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On less important topics, our garden had been surprisingly productive, considering that it had
only about five weeks of growing season. When we got back, we found a half acre of plants that
had matured, but were mostly frost-killed and rotted. The potatoes, beets, and other root crops
could be salvaged, but little else was saved.
Nonetheless, the long days of sunlight did allow for a decent enough harvest, except for the
fact that a farmer would have to do all of his work, from plowing to harvest, in only five weeks,
and it didn't seem likely that a man could make a living that way. Maybe gardening would be a
hobby for some of the workers at the steel plant we would build here.
We made a few quick excursions back up the river, to check on a few alternate railroad
routes and to bring back more samples of the ore for the metallurgists, but for the most part, the
balance of our year on the Torne was spent at our base camp.
Once, coming back from the ore site, we crossed the tracks of the deer people, but we didn't meet
any of them. We found out later, over the radio, that they had been contacted by two of the other
explorer lances, southwest of there, toward Sweden. Hopefully, the others would learn more
about those strange people than we had.
Before the Baltic froze over, a few people from the ship dropped by, to pick up our ore
samples, along with our maps and drawings, and drop off some fresh fruits and vegetables, but
army policy was that an explorer lance should spend at least a year at a site, so we did.
Once it became really cold, having the cave was a godsend. It was pleasantly warm in there
compared to what it was outside.
A cave stays the same temperature all year around. This temperature is the average of all the
outside temperatures in the area over the past several years. At least, that's what our data showed
once we'd collected it over a year.
In fact, recording the temperature, along with the weather and the time the sun rose and set,
was about all we did for the last six months in camp. Cooking, eating, and sleeping were the only
other things we had to do besides writing up what had happened the summer before.
I expanded my notes to cover my entire life up to then. That is to say, this is when I wrote
most of the journal you now hold, although now that I've gotten this far, I think I might
continue with it.
At the Winter Solstice, the opposite of the Midnight Sun happened. One day the sun never
does come up. But you cannot celebrate something that doesn't happen, so we didn't.
We tried trapping fur-bearing animals, using traps we made according to one of the manuals we
had with us. Either there weren't any animals to be trapped or we didn't know what we were doing,
or both, but the project was not successful.
We did find a large bear, or rather, he found us. Apparently, the cave had been his winter home,
and he vigorously objected to our possession of it. This was only fair, since we objected to his
repossession of the premises with even greater vigor. The bear made it all the way through the
doorway before dying with over a dozen bullets in him. Bear meat was a refreshing change from
venison, and we made his pelt into a rug.
Kiejstut and I managed to catch Sir Odon with the old outhouse trick, but it just isn't as much
fun when the shit is frozen solid.
Lezek and Kiejstut wrote quite a few songs that winter, and some of them have gotten popular
around the Explorer's School. When next you hear "Under the Midnight Sun," or "The Baltic
Challenger," or even "Ten Thousand to One, Against Us," also known as "The Mosquito Song,"
think of them, up there in the cold.
Mostly, we told a lot of long, tall stories, played a lot of games, and read every army manual
we had with us at least twice. We loudly bemoaned the fact that we had neither beer nor fair ladies
with us. We sang and played our horns, violins, guitars, drums, and recorders, and with so much
time to practice, we became better with them. We lived, but I think that if we had not been such
good friends in the first place, we might have killed each other just to have something
interesting to do.
In fact, there was a killing in the lance to the southeast of us. Apparently, the man just went
crazy from sitting around with nothing to do. He killed one of his teammates and injured two
others before he was shot dead. Madness.
Sitting unloved and sober in the cold and dark, my lance made a few resolutions. We swore
that on our next mission, we would bring a year's supply of strong drink with us, even if it had to
be that powerful white lightning stuff that Lord Conrad liked. Also, our next mission would either
have to be someplace where they had women, or we would smuggle in our own. And mainly,
wherever it was, it had darned well better be warm!
WRITTEN JANUARY 12, 1250, CONCERNING JUNE 1249
Again I find time weighing heavily on me, as I sit alone in my cabin, steaming across the
Atlantic Ocean, and far away from my one true love. I might as well bring this journal up to date.
Finally, the birds of the Arctic began to return, the ice on the Baltic started to break, and the
long winter ended. We were told to leave everything behind, except for our journals, our weapons,
and our personal equipment. All the rest would be of use to those who would follow us. We asked
if that included the chest of money we had brought but hadn't found a use for, and they said yes, leave
that, too.
We sealed up and buried the cave entrance as we had done once before, but only after Sir Odon
counted the money twice and made us all sign a paper saying that we had left the money and
everything else behind pursuant to orders. I'd never seen him quite so nervous before, but then I'd
never seen anyone ordered to abandon a quarter of a million pence before, either.
Well, a quarter million pence less all of our back pay, up to the first of next month. We didn't want
to be penniless on the trip back to the Explorer's School.
We were personally welcomed on board the Baltic Challenger by Baron Siemomysl and Baron
Tados with a party, mostly because we had found the most valuable thing of any of the explorer lances.
You see, our superiors would get a cut of the profits on the mine, just as we would.
We all smiled and shook hands, and they all smiled and shook hands, and everybody said
uninteresting things, and nobody said anything original, since everything important had already been
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