The Trojan Horse, Part 1
I arrived in Gaia and went out to the castle works.
The foundations were finished, and already they were laying brick up from the floor, course by slow course. Marco and Enne had set the architectural line, and the village chief was driving the labor. The concept of the castle itself, though, was mine.
For the basic form I had taken the medieval crusader castle on the Greek island of Rhodes — a great house for its lord that would serve as a fortress at the same time. Onto that I had set a massive central mansion and a high tower, built so a man could look down on everything around him, sea and woodland under watch together.
Water was drawn from a waterfall on the nearby shore to feed a spring at the center, and a well was sunk into the groundwater besides. A waste channel bored through the cliff on the far side settled the sewage.
The castle held sixty rooms and forty-seven toilets, five kitchens and seven dining halls, four banquet halls, and the rest of what a hold needs: warehouses, an armory, a laboratory, a training hall, and a parade ground for drills. In ordinary times four hundred slaves and soldiers would be stationed there. When the need arose, it was laid out to garrison as many as twelve hundred, troops included.
Out from the central castle, the groundwork for a city was already going forward in parallel. I meant to move every villager over to this side and ring them with an outer wall for their protection. The settlement taking shape around the castle was planned, from the start, to hold ten thousand.
The territory's own people numbered only about eight hundred. Slaves, men and women together, came to some twenty-six hundred, and once their children, the other races, and the special slaves were counted in, the population already stood past forty-six hundred. About a third of the children would come of age within four years. From then on, the numbers would explode. Twenty thousand inside the outer wall — that was the mark. After that, I would push the territory out beyond it.
Watching the site churn, I let the finished thing rise in my mind, and a quiet satisfaction came of its own accord.
Once I had Marco's report on the progress, I decided to take a few slaves and make for the capital, Trimalia. Curious, he asked.
"Why are you going to Trimalia, sir?"
"To buy hunting tools."
"Hunting?"
"Yeah. I've opened a new hunting ground."
"If it's hunting, then..."
"What else would it be? Slave hunting, obviously."
I set out for Trimalia.
It was no great city on the scale of Gerona or Zahed, but Trimalia, capital of Burgos in its own right, had a magic tower open for business. The middle-aged mage attached to the tower turned my question over for a moment.
"Ah. Something that can subdue them without doing injury. Nothing suitable comes to mind. If nothing here pleases you, commissioning a custom piece may be the better course."
"Custom work."
That wasn't bad either. I ran back through the various ways I had been taking Al-Shabaab men, and one scenario among them — a method I judged reasonably likely to work. For it, several conditions had to line up. I looked at the mage and placed the order.
"First, make it hard to notice, and ordinary to the eye. The smaller, the better. As for range..."
After the trip to Gaia, I took a plane across to Somalia. I stepped off in Mogadishu, and the slaves were there to meet me.
"Chairman. You have arrived?"
"Yeah. The work?"
"Finished, as you commanded."
"No problems?"
"The work went to plan. There was one minor problem."
"Minor?"
"Yes. Burglars broke into the house."
"Burglars?"
Given the state of order in Mogadishu, it was entirely possible. But the men staying at the beach mansion were Maximus and the former IS slaves. The others might have been at risk. Maximus wore an armor vest even on an ordinary day. If they had set out to kill him in his sleep, that would have been another matter — but if the burglars had taken their time, the ending was obvious.
"So how did it turn out?"
"Four came in. One is dead. We confined the other three."
"Dead?"
"Yes. He died while we were interrogating them about accomplices."
"That so? No more of them?"
"None. The four agreed among themselves and came in."
"Yeah? Works out perfectly. Let's go see them."
"Yes."
I got into the car and headed for the mansion. Forty minutes later it was still walled in high. I went first to the works, crossed the house, and came out into the broad yard behind it.
The deep pit that had been there before I left was gone. The turf showed the hasty covering plainly enough, but time would soften that.
"Open it."
Maximus and the slaves took hold of a handle jutting from the lawn and hauled. A cover of planks and sod lifted, and a deep hole showed itself. I leaned over. A black mouth gaped below. It was not so very deep.
They brought a rope ladder, made it fast, and climbed down one by one. I lowered myself slowly on levitation magic. Floor to yard was about five meters. Past the vertical shaft, a chamber of some thirteen hundred square meters opened around me — two and a half meters high, one undivided space. Iron pipes stood here and there, bracing wooden planks overhead. It was a single great excavation, but with dozens of pipes in place I saw no reason to fear a collapse. Packed tight, it would hold five hundred. And with nothing for a way in or out but the rope ladder lowered from above, there would be no running. Lock a man in here, and escape looked impossible.
"The latrine?"
"Installed at the back."
On one side of the open space was the only hole tall enough for a man. Beyond it a ditch ran along the floor, a drain to carry the filth away, and set into the wall was an air-purification magic-circle panel bought from the tower. To eyes from Earth it would be nothing but a panel carved with a strange pattern. Thanks to it, no one was going to die of the stench.
"Meals come down the rope ladder. For air, we bored one vent here and one on the far side."
"Good. Well done, Maximus."
"Thank you, Chairman."
"Right. Now let's see these men you caught."
I woke the men sprawled and bound in the mansion warehouse. Every face was a wreck — bruises laid over bruises, three or four teeth broken out of each mouth. Break a man's teeth and his value on the market drops hard. A shame, but I would have to use them while I was working Somalia.
Terrified of Maximus, all three kept glancing up at me, reading my mood. Orphans, the lot of them, running in a pack and living by crime. That they had turned to robbery owed plenty to a wretched life, but I had no intention of pitying men who had come with pistols and knives to rob a house.
"Fitting material just walked in. We can run the plan now."
I named them Somalia One, Two, and Three, and fitted shackles on the new slaves — not the thick iron locks we had used until now, but thin copper rings. A thing that breaks a man in the mind can be small and still certain, and small enough not to catch the eye, it was easy to use in secret. I had them wear several other pieces as well, among them items worked with a wiretap transmitter. The gear on their bodies had cost more than eight hundred gold. They were to be bait.
The name of it was the Trojan Horse Tactic.
I took them to the recruiter I had already found.
I drilled it into them.
"Tell the trainer you got caught in a robbery and you're on the run. And that you want a new life with Al-Shabaab."
Maximus's face was a drawn blade, and the Submission Rings were on them besides. They nodded, and nodded again. It might not go to plan. One of the pieces they wore was a wiretap transmitter, though, so I could listen and deal with whatever came.
As ordered, the three went looking for the Al-Shabaab recruiter holed up in a back alley of Mogadishu. Face to face with them, he seemed only half convinced.
"So where was this place you were going to hit?"
"A mansion on the southern coast. We heard a Turk had moved in, so we went looking."
"And?"
"We walked in without knowing any better and got caught by the armed guards. We ran. One of our friends died then. The rest of us got away."
"That so? How'd you know to come here?"
"I heard friends in the neighborhood talking. The police are after us too, but we want to start a new life with Al-Shabaab."
"Hmph. Wait here a minute."
The recruiter had the three wait somewhere else. Checking who they were, no doubt. But a day had not passed before their enlistment was confirmed. He must have asked around the slums and satisfied himself that they were local thugs.
So the three climbed into a waiting vehicle and moved south through Somalia. The gear fastened to them carried a tracker as well, and I followed at an easy distance.