The Mountains of Montora (The Chronicles of Montora Book 1) Read online

  The Mountains

  of

  Montora

  Ward Wagher

  © 2011,2013

  Second Edition

  Paris Mountain Press

  Taylors, SC 29687

  Cover photo by Bill Wentworth

  Books by Ward Wagher

  The Scott Baughman Saga

  Hannah Sorpat's Eye – A Novel of Alien Abduction

  Without Beginning of Days

  Witnesses in the Cloud (planned)

  The Chronicles of Montora

  The Mountains of Montora

  The Margrave of Montora

  The Snows of Montora

  Christmas in Montora

  The Diamonds of Montora (Summer 2013)

  Short Stories (available at www.wardwagher.com)

  First Contact!

  Cataclysm

  Available from www.amazon.com

  Forward to the Second Edition

  As a way to further the opportunities for the readers, I plan to begin issuing print editions of my books during the year 2013. Following the old saying you just never know, the Montora series has been significantly more popular than the Scott Baughman books. So, it makes sense that the first of the Montora series is the logical candidate to put on paper.

  Having made that decision, I took the opportunity to comb through the book one more time, in an attempt to stamp out the never-ending punctuation and wording errors that are the bane of a writer's existence. And, of course, once inside the book, I was unable to resist the temptation to smooth some of the awkward phrasing, and change some of my questionable word choices. So this is a true second edition. No changes were made to the plot or story-line, but I just took the chance to make the book read slightly better.

  This series, itself, has been surprising, too. I had originally planned three books, which then turned into four. And at the conclusion of Christmas in Montora, I was shocked to discover yet another story lying in ambush. The Diamonds of Montora will tell the story of the invasion of Hepplewhite by a mercenary army in the pay of an interstellar mining syndicate.

  And, of course, I enjoyed the opportunity to immerse myself once again in the story of the Nymans, and the challenges they faced in the margraviate of Montora.

  Ward Wagher

  January 2013

  Chapter One

  The explosion rumbled up through the keep, more felt than heard. The lord of the manor and his wife sat up in bed.

  “What was that, Jack?”

  “I don’t know, but it’s got to be bad.”

  He threw the covers off and climbed out of the bed. “You’d better get some clothes on, Shar.”

  Jack Nyman walked over to the chair where he had tossed his clothes the night before.

  “Wish I hadn’t quaffed all that brandy this evening,” Nyman said. “I'm probably going to need a clear head.”

  Sharon walked over to the closet and pulled out a pair of slacks and a sweatshirt. She leaned over near an air vent in the wall. “I can hear people running.”

  Her husband walked over and listened briefly. He then reached into the closet and pulled out a shotgun. “The pistol is in the desk. You’d better get that.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Jack walked over to the door which led from their suite into the upper levels of the keep. Sharon followed him. He stopped at the door and put his ear to it.

  “Stick close to me, babe. This may get dangerous.”

  She placed a hand on his arm. “Be careful, Darling.”

  Jack eased the door handle down and started to pull it open, then stopped. “No, let’s go the other way.”

  He took her by the hand and hurried across the room. He reached behind the edge of a bookcase to flip a catch. The bookcase swung silently outward. They stepped through and pulled it closed behind them.

  “I’m glad whoever built this place loved secret passageways,” he whispered as they felt their way along. “It sounds like somebody is sacking the castle.”

  Behind them a blast shook dust into the passage. “They just blew the door to our suite.”

  “Good thing we didn’t go that way,” she said. “Do you think they’ll find the passage?”

  “Don’t know,” he grunted. “I don’t propose we hang around and find out.”

  The narrow passage followed the outer stone walls of the keep on one side. The other side showed the framing and insulation of the inner walls. Nyman briefly flicked a penlight to show the path. He led around a corner and they descended a circular staircase to the next lower level.

  “Can we stop for a minute so I can fasten my shoes?” Sharon said.

  “We need to keep the noise down,” Jack whispered. “The interior walls are not sound proof.”

  Sharon leaned against the stone outer wall and bent over to hook the fasteners on her shoes. “If we get into the root cellar, we can slip out the back way,” Sharon said.

  “Let’s keep that route in mind. First I want to find out what is going on.”

  They slipped along the narrow passageway and looked through peepholes, giving them a view of each room.

  “There’s a couple of the staff,” he said.

  Sharon pushed him aside to look. “Are they dead?”

  He sniffed. “Smell that? The telltale for Sleepy gas. It’s already broken down, but they’re down for the count.”

  “Can we get them out?”

  Jack chewed on a thumbnail. “There’s not a door from here into this room. We’ll have to go through another room and into the hallway. It’s too dangerous, Shar.”

  “We can’t just leave them!”

  “Shhhh. Our voices will carry. If they’ve gassed them, I think they are in no great danger.”

  “But what are those people after?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know. There is not that much in the strong room. My guess is they are after us.”

  “Ransom?”

  “At best. We don’t have enough money to be worth this kind of a raid. Come on, let’s look further. They don’t seem to be aware of the secret passages.”

  He led her further along looking into rooms as they went. They could hear voices and the occasional sound of slamming doors, but saw nothing in the rooms where they peered.

  “Maybe we should stay in here. It may be safer than trying to run for it,” she said.

  “I think you may well be right. Hopefully they won’t fire the keep.”

  “I hadn’t thought of that,” she said. “If they do that, we will have to go get the staff out.”

  “Let’s move around to the other side and see if we can watch a hallway.”

  Because the passageways were arranged around the interior plan of the keep, moving around was not necessarily straight forward. In a few places they had to crawl under structures supporting window seats and the like.

  A peephole behind an elaborate wall carving gave them a line of sight down the central hallway of the second floor.

  “Okay, so where are they? Sharon asked.

  “Not here.”

  “Have they left?”

  “Who knows? I’m not anxious to find out.”

  “We can’t wait in here all night, Jack.”

  “That’s precisely what I plan to do. I think whoever it is that crashed the gate has no idea where we are and I want it to remain that way. There’s no reason for us to be in any hurry to leave our hidey hole.”

  “But what if they take the staff?” she asked.

  “It would take six of them to carry Eden Prary out, as big as he is.”

 
; “Aren’t you concerned about our friends?”

  Jack turned and held a finger up to her lips. “You’re getting loud again. Yes, I’m concerned about our friends, but I’m more concerned about you.”

  “I can take care of myself.” She stood with her hands on her hips.

  “You have never been in a fire fight. I have. It’s no place for novices.”

  The sound of a door scraping open stopped their conversation. Then a voice, “Look here, the place has got hidden rooms.”

  Jack turned Sharon around and pushed her in the other direction. “Okay, things just got complicated.”

  They took another circular stair up to the third floor and looked into the room across from their suite.

  “Looks clear,” he said. “I think they’ve already been in our suite. There are a couple of nooks we can get to and won’t be obvious in a search. Daylight will be soon and they won’t want to hang around.”

  They eased the section of hinged wall outward and crept into the room. It was very quiet. He eased across the room with his wife following. They waited for a few moments at the door as they listened. He started to turn the handle. With a roar the door shattered inward. Jack’s body caught most of the force of the blast, but the residual tossed Sharon across the room like a rag doll.

  The stunned woman opened her eyes to see two of the assailants in the doorway. Whimpering she skidded backwards, pushing with her hands and feet. She rolled back into the door to the passageway she had come from. The shotgun bellowed twice, missing her each time.

  Screaming, Sharon lunged from her hands and knees to her feet and started running down the passageway. She grabbed the rail and swung down the circular staircase, entirely focused on getting to the root cellar and the back door to the keep. Tripping on the bottom step, she sprawled face first on the floor. Hearing running feet above her, she scrambled to her feet again and ran.

  She ran around a corner in the passageway and skidded to a stop in blinding light of a high-powered hand torch. Four gunshots tossed her backwards to crumple in the corner. The light stayed on her as the life drained out of her eyes.

  In the drifting smoke the shooter spoke. “I’m very sorry, my dear. It’s nothing personal. Really.”

  Chapter Two

  Hepplewhite is a pretty planet, about sixty percent ocean. With a diameter of 7,600 miles, the blue and white globe is a close twin of Earth. The majority of the land on the continent of Ducat consists of compact plains between extended mountain ranges. The two remaining continents, Parkland and Snowdown are generally temperate in the first case while Snowdown straddles the southern pole and is snow covered year round.

  The planet orbits Panoz, its G5 star at a distance of a bit less than one astronomical unit. The closer orbit largely cancels out the effect of a star which is slightly cooler than Sol. The 25 degree axial tilt again mimics Earth. The overall climate is cool with mild summers and cold winters, however there are local extremes, once again like Earth.

  Hepplewhite was settled three hundred years previously during the second migration of mankind to the stars. Robert Hepplewhite attempted to bring his British prejudices and culture to the planet. The end result is a fairly homogenous population of Northern Europeans from Earth, and a dubious implementation of a duchy, with none of the charm. The population is concentrated on Ducat with the other two continents uninhabited.

  The broad oceans and extensive mountain ranges of Ducat produce spectacular thunderstorms, which can make for an interesting shuttle ride into Cambridge, the capital of Hepplewhite. Cambridge is situated on St. John’s Bay. The bay was formed by an ancient volcanic crater, but now partially covered by lush foliage.

  The shuttle bounced around the perimeter of the bay as the storm winds swept up the sides of the mountain walls. Frank Nyman watched out the window at the cliffs, which seemed closer than they really were. “If the pilot were to have a sufficiently bad day, we could be splattered all over those rocks.”

  Wendy looked out the window and then glared at her husband. “You bring up the most interesting subjects, dear. Life is all too short even without your morbid comments.”

  “Sorry. After years of trying not to back-seat drive the various helmsmen under my command, I’ve developed a keen sense of what else can go wrong.”

  “We don’t need anything else to go wrong, thank-you very much. And I’ll be happy to get my feet planted on the ground. This has been a rough ride.”

  “It’s not over yet, my dear.”

  As he finished the shuttle lurched upward and then dropped suddenly. There was a collective whoop from the thirty or so passengers on the shuttle as the pilot fought the winds and worked his way to the starport.

  “I wonder what moron located the starport so close to the city,” Frank commented. “One accident would wipe out the whole thing.”

  “Will you stop?”

  Frank shrugged his shoulders and rolled his eyes.

  “You ought to be glad I don’t get physical. You would just think you had been in a shuttle accident.”

  “You can get physical with me anytime you want to.” Frank leered at her.

  “Don’t tempt me.”

  The nose of the shuttle came up and they felt the acceleration as the pilot fed more power to the turbines. A two-tone note filled the cabin of the shuttle. “This is the pilot. Cambridge Starport has advised us to abort our landing and to move out to sea until the storm passes. We’ll try to find some smoother air for fifteen or twenty minutes until the storm passes over the city.”

  The passengers applauded the announcement. Frank turned to Wendy. “I am relieved somebody in this place has a brain. I was beginning to get concerned.”

  Frank and Wendy stepped out of the shuttle onto the boarding stairs as the heavy clouds moved to the east. The shadows swept across the starport and the light of Panoz fell upon the field. Frank was a slightly built, middle-aged man with brown hair turning to gray. Wendy, his wife, was only slightly shorter with light brown hair, and was more solidly built.

  “Will you look at that blue sky.” she said. “And the fresh air is wonderful too.”

  “Good first impressions, don’t you think?”

  “I hope the storm clouds clearing is a good sign, Frank. Maybe we can clear things up quickly and get back to the Forsythia.”

  “What, and break Chuck Schubach’s heart?”

  “He wasn’t very good at hiding his delight at your turning over command of the Forsythia to him. Maybe this would be a good time for us to buy a second ship.”

  Frank responded as they walked down the steps. “I had been thinking the same thing myself – with some trepidation, of course. It’s still a lot of money.”

  Wendy chuckled. “It will give us something to talk about during the long evenings here. Are we expected to ride that thing to the terminal?”

  A battered and rusty ground jitney wheezed up to the shuttle and the door opened with a squeal of tortured metal.

  “I suppose we could always walk to the terminal,” Frank said.

  “It’s got to be a mile over there, at least.”

  “I said, I supposed we could walk. I didn’t necessarily recommend it.”

  “Hopefully that rattletrap won’t expire along the way. We would end up walking anyway.”

  “Don’t you just love it when there are no good choices, my dear?”

  “That’s why I got out of the Navy, Frank.”

  “And being Supercargo on your husband’s tramp freighter was an improvement?”

  They walked across the rumpled paving of the port. “Maybe not for me, but it certainly improved your life.”

  Frank snorted as they got in line with the other passengers and climbed aboard the ancient looking bus and sat in the hard plastic seats. The bus moved away from the shuttle with a groan and slowly picked up speed.

  “What kind of a power plant is in this thing, I wonder.” Wendy said.

  “It’s definitely not a turbine,” Frank said. “Kind
of sounds like a reciprocating engine, but it’s not turning over very fast at all. Notice you can hear the individual cycles. I’m not familiar with that odor.”

  “Could it be a steam motor?”

  Frank leaned forward. “Uh, Driver, what kind of a powerplant does this vehicle have?”