The Brave New World - 147 The Secret Meeting

“I can count five,” Henrik said, squinting.

“There are six. Four women and two men. The fourth woman stopped to take a shit. See, there she goes.”

“I don’t see her.”

“She’s stopped again to wipe her ass with some leaves. She’s half-hidden behind that huge fir with the yellow top. You might not see her from where you are.”

They were lying side by side, a step apart, on top of a large cliff overlooking the forest. It was thinner here, and they could see a large clearing in the distance, maybe five hundred paces away.

They saw the pale flash of the woman’s face as she threw back her head and looked up – almost directly at them, it seemed. There was no way she could spot them – they were watching her from behind a screen of seedlings growing at the edge of the cliff – but they both instinctively pressed their bodies against the ground.

“It’s all right,” Sven said softly. They heard a crack as a dry branch broke under the woman’s foot.

“Let’s go rejoin Lasse,” said Sven. They moved back from the edge, rose to a crouch, and began climbing down the cliff’s other side.

Sven and his men had been following the tracks left by the group of two men and four women all morning, and most of the afternoon. It had been easy once they reached the spot where the oblong lake changed back into a river. Up to that point, there had been so many tracks it was obvious the inhabitants of the captured village took that route regularly. Once Sven’s band reached the river, narrow but sluggish at this point, they saw why: a series of cage-like traps weaved from thick wire had been stretched right across the water to the other shore. Inside two of those, a beaver and a small animal resembling a weasel were throwing themselves about.

They left them there, and pressed on. After the line of traps, the tracks dwindled in number that Henrik initially estimated to indicate two to three people. He revised that to four or five after an hour, explaining to Sven:

“A couple of them must have been gathering berries, then they rejoined the others. There are tons of berries growing to the right. Look!”

He pointed out a cluster of bright red loganberries just above the ground a dozen steps away.

“Good thinking,” said Sven. They continued their chase, and as time went on Henrik discovered more clues. He fixed the number of people in the party at six: at least one man, at least three women.

“How do you know?” asked Sven.

“Most women and men walk differently. Men take larger steps, and hit the ground harder with their heels. But it’s not easy telling them apart. That’s why I’m not sure about the other three.”

“You sure there’s six of them?”

“Absolutely.”

Sven shook his head silently; this bordered on black magic. He dropped back behind Henrik and began following him mindlessly, his thinking focused on something else.

But that whole wire business wasn’t half as bad as the ability to produce glass bottles. Making a bottle involved a blowpipe. Making a blowpipe meant the ability to make long metal tubes. And the ability to make long metal tubes meant the ability to make gun barrels.

From there, it was but a short step to manufacturing firearms. That short step was acquiring gunpowder, and gunpowder wouldn’t be difficult to acquire. It had three basic ingredients: sulfur, charcoal, and saltpeter. Sven knew of at least three sulfurous springs within existing Viking territory. Every Viking settlement was already producing charcoal. And obtaining saltpeter was a matter of pissing and shitting into a straw and ash-filled pit for a while, then leeching the needed salts from the nitrified soil with water that would be subsequently evaporated, leaving saltpeter crystals.

The rival colony was at most a few months away from developing a working gun. The realization of that fact made Sven’s mouth go dry with tension. Yes, they would be primitive guns, and there would be few of them to begin with. They would be crude and inaccurate and not half as good as a well-made crossbow in combat.

But guns were guns. They would be made better and more deadly and before long, guns would dominate every battlefield. His best Viking sword-and-ax virtuoso would be as defenseless as a baby against a woman with a gun!

Okay, so he could wipe that colony off the face of the New World, kill them all before they got to make a single pistol. But if he’d run into a colony as developed as that so swiftly, there would be others, many other colonies who had also developed the technology needed to make firearms. His conquest plans had to be significantly sped up. Otherwise, his Vikings could be stopped before they even reached the sea by forts and castles bristling with cannon.

These weren’t easy thoughts to digest. Sven maintained a sullen silence until, several hours later, Henrik said:

“We’re getting really close. No loud talking, no talking at all if we can help it. They’re just a few hundred paces in front, and there could always be a straggler.”

“You can hear them?”

“No. See those blades of grass? They haven’t been broken, just bent, and they still haven’t fully straightened out. We’re close.”

Within the next few moments, they were close enough to hear voices. They crept forward and caught sight of the group of people they’d been following. The watched strangers had just finished resting and eating and were about to resume their journey.

Sven noticed a steep cliff rising from the ground nearby, and the hard climb to its top rewarded them with a good view of their quarry.

“They have arms,” Sven told Lasse upon rejoining him at the foot of the cliff. “The men have bows and axes. The women have cutlasses. They’re all carrying sacks slung on their backs, and those sacks are almost full. They’re definitely not out gathering food, with that amount they’d be making their way back to the village.”

“Maybe they are,” Lasse said. “Maybe they’re from a different village that we haven’t discovered yet.”

“You’re a fucking fool,” hissed Henrik “You think I can’t tell where they came from?”

Lasse raised his hands in mock surrender.

“All right, all right, I’m sorry,” he said. “I wasn’t questioning your abilities.”

“Enough,” said Sven. “They’re far enough now for us to get going. Henrik, you lead.”

They didn’t get far. After just a few hundred steps, they saw the clearing they’d spotted earlier from the top of the cliff.

The group they’d been following had halted under a solitary tree growing near the middle of the clearing. They were too far away to see details, but Sven thought they’d taken off their crude backpacks: seen from the side, their silhouettes had no hump. He also noticed one of the men stepping out from under the tree to look at the sun, his hand shielding his eyes.

That gesture told him everything he needed to know.

“They’re waiting for someone,” he told his men. “They got here ahead of time. What time is it, Henrik?”

Henrik glanced at the sun and then at Sven and said:

“What’s today? The eleventh?”

“Twelfth of September,” Sven informed him.

“I really should get a fucking quadrant,” said Henrik. “It’s nearing two o’clock in the afternoon, or maybe just past it.”

“Quiet,” hissed Lasse.

They all fell silent and listened and heard an echo of a rhythmic, ragged sound that steadily got louder and closer. When Sven recognized it for what it was, he closed his eyes and whispered:

“Oh fuck.”

He opened his eyes again to see two horsemen burst out from the trees on the other side of the clearing. Under the tree in its center, a couple of people were waving to them, hands raised high. Fucking horses! He had a few replicated in Svenborg, but they were too precious to ride: all of them apart from the pregnant mares were busy pulling or carrying loads, plowing, helping clear trees, or with construction work.

The two riders slowed down and stopped by the tree and dismounted. This definitely was a prearranged, friendly meeting. Sven scanned the clearing for any cover that would enable him to get within earshot of the group under the tree. He couldn’t see anything, and he absolutely couldn’t risk discovery.

Henrik and Lasse had been trying to work something out, too. Lasse said:

“Maybe I could climb a tree. At least I’d have a clear field of view.”

“It will sway and they’ll spot that and then you and then we’ll be neck deep in shit,” Henrik said. “No, it’s better that I have a go. I’m pretty sure I can get close enough to hear what they’re saying.”

“How can you be so sure?” asked Sven. Henrik shrugged.

“I can get within twenty steps of a deer without it noticing me,” he said.

“All right,” said Sven. “Do it. Get back the moment you’ve worked out what’s going on. Earlier, if there’s no chance of safely getting close enough. No risks, you understand?”

“What risk are you talking about?” said Henrik. He didn’t waste time. He moved out instantly, crouching and then dropping to his belly. Watching him, Sven had the feeling he was watching a veteran lizard stalking a landed insect.

Men like Henrik were a treasure. He had many men like that. He wasn’t going to risk losing a single one of them to a bullet fired by a moron who’d just learned how to wipe his ass. He was going to solve this mystery, and then solve any problems that became apparent.

He looked for Henrik, but Henrik had disappeared. Incredible! The grass in the clearing had grown high, it was true, but it was sparse, growing around bald patches of rocky, mossy ground. A cat could hide itself in that, but a grown man?

But Henrik just wasn’t there! Was he tunneling like a mole?

Sven saw a small, mossy mound move – or were his eyes deceiving him, exhausted by the strain? No, it moved again! The mound seemed to shift, then grew a human eye. The eye sent Sven a wink – he could see it clearly even though it was at least sixty steps away. Then the eye disappeared and the mound moved again and then it was gone, just like that, as if it had melted into the ground.

It felt like a miracle, and not only to Sven.

“He’s fucking good,” breathed Lasse.

Sven was brought back to reality with a jerk. He instantly recognized it was time to assert his leadership, if just a little.

“Aren’t we all?” he said, giving Lasse a questioning look.

Lasse responded the way he should. He grinned and said:

“Yes, we are. You bet we are.”

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