“What can I do for you, Lord Raleigh?” Kobe asked.
“You used to be a private, right? Can you load a musket?”
“It’s been a few years, but … more or less.”
“Show them how it’s done,” Fletcher ordered.
“Aye, sir.”
Fletcher watched as Kobe returned to the others and unslung his musket. The boy was hesitant, but the motions he went through looked right to Fletcher, if loading a musket was anything like loading a pistol.
“We need to teach them the proper techniques,” Fletcher said, squinting in the midday sun. “Firing lines, formations, fast-loading, aiming. In the army they go through basic training, but this lot…”
“Didn’t they teach you that in Vocans?” Sir Caulder asked.
“No. I missed my second year,” Fletcher said, remembering the books on strategy and tactics that had been sitting on the library shelves while he studied demonology and spellcraft. “Kobe probably knows more about musketry than I do.”
“I can’t help you there. But give me a few weeks with them and they’ll be better with those poleaxes than any warrior.”
“Let’s hope.”
Fletcher sighed and looked out over the savannah. There was a large copse of trees nearby, the trunks tall and straight, the tops capped with a wide umbrella of branches. Shade.
“We’ll be needing timber soon enough,” Fletcher said, motioning at the trees with his chin. “You know much about trees?”
“Only what your grandfather told me,” Sir Caulder said, looking at the copse with a rueful smile. “He planted those when he was your age, wanted a forest for his descendants to play in. Makes me feel my age; I remember when they were nought but saplings.”
The beginnings of an idea began to form in Fletcher’s mind. He turned.
“Men, follow me,” Fletcher said loudly.
A startled elf fired his half-loaded musket, his finger tightening involuntarily on the trigger. There was a bang, the stench of brimstone, and a ramrod spun through the air to land in the grassland a dozen feet away. Fletcher shook his head in disappointment.
“Let’s find some shade,” he said, turning his back on them and making his way to the trees.
They filed in behind him, sweaty and frustrated. Without waiting to be dismissed, most of the soldiers collapsed onto the ground to relax in the cool. Fletcher didn’t have the heart to reprimand them. Or was it fear that made him hesitate?
There were a hundred trees or so in the copse, all as tall as three men standing on one another’s shoulders. Many had termite nests growing around the base, though the trees looked unharmed by the insects’ ministrations.
Round fruit littered the ground, having fallen from the tree branches above. They looked like limes, with a yellow-green rind on the outside. Sir Caulder picked one from the ground and split it open on the edge of his sword.
“Jackalberries,” he said as the tart citrus smell filled Fletcher’s nostrils. “Try it. They’re not quite ripe yet, but you’ll rarely manage to find one that’s purpled; the animals get to them first. Jackals in particular—hence the name.”
Fletcher bit into it, the juices bursting in his mouth like sweetened lemon juice. It was delicious and reminded him of persimmon.
“Well, they’ll add to our meager supplies, even if we don’t catch anything to eat tonight,” Fletcher said, his mouth half-full.
He peered into the grasslands. There were antelope herds in the distance, but the shimmer of a heat haze made it difficult to gauge the distance.
“You can make flour from them once they’re dried and ground—not to mention a pretty decent brandy,” Sir Caulder said wistfully, biting into one himself. “And don’t spit out the seeds—you can eat them.”
Surprised, Fletcher crunched down on the seeds he had been holding between his teeth and found them to have a pleasant, nutty taste, not unlike almonds.
“What about the wood itself?” Fletcher asked, skewering a jackalberry on his khopesh and tossing it to one of the soldiers. The man pulled it apart, then groaned with delight as he bit into it, setting off a chain reaction as the recruits picked their own fruit from the ground.
“Well, that’s the best part,” Sir Caulder said, grinning. “Your grandfather picked these because of their fruit, but there’s something special about them. They’re termite proof.”
He pointed to the red humps of the insect mounds growing around the tree bases.
“They’ve got a special relationship, termites and these trees. Their roots protect their homes, so the termites leave them alone in exchange. Even when you cut them down, the termites won’t touch the wood.”
Fletcher smiled and ran his hand along the rough-grooved bark of the nearest tree. He had found a source of timber.
“So that’s what they’re called then, jackalberry trees?” Fletcher asked. “I can’t say I’ve heard of them.”
“No, they’ve another name,” Sir Caulder said, a smile playing across his lips. “Most people call them ebony trees.”
CHAPTER
41
THERE WAS NO HUNTING THAT DAY. The troops were put to work, using their poleaxes to cut down the first trees for the rebuilding of Raleightown. The wagons were refitted and wheeled out over the flat ground of the savannah to take the first branches, cut away from the main trunks for the carpenters to turn into the smaller necessities, like wooden bowls and furniture struts.
Despite their numbers, Fletcher weighed in with the men, stripping down to his shirtsleeves and chopping at the base of his own tree with one of the few felling axes that had come with the convoy.
Every hour, the shout of “timber” would precede the crackle of falling branches and the ground-shaking thud of the trunk hitting the ground. Then the men would swarm over it like the termites that crawled beneath, hacking away the branches to leave long, straight trunks to be turned into planks, beams and lumber later on.
When the sun began to set, the soldiers were finally given a brief reprieve. Their arms were near dead, but within half an hour Fletcher called for ropes and colonists to be brought up from the town, even as he staggered with exhaustion from their labors.
The logs were too heavy for them to lift onto the wagons. So the trunks were tied with ropes around their stumps and dragged inch by backbreaking inch to the carpenters, where the tools had been prepared for the night’s work. If the boars had not been on hand to help, they might not have managed it at all.