few who hadn't had been cornered and were being asked for directions - although Donna got the impression that if they were being menaced it was purely accidentally.
Yvette herself was one of them, although the Jäger talking to her appeared to be slightly distracted by her lunch deliveries. She peered past him, caught sight of Donna starting purposefully toward them, and pointed.
"I'm Donna DuLac, if you're looking for the blacksmith," Donna said. "What are you all doing here?"
"Ve heard hyu mek nize swords," offered one, red eyed and sharp toothed but otherwise not very inhuman looking.
She scanned the rest of them interestedly. Green, purple, blue with gold fur, hulking grey with ram's-horns, pale with one ram's-horn. He didn't seem bothered by the asymmetry. "I do," Donna agreed, because it was true. But it had been true for quite a while without prompting Jägers to show up with a commission. She put her eyebrows up. "Should I guess you also heard I'm seeing Barry Heterodyne?"
"Dot too!" said the one with a single horn, with a wide grin.
It was a very toothy grin but less alarming than bright-eyed and infectiously cheerful. Donna smiled back at him. "Well, you can all come back to the forge, then, and stop making everybody nervous. If you want to buy lunch from Yvette, I'll show you to the bakery - the meals she's carrying right now are spoken for."
"Lunch vould be good," said the red eyed one.
"Jaya!" Yvette called. "Run ahead and tell everyone to get busy." She smiled politely at the Jägers as her daughter pelted off. "I'll be back myself when I finish my deliveries."
Donna gestured for them to come with her and started off. When she glanced back, people were emerging from their houses and shops, beginning to look curious now that the Jägers were with her. "I'm sorry," she said after a moment, "I didn't ask your names. Who are you?" She couldn't keep identifying them to herself by transformation.
They each gave her a name; Jorgi, Dimo, Maxim, Vali, Fane, and Ognian. "Und ve know who hyu are!" Ognian finished cheerfully before adding, apropos of not very much, "Hyu squid blades are vonderful."
"Thank you," said Donna. Then, "Oh. Did you just see them? Were you at the battle?"
That got her a chorus of affirmatives. "Dey vere great," said Maxim. "Beat all der real squid."
"Der real squid didn't haff svords," Dimo clarified. "Just suckers vit needles."
"Vhich vas easier for those ov hyu vit fur," Fane rumbled.
"...Ouch," said Donna. Squid with needles? "I imagine it would be hard to teach a real squid swordplay," she added reflectively. "I take it the capital went well too?" She looked at them quizzically. "I had a letter this morning from before the battle. It was a few days old, but you nearly beat it here."
"It vent great," said Ognian, with an ear to ear grin. "Ve hardly killed anyvun, just like Master Barry vanted! Und ve left all der buildings still up."
Donna swallowed a sudden and possibly nervous urge to giggle. Probably she shouldn't be picturing the Jägers habitually bringing down buildings bare-handed. "Taking a town and hardly killing anyone sounds very difficult," she said. "He must have been very pleased with that."
She was instantly surrounded by sharp, happy and rather smug smiles. "He vas," said Vali.
"He's gun let us do it again now!" added Maxim.
"Yah, ve don't haff to stay in Mechanicsburg anymore," said Ognian. "Ve gets to fight!"
Donna very nearly asked how often they expected it to come up, then realised it was a silly question. When she considered the wrecked state of the continent, and how many times the Heterodyne Boys had clashed with evil Sparks, and how many more of them people had hoped they'd get to. Although nobody had hoped they'd do it with Jägers, of course. "Between uncooperative Sparks and the stray creations in the Wastelands," she said, "I imagine you'll have a lot of chances." She gestured to the bakery ahead. "And there's Yvette's place."
Forewarned, the rest of Yvette's staff had steeled themselves for the Jägers' arrival and started a lot of extra food, so this went relatively smoothly. Leaving aside their table manners they were polite. They ate a truly astonishing amount of sandwiches, paid for them and even tipped well. They then followed Donna back to the forge where they proved sword shopping hadn't been entirely an excuse by breaking up to look at her wares. Maxim poked at cavalry sabres, Vali at short swords and Ognian at anything that looked interesting. Dimo, passing by her desk, paused for a moment, brows furrowing, and sniffed the air before noticing the letter. He gave it a quick sniff and then passed on with a grin to test the balance of a collection of throwing knives by spinning them between his claws. Jorgi looked more at her work area than the finished weapons, and when he looked up regarded her with the same frank interest he regarded her work.
Fane came up to her and held out his right hand, at least twice as big as a human hand and with only two blunt fingers and a thumb. "Hyu do custom vork?"
"Yes, regularly." He'd need something a little more customised than most, but he had the height and strength to go with the size of his grip, which improved the options. She started to reach for his hand, then checked herself. "May I?"
"Sure ting." A smile, amused and just a bit flirtatious, as he held his hand still for her to inspect.
Donna smiled back, also amused, and began exploring the muscle and bone structure. (The muscle was hard enough she wasn't sure she'd have been able to find the bones if he hadn't completely relaxed his hand for her.) She did less mechanical work than the average Spark - her breakthrough had mostly allowed her to pursue the whole of her fascination with metalworking, although she could appreciate a good design too - and less biology, but hand anatomy was an extension of her interest in weapons and other tools. Fane's fingers seemed to have fused, from four to two; the phalanges were still broad enough from side to side to reflect that. (Ouch, Donna thought. Something similar seemed to have happened to Ognian's feet, actually.) The distal joints allowed slightly increased flexion, and the claws would have to be taken into account for a really comfortable grip...
"All right then," she said, looking up at him and considering rather belatedly that prodding analytically at a Jäger's hand might be something to be nervous about. Then again, it probably wasn't objectively more alarming than Castle Heterodyne trying to set her up on a date. "What kind of sword do you prefer?"
"Arming svord," he said, gesturing to the straight, double-edged blades.
Donna nodded thoughtfully. He could probably wield most longswords one-handed, but there would be structural differences and even the longer hilts would tend to be uncomfortably narrow. Not really satisfactory. "I'd like to see your grip..." She offered him a short steel bar, then almost immediately shook her head and replaced it with a wider one.
Jorgi wandered over to sit at her desk, half watching the process and half fiddling with her mirrored reading device.
Fane wrapped his hand around the bar and tilted his head towards her questioningly.
"That looks about right. How does it feel?" She glanced over at the glint of one of the throwing knives. "Dimo, there are targets out back if you want to test those."
"Preedy goot," said Fane, gripping more firmly and swishing the iron bar through the air with a frown.
"Thanks, dollink," called Dimo, vanishing out the back with a selection of knives fanned in his hand.
"Tell me how they do, I can't put the power behind them that you will," Donna called back, studying how Fane moved. That was it, aside from the length of the fingers there were shifts in the wrist and shoulder movement. There was only so much one changed the basic structure of a sword, but there were a lot of subtleties in the shape of the hilt and blade. She quizzed him on what he was looking for and at last concluded, "All right... I can make you a sword that will feel and handle very nearly like a good standard arming sword from before your transformation."
He grinned at her, pleased and fierce. "How long vill it tek?"
Behind them there was a clatter - Maxim and Ognian had started trying out swords on each other with some playful sparring and Ognian had stumbled into a display rack. From the way Ognian was holding his sword it wasn't his normal weapon and both of them looked sheepish as they picked the rack back up.
"About a week, I think." She eyed the other two. Neither appeared to be bleeding, at least. And if they'd been able to damage any of her work by falling into it, she wouldn't have wanted it going out into the world with her mark on it anyhow. "Should I send you two outside as well?"
"Ve'll be more careful," Maxim said, picking up the knocked over swords. Ognian nodded.
The last people to try a swordfight inside here had been boys, and she had naturally run them right out and had words with their parents about making sure they knew what they were doing. These were obviously grown men, and given the Jägers were supposedly unaging and the Heterodyne Boys had not added to their ranks, they probably had been for a few of her lifetimes. "Well, there is more space there. The display racks will only make a mess," she said drily, "but please, stay away from the fire."
"Ve don't vant to miss anyting," Ognian said cheerfully. "Ve ken stop fighting if hyu like."
"That might be better," she agreed. "Though I'm not sure exactly what you think you'll miss. Did you want to talk, or watch me start on Fane's sword?"
"Hy don't know vot ve'd miss either," said Ognian, looking puzzled for a moment.
Jorgi rolled his eyes at him. "Ve ken talk," he said. "Hyu haffen't sold to Jägers before or ve'd haff heard. Hyu sell to constructs?"
"If they come to me," said Donna, "which I admit isn't very often. I did arm nearly everyone in town when things were particularly bad outside, although I suppose in proportion to the number of Sparks we don't have that many constructs."
"It dun't bother hyu," said Fane, flexing his hand on the table. "Adapting."
"It's an interesting prospect!" Donna gestured, perhaps a little more wildly than necessary. "Most really large blades are for clanks or other machines... and I mean limited-function automatons; I suppose making one for Otilia would be a different matter entirely. Of course it's important to make a high-quality blade that suits the mechanism, but it's not the same set of concerns as dealing with the flexibility demanded by a skilled swordsman and the feel of handling it."
"If hyu come live in Mechanicsburg hyu ken mek a lot of svords for Jägers," said Jorgi, half teasing, genuinely welcoming.
"That is a potential advantage," Donna said cheerfully - also teasing a bit, because it was hardly the main consideration, but she did mean it. "This town does not need nearly as many blades as I want to make."
"Hyu haff family here," said Ognian, poking at things restlessly again now he wasn't fighting. "Vould hyu miss dem?"
"Mm, yes, but I'd plan to keep in touch. I have family from Calcutta to Algiers as it is. Comparatively speaking, Mechanicsburg isn't so far."
"Dot's a lot ov family," said Ognian respectfully and maybe a bit wistfully.
"We have several people very determinedly keeping track," Donna said. "And writing a lot of letters."
"Oggie's family vould be bigger if he didn't do dot," Maxim muttered.
Donna blinked. "Ah, what?"
"Iz such a ting as too much encouragement. Und rilly bad matchmaking," Maxim answered.
"Ah," Donna said. It would probably be kinder toward both Ognian and several of her own relatives if she didn't say she had sometimes felt a little too encouraged herself. Not to mention Barry's opinion of the Castle's intervention, although she wasn't exactly complaining about that one yet. "Yes, I suppose that's possible." Her thoughts veered back to sword design as her eyes fell on the bar Fane was still holding, and she held out a hand for it, drifting over to examine her metal selection.
This was perhaps not entirely the behaviour of a courteous hostess, but Fane wanted a sword and her guests were presumably used to the distractible behaviour of Sparks. They gathered around at a nearly sensible distance and chatted intermittently with her and each other as she began beating the layers together.
It was a little while before Dimo came back in and announced, "Hyu targets haff beeg holes in dem," while putting back some of the knives he'd taken and picking up a few more of the one he'd selected.
Donna had to pause in her hammering and ask him to repeat himself. "I take it I'll need new ones," she said. "But the blades held up well?" She went over to inspect one of the rejected ones, holding the edge up to the light.
"Very well!" said Dimo, putting his selections down on the counter. "Dey ken tek a lot of force."
"Good. Did you use the bone target?" There had been this... thing... a couple of years back, that had eventually been more pried apart than cut and seemed to be internally composed largely of giant knucklebones. She had kept several of them, boiled clean.
"Dot vun haz smaller holes in it."
"Excellent. I don't know what its creator did to the bone composition, but I hadn't managed to make a mark on it, even with the ones that go through rock with no trouble."
Dimo smiled at her. "Vell, it vasn't hyu knives dot vere der problem. How much for dem?" He glanced out the window at the sun and added, to Maxim,"Hyu'd better pick vun if hyu iz buying today. Ve still got to get beck."
Donna quoted him a total (discounted a bit for quantity, friendliness, and how long throwing knives tended to sit in the shop). "You're on a short leave? Back to where, by when?"
"Kestle Wulfenbach iz moving over cloze," said Jorgi. "Beck before its out ov range."
Maxim brought a cavalry sabre up to the counter and Fane followed him up, asking, "Hyu vant der money now? Or vhen I pick it up?"
"When you pick it up," she said. "You can decide if you like it first." A quick, mischievous grin. "You will, though."
"Hy don't doubt it," said Fane, smiling back.
They exchanged farewells, and the Jägers left town at a lope, apparently satisfied and managing to look like an impressive horde even with only six of them. Donna tried to decide if she could spot Castle Wulfenbach among the scattered clouds (probably not) and then went to check on her destroyed targets.
And answer her letter.
Dear Barry,
I hear the battle went well….