Sturm country musket men.., p.25
Sturm Country (Musket Men Book 9), page 25
“You agreed to open the gates of Cidade Fortaleza to Jiniral Darwish!” Dekker snapped.
Lima turned to Sturm. “What he says is true.”
Sturm chuckled. He just couldn’t help it. “You, a Granite Knight, help Ahl-Alnaar?” The more he thought about it, the funnier it became.
Lima shrugged again. “Evidently, I was quite convincing, because they let me go free.”
“And this is where the grandmaster’s information regarding the loyalties of Al-Andalusian lords came from?” Sturm asked, finally getting control of himself.
“It’s one of the sources,” Lima confirmed.
Sturm shook his head. “Just imagine how the other Granite Knights would have responded if you ordered them to throw open the gates to Ahl-Alnaar. They’d have cut you down where you stood. Why on earth, Dekker, did anyone believe that Sir Lima would betray his oath?”
Dekker’s shoulders had drooped as the knight and the earl spoke. “Desperate men often make foolish gambles,” he noted.
“Well, I hope the rest of your information proves better,’ Sturm said, “or I shall show you no leniency at all at your trial.”
“You’re going to try me?” Dekker protested.
“I am,” Sturm confirmed. “It was probably already within my authority as earl of Fortaleza during this crisis, but since the governor’s council voted to give me total authority to protect Al-Andalus there is no doubt that I have the right to see you beheaded.”
He leaned forward in his seat. “And don’t think you can draw out your information. I have a lot to wrap up here before I invade Ahl-Alnaar. If you waste time, it will go even harder on you.”
“We’re invading Ahl-Alnaar?” Dekker obviously couldn’t believe Sturm’s words.
“You’re not,” Sturm corrected him, “but Sir Lima and I am. We already have cavalry there gathering information and causing havoc. The rest of my army will join them as soon as we wrap up the dregs of Darwish’s invaders.”
“You’re mad,” Dekker told him. “You really are going to destroy Al-Andalus.”
Sturm stood up. “I am only fixing the disaster that you and Governor Sorensen created. Ahl-Alnaar must learn that Al-Andalus and Kriegsturm are not the soft prizes it imagines them to be. Now, in a few minutes you are going to be given paper and pen. You will write down the name of every man or woman you know to have supported the invasion or Joachim Adler. And you will also write down everything you know about Jiniral Darwish’s forces. If I am convinced you have been completely forthcoming, I am prepared to offer you some measure of mercy. If I find you have lied or withheld information…”
Sturm left the threat hanging. He really didn’t need to complete it.
Excerpt from Leverage
Now that the Great War is done, ace pilot Mitch Pembroke just wants to spend a few peaceful years enjoying the Roaring Twenties before he settles down and takes the corner office in his father’s company, Pembroke Steel. Unfortunately, peace is the last thing Mitch can find. Trouble follows wherever he goes and not even his best friend, boxer-turned-bodyguard, Kit Moran can keep him out of all of it.
Mitch, accompanied by his best-friend and bodyguard, Kit Moran, is in Newport News visiting Jenny Lee Danforth and her family, hoping to spend a few pleasant weeks getting to know them in preparation for the coming wedding. But all is not peaceful in Virginia and a storm of vice and corruption threatens the security of the entire Danforth clan. Jenny Lee’s older brother has involved himself with the mobsters who run the local gambling halls and he is in way over his head. Can Mitch find the leverage to protect the Danforths from his soon-to-be brother-in-law’s idiocy? Or will his and Jenny Lee’s future collapse with her family like a house of cards?
Leverage is a stand-alone novella in the Pembroke Steel series.
Leverage
Chapter One: A Fight on the Beach
Friday
“I wasn’t sure you were coming this morning,” Kit observed as Mitch came out of the Danforth’s house by the kitchen door and joined him on the patio. The upper edge of the sun was still a few minutes from touching the horizon out over the Atlantic Ocean and a beautiful haze of light orange and pink brightened the sky nearest to the water line. The rest of the world was still mostly dark or in shadow.
“I almost didn’t come,” Mitch admitted. “We stayed out later than we’d planned waiting for Jeff to come back and I really didn’t want to get up this morning.”
Kit began to run in place, lightly moving, shaking out his shoulders with a couple of light shadow-boxing jabs. “You should have slept in then.”
“You were out just as late,” Mitch pointed out.
“But I do not have to spend the day with my future father-in-law learning the ins and outs of Danforth Shipping,” Kit reminded him.
Mitch rolled his eyes, although he doubted that Kit could see the gesture. He really didn’t like spending his days meeting Horace J. Danforth III’s staff. It felt too much like work. But what he hadn’t told anyone—not even Kit—was that he enjoyed pretending to work with Mr. Danforth a lot more than he ever had with his own father.
“Shall we get started?” Kit asked.
By way of answer, Mitch started down the path toward the beach—loosening his shoulders up as Kit had with a couple of shadow-boxing jabs. The marble stones of the path slapped against the bottoms of his shoes, but soon they gave way to the fine grains of sand that formed the dunes between the house and the ocean. There were tufts of long grass sticking up out of the sand. His fiancé, Jenny Lee, had told Mitch that when she was a child her mother had wanted all of that grass pulled out but that her father had refused, explaining that the grass somehow held the dune together which protected the house every time there was a big storm out over the water.
Mitch wondered just how Mrs. Danforth had punished her husband for daring to suggest that reality should get in the way of her wishes. Then he shrugged his shoulders, threw a couple of more jabs at the air, and tried to put the unpleasantness out of his mind.
The grassy sand of the dune soon gave way to the soft sand of the beach proper, which in turn became the wet, hard-packed sand which marked the limit of the reach of the waves. Kit turned them north, rather than continuing to run them east into the water, and they jogged on in silence toward the town of Newport News several miles in the distance. Before too long, they left the Danforth property and entered the Becks’ and after that they ran past the Tollmans’ place, and the Gabriels’, and the Hollisters’. Mitch had met them all and he knew that none of them would mind Kit and he together running along the edge of their property like this. Kit on his own, however, they might find a cause for alarm so Mitch made certain it wasn’t a problem by getting up to run with his friend and bodyguard each day.
A mile passed, and then a second. The sun was all the way over the horizon now and the sea gulls were hunting up and down the beach for the little sand creatures uncovered each time a wave slid back into the ocean.
“What’s that?” Kit asked and slowed his pace, keeping himself between whatever he had seen and Mitch.
Mitch stopped daydreaming. A few hundred yards up the beach three men were in the water just beyond the breaking waves, about waist deep when it troughed, while three others observed from the sand.
“Any idea who they are?” Kit asked as he and Mitch continued to close the distance to the struggle.
“I can’t see them that clearly,” Mitch admitted. “But I make it two to one.” Even as he spoke, the two assailants forced their victim’s head under the water.
“Let’s break it up!” Mitch decided.
“That is not a good idea,” Kit told him.
“I know,” Mitch agreed, “but we’re going to do it anyway.”
Kit showed the grace not to sigh. It was his job to keep Mitch out of trouble and his cross to bear that Mitch rarely did the truly smart thing.
Further up the shore, the three men on the beach noticed them approaching and two of them started down to keep them from interfering. “Why don’t you turn around and—”
He stopped talking and put his fists up when neither Mitch nor Kit stopped.
Kit got his hands up as well, slipping easily into the boxer’s stand as the man blocked his way.
Mitch would have liked to watch—Kit was a superb prizefighter—but he had his own problems as the shorter of the two men came at him with a lot more enthusiasm than skill. He dodged slightly to the right and jabbed with his left, stopping the man’s forward progress with a blow to his mouth which unfortunately failed to split his lip.
Out of his peripheral vision, he saw Kit maneuver to turn the big man’s attention away from Mitch.
Mitch avoided a powerhouse blow without a lot of difficulty and landed two punches on the man’s ribcage just as if he were hitting the heavy bag.
Off to the side, Kit kept maneuvering, turning the guy further around as he dodged swings and irritated him with a flurry of lightning jabs.
“You should have minded your own business,” Mitch’s opponent told him, just before suffering a blow to the left eye. He really had no ability to defend himself. He didn’t have his hands up high enough to protect his head.
All of the sudden, the man stopped throwing punches and charged in to grab Mitch about the waist.
Mitch went down hard and the man reared over him to make him pay for his mistake, when Kit danced out of nowhere and drove a hard right hook into the side of his head.
It cost the former heavyweight boxer a blow to the shoulder from his own opponent, but Mitch took advantage of the assist to roll onto his knees and hit the man’s face as hard as he could.
He had to—because the two guys in the water had apparently abandoned their victim to come onto the shore and help their mates.
Mitch got to his feet and saw his opponent hadn’t given up yet. He rolled to his hands and knees and spit out a mouthful of blood.
Mitch kicked him in the chest as hard as he could, and from the way the guy screamed he might have cracked a rib or two.
Then he got between Kit and the other two men, knowing that he probably wasn’t good enough to beat both of them, but figuring he could slow them down and give Kit a chance to finish off the big guy and come help him.
Kit had other ideas.
As Mitch slid past him to protect his bodyguard, Kit faked with his right and hit the bigger man hard on the ear with his left. The blow momentarily stunned the other man.
Kit him again in exactly the same place, cocking the left arm back and then powering it forward with all his strength.
The big man stumbled two steps, trying to get his bearings and then Kit danced forward a step of his own and laid him out flat with his unstoppable right.
As the man hit the sand he darted down to Mitch’s side, joining him just as the two who had been in the water charged out of the surf toward them. Their clothing dragged them down, and unlike the two on the shore, both looked tired from tussling with their victims. They lifted their hands in a poor copy of Kit and Mitch’s forms and then Kit laid out his second man, his fist flying so quickly the poor guy probably never even saw it coming.
“That’s enough!” the apparent leader of the five said.
When Mitch glanced back at him, the man opened his suit jacket to show he was packing heat underneath it.
Mitch frowned. There was no way he wanted Kit or him going up against a man with a gun, but he also didn’t want to leave the man trying to get through the breakers and back onto the shore to their tender mercies. “What is exactly is going on here?” he demanded.
“None of your damned business,” the other man said.
Out in the water, the victim got caught in the waves and tumbled up onto the beach about thirty feet away from Mitch, and then rolled painfully onto his hands and knees.
Mitch knew him.
“Oh, God, Mitch!” the brother of Mitch’s fiancé groaned. “Do you have any idea how much trouble you’ve just caused me?”
The Kriegsturm Calendar
The Wolf Moon—January
The Snow Moon—February
The Worm Moon—March
The Pink Moon—April
The Flower Moon—May
The Strawberry Moon—June
The Buck Moon—July
The Sturgeon Moon—August
The Harvest Moon—September
The Blood Moon—October
The Frost Moon—November
The Cold Moon—December
Ranks in Kriegsturm and Anjou
Private
Corporal
Sergeant
Lieutenant
Captain
Major
Colonel
General
Master General (Kriegsturm)
Marshal (Anjou)
Ranks in Ahl-Alnaar
Mulazim (Lieutenant)
Qutab (Captain)
Rā’id (Major)
Kulunil (Colonel)
Army Units in Kriegsturm and Anjou
A platoon has 50 men
A company has three or four platoons
A battalion has three or four companies
A regiment has two or three battalions
A unit is considered full strength at 80%
Army Units in Ahl-Alnaar
A Katiba has three or four companies
A fwij has two or three katibas
About the Author, Gilbert M. Stack
Gilbert M. Stack has been creating stories almost since he began speaking and publishing fiction and non-fiction since 2006. A professional historian, Gilbert delights in bringing the past to life in his fiction, depicting characters who are both true to their time and empathetic with modern sensibilities. His work has appeared in more than a dozen issues of Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine and is available online. He lives in New Jersey with his wife, Michelle, and their son, Michael. You can find out more about Gilbert at www.gilbertstack.com.
About the Cover Artist and Mapmaker, Chris L. Adams
Chris is the author of The Savage from Atlantis and other bizarre, pulp-style stories and poems, together with an ERB Inc authorized Barsoom novel titled Dark Tides of Mars. Chris also does oil paintings, a couple of which were used to create the Map of The Jeweled Cities of the North and Winterhaven. If you'd like to learn more about Chris and his artistries, you can find him online at https://www.ChrisLAdamsBizarreTales.com/
Other Works by Gilbert M. Stack
(Available in Digital and Audio Formats)
Legionnaire
1 The Fire Islands
2 The Sea of Grass
3 The Jeweled Hills
4 The Battle for Amatista
5 The Centinela Gambit
6 Morganita Burning
7 The Bridges of Morganita
8 Seneca’s Command
9 Flood of War
10 Calidus’ Stand
11 Fog of War
12 Fire Storm
13 The Seduction of Malaquita
14 River of Death
15 The Fall of Amatista
15.5 Escape from Amatista
16 The Plains of Diamonte
17 The Harrowing of Diamonte
18 Snow
19 Severus Alone (Coming Soon)
Green Vigil: A Legionnaire Prequel Series
1 The Jungles of Ekángá
Boxed Sets of Legionnaire
Marcus Takes Command (Legionnaire 1-3)
Marcus Goes to War (Legionnaire 4-6)
Marcus Betrayed (Legionnaire 7-9)
Musket Men:
1 Sturm Warning
2 Sturm Front
3 Sturm Shelter
4 Sturm Rising
5 Sturm Line
6 Sturm Clouds
7 Sturm Barriers
8 Sturm Season
9 Sturm Country
10 Sturm Strike (Coming Soon)
Winterhaven
1 Winterhaven
2 The First Snows
3 The Blood of Torons
Winterhaven: Young Tavistock
1 Steel Gray Eyes
2 Dark Treacherous Hearts
3 Crimson Steel Blades
Preternatural
1 The Devil’s Cavern
2 Blood
3 Oktoberfeast
4 Masks
5 Red Caps
