A Spell of Empire

by Michael Scott Rohan, Allan J. Scott

Genres: Science Fiction; Sci-fi Action & Adventure; Military Sci-Fi

Synopsis

In the north, the Nibelung Empire covering Scandinavia and Northern Europe. In the south, the Tyrrhennian Empire, decadent child of once mighty Rome. In between, Volker Seefried, musician and sorceror's apprentice, finds himself in danger of being crushed to dust. Having left the city of Worms hurriedly when his master's final conjuration resulted in a congealed magician, Volker finds himself in Nurnberg. He is offered work by a rich merchant who asks him to recruit three bravos to accompany them on a perilous journey. And thus - not without some minor disasters - is formed a group of modern musketeers whose motto might be"All For One and Each For Himself!"

Release date: February 27, 2014

Publisher: Gateway

Print pages: 462

Sample

The sublime Emperor Constans, born to the Purple, Lord of New Rome, or Constantinopolis, or Byzantium – depending upon whether you were flattering the Emperor, writing a history book, or just trying to ask the way – stamped furiously into his marbled audience chamber, his sparse hair disordered, his crown of gilded laurels bent at a rakish angle over one ear, striving vainly – and messily – to shake the richly assorted clods of horse dung off his stiff gilded robes. From below came the buzz of angry altercation as his personal guard of Saxon, Teuton and Scandinavian tribesmen forced the crowd back down the steps, removing the odd head here and there in their artless barbarian fashion, and barred the palace doors. He rounded angrily on the sleek old man who had glided in, apparently on oiled wheels, and was contemplating the Emperor with a far too expressionless face.

‘Hokay! All-a right!’ said the Emperor coldly. He made a point of not speaking Greek too well, as if to underline that he was technically at least still an Italian. ‘So, what’s a-da matter this-a time?’

Stephanos, his personal scribe, adviser, food-taster and stage manager, waved his hands in the twisted shrug that was the nearest to helpless frankness a Byzantine official could manage. He began checking off a list on his ring-laden fingers. ‘The Leek-Greens are rioting because their chariot teams didn’t win. The Blues are rioting because theirs did. The Red and White demes are rioting because they want to keep up with the wealthier supporter’s clubs. The Christians are rioting because they can’t agree over the nature of Christ, and because you don’t restore them to the official faith. The Jews are rioting in case you do. The devout pagans are rioting because they’re being threatened by all these monotheists. The worshippers of the dark gods of Tartarus are rioting because what else would you expect them to do? And the everyday Greeks—’

‘Si?’

‘Because it breaks the monotonos, I suppose.’

The Emperor howled for a slave while he began a futile effort to wriggle out of his soiled finery. ‘Jeesama Christ!’; Like most of his line since Constantine he had flirted with Christianity, but it had taken root only in his swearing. ‘What a-da people I’m-a ruling! What a-da people! Jeesama Christ!’

‘Would that be in His divine nature, O excellency?’ inquired the slave politely. ‘Because, saving your Worship, despite the ridiculous Orthodox contention that He could somehow have two, divine and human, divisible, it surely must be more respectful to believe that—’

‘Out!’ roared the Emperor, wrapping the noisome cloak around the slave’s head and shoving him staggering away. He slumped down in his throne of gilded porphyry, and raised his fists to heaven.

Unknown to him or to anyone else, a nexus of history trembled invisibly on the brink of resolution. It swelled and bobbed in an instant of electric silence, broken only by the distant sound of the slave falling downstairs. It was quite an old nexus, having been born in the turmoil after the death of the emperor Constantine, when it became clear that his attempt to make Christianity the official Imperial religion hadn’t quite caught on. By now it was positively overripe and bursting with implications; and it was determined to be settled one way or the other.

The Emperor slammed down his fists on the arms of the Imperial throne, accidentally activating the mechanism of clockwork and counterweights arranged by what would now be called the Imperial special effects department to impress barbarian visitors. There was a clanking whirr, a strong smell of olive oil, and the emperor was hoisted sixteen feet up in the air, while bronze lions roared and brass peacocks flapped their wings.

‘Mamma mia! That does it! That-a does it! I’ve had-a my bellyful of this city of lunatics and-a chariot hooligans and religious maniacs and-a crazy clockwork tinkerers and-a retsina louts out here on the edge of the world, entendi? My bellyful!’ repeated the Emperor. The nexus of history tipped happily over and burst. ‘I’m-a going back to where it’s-a civilised, and-a people can murder each-a other inna peace anna quiet and not-a tear down half-a city every time!’

‘But excellency!’ stammered Stephanos from below, staggering against an unseen shower of implications. ‘Roma – so ruined – and so far from the capital of your Empire – all the heart of the Imperial administration—’

‘That’s all-a right!’ declared Constans with a grand, all-embracing gesture. He slumped back into the throne and crossed his legs. It was amazing how problems seemed to melt away once you came to a decision.

‘They-a coming too! Where-a Emperor is, is-a Empire, no? So. It is-a settled. But we not-a going to Roma. We go to Sicily, to lovely rich-a Syracusa, where the sun shine and men-a know how to live! Make-a da arrangements, Stefano! Sei pronto!’

‘But – majesty—’ protested Stephanos faintly, feeling ancestral reins of influence and rivers of patronage slip out from between his shaking fingers. Sheepishly he began to work the lever that lowered his royal master safely, if rather jerkily, back to earth. ‘It’s so far to the south – cut off by sea – so remote from the direct lines of Imperial communications northward! These barbarians in Germania and Gaul, these Angles and Saxons and Franks and these Burgundians, Nibelungs as they called themselves after they allied with that uncouth Attila person! They’re powerful already, and there’s more of them pouring in all the time! What if they band together? They could found a whole new Empire up there in the Transalpine lands!’

The sublime Emperor Constans stood up, plucked the ruined laurels from behind his ear, contemplated them a moment – then threw them down and stamped on them. ‘Let-a them! They’re-a welcome. Me, I’m-a go take a bath! Let them!’

And that’s exactly what they did.

Night lay heavy over the ancient city of Worms, high capital of the vast Nibelung Empire. Elsewhere, perhaps, in the palaces of its lords and the high houses of its richer merchants, blazing braziers and festoons of candles might lift the mantle a little, music and song drive back silence; even in the lowest dives of the Rhine-side districts dockers would be carousing with their drabs around a fire of flotsam and litter. But here in the university quarter the shutters were made fast, and scarcely a chink of light escaped between them; even the moon could not lift the darkness in the narrow, winding streets they overhung, and a deep silence reigned. But it was the silence not of sleep, but of thought, the thought that delves deep into mysteries darker than the darkest night. Behind many of those shutters, by the light of a single candle or cheap tallow dip, strange substances were mixed, decayed old scripts were scanned and arcane rites performed which might, in the day of their fruition, move the world more profoundly than a whole generation of merchants, lords and dockers together. For this was the realm of knowledge, and the hour of magic.

In the large and draughty room where the doctor of alchemy Schweiker Strauben had allotted his apprentice Volker a place to sleep there was no light at all, save a silver thread of moonlight at one ill-fitting shutter. The darkness didn’t worry Volker; his fingers knew every contour of the old cittern better than his eyes, and they slid deftly to their stops as the music poured out into the room. It was his great love and leisure, this music; there was no greater pleasure for an apprentice, at least one as poor as he was. But tonight his heart was hardly in it; he’d strum a few chords, then break off and glance anxiously up at the ceiling, to where even now his master was working. He didn’t worry about disturbing him; in fact Strauben liked him to play, saying that it helped him concentrate. It was just what the old man was up to that concerned him, this evening and many like it in the past few weeks. He’d half a mind to go up and knock on the elaboratory door, though he knew it would get him nowhere.

Strauben had changed. He’d seemed like a worthy old fellow when Volker had first come to him, a year or two past, austere and withdrawn but kindly enough in an absent-minded way; and he’d never been less than a good master. But Volker had soon come to realise that as an alchemist Strauben was a failure, and knew it. He had made a great name twenty years ago with a pioneering thesis on the natural harmonies of matter, the ‘music of spheres’, but all his attempts to research it further had led nowhere. These six months past the last of them had gradually petered out, and he seemed to have no new ideas to replace it; at least, none he’d talk about. He’d become not just withdrawn but completely cut off. By day he’d potter through meaningless labours, with hardly a word for Volker; he seemed to be waiting impatiently for night, when after their scant supper he would retreat into the elaboratory again, shutting Volker out. And then there would be … things. Worrying things. Sounds, strange sounds filtering down through the boards from above; some he could identify—

He stopped playing abruptly. There was the first, the creak and bump of furniture shifting. Old fool! He’d do himself an injury mucking about like that! Then the squeak of chalk on the boards, or sometimes a brush rasping, painting something in minute, intricate-sounding strokes. Then the voice, sometimes simply muttering aloud, sometimes clearly chanting, now rising, now falling, a monotonous moan like the wind in the chimney. After that, other sounds, infinitely stranger, and odours – gods, those stinks! There was the chant beginning now; it could go on and on for hours, lulling him to sleep only to waken him, half the night later, with nightmarish visions dancing in his head. Dancing – was the old fellow doing that too, the way those feet thudded on the boards, hopping about and kicking up his scrawny shins? He shivered; it should have been funny, that idea, but instead it unnerved him. He didn’t want to face what it suggested. Even the merest suspicion of such goings-on would bring every witch-hunting fanatic in Worms down the back of their necks, and right now the city was louse-ridden with them. He strummed an angry chord, then jumped as something answered him out of the darkness, a metallic ring like a soft cymbal. Volker looked up to the ceiling and saw the orrery of painted bronze that hung there still vibrating, its planets shaking on their gearwheel courses and turning new faces to the thin sliver of light. He swung off the bed and padded over, cursing the cold flagstones. Something had struck it …

The chant was rising now, a note of intensity and excitement in the old man’s voice that he had not heard for many months. He held out a hand, and something warm dripped into his palm. Dripped? He lifted it to his face, then gagged and ran for the pitcher and basin to splash away the foulness; blood and dung and rotting offal were the least of it. More of it was dripping down as the boards flexed, and the stench was filling the room, catching acridly at his throat, while overhead the bouncing and crashing grew louder. And behind all that noise there were other sounds, ghastly ones. He grabbed his jacket, and kicked his feet into his boots. This had to stop, and now! Come morning he’d give the old loon a proper earful, but for now he was going out; he’d little money to spare for another bed, but sooner sleep in the gutter than beneath what was going on up there.

Then he stopped dead. Something had fallen with a crash, something big – and now something else. And as he looked up he saw the boards creak and bulge suddenly, as if some immense weight had settled upon them, and a single wisp, of steam or of smoke, puff down between them into the shaft of moonlight. Old Strauben was not chanting now, he was shouting. Or screaming. Volker darted across the room, hurtling out of the door and into the narrow stairwell. The stench seemed to pour down on him as he clattered up the springy boards, enveloping him in its invisible embrace. His lungs convulsed, refusing to take it in; it was growing worse by the minute, an overwhelming, suffocating wash of foulness. He had to force himself up against it, like climbing up a waterfall, and draw himself up on to the landing on all fours. He reached the door, scrambled up and beat on it. The screaming was louder now, louder but somehow thinner; and beneath it he seemed to hear another note, a deep gurgling sound with the rhythm of a chuckle, though there was nothing merry about it. It was the kind of gloating sound a cat might make when toying with a mouse, undisturbed by Volker’s hammering and cries. He leaned against the door and pushed hard; and it seemed to him that the wood quivered under tension, as if something upon the far side pushed back with greater strength. He could not move it in the least, and suddenly he fell back with a cry, rubbing his shoulder; the wood was getting hot.

In desperation he stepped back across the landing, nerving himself. He was more afraid than he had dreamed he could be, he knew it was a foolish and futile thing he was about to try. But the old man had been good to him. He flung himself off the wall opposite, and cannoned with all his weight into the door. He was not heavily built, but even that strain seemed too much for the tortured timbers; they exploded outwards with a roar, and a great tongue of red flame licked out over his head.

Tongue indeed; for as he reeled back, shielding his face, he saw the door pillars sweat and bulge, and the lintel above them curve suddenly. Warping in the heat, was his first instinctive reaction – till they bulged out after him like vast obscene lips, slobbering fire. In sheer terror he hurled himself aside, and that saved him, for he fell head-over-heels down the stairs once more. Bruised and shaking, he staggered to his feet and back into his own chamber, knowing there was no more he could do. The foul drip lay slathered across the room: the books on the shelves whose worn bindings he had polished, the papers on the great table, the worn trenchers on the dark dressers, the clothes chest he left open at night to air it. He could not bear to touch anything it had contaminated, not even the worn spinet he had been learning to play. But his best cloak was safe, and his cittern and hautbois, and he caught them up, along with the two books that lay beside his bed, his present studies. On the dresser only a salt-cellar, one of Strauben’s few pieces of silver, had escaped the drip, and he seized that also. Smoke was billowing in the hallway outside, but he had no intention of escaping that way; seizing the shutters, he hauled them back and flung wide the casement beyond. The fire above roared hungrily at the fresh inflow of air. He inhaled once with deep relief, then sprang nimbly on to the sill, crouched there an instant, and leaped out into the cool darkness.

He landed in mud. There was no drain in the alley that ran behind the old houses, but it felt infinitely cleaner than the foul air within. Looking up, he saw plumes of smoke escape between the roof tiles, with here and there red glows like malevolent eyes peeping through. Smoke billowed up through the open window, and tongues of flame played across the ceiling. He had one glimpse of the orrery, glowing scarlet and white, swinging crazily; then the beautiful instrument fell free and dropped blazing into the dark, like true stars falling.

Outside in the street voices were calling, feet clattering on the cobbles. Volker had been wise not to go that way; folk were gathering, folk who would want to put out the fire, to know just how and why it had started. He wouldn’t be the one to tell them. Let it burn, and with it all trace of Strauben’s folly. He picked himself up, and began to run, though he didn’t know where. The rising column of flame lit his way, and showed him the vast wavering shadows of the crowd gathering. The witchfinders would not be far behind, circling like vultures over any unexplained calamity, eager – too eager – to find someone to blame. Only when he was some streets away did he stop and stare back at the glare that danced over the rooftops. It hadn’t been put out, then, but neither was it spreading; and both those things were good. He found himself shedding a few tears for the old alchemist; in his way he had been a good and a kindly master, something of the father Volker had never known. Even if, in his extreme of fury and frustration at failing to master his own legitimate science, he’d been driven to dabble in demonology – and had demonstrably failed to master that as well.

Pitying the old man made it easier to avoid self-pity. He shivered. He’d some excuse: he had been cast out almost penniless and utterly alone, without a single friend to turn to, and with little or no skill to support himself. True, he had his degree – but the theses his tutors had admired and encouraged were no substitute for practical experience, and two years as Strauben’s assistant had given him less of that than he had imagined possible. His prospects looked dismal, right enough. Then he drew himself up to his full height, which was considerable, and pulled his cloak closer about his lean shoulders. He was young, wasn’t he? And strong? There must be plenty of jobs he could do, if he didn’t mind swallowing his pride. And he had freedom. No bonds of duty, family, or religion held him back; he was free to wander where he willed in the world. He’d seen little enough of it so far – his home city of Bremen, Worms, the roads between. Yet, huge as these cities were, the Empire was vaster yet. From the cold borders of the Norselands to the warm coasts of the Mittelzee in the south, from the barbarous steppes of the East to the wide seaboard of western Galle, over huldra-haunted forests and kobold mountains, over nymph-swum lakes and pirate-ridden rivers its vast mantle spread – although sometimes a little threadbare in patches. And beyond that mighty sweep lay another as rich, that few now living had ever visited – the Southern Empire, vast and decadent, last heir of vanished Rome, sprawling about the Middle Sea like the corpse of one of the Titans Jupiter struck down, gangrenous and crumbling, yet still seething with malign life.

And beyond that immense sway there must be other, stranger lands still. In so wide a world there must surely be a place for him somewhere, a new life to lead …

The problem would be staying alive to find it.

Volker glared contemptuously at the specks of coloured light skipping about like fireflies in the smoky air, and struggled not to feel envious or despondent. One of them wiggled suddenly and made as if to shoot up his nose; despite himself he swore and slapped at it, though he knew it was the simplest of illusions, the cheapest and flashiest of magic. The skinny little man who had directed the lights with his waggling fingers smirked broadly and bowed, while the tavern regulars around the ratting pit hooted. Some threw bones and crusts at Volker, and even the occasional dead rat. They were getting used to him, which wasn’t too surprising. He had been standing in that same hiring line every day for the last two weeks.

The Mutzelbacherkeller was a huge low-roofed cellar. The building above had once been the headquarters of a waggoners’ company – but its owners had failed to compete with the new canal link to the Danube. Since those heady days the inn had come down in the world, a long way down. Even so, its hiring line was supposed to be the best in Nürnberg for entertainers, especially those boasting magical skill. That was why silk sleeves brushed the greasy tabletops, and fine leather boots scuffed circles in the sawdust on the floor. With both music and magic to offer, Volker had thought he might do well here. After all, Nürnberg was the oldest Free City of the Empire, commercial capital of the Burgund-mark – all its lands east of the Rhine – and richer, if anything, than Worms itself. Also, it was a university centre, almost as illustrious as Heidelberg or nearby Regensburg, but much more liberal. It had seemed the best place to run. The capital, after all, was too hot to hold him, what with demonfire on one hand and witch-burners on the other. Finding another master would take time, but his skills should pick him up some cash while he looked.

He knew better now. He’d known better after the first two humiliating days. He was ten times the magician of any other in this line, with their hedge-wizard skills and half-baked marketplace patter; but he could not do that trick with the lights, nor conjure up crude caricatures of leading citizens as the man before him had – nothing at all like that. And he wasn’t enough of a musician to make up. He’d been careful to keep his music a hobby. Becoming anything like a professional player would have seemed like a bad joke, as if the blood he’d always despised and rejected was showing through. So he couldn’t join the kept players of a nobleman, expected to read off anything from a sarabande to a symphony at a few minute’s notice, And he couldn’t reel off all the bawdy street songs from memory the way the feeblest busker could, even with only three chords and a broken d-string, nor play the lumbering ländler dances they favoured for weddings and jollifications round here. There was definitely more to being an entertainer than he’d thought.

He had stood in other hiring lines, of course; but scriveners and shophands had their special skills as well, and even a bootblack with a reference could beat a bootblack without one. He’d never have dreamed how many experienced bootblacks and undergrooms and footmen – even tall and personable footmen – seemed to be running loose around Nürnberg just now. There was no hiring line for experienced magician’s apprentices, and if there were he wouldn’t have dared join it. Strauben’s death had caused gossip, and with the taint of demonology at his back nobody would have hired him, even if the witchfinders didn’t start pulling out his toenails just in case. Moodily he watched the very fat man next to him conjure up a miniature nymph, on the porky side herself, and set it dancing on his palm. Volker found nothing remotely erotic in her meaty wigglings; in fact they only reminded him that he was hungry. The proceeds of pawning the salt-cellar had kept him alive, barely; but there was only tonight’s dinner left of it, and a meagre dinner at that. For the last week he’d been dining only every other night. And the bluff, jolly fellow who was the last hirer tonight seemed the typical merry merchant type, richly dressed and leaning on a silver-headed ebony cane. He was no more likely to hire Volker than all the others had. It hardly seemed worth staying in the line.

But here was his turn, and he might as well summon up the best trick he could think of. From his pocket he produced one of his last coins, a cheap copper thing, and spun it a moment on his palm; then he breathed on it, and muttering words in an ancient tongue he flipped it high in the air:

A Mercurio! Denarius in argente enitesce!

It caught the torchlight with a sudden silvery gleam as it dropped into his outstretched palm, and with a flourish he held out what looked like a silver thaler. The burly man took it in red, meaty fingers, and examined it carefully. ‘That’s useful!’ he said cheerfully. ‘Doesn’t look like an illusion, either. Risking the laws ’gainst coining, aren’t you?’

‘It’s not meant to be an illusion,’ explained Volker hastily. ‘Just a simple transformation spell. Before I blew on it I turned the acid in my breath to a weak solution of spirits of nitre and quicksilver; it reacts with the copper to become a thin film of amalgam. Looks silvery at first, but it goes on reacting – turns black in a minute or two, then rubs off, so!’

It seemed a feeble trick to him, and the tavern louts thought so, too. But to Volker’s surprise the merchant rounded on them, and silenced their hooting with a single angry bark. ‘That’s real magic!’ he said, in some surprise. ‘Simple alchemy, but real. Called on Mercury, didn’t you? God of alchemists …’ He chuckled. ‘And thieves. You know a thing or two, don’t you, my lad? Any other skills?’

‘Well, aside from reading and writing, only music, I’m afraid,’ said Volker lamely, ‘but I play several instruments—’

The merchant stepped back a little, and looked Volker up and down. He felt a cold chill as those eyes passed over him; suddenly they seemed dark and fathomless and not at all jolly. ‘Yes,’ said the merchant musingly. ‘Yes, of course. You would, wouldn’t you?’

Volker flushed angrily. Was it that obvious? And suppose it was, why should even a rich bastard go tearing out of a man the things he most wanted to bury? ‘I’m no minstrel or player,’ he said coldly. He was ruining his best, his only prospect, but he couldn’t hold back his pride. ‘It’s just a hobby with me. Nothing more.’

The merchant nodded, apparently undisturbed. ‘All the same, it’s in your blood,’ he said calmly, adding, ‘whether you like it or not.’ Volker flushed. ‘But this once, at least, it may serve you; it has decided me. I hadn’t hoped to find a lettered man here. My name’s Ulrich, Ulrich Tragelicht of Worms, dealer in wines and spices and anything else that’ll turn a profit. If you’re game for a long journey, and maybe a hard one, you’re exactly the servant I’m looking for. Will you join me?’

A long journey? Volker blinked in amazed relief. It could hardly have suited him better. He could go somewhere else and find a new apprenticeship, or at least stay away till matters here had blown over. As for hardship, well, he could soon have his bellyful of that just by staying where he was. Volker squared his shoulders and bowed as he had seen servants do. ‘I’m Volker Seefried of Bremen. I’ll be honoured to!’ The merchant nodded, and called across the gaping heads of the loiterers for the two cups of wine that were the traditional bond of hire.

‘But not here!’ he told the landlord sternly, glaring at the noisy crowd about the ratpit. ‘Show us to a clean table in a quiet corner! I’m surprised the city ordinances haven’t banned this filthy sport.’

Volker smiled sourly. ‘They do – officially. But it’s tolerated – they say it encourages the poor to catch rats.’

Ulrich twitched his whiskers disdainfully, and followed the grovelling landlord to an alcove by the main fireplace. There they toasted one another. Volker took a long draught, and felt the new wine run cold and deep into his empty stomach; the merchant sipped austerely, and put his goblet down at once. Again he looked at Volker with that same piercing gaze, that turned his jolly face to … something else. ‘Seefried, eh? I’ve heard that name in Bremen. A wealthy merchant family. Strange …’

Volker smiled ruefully. ‘That’s my family, sir – abut my branch of it hasn’t much hope of wealth.’

Ulrich shrugged. ‘Perhaps. But truth to tell, I expected a name in another tongue altogether.’

Volker flushed: ‘Seefried was my mother’s name. My father’s I choose not to bear.’ He had meant to say no more, but when the merchant looked at him expectantly, tapping his cane lightly against his shoe, he found himself telling the whole story, unable to hold it back. ‘She came from the merchant family you know of, yes. My father – he was as you have guessed. Of another kind altogether—’ He stopped, waiting for the merchant to fill in the hateful name himself; but he didn’t.

‘One of the Huldravolk,’ said Volker at last. ‘One of the Old Peoples. A Huldrawicht of the Odenwald, the High Forests.’ He spat out the words as if they poisoned him. ‘One of the few who live near men, and have some trade with them. He … he went away when I was young. Just vanished. Perhaps something happened to him. I think he just got tired of humans – like any wild beast! He abandoned us without a thought. In poverty. My mother’s kin might have helped us, but she broke with them to marry my father – she was too proud to go begging to them. My father had kin still in the woodlands; it was their duty to aid us. And they did – as little and as grudgingly as they could. After all, we were humans. My mother died young, worn out. Now I want nothing of theirs, not even the name. I would spill their blood from my veins if I could.’

‘But you cannot,’ said the merchant severely. ‘Nor their shape from your body, their thought from your mind – as witness your love of music. This is folly, my young friend.’

‘My mother loved music,’ said Volker angrily. ‘My father was a huntsman, a skin-trader – practically tone-deaf, by his people’s standard! She gave me music, not him.’

‘And your way with magic? In huldra the two go together – in humans, more rarely. Which brings me to my problem.’ He sat back, took a deeper draught and patted his belly, and became the merry merchant once again. ‘I use magic and music to sell my wares; a good show pulls in the customers. And sweetens ’em for an extra two or three thalers in the hundred on the prices. Trouble is, none of my present staff could manage this journey; it’s a long one – and no, I’m not saying where to just yet. What I need is two or three new helpers, same as my partners in the venture are taking, men young and strong enough to s