by SM Stirling
“We Rangers make our living guarding caravans and putting down bandits in peacetime, and believe me, the bandits enjoy the holiday when we’re on war-duty. And this is the new world, the Changed world. We can’t have a government that ties everything up in paper and forms anymore. The land is too big.”
“Got a point there,” Woburn said. “Still . . .”
“Wouldn’t it be better for Boise to be part of something bigger, but still fully autonomous within its own borders?” Alleyne asked. “And for the ruler in Boise to leave the rest of Idaho to govern themselves in most things, rather than taking your young men and crops and horses for its wars? Especially if, umm, Reunification could come anyway.”
“With a King?” Woburn asked, shaking his head.
“An Ard Rí, a High King. Who presides, but has only enough power to keep us from fighting each other and enforce a few clear rules. No costly standing armies to support, no armies of clerks telling everyone what to do, either.”
“How does that work?” Woburn said. “I like the bit about the clerks. If you knew the forms and regulations they’ve brought in this past year—and there were enough before . . .”
“The High King has only what the founding laws and the member realms give him, what they are willing to levy on themselves in money or troops. There will be a Meeting of delegates from each people, to oversee things, as well, and a High King’s court to decide disputes between them.”
Eddie Running Horse nodded. “Sounds OK. I’m not dead set on Boise being the capital of whatever but it would be nice not to have to worry so much about the neighbors.”
Woburn frowned. The talk flowed on late into the night. When she lay at last in her sleeping bag, Astrid cuddled her back up against Alleyne’s and stared at the fading banked embers, glowing like red stars in the deep velvet blackness of a moonless night.
That poor lady, held captive in Boise by a murdering usurper, she thought. Something has to be done about that. Eilir and I swore that oath to succor the defenseless . . .
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
BEND
CAPITAL, CENTRAL OREGON RANCHERS ASSOCIATION
MAY 5, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
“So far, we haven’t donemuch thisyear,” General-President Thurston said.
They were using a third-floor chamber in a pre-Change building for the conference. It had glass walls on two sides, facing west and north; you could see the line of the—criminally inadequate—city wall along the bend of the Deschutes River that had given the city its name; he instinctively drew a mental picture of how it should have been done, the underground aqueduct to secure the water supply, the height of the wall, the wet moat and glacis. He knew that from there it followed two of the old roads in a right angle to the eastward, encompassing the old core of the city, and the visibility made his sense of frustration at the stalled campaign worse. The room also had the slightly dead feel that old buildings often did; you just couldn’t get the ventilation to work properly and frequently, as here, the windows didn’t open at all.
“We’re not accomplishing anything,” he said. “Not fast enough.”
Not since that . . . that whatever it was. His mind shied away from remembering it, and he forced it back. Something . . . something like a flash of light . . . something about the Sun . . . anyway, it’s put a crimp in your style.
The Prophet of the Church Universal and Triumphant smiled. Martin Thurston blinked. There was something . . . wrong about the smile. Sethaz was a middling man, middling height and coloring and features; very fit but otherwise unremarkable, save for the tuft of brown chin-beard and stubble-shaven head that the higher echelons of the Church Universal and Triumphant affected. A little older than Martin Thurston, in his early thirties, but young enough to be more or less a Changeling.
And there’s something wrong about him.
“You sense higher things, the touch of the Ascended Masters. Yet you are still blind to them.”
As Martin stared, the ruler of Corwin went on, and the wrongness seemed to fade:
“We have taken Bend and all of central Oregon; and we have pushed the enemy out of the Palouse and confined their holdings along the middle Columbia to a narrow strip.”
Martin nodded jerkily.
And I need him and he needs me. Which is the best reason for cooperation there ever was. But we’re not taking any more castles by the . . . special means he had. That’s why Dad never tried to break the PPA; they had too many of the damned things by the time we were organized enough to think about it. Storming one castle is expensive. Fighting your way through country full of them is a nightmare, like dancing up to your knees in molasses. “Yes,” he said aloud. “We have. Unfortunately, that means we’ve taken a lot of thinly populated rangeland. We won’t have mortally wounded the enemy until we cut them in half by cracking the line of the Columbia down to the sea, and we won’t have disposed of them until we’ve overrun the western valleys. And we’ve lost more men than they have.”
“We can afford it and they cannot.” Sethaz shrugged. “The lifestreams of the fallen will be welcomed by the Masters.”
There was a rattle in one corner of the room. He had a six-man squad from the Sixth Battalion here—just in case, and in full armor of hooped plates, with shield and pilum; tough young farmboys, smelling of sweat and leather and oiled metal. The rattle had been the men moving—not enough to notice, they were still rigidly braced—but enough to show their start of indignation. Martin Thurston was known to be a ruthless bastard, but he was also one who husbanded his men and hated to lose one without a measurable result.
Two centuries of infantry waited in the street outside. Sethaz might be an ally . . . but I’m not crazy enough to actually trust him.
“My intelligence indicates the Midwestern states are making preparations for an attack,” the General-President said, tapping the files before him on the table. “We may not have as much time as we thought.”
“They are preparing for war,” Sethaz said equably. “But they are very far away. Also the Church Universal and Triumphant’s territories are between them and Boise.”
“And what about this Sword?” Martin asked. Because that’s what scares me. “Every rebel and guerrilla is talking about it—”
Sethaz screamed.
For a moment Thurston simply stood staring at him. He’s gone mad, he thought, and then they locked eyes. The eyes drew at him, a whirling vortex. He could feel bits and pieces of his mind shredding, flying away, sucked in by the spinning nothingness. He was floating, falling, drawn down, deeper and deeper and something waited for him at the bottom of the darkness. Not-being. Not-anything. Waiting to un-make.
Martin Thurston screamed in agony, and then in something far worse, that made him shriek on the same rising-falling note as the Prophet.
Did you think that you had bargained with Me? a voice asked. No, you deceived yourself. I have no need to buy men. They give themselves to Me.
FREE REPUBLIC OF RICHLAND
SHERIFFRY OF READSTOWN (FORMERLY SOUTHWESTERN WISCONSIN)
MAY 10, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
“Not as nervous as you were last time, meleth nín,” Mary Vogeler teased gently. “Even though it’s just the two of us for now, instead of the great band.”
“Herves, last time I wasn’t sure whether big brother Ed was going to greet me like the prodigal son or kick me out like the proverbial polecat,” Ingolf said, taking a deep breath of the clean moist air as the earth exhaled last night’s rain. “Also we weren’t married yet. It’s calmed me down a lot and given me a more optimistic outlook on life.”
And last time I’ d been away for ten years. Now it’s only months, and two of those . . . just went missing in an instant while we were on Nantucket. But I haven’t been feeling homesick quite as hard either, and that’s the truth. It’s as if something inside has let go. Mary and I will have our own place someday, and in the meantime we’re each other’s home.
“Anyway, we’re just going up
to see about those troops.”
It was spring instead of late autumn this time, too; the same season when he’d originally stormed out as a young man to begin his wandering years as a paid soldier and salvager.
Mary grinned. “Anyway, Rudi’s giving you a last chance at a visit home while everyone else is stuck at the muddy junction of the Wisconsin and the Mississippi rivers, waiting for the barges. That’s why he didn’t ride with us, too. He wants you to have some time with your family before he arrives.”
It may well be the last time you can be here, went unspoken between them. Crossing the continent isn’t something that many men have done once, let alone two or three times.
They followed the dirt track north from a hamlet named Craw-ford, with forested ridges on either side crowding closer to the winding Kickapoo or opening out into a wider view. Mostly they traveled at an easy trot, the fastest pace a good horse could keep up for any distance. Every few miles they slowed to an ambling walk for ten or twenty minutes; that combination gave an average speed close to a man running. It didn’t even make conversation too difficult, if you were used to it and traveled side by side. Right now the traffic was light enough for that, only an occasional buckboard or someone on foot pulling a handcart or in the saddle or a bicyclist now and then lurching along on a solid-tire makeshift.
“What I’m really worried about is Rudi,” Ingolf said.
“I think we’d better get used to calling him Artos,” Mary said; but she said it without the usual smile in her voice.
“Yah, OK, I’m worried about His Majesty Artos the First, High King of Montival, our liege-lord,” Ingolf said. “Also my friend and brother-in-law Rudi Mackenzie. I’m worried about both of him.”
“Why? He’s coping very well. Look at the way he remembered you’ll possibly never have a chance to visit Readstown again.”
“That’s the problem,” Ingolf said; talking crystallized his thought, giving it form. “You’d need a general staff to do a lot of the stuff he’s doing all by himself. Yah, he was always an impressive guy, but some of this . . . remembering every name in that pissant village at the mouth of the Wisconsin River? All the ones he heard once when we were through it for one day last year? I was born not two days’ ride from it and I don’t! You notice how he doesn’t make mistakes anymore?”
“He never did make many.”
“Now he never forgets anything, not even his spare bowstring. He never has to stop and figure things out anymore!”
Mary was subdued; when she spoke it was slowly.
“I asked him . . . I asked him a while ago if he wasn’t making decisions too quickly. He said there just wasn’t any point in pretending he had a choice. What did he mean? Is the Sword . . . is it taking him over?”
Ingolf shook his head; it was hard even to talk about this, as if there weren’t the right words in the language.
“It’s spooky, but I don’t think so. It doesn’t give you that creepy feeling the Cutters do. I think . . . this is just blue-sky . . . I think the Sword is too smart. Or makes him too smart.”
“How can you be too smart?”
“If you knew, if you really knew what would happen when you made a decision . . . would you have any freedom left at all? There would be only one thing you could do.”
“Oh,” she said, and shivered. “I guess it’s like the Elven-Rings; good, basically, but perilous to any but the strongest bearer.”
For a moment he felt impatience that she was dragging the Histories into things again. Then he shrugged mentally. In fact—
“That’s actually a good comparison . . . what Doc Pham, our doctor in Readstown—God, how could anyone know so many books?—he used to tutor me sometimes as well . . . what he used to call a metaphor.”
She nodded; he knew without resenting it that she had a lot more book learning than he did, even if much of it was bizarre.
Though I’m better at lifting heavy weights . . . That’s me: strong like an ox, sharp like a watermelon.
“Metaphors help you understand the world,” she said. “Otherwise . . . otherwise it’s just a mass of things without pattern. It doesn’t mean anything. But you’ve got to be careful with them. They can make you see patterns that aren’t there.”
“Yah. Only the Sword seems to be a, a metaphor that’s actually there. Not just a way to sling words together; it’s a physical object you can touch, so the story is telling us instead of the other way ’round. Damn und hell, but that’s scary.”
Mary shivered, and he knew exactly how she felt.
“It’s like the old legends about Gods becoming men, or animals talking. I mean, they’re wonderful as stories and they show you the way things are underneath, but if you actually met one it would . . . would sort of break things. Not deliberately, not because it was bad and wanted to do that, but just by being too real for us.”
Ingolf smiled grimly. He reached over and touched her eye patch with the thick calloused fingers of his right hand, very gently:
“We’ve both met men like that before. Only they were bad, as well as scary, if you know what I mean.”
“Oh, yes.” Then she brightened. “Most of the time, though, it’s as if the Sword makes him more of what he was already.”
Ingolf grinned. “Super-Rudi. Ye . . . Gods, that’s a scary thought too!”
They laughed together, and then by unspoken mutual agreement brought themselves back to the moment. For a while after they left the village the landscape was mostly abandoned land used for summer grazing if at all; tall grass and thickets of raspberry bushes, goldenrod, and surging clumps of young elder and elm struggling with them and the saplings spreading out of the old woodlots. All were loud with birdsong as the migrants settled in and disputed their territories; flights of blue warblers chased cloud-formations of mayflies in melodious flocks.
He saw tracks and scat of elk, deer, feral cattle, swine and half a dozen others, but this road was traveled enough that animals were wary of men by daylight; they caught only a fleeting glimpse of what might have been a wolf or a very large coyote. And once, laughing, they steered their mounts around a defiant skunk standing with raised tail.
Mary was looking at the roadway too; much of it was post-Change, created by the traffic pounding the soil when the road by the river was washed out. Improvements later had mostly meant a little ditching, the odd brushup with a horse-drawn grader, reused culverts, and shoveling gravel into the worst wet spots when they threatened to swallow travelers or their horses whole.
“Is there normally so much traffic on this road?” she said.
“No,” he said, noticing. “People usually float things up-and downriver; the Kickapoo’s not big enough for real boats but canoes do fine most of the year and they can carry a fair bit. And mostly we swap around locally anyway.”
By definition any area that had come through the first Change Years without utter collapse was self-sufficient in everything it really needed. Where trade had revived at all it was mostly in light high-value luxury goods, particularly here in the backwoods.
Which Readstown is, you betcha, even if we . . . they . . . don’t like to admit it.
“Wagons and horsemen both,” Mary said, looking down again. “Horsemen in column of fours, and trains of wagons. The troops we’re supposed to be looking for.”
“You’ve got a good eye.”
She hit him on the shoulder; mostly theoretical when he was wearing a mail shirt and gambeson, but he cowered theatrically. Then he went on:
“Hmmm, looks like it was mostly a couple of weeks ago and then tapering off; it’s real blurred by the rain. Well, we’ll find out.”
Now and then a Norway spruce or an old apple tree still valiantly showing a few flowers served to mark the site of an abandoned homestead. Once a ruin’s glass shards glinted from the high ridge to the west, beneath the purple blaze of a rambling lilac.
“Why would anyone build up there?” Mary asked. “Well, easier to defend, I suppose . . .”
/> She stood in the stirrups for a moment and shaded her eye with a hand; the sun was a little past noon, and the air was just in that place between warm and cold where you hardly noticed it except as a stroking on the skin. Then she took out her monocular.
“That was a pretty big house, not just a lookout post. No defenses . . . and the roadway to it runs straight up the slope; there’s an overgrown gully where it washed out. Strange.”
“There’s actually good farmland up on the ridges in places, you just can’t see it from here,” Ingolf said. “But those were built for the view.”
He raised a hand at her stare: “I swear to God . . . by the Valar. Just so they could live there and look at the view. Which is pretty.”
“The view?” Mary said. “They put a house on top of a slope that would kill a team climbing it just to look out the window?”
They both laughed and shook their heads; you could go crazy trying to understand why people did the things they did before the Change. Then they emerged into the settled lands closer to Readstown with startling suddenness, shaggy neo-wilderness on one side of a weathered board fence, close-cropped green pasture on the other and then a not-quite-town.
“This used to be called Gay’s Mills,” he said. “We’re about an hour from home, from Readstown, now. If nobody’s horse throws a shoe, that is.”
Both riders relaxed at the signs of habitation . . . relaxed a little . . . and slid their recurve bows back into the saddle scabbards at their left knees and the arrows into their quivers on their backs. Gay’s Mills was a cluster of farms and cottages these days, with a blacksmith’s shop by the side of the road and a gristmill somewhere close; they could hear the bur of the millstones. The full-bearded smith looked up from shoeing a big hairy-footed draft beast and gave a brief wave of his hammer with his mouth full of nails before he bent back to his task.
Ingolf’s horse, Boy, threw up his head and snorted as the wind brought the scent of his own kind; Mary’s dappled Rochael ignored them and him. A barefoot pigtailed girl in a linsey-woolsey shift and a floppy hat three sizes too big for her dragged a barking mongrel back just before he was kicked into next week, then stood gaping at them with one dirty foot tucked behind her other knee. Mary smiled and leaned down with effortless grace to pat her head in passing. They headed through a gaggle of chickens that stopped pecking at the roadway and scattered in mindless panic, and out into open country again.