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Chapter 23

Increasing Tensions


Bajak’s smithy, Jabir


May 9, 1008 CE


Bajak carefully pulled the ceramic jar from the blast furnace and emptied it into the flat tray. The steel was white hot and liquid. The tray was of fine sand, just moist enough to hold its shape.

The steel poured out and formed a sheet a half inch thick, three inches wide and six long. He waited until it was starting to harden, then quickly placed it on a mold and, using a rounded wedge, he hammered the sheet of steel into the mold until it formed a U shape, round on the bottom with two straight sides.

For two years, Bajak had been working as a blacksmith, first in Fort Peterbilt, then in Jabir. He’d learned a lot in that time, both from experience and from the videos that smiths from that future time had sent back. He’d also built tools, like the mold he was using and the long, rounded chisel he used to hammer the hot steel into shape.

Bajak was building a six-shot ball and cap revolver. He knew how it had been done by gunsmiths in the 1860s in that other history, but he liked his way better. The 1860s way had too many welds. His barrel would have just a single weld when he was done. That weld would be on the bottom of the barrel, so if it split, the explosion would be toward the ground and be less dangerous for the user.

He put the U-shaped piece back in the fire to heat again. His shop was full of gadgets that he’d made over the last two years. He had a drill press with a steel bit. He had files and awls and sandpaper. He’d bought the sandpaper, but most of what was in his shop was built by him, and that wasn’t all he’d built.

He did a regular business in ax heads and arrowheads, in wood files and wood saws, even steel pots and pans. He wasn’t the only blacksmith in the United Clans. He wasn’t even the only one in Jabir. But he was the best.

One of the best, anyway.

And he was making this gun not for Michael Anderle, or any of the Peterbilt people. He was making this gun for himself.

Because he was frightened.

The Peterbilt people were kind and strong, at least when directly defending themselves. He knew that. He’d been in Fort Peterbilt when the army Hocha sent attacked. But then, after Hocha massacred a village, all the Peterbilt had done was drive through the town and make a speech.

Increasingly, Bajak was convinced that if the Pharisees in Hocha were to be stopped, it was going to have to be the people of the United Clans that did it, not the Peterbilt people. They didn’t have the stomach for what was necessary.

Because what was necessary was to burn it out, root and branch.


Temple mound, Hocha


May 9, 1008 CE


Ho-Chag Kotep looked out at his city. His many-times great grandparents had come to this place up the river almost two hundred years ago as refugees from the lands south of the sea, what the demon people called the Gulf of Mexico.

He turned back to the table and went over to the map. He had the stories from his grandfather, who had died before the demon people arrived, and the string codes, to tell him that.

The string codes were his family’s great secret. He looked at the strings and the map that came from Fort Peterbilt. Without the map, he wouldn’t know where the string codes were referring to. Without the string codes, he wouldn’t know where on the map his family came from.

His ancestors had brought with them the knowledge of the gods of the south and had adjusted the names to make the gods like Talak, the mother of rivers who made humans from corn. And they had taught the savages of this land how to live and respect the gods.

Ho-Chag Kotep was their heir and the high priest of Talak. He lived and worked in a palace on the top of the temple mound, what the histories of that other time would call Monks Mound. Not out of any respect for the religion of Hocha. Hocha and its gods were lost in time. It was called that because Christian monks had put a settlement there.

Gods are supposed to be eternal, not to fade away and be forgotten. The demon people, with their cross god, had destroyed his future, and he hated them for it.

“How?” he demanded of his cousin. “How do we kill them?”

“It won’t do any good. Even if we kill them all, the knowledge has already spread. The writing is known. They are making paper.” He pointed at the map. It had place names written out on it in the script of the demon people.

“I don’t care!” Ho-Chag Kotep shouted. “The gods demand that they be countered! This cross god of theirs is a lie and an abomination. The gods demand sacrifice of us, if the world is to continue. They created the world, not this false god of the demon Peterbilt and its lying followers, who were sent into this world to disrupt the social order and make the peasants think that they have no duty to the gods or to Hocha.

“If this is allowed to continue, the gods will abandon our people. And, first, the rains will stop, and the mother of rivers will dry up. Then the sun god will become angry and the world will burn.” Ho-Chag Kotep had to believe that. More, after the things he’d done in the service of the gods, they had to be real. Had to be. He would die before he would give up his belief in them, for it was that belief that justified every act he had taken in their names, which justified his position of privilege and his very self.

His cousin nodded in doubtful agreement. Ho-Chag Kotep was terrified by that doubt, and the terror added to his fury.

“You must find a way to attack the demon Peterbilt.”

“There is a way.”


Capsule School, Fort Peterbilt


May 15, 1008 CE


The school was now a brick building with a whitewashed wall on one side. There were chairs for over sixty people to sit and watch videos sent back in time with the capsule. And the building had locally made glass windows, though the curtains were usually closed.

Right now, the screen was displaying a discussion of using black powder in digging holes and mining. Seated in the audience was a secretly devout follower of the sun god. He was learning a great deal about the effects of a contained explosion. Among the most important parts was the knowledge that the explosion must have a great deal of earth over it, else the blast will just shoot up and do little to dig the hole.

* * *

Several hours later, using the script of the demon people, he wrote out his message to the sun god’s high priest, for he’d come to realize that the blast shooting up was just what was needed for his purposes and the purposes of the sun god. Fire would serve the sun god, as was its proper role.


Village of Darta in Purdak Territory


May 15, 1008 CE


Darta was still loyal to Hocha and the priests of the gods of Hocha, but that didn’t mean it was willing to do without the innovations that the Peterbilt people offered freely.

Gatadi was a woman of middle years. Her husband had been killed in a hunt three years ago, and she hadn’t found another. However, her property included a clay field. Mixing the clay with ash, dung, and dried grass and forming it into bricks was the work of the entire village.

There were over a hundred people mixing the ingredients and using wooden molds to form the bricks. As soon as a mold was emptied onto the sand, it was dumped in a bucket to wash, then sanded, and more of the mixture was added. They’d been at it for weeks, and the first bricks had had plenty of time to dry.

Darta was a bit over a hundred miles north of Hocha on the Falast River. The winters were cold, but brick walls and fireplaces would make a great difference in that this winter. The money was already making a difference, even if the priests of Hocha didn’t approve of it.

Another man dropped a form into the water-filled barrel. That was another thing the Peterbilt people had brought. Wood barrels. They’d already had pots and plates and many other things carved from wood, but the cutting of staves and fitting them together into a barrel was new.

Gatadi, no stranger to hard work, grabbed the wet form from the barrel and placed it on the table. The form was rectangular, about two and a half inches tall and open on both the top and the bottom. She set the form on the table, and the table acted as the bottom side of the form. She grabbed a handful of sand and used it to sand the sides of the form and the tabletop that was acting as the bottom of the form. Then she took a blob of the brick mix and shoved it into the form. She pounded it into the form using her fists, then, taking a flat stick, scraped off the excess and applied a bit of sand to the top of the brick. A boy took the form over to a stretch of flat ground. He hit the form with a wooden mallet a couple of times to encourage the brick to fall out, then brought the form back to the bucket.

Many hands make light work, but even with many hands, making tens of thousands of bricks was a lot of work. But the village had an assembly line going. Several assembly lines. It wouldn’t all be done this summer. There was other work to be done. But in the next few years, Darta would become a town of brick buildings, some of which would have actual basements.

Gatadi filled another mold, wondering what was going to happen between Hocha and Fort Peterbilt. For that matter, she wondered what was going to happen right here in Darta. It seemed like half the village were secret Christians.


Village of Coasblin in Gruda Territory


May 15, 1008 CE


The blast furnace went up the wall of Coasblin. It was made of clay with brick surrounding it, and it had stone shelves that you could set ceramic pots into, where iron and iron ore could be held. There was a fire at the bottom, and the shape of the chimney sucked heat up from the hot fire, directing it and magnifying the flames into a blast of fire that heated the metal, not just to the point that it turned ductile, but beyond that, to the point that it became liquid.

On another day, it might be making stoneware, or even glass. But today they were making steel. Steel for knives and axes and arrowheads, because war was coming between Hocha and the demon people.

* * *

All across the clans of the river people, the citizens and subjects were preparing, using the knowledge brought by the Peterbilt people to make their lives better.

But also to make ready for war.

For if the priests of Hocha were right, unless the cross god was brought down and his followers destroyed, the world would end as the gods abandoned it.


Village of Plack in Kadlo Territory


May 15, 1008 CE


Bivwhok, the radio man, typed on the locally made keyboard. He was a local, not one of the Peterbilt people. He wasn’t even from Jabir. But he’d spent most of 1007 in Fort Peterbilt, studying electronics under the tutelage of the library and Jerry Jefferson. There were limits to what they could do, but he had, with help, built a printer and a keyboard that worked and operated within the voltages defined by the capsule. That had been enough to get one of the computer chips assigned to his radio.

Jerry Jefferson’s micro 3D printer had built a screen. It was actually two tiny little screens, and to use it Bivwhok had to lean forward, placing his head in a wooden rest so that each eye saw its own screen. Jerry’s micro printer took over two weeks to make the two screens. They were very expensive and Bivwhok’s wife Yola, who was a senior member of the women’s council, had to promise to repay a large loan. But it meant that Bivwhok could use the computer and the radio to access the main computer in Fort Peterbilt. That knowledge had already saved the lives of two villagers, one an injury and another, a sickness.

And they had weather reports. Not great weather reports, but some weather reports. Enough so that they often got a few hours’ warning before rains or high winds came.

Plack wasn’t the southernmost village in the Kadlo Territory, but it was over a hundred miles south of Hocha. Probably two hundred if you were trying to march an army there. So it was safer from Hocha attacks than most places, but even here the increasing tensions were making people nervous.

Bivwhok stretched and shifted. He’d lost a foot in a hunting accident almost ten years ago, and after that he’d been unable to do much but hop with a walking stick. Things were much better now, thanks to the radio. Also, thanks to the Peterbilt people, Bivwhok now had an artificial foot. It was made of wood and metal and attached to the bottom of his right leg with a leather cup, but he could walk on it, even though he still needed a walking stick. He had purpose now, and skills. The whole village was eating better and they had more stuff and better brick chimneys and hooks to hang pots over the fire. The world was better.

At the same time, it was getting scary. Even here, there were those who were afraid that if the villagers listened to the Peterbilt people, the gods would abandon them for their arrogance and the world would end.

“Bivwhok?”

Bivwhok’s head jerked up at his wife’s shout and he banged his nose on the wooden frame that held the little screens.

Rubbing his nose, he stood, keeping most of his weight on his left leg. It still hurt some to put weight on his right. He grabbed his cane and left the computer room to answer Yola’s summons. “What is it? I was sending your message to Fort Peterbilt.”

He moved the flap and stepped out of the “radio shack,” which was rather more than a shack, truth be told.

The sun was bright compared to the darkness of the radio room, and he blinked a bit.

Yola said, “We have a delegation.” She waved at a group of three men.

The three men were staring at his right leg and the artificial foot that was attached to it. Bivwhok’s day-to-day attire was a leather loincloth, basically the same thing he’d worn his whole life. It, unlike the clothes the Peterbilt people often wore, didn’t hide his artificial foot at all. Also, while he wore a moccasin on his left foot, he saw no reason to put one on the wood and metal prosthetic that the woodcarvers of Jabir had made for him from designs brought back with Jerry Jefferson. Yes, especially for Bivwhok, things were a lot better since the Peterbilt people came.

“Does it feel?” asked one of the men.

The others shushed him.

“Sort of, in a strange way,” Bivwhok said. “I have had phantom pains ever since the accident. Long before I got this.” He used the cane to tap his right foot. “But using the virtual glasses at Fort Peterbilt, they treated that, so I still have them, but they aren’t as bad. And the more I use the foot, the more it feels like I can feel it. I can’t really, but it can seem like I can.”

Yola’s half smile was there now. This was what she was after, at least part of it. Yola was his wife, and he loved her. Also, she’d stuck with him after the accident that lost him his foot and almost killed him. But he had few illusions about his wife. She was manipulative and sneaky.

“What brings you to Plack?” Bivwhok asked.

“We saw the giant canoe,” said one of the men.

Bivwhok thought he was probably the leader.

“We saw it as it went south and again as it went north. We came to find out how it works.”

“I can show you that,” Bivwhok said. “Not as well as they could in Fort Peterbilt, but I can show you.”

And he did, over the next several hours. He showed them how it could be done and he showed them that they couldn’t do it, at least not quickly. They had a few copper tools and ornaments, but no iron or steel. And though you could build a boiler out of copper, it would take a lot of copper and copper came down the river from the Great Lakes. They didn’t have enough, and buying or trading for enough copper to make a boiler, much less a boiler and steam engine, would bankrupt the village.

Steel, they could make, but it would mean a whole other investment, and finding the iron ore to make the steel. Even with the knowledge which Bivwhok freely shared, as that was part of the deal with Jerry Jefferson, it would still be much cheaper for them to just trade for a boiler and steam engine built in Fort Peterbilt.

They went away, saying they would think about it. But Bivwhok was worried. His feeling was that they thought the cheapest way of all to get a steam barge would be to steal it.

The world kept getting better for him and his village, but every time it got better, it also got more tempting, and so more dangerous.


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