“Tenks for you caution, Brodder. Hy hope ve vun’t need hyu protected dot vay.” Dalibor dropped his packs to the floor. “Kommender, if Hy ken help?” he eased Dafi’s pack from her shoulders.
Luckily, Dafi caught the clue, “Thank you, Sergeant. We will only need assistance in getting into Prahova.” Dal held his breath, but she did not tell the brothers they were headed for Tânărăjugul. “Beyond that, I do not wish to inconvenience you.”
Brother Lucian nodded, and one of the other brothers opened a cabinet under the window bench, “Your gear should fit here.” After helping fit their packs into the cupboard, the brother locked it and handed the key to Dafi. “Understand that the owner of the contents of that cupboard has the key, and I am unable to open it.”
Dafi’s eyebrows went up, but Dalibor understood, “Hyu get zearched at de border?” he asked, not quite keeping the growl out of his voice.
Brother Lucian nodded, “That started year before last. Before that, it was only an occasional thing, and generally, it was the Baron’s soldiers, when there was a dangerous experiment loose. Now...” he shrugged, sighing. “These days, it is as likely that the soldiers are bored as anything.”
“Or they think they can get away with confiscating something they want by calling it ‘contraband’,” the youngest of the trio snorted. To Dalibor’s estimation, he looked just old enough to have taken his vows. “Everyone knows Duke Gavril has not publicly announced additions to the proscribed list, but getting a complaint to him...” The tall and lanky monk held up his hand, “Wait, grab on to something...” and the kabuis jerked violently.
At Dafi’s look of alarm, “The engine hit the grade change, that was normal.” The shortest of the brothers explained, “The train’s change of speed caused the cars to shimmy down the line. Probably a good reason for both of you to sit whenever possible. Give me a few moments to recalculate for the stop and your weights, and I can give you an idea how long the trip will be.” He sat at the little desk with a compact analytical engine bolted to the top.
“If hyu are boarded, iz dhere anodder cabinet dot Kommender vould fit in?” Dalibor caught a twitch in Dafi’s mouth, but the others might not have noticed. “Hy could probably jump off und run around de blockaded area...”
“Not a great idea, Sergeant. The farmers here are under pressure to report everything. Being blind is not an excuse.” Brother Lucian shook his head, “We can hide both of you, I think. That would be a better idea.” Then he climbed up into the cupola, watching both the train and the surrounding area with a spyglass.
The analytical engine announced the solution with a soft chime barely audible over the sound of the singing rails, and the brother at the desk grunted, “Not a big difference, if we take advantage of the next downhill.” He passed the card up to Brother Lucian, “Do you think we can risk it not being noticed, since the crossing has been quiet the last few weeks?”
Tall-and-Lanky laughed, “Not likely. I’d say let the driver know, your next trip up the cars. Not that we have passengers, just that the extra stop was for cargo,” he tapped the cabinet with the toe of his boot, “to explain the compensation.”
Dalibor cocked his head; the monk’s accent was passing familiar, and the attitude seemed to fit, but he was not quite sure about him yet. Instead he asked, “Hyu do not truzt a long peazeful schpell?”
The monk shook his head, “It means it’s more likely the guards are bored, and will harass us because they can get away with it.” He shrugged with a resigned air, “The duke has been paying less attention to the local soldiers since he started gallivanting with the rest of the Fifty full-time.”
Dafi said quietly, “You speak as someone who has been here, not just passing through.”
Tall-and-Lanky nodded, “I was one of the locals, before I got a vocation.”
“More like hyu’re from Moviloraş, Hy’d zay.” Dalibor watched the young man’s reaction.
The reaction was a little chagrined, “That means I need to watch my accent. Not many recognize it.”
~=*=~
“Being from the capitol city is a problem?” Dafi asked. Dalibor shook his head at her, and she subsided. More questions than answers in the past few minutes, so she watched the scenery roll by. This was a picturesque area, and roughly defensible. Searching her memory, she sifted through what every child who went through formal schooling learned about the sovereign states of Europa. Movilă was noted for sheep and goat herding, so villages were bound to be few and far between.
The capitol, however, was wrapped around a mountainside (a small one, by Dafi’s standards) with the ducal seat perched just under the summit. The river in the valley was deep enough to make trade profitable, and the town itself was a series of highly defensible walls. Why someone would want to hide the fact they were from the capitol was lost on her, though.
The brother who had the conductor’s watch on his belt stood from the desk, and retrieved the card from Lucian, “I had better let them know about the time. We did not stop long, so I shall give them the option of making up the time or not.”
When he left, Dafi thought about it a moment, and Dalibor murmured, “If it izn’t impawtent, it iz op to de pilot to make it op or not?”
“Driver,” she corrected, then nodded, slowly. “Hm, that makes sense. Makes it less noticeable, if it is not given more weight.” She shifted her position in the window seat on top of the cabinet. “I ought to have brought something to read”, she muttered, looking out the window, and hoping she did not sound as petulant as the thought in her head felt. She heard a soft chuckle, and a well-thumbed groschenroman landed near her seat.
She looked up at Lucian, and he grinned, putting his gaze back on the horizon with the spyglass. “We find those on the train every trip we have a passenger car on this route, sometimes more of them than the Heterodyne Boys books.”
Dalibor craned his head around to read the title, then grunted in disgust and turned his attention outward to the countryside. Dafi, curious at his reaction, picked up the cheap paper book and began to read about Third Son and the Paper Tigers.
Within the first chapter, she knew this would be one of the implausible stories Dalibor had warned her about. She thought she could see places in the narrative where the author might have embroidered events. By the time she reached the middle of the book, she spotted several events that were obviously created out of whole cloth. The mad chase scenes, with the Third Son hunting the counterfeiters through the printing houses of Vienna with a pride of clockwork predators made from origami was howlingly unbelievable.
There were a few things that stood out for Dafi, though. The hero was never named anything other than Third Son. Though it was never explicitly stated, there were broad hints that the hero was a construct. What sort of construct was rather vague, but comment was made that he had the strength of a dozen men and was able to run through a duchy in a day. Towards the end of the story, the phrase “a man apart from men” caught her eye.
She finished the book in a few hours, and accepted a cup of tea from the flagman. “I wonder if the writer ever was in the military. I do not think so.”
“At least this one got the geography right.” The young monk passed a cup to Dalibor as well. “Some of the wilder ones we leave in the passenger car rubbish bin to get confiscated. Most of them are produced locally, but rumor has it some are coming in from England.”
Dafi ignored Dalibor’s snorting into his cup, and asked, “How can you tell?”
The conductor chuckled, “Most of those are easy to spot, because they are the stories that make Baron Wulfenbach the villain of the tale and are generally stories nobody has heard of before. Sometimes, there are subtle hints that the author is someone who is used to writing in another language. There are some others that you can tell the writer was uneducated, but they are comfortable with the local language. Ten years ago, the scholars generally agreed there were six to eight established writers of Third Son stories, based on their styles.”
Dalibor choked on his tea. “Dot menny?!?” he asked when he caught his breath.
“Oh, undoubtedly!” the conductor chortled, warming to his subject, and possibly not noticing Dalibor’s distress, though it was obvious to Dafi. The brother continued, “there were dozens of one-off print runs that did not match the styles of the more prolific writers, and likely there might have been more authors to add to the list by now.”
“You seem to be very knowledgeable about this, are you studying folk-tales as an hobby?” Dafi asked.
He grinned, “Commander, I once taught the subject at Beetleburg, and the maths were my hobby. When my last paper was not well favored, I was... encouraged to take a sabbatical. It was Providence that I did take it, for while I was travelling and collecting more of the oral traditions, I found myself in the company of the Brotherhood more often than not.” The conductor nodded his thanks to the flagman for his tea. “Though many scholars among us might disagree, it has not come to blows over the varied disagreements. That which cannot be proven by mathematics and physics is still considered open to interpretation.”
Dalibor left off his muttering (Dafi had picked up the words “prolific” and “six-to-eight authors” mixed in with words soldiers used a great deal, but generally not in confession) and asked, “De schtories are getting more popular? Dhey aren’t dying out?” Dafi thought his tone was rather desperate.
The conductor-professor reassured him, “Oh, more popular than when I was teaching the subject, undoubtedly!”
Dafi likely thought it was not the reassurance Dal sought. His next question made her think it might be for good reason. “How long haff dhey been gaining popularity?” Was it her imagination, or was Dal’s accent losing its Mechanicsburg weight, becoming smoother?
The flagman answered gravely, “It has been a steady climb, as long as I can remember, but we started seeing a spike in the novels appearing in the passenger car a year after the young Duke ascended.” He and Dal exchanged a look, and Dal nodded.
The conductor finally twigged to the fact the stories had an upsetting aspect for Dalibor. “Oh, I see now - the patterns from the past! These stories gain popularity when unrest is on the horizon.” He frowned thoughtfully a few moments, then set his cup in the holder on his desk, rummaging through the file drawer, “I think I know what markers the statisticians would recognize for the next estimation of anarchy in the duchy...” he was selecting reports, noting the number and date on a scrap of foolscap.
Lucian explained, “We will not have all of the indicators in our reports, but the dates should match reports for other problems. The brothers at the Abbey of St Blaise specialize in this sort of thing.”
The conductor was still making notes, “I will not have everything ready by the time of the border crossing, but by the end of the run I should have a full report to file with the Abbot.” Then he turned the Dal and Dafi, rubbing the side of his nose with a grin, “and I am not all that careful about scrap paper, since the dates and document numbers aren’t useful to anyone who does not have access to the Central Station Records.”
“Heads up people, “ Lucian said from the cupola. “Looks like an inspection team around the next rise, signaling for a stop.”
Dalibor scanned the area, “No chancez of getting off de train unseen, here.” Dafi noted what he saw, the terraced slopes of farmland, with naught to provide adequate cover.
The conductor gestured for them to stand up, and pulled another key from the neck of his tunic, unlocking the bin they had been seated upon. “Right, in you get, sergeant first, I think.” Dalibor looked at her and shrugged, then folded himself into the space, curled on his side. “Quick now, lass,” he handed her in, with Dal’s help, to curl into the remaining space, then covered them with a dark blanket. “Cover up completely after I hand you the key.” Then he closed the bin, locked it, and then lifted the lid as much as the lock would permit, and slid the key through the space afforded. Almost as an afterthought, three of the groschenroman were slipped in as well.
Dafi took the key and twitched the blanket to cover them both. She whispered in between the squeals of the brakes, “I am not happy that they had to learn to smuggle people like this. Especially this efficiently.”
Dalibor gently covered her lips with his fingers and breathed in her ear, “Hy know. Later.”
She nodded, and they began the wait for their own personal siege.
~=*=~
Dalibor was glad he had chosen to put his feet toward the engine when he had climbed in the bin. The force of the train braking to a rapid stop would have been uncomfortable on his neck, and might have actually caused Dafi problems. Of course, she was causing him problems by her proximity, but she could not help it. She was just a wonderful armful.
He turned his attention turned to the new voices approaching. The accents were not right. These men were not local, not by leagues. A few flat-lander accents here and there, but for the most part, the accent was from the mountain ranges to the far south and west. These soldiers were mercenaries, and very far from their home. He concentrated on combing out what he could hear outside the train.
What was said in the local language was innocuous enough. Bored soldiers kvetching about being stuck in the back-end-of-nowhere and not a bar within two day’s hike. Two low-ranking soldiers, speaking some variant of Castillo, complaining about pulling the short straw and having to crawl under all the cars looking for “the officer’s shopping list”. Then the group of non-coms muttering in Napulitano, about the “girl-knight”.
Dal tensed, and stretched his hearing as best he could, catching only a few bits about the search for this person, when someone pounded on the door of the kabuis. “Open op! Time for l'ispezione!” Dafi stilled in his arms, and a protective instinct made him curl over her.
He heard the sound of the door opening, Brother Lucian greeting the then a shuffling of boots as the mercenary entered. Dalibor thought it sounded like the soldier had forced his way in, unnecessarily shoving the brother out of the way. Then another set of footsteps entering from outside, and the sounds of the doors of the cabinets being opened. Sounds of someone casually rummaging through the items, then the slam of a door.
This repeated through half the car until someone jerked on the lid of the bin they were in. “Oi! Wassamatta wit’ dis’ pict’cha?” This was the same voice that had demanded entry earlier. “Ispezione mean ev’vyt’ing!”
Dafi moved a fraction, putting her hand in his... and the keys between their palms. “This is a secure shipment.” said the voice of the shortest of the monks that had hidden them. “The owner of the items has the key.” Even in dire straits like this, she was making sure the monk did not commit the sin of lying. He froze as the lid was jerked up again, but not slammed. With the blanket over the both of them, he could not see, but he guessed someone was peering in. Luckily, the soldier apparently did not have a sword to poke in the gap.
Much the same conversation occurred at the next bin, the one with their packs in it. The soldier was getting less intelligible with each calm response from the professor-turned-holyman. The search continued, the sounds of rummaging becoming more pronounced, sounding more like someone ransacking the cabinets than carefully searching them.
Apparently the final straw came when the soldiers found a third locked cabinet. This time there were no questions, only an enraged shout from the soldier, and the sounds of a scuffle followed. Someone landed heavily on their bin, and the soldier called the monks several biologically-impossible things in Napulitano. The soldiers stomped out, and eventually the train started moving again.
~=*=~
A low mutter came to them, “We will be able to let you out once we are out of sight of the soldiers, give us a little bit.” Dafi was worried about the sounds outside, but she was willing to wait. Dal had begun to shake when the fight started, and she did not think it was fear that fueled it, but rage.
Oddly enough, being locked in a trunk with an angry Jäger did not call up fear in her, only worry for his well-being. She felt a twinge of something that she rationalised into concern for a fellow soldier - she told herself it was the reflexive consideration of a commander. Dafi turned her head, so that she could keep her voice low, “What is it?”
Dal muttered something about the Duke either losing control or losing honor, but his anger made the growling statement a mix of accents, difficult for her to decipher. She touched his shoulder gently, and murmured, "We will take the report to the Baron. We can make sure that something is done to make things right for the people here. Whether it is the Duke being unaware or...” she paused, not wanting to malign the Duke unfairly, “...having lost his way - we can see to it that something is done."
