"Worse?" he said softly, coming back to them. "Oh, yeah. I've seen as bad as this, during the Sioux War. That was a hard bitter fight, and a lot of… questionable… things got done. By us and them both."
His hands closed and opened unconsciously, and he swallowed as if the food had turned sour in his mouth before he went on.
"East of the Mississippi, that's a whole different thing. It's like God pulled out the plug at the bottom of the world, and everything human drained out. And then something… else… came trickling in, and messed things up, twisted them. I don't mean just the Change. I swore I wouldn't go back to the deadlands again, not even for a fortune… and now I'm headed back all the way to Nantucket because of a vision and a dream. Go figure."
Edain paused a minute, swallowing, then doggedly cut another piece of ham, dipped it in the mustard pot, chewed and swallowed. Everyone was silent for several moments. That was the way they were headed, into the death zones, where the hordes fleeing from the stricken cities had overlapped and eaten the earth bare, and then each other. Not everyone had died, not quite, but their descendants weren't really human anymore. The stories were gruesome even at a distance; enough rumors had trickled back from the borders of California. From what Ingolf said the mega-necropolis on the Atlantic Coast was just as bad, and he'd seen it firsthand.
"That's as may be," Edain said stoutly; dangers rarely daunted him when they arrived, and never beforehand. "You said these Cutters were just men. Well, that they may be, but they're roit bad ones an' no mistake."
Rudi mopped his plate and poured himself more milk from the jug. Halfway through, he wondered if the women who'd milked the cows had spat in the bucket, but finished anyway. They'd have reason.
"They are men. Men who've been encouraged to give guest-room to the worst parts of themselves," he said thoughtfully.
Edain made a protective sign. "They're blaspheming the Goddess, that's what they're doing," he said. "I just hope we aren't caught in Her anger."
He held his hands up before his face. "Use these my hands to avenge Your likeness, Dark Mother, Morrigu Goddess of the Crows, Red Hag of Battles. So I invoke You."
Rudi nodded soberly and joined in the gesture and the prayer. "So mote it be!"
We fight, we of humankind, he thought. Man against man for pride and power, tribe against tribe for the land that feeds us and our families… That's the nature of things, the way They made us, neither good nor bad in itself. To fight is the work of the season, just as wolves fight one another for lordship of a pack, or a whole pack battles another for hunting range in a bad year to keep themselves and their cubs from hunger.
But taking women by force wasn't war. Nor just a crime, either, not even a serious one like murder in hot blood. As Edain had said, it was a profanation of the holy Mysteries, the divine union of Lord and Lady, Spear and Cauldron, that made all creation.
Mackenzies buried a rapist at a crossroads, with a spear thrust in the soil above; and they buried him living when they could, as a sacrifice to turn aside the anger of the Earth Powers.
These Cutters have overstepped the bounds They have laid on us, and must pay for it.
The vengeance of the Lady could be slow; it was also very thorough.
Thorough to the point of being indiscriminate, sometimes, Rudy thought grimly, feeling the hairs along his spine crawl a little. It would be well to make ourselves that vengeance, before it falls from somewhere else like an avalanche on all and sundry.
"Hard times make for hard men," Odard said. "Things were bad everywhere right after the Change, from what the oldsters say, and you had to be bad yourself sometimes to survive. I imagine Montana was the same, even if they weren't as crowded. My mother doesn't talk about those times much, but some of the older men-at-arms who served my father do. From what our, ah, hosts have let fall, there hasn't been much order or peace out there since then, except what the CUT imposed at the sword's edge."
Rudi nodded; that was true enough that he could be polite. His own mother had had to drive away strangers and foragers, lest the Clan-in-the-making and its neighbors be eaten bare before the first harvest. And to keep out the plagues which had killed as many as raw famine did. Away from habitation you still found the skulls lying in the brush by the overgrown roads, or bones huddled in heaps in the ruins. Sometimes they'd been scorched and cracked for the marrow.
But what Odard said was true only to a point. There was doing what you had to do to ward off death or worse, and there was treating disaster as opportunity.
"You know Chuck Barstow?" he said to the Association nobleman.
Odard nodded. "I've met him. First Armsman for you Mackenzies now, after Sam Aylward retired."
Rudi nodded himself. "He was a Society fighter before the Change. On the day, he lifted two big wagons and their teams from a… living-history exhibit, whatever that was… in Eugene on his way to Dun Juniper with the Singing Moon coven. And he loaded the wagons with food and tools and seeds he… picked up… along the way, and drove along cattle and pigs and sheep they acquired likewise, with worthless money or just by lifting them. This was before people had a chance to eat everything, you see, or even to realize what was happening, the most of them."
"There you are then," Odard said. "All our parents did that sort of thing. If you have to-"
"And he ran into a load of lost schoolchildren along the way, and picked them up too, and adopted three of them himself," Rudi finished, interrupting him. "Oak-he used to be named Dan-has three sons and daughters of his own now."
"Oh," Odard said, and cut himself a wedge from the cheese.
Rudi didn't say any more; Eddie Liu, the first Baron Gervais, hadn't been that sort of man, and everyone knew it.
In your father's day, Odard… Matti's father's day… your lot were just as bad as these Cutters, for all the fancy titles. Eddie Liu and Norman Arminger among the worst of them; not just hard men, but rotten bad. If they'd won the War of the Eye, you'd be worse than you are yourself, my friend, and even so there are things about you I don't much like.
And at least Arminger's had been a mortal evil, while the CUT seemed to corrupt everything it touched.
And… he remembered the dead man laughing.
"The times were very hard indeed," Rudi went on aloud, controlling a slight shiver at that recollection. "But hard isn't the same thing as bad. It depended on the leaders and what sort of things were in their souls, and what paths they led their folk down. My mother says a tribe is like a man; it becomes more itself as it gets older, and as what it does writes on the heart. Things were… loose, for a while after the Change. They could be turned this way or that. Now they're getting set again, for good and ill."
Ingolf shook himself and loaded his plate, doggedly plowing through eggs and ham and fried potatoes. When he glanced up at Rudi, the haunted look was gone for now and a tough shrewdness back in charge.
"I gather we're not just going to buy some supplies, and ransom some people, and ride quietly away, Rudi?"
"No, that we are not," Rudi said forcefully. "Not if we can do more. I won't command us to certain death-but I will take a risk."
" I'm the one who was raised on tales of knights-errant," Odard said dryly. "We have the Princess to think about, Rudi… and your precious Sword. We have a long way to go. We can't right every wrong we find, not when we're outnumbered fifty to four. We're fugitives, not an army with banners and trumpets. I don't mind a fight, but.. ."
Rudi nodded; that was true. And he didn't doubt Odard's courage. It had been shown often enough that there was no need for him to go out of his way to prove it.
"I'm not going to try to right every wrong," he said. "But when the Powers shove one under my nose, and it smelling no better than a goat turd on a hot day, then it becomes my business."
"Yes!" Edain said, his eyes bright.
Rebecca's blazed. " Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you both."
"You're welcome," Rudi said.
"Well, then we need m
ore information," Ingolf said practically. "More than we can get cooped up here. And that Jed Smith may have acted real friendly, but he's no fool like his nephew Jack. He'll let us see just as much as he thinks is needful for him, and not a bit more."
"No, he's a dangerous man," Rudi acknowledged. "He'll keep a close eye on us."
"Not on all of us," Rebecca said.
A sharp scream came from the middle distance, and then sobs and the sound of men laughing. She shivered, but went on:
"My people here will know all we need."
TheScourgeofGod
CHAPTER SIX
Avenger the Archer high-hearted
Deadly the skill of the bowman's hand
Stronger still is fate hard woven
Than any shaft nocked by mortal man From: The Song of Bear and Raven
Attributed to Fiorbhinn Mackenzie, 1st century CY
EASTERN IDAHO, SOUTHWEST OF PICABO SEPTEMBER 10, CHANGE YEAR
23/2021 AD
Peter Graber, newly promoted Major in the third battalion of the Sword of the Prophet, was a believing man. He recited from the Dictations nightly, or the Book of Dzhur, and had since he was a child in the House of Refuge. He treasured the occasions when he could feel that chanting bring him into contact with the Beyond, a joy as great as holding his firstborn son in his arms, and greater than any his wives could furnish. The Ascended Masters would welcome his lifestream in time, and eternal glory would be his.
He believed that so deeply that danger to his life aroused only an animal wariness, not the fear some men felt. And his combat record had been excellent as he rose from trooper to squadron commander; against the Powder River Ranchers, the Sioux, the Drumhellers, and then in the great battles of the Deseret War and most recently at Wendell against the US of Boise.
But I still don't like this Seeker, even if he comes from the Prophet's right hand. There's something… wrong… about him.
Right now High Seeker Twain was just an unexceptional-looking man of about thirty-five, wiry and tough, with a dull red robe over his traveling clothes, huddled on his horse with a blank expression on his face as beads of sweat ran down through the dust. He rode well enough to keep up, but not to the standard of the Prophet's elite guard regiment, or even as well as the average cowboy. Graber would have placed him for a townsman, if he hadn't been so uncomplaining of hardship… but then, the Seekers had their own code.
Fifty of the Sword were spread out to either side, in a single rank to make it easier to spot any turning in the trail they followed. The dull russet brown of their lacquered leather armor faded against the volcanic soil in the distance, with an occasional eye-hurting blink as the lance-heads above them caught the harsh noonday sun. The men rode in disciplined silence except for an occasional order from an under-officer, the spiked helmets rising and falling with the walk-trot-canter-trot-walk pace.
The noise came from the slow steady pounding of hooves, the clatter of the hard metal-edged scutes of their war harness, creak of saddle-leather, the dull clank of a shete scabbard against a stirrup iron or the rattle of arrows in a quiver.
Unavoidably they raised a plume of dust, in this stretch where even sagebrush was sparse; they rode into a wind out of the east, so the dust fell behind them rather than hanging about to get in nose and eyes, but it would be visible for some distance. The remuda, the remount-herd, was behind them, and its cloud was larger. Most of the Snake River country wasn't so different from the plains of Eastern Montana or the Powder River ranges, though a bit drier. This particular eerie stretch of cinders and conical hills was strange, though, and he distrusted it.
"High Seeker," he said respectfully.
You told us to come this way, and now my battalion is scattered over a front a hundred miles wide. Now tell us how to get out of it! I'm going to lose horses soon, if we don't get to forage and water. May the Nephilim eat your soul in the Black Void if I'll lose good men without an explanation!
"High Seeker?" he repeated.
The man's pupils were shrunken to pinpoints, and his jaw worked as if he chewed a bitter truth. Graber shrugged with a slight clatter of gear and swung up a clenched fist. The unit halted within three paces, horses as well trained as the men. Dust smoked backwards; he could hear a slight hissing sound as the heavier particles fell out. Everyone dismounted; you stayed out of the saddle whenever you could, if you wanted your horse to last.
"We'll wait for the Scout," he called. "Loosen girths but keep the tack on."
All his men could follow a trail; they were trained horse soldiers, and hunters besides, and many came from ranching families. The Scout wasn't of the Sword; his tribe were called the Morrowlander Troop, and they lived deep in the forests and grasslands south of Corwin, what the old world had called Yellowstone. Rumor said that they'd fallen from the sky right after the Change.
Graber didn't believe that; but they were almost inhumanly skillful trackers. They served the Church by sending their best for work like this, and paying a tribute in hides and furs. In fact, his superiors had said something about their ancestors being Scouts… some weird woodland cult of the olden times.
Graber considered taking a stick of jerky or a hardtack biscuit out of his saddlebag; he was hungry. Then he decided not to, as an example to the men of rising above material things. Instead he took off his helmet, unsnapped and peeled out the lining, then poured in a measured quantity of water. His horse drank eagerly, chasing the last drops around the bare metal with its lips. The rest of the unit followed suit.
Only then did he drink from his canteen himself, a precisely measured amount. No need to check on the others; the under-officers would see to water discipline.
And we are the Sword of the Prophet, he thought proudly, as he finished exactly the amount that the lowliest trooper would have. In the Sword there is no Rancher or cowboy or refugee, only servants of the Messenger of the Ascended Masters… Dammit, how did he do that!
Somehow the Morrowlander Scout got within a few hundred yards before he was spotted. His horse was shaggy but sound; the Scout ran along beside it at an effortless distance-devouring lope with one hand on the simple pad saddle he used, using the beast to set his pace.
He was a tall lean man, dressed in moccasins and fringed leather leggings dyed in mottled colors and a brownish green tunic over a shirt starred with circular badges sewn with bows and tents and other curious designs. A kerchief went around his neck, the ends held through a leather ring. Plaits of red hair held with leather thongs and stuck with eagle feathers bumped on his shoulders beneath a bandana, and he was lightly armed, with knife and tomahawk and bow. Three parallel scars gashed his cheeks on either side of a snub nose.
"Scout," Graber said politely.
"Prophet's man," the Morrowlander said, equally expressionless, saluting by putting three fingers to his brow with the other folded under his thumb.
Then he held out his hand. Graber tugged thoughtfully at his brown chin-beard; the grimy paw held a horse-apple, and one that was fairly fresh.
"How long ago?" he said.
"Two days. Wind scrubs out the hooves in this place, but they went this way. Water about half a day's ride north, a little east-spring beneath a big hill. The nine rested there, and met some more."
"More?"
The Morrowlander grinned, showing strong yellow teeth. "Here."
He opened his other hand like a conjuror, with a twinkle in his blue eyes. In it was half a glass ornament, a golden bee.
"Mormons," Graber said thoughtfully, and whistled sharply in a signal to summon the under-officers.
His three subordinates gathered around him; there should have been four noncoms and a lieutenant, but casualties had been heavy at Wendell. All of them squatted and leaned on their sheathed shetes as they watched the Scout sketch in the dirt.
"How many?" one asked.
"Twenty, twenty-five of the Deseret men," the Scout said. "They came in from here "-his finger traced a route-"but they don't have many remounts, an
d their horses walk tired. And the nine we chase came in like this, met them there at the spring. The nine have plenty good horses"-he opened and closed his hands, showing the number- "some very big, never seen any tracks like that before. Big but not slow. They buried their ashes, and their own shit, but not the horses'! All rode off together, the nine and the Deseret men, making east and north."
"Two days ago?"
"Two days. Traveling slow-a-bit, walking, riding, walking. Half our pace. Be careful. They have good lookout, and they watch their backtrail. Their scout almost spotted me, I think. Had to wait half a day hidden up, buried myself in the dirt."
Another grin. "He didn't see me, though! I like to meet their scout, someday."
He tapped at his tomahawk to show how he'd like to meet the unknown man. Graber grunted and pulled at his beard again. That the nine were traveling at a long-distance pace argued that they didn't know someone was right on their trail-they were trying to conserve their horses for a long haul. He wished he could do the same. A ridden horse couldn't equal a fit man for long-distance endurance, though you could do better than foot-speed with a string of remounts.
Provided there's grazing, he reminded himself. Which there isn't, here.
"Northeast is old Highway 20," he said, drawing a line at the base of the wavy marks the Scout had used to represent the mountains. "They may be trying to cross the Tetons. Or work north through the mountains and then across; there are old tracks there."
"Bringing twenty-five Mormons into Church territory, sir?" one of the under-officers asked. "Pretty much like holding up a sign that says: Hurrah, we're here, now kill us! "
"A lot of it's Church territory that's pretty thin on people, just around there," Graber said thoughtfully. "And they may not be taking the Mormons… but we'd better catch them before then. General Walker will be pleased if we finish off some bandits at the same time."
Suddenly the Seeker spoke. "Give me two of your arrows, Major Graber."
Graber blinked in surprise; at the statement, and at its sheer disconnectedness. He obeyed automatically, reaching up over his right shoulder and twitching out two of the long ashwood shafts. As it happened they were both armor-piercing bodkins with narrow heads like a blacksmith's metal-punch.
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