The Scourge of God c-2

by S. M. Stirling

  Tancredo's left eyebrow went up; then he grinned. "Now let's talk prices and details."

  They did, though most of the party stayed quiet; Father Ignatius was off talking with the local archbishop. Rudi finally agreed on a figure with a slight wince; they'd started out with a good deal of money, but this was a major chunk.

  But to be sure, once we're east of the Mississippi, money becomes moot. It'll be what we can find or take, there.

  "Man, you're talking a ship here," Tancredo said after the bargaining had gone around in the usual circles for a while. "That's a capital asset. And you'll be taking it places where it very possibly ain't coming back, and do you think I could get insurance? No, I could not."

  Rudi sighed and reached over the table to shake the local's hand and seal the bargain-he refrained from spitting on his palm first, that not being a rite used much in these lands. The Iowan stretched out his own hand and shook.

  And Garbh looked up from where she sat at Edain's feet, growling slightly and looking at the door. It burst open. A draft of cooler air came with it, into the fug of the big room.

  "Freeze!" a voice bellowed; one Rudi recognized. "Iowa State Police!"

  Captain Denson stood in the doorway, a bristle of billhooks behind him. "Rudi Mackenzie, Ingolf Vogeler, you and your companions are under arrest in the name of Bossman Heasleroad!"

  There was a moment's silence, then a murmur of mingled anger and fright. That grew to a roar as Tancredo stood and signaled before turning and walking quickly away; that took just long enough to block Rudi in the booth's inner seat. The man behind the long bar at one end of the room reached below the scarred surface, and the gaslights died. Blackness filled with screams and the crash of tables being overset; the stink of spilled drink filled the air, choking-strong.

  "Sherwood!" Rudi called, clear enough to carry to all his own party.

  He stood as he did so, turning and reaching for the sword belt looped over the partition between this booth and the next. His teeth bared in the darkness, and he forced his breath to come slow and deep. You took a risk, and sometimes it paid off Lights speared into the common room; the troopers had mirror-backed Coleman lanterns with them, and the incandescent mantles glared into his eyes. He moved his hand away from the hilt of his sword-slowly-and raised both palms shoulder-high as the edged metal of the billhooks rammed close, a circle of them poised to thrust if he moved. The men holding the polearms were shadows, outlines backlit by the second rank carrying the lights, but he could see a gleam of flame on chain mail. A third rank of State Police were behind those, facing back with their crossbows leveled.

  Rudi put up a hand, as if blinded. That let him look around; Ingolf was still across the table from him, and Odard and Mathilda were in the same frozen reaching-for-the-sword motion as himself. He let out a silent sigh of relief when he saw that Mary and Ritva were gone, and Fred and Victoria and Edain with them. Edain's quiver had been snatched free of the hatrack in such haste that a gray-fletched arrow had spilled out, and it still spun on the littered brick of the floor.

  "No need for trouble," Rudi said mildly to Denson. "It's your lord we came to see, after all."

  "Yeah, no trouble," Ingolf said mildly. "Just a word to the wise, Captain, these folks"-he indicated Odard and Mathilda-"are VIPs back home. Whatever the Bossman has against me, he won't be happy in the end if they get roughed up."

  "We'll see," Denson said; his shete was drawn, and he used it to reach over and flick their sword belts to his waiting subordinates. "Secure the men. The woman can come along peacefully if she feels like it."

  The Bossman's palace was certainly magnificent; the grim massiveness of the citadel built around it since the Change didn't obscure the high dome gilded with genuine twenty-four-karat gold leaf. Neither did the evening's darkness; a golden lamp atop it and four more at the corners made it gleam above the marble and pillars of the great building. The gate passed them through with password and countersign and displays of ID cards, despite Denson and his men being known to the detail there. Under his anxiety, Rudi rather approved-procedures were like habits, and good ones tended to keep you alive, and keep the enemy from putting one over on you.

  Inside the walls, lawns and gardens filled the giant rectangle; he suspected that the stables and barracks and so forth were on the eastern side, behind the showpiece.

  Though perhaps right now I should be worrying about the location of the dungeons, he thought.

  Square in the center was the palace. The middle block had four smaller domes at its corners besides the great gilded piece in the middle, and two smaller but still large buildings to either side had copper-covered domes of their own. The entrance was up a long stone staircase, under a portico of six eighty-foot marble columns with a triangular sculptured portico above. Guards snapped to attention, grounding their billhooks with a stamp of metal on stone. Inside a broad corridor led to the rotunda, with the inside of the dome soaring nearly three hundred feet above; two more hallways gave off to north and south as they approached it. There were polished red-marble columns with gilded finials, floors of shimmering stone in geometric patterns, murals showing ancients breaking the prairie sod, meeting in stiff archaic costumes and hats like stovepipes, fighting with strange, powerful weapons. And it was not a ruin, but the heart of a living realm; guards stood at corridor entrances, gaslights shone brightly, and clerks and officials and courtiers in archaic suits and ties or the more modern bib overalls stood in clumps or bustled officiously by with files even past dinnertime. There was a smell of wax and polish, not the cold abandonment he'd felt in other pre-Change structures.

  Sure, and I'd appreciate it more if I weren't tied up, Rudi thought.

  The State Police had cuffed their hands before them; they'd also thrust batons between their elbows across their backs, which was painful and allowed two men to steer them by gripping the ends.

  Ground and center, ground and center, Rudi thought, breathing deeply again and imagining his anger flowing out with the air.

  It didn't, but it did recede; he couldn't afford to be angry right now. Mathilda was striding along with her head up, as if she were in Castle Todenangst; Odard had his lips pursed, as if at some social solecism, and Ingolf just looked blankly watchful. He blinked when they stepped into a great rotunda, the oculus of the dome above them and a great staircase leading up to a second story; above the stair was a huge and well-done if surreal painting of goddesses floating around a covered wagon, holding books, seed and various objects he supposed denoted their sacred functions.

  Not what I'd have expected of a Christian land, he thought.

  Mosaics of iridescent glass glittered above it. The carved and jeweled throne itself was at the foot of the stairs; he saw Mathilda's mouth quirk. That was precisely the location her father had picked for his throne in the great hall of the Portland city palace-what had once been the Central Library on Tenth Street.

  The men who would be King tend to have similar tastes, Rudi thought.

  " That's new," Ingolf murmured. "His old man used to meet people in the Governor's office."

  The State Police troopers gave the pole between his elbows a warning shake, making his boots skid on the marble tiles. Rudi's breath hissed as he saw who awaited; beside the usual crowd of toadies and flunkies and officials and guards and general reptilia you'd expect around any monarch, a man in the dried-blood-colored robe of a CUT High Seeker stood below the dais to the left; and the Cutter officer who'd pursued Rudi and his friends into the Sioux country was beside him.

  Peter Graber, that was the name, Rudi thought. And I'm less glad to see him here than I was riding a mad buffalo, sure and I am.

  The Heuisink father and son were on the other side; not under arrest, but looking very unhappy, in a stone-faced way.

  The State Police detachment and their prisoners came to a halt; the bodyguards around the throne were in the same gear, but two of them slanted their bills across each other in an X to bar the way to the ruler's chai
r. Captain Denson came to a halt, saluted smartly, and bowed:

  "Your Excellency, we are reporting with Ingolf Vogeler and his associates, as ordered."

  It was then that Rudi gave the occupant of the throne a careful look. Anthony Heasleroad was in his mid-twenties, and a hair under six feet. There was muscle on his frame, under a budding plumpness that had just begun to obscure the line of his jaw and thicken his middle under the blue-silk bib overalls. His short hair was sandy blond, and his eyes pale blue, in a short-nosed face with a cleft chin; a strong face, the Mackenzie thought, but not a good one. He leaned one elbow on an arm of his throne and reached out with the other hand into a bowl of chocolate truffles and ate one while the silence stretched.

  And that's a boast, too, Rudi thought. Mrs. Heuisink said that only a ship or two a year reached here from the Caribbean.

  When he spoke, the Bossman had a smooth well-modulated voice. "I gave you a hundred thousand dollars' worth of equipment and cash, Vogeler. Where is it?"

  Ingolf's guards forced him down on his knees. "My people and I got to Boston, and we collected most of the stuff on the list you gave me, Your Excellency," he said. "But you also sent Kuttner with me, and I trusted him as your man. He was working for the Church Universal and Triumphant; they ambushed my Villains in Illinois, and as far as I know the goods are still there. Of course, that was years ago now. They dragged me all the way to Corwin, tortured me, held me prisoner, and if I hadn't escaped, I'd be dead now-and that's not for lack of their trying since."

  The Cutter priest looked as if he were about to explode, his face flushed red; the dead flatness of his eyes was more vivid by contrast. Graber stood motionless, his hand near the vacant place on his belt where his shete would rest, but his eyes were never still and his body was poised ready for action. The ruler of Iowa spoke languidly:

  "Yes, yes, Sheriff Heuisink has been entertaining us all with his stories of assassins, plots, exiled princesses, mad monks, battles in Idaho…"

  The Bossman leaned forward. "But I still didn't get what I paid for, Vogeler."

  "I'll fetch it for you, Your Excellency…"

  "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me -"

  Rudi took a deep breath and stepped forward; his guards were too startled to do more than grab the ends of the rod, and he wasn't trying to move any farther.

  "Your Excellency, if I might be of assistance? You've a right to be displeased that your expedition to rescue the beauties and glories of the time before the Change was brought to naught, sure and you do, by the Gods. But it wasn't my comrade Ingolf's fault; it was the Prophet and his lackeys and spies-"

  "Lies!" burst out of the Cutter priest.

  Anthony Heasleroad's hand swung out, the finger pointing at the High Seeker; he didn't bother to look around. He smiled slightly at Rudi as he spoke to the man who'd interrupted him:

  "First and last warning." Then to Rudi: "It's all he-said-they-said, isn't it? This is amusing, but it'll turn boring if it's like a court session."

  "Then let me fetch your goods, my lord. Keep Ingolf here, if you will, as security for it."

  Quiet fell again, and Heasleroad gave a sidelong glance at Colonel Heuisink as he thoughtfully ate a chocolate-covered cherry.

  "What do you say, Sheriff?" he asked the master of Victrix Farm.

  "Our intelligence has nothing good to say of this Western cult, Your Excellency," the older man said carefully.

  "Oh, they've been fighting the Sioux-who are such a nuisance and have been for years," the Bossman replied.

  Then he clapped his hands together. "I think I'll take you up on that… what were you called?"

  "Rudi Mackenzie, tanist of the Clan Mackenzie," Rudi said. "Your Excellency."

  "There can be only one," the Bossman said, and laughed; it was more like a giggle, and for some reason Colonel Heuisink shot him a glance.

  "Yes, only one. You may go and get my artworks. If you have them in… oh, shall we say one month… you and the others may leave. If not… well, breaking a contract with the Bossman is treason, isn't it? And we all know what treason brings."

  Rudi forced himself not to lick his lips. A month wasn't too long for a well-found party to get to where Ingolf's wagons had been left. The weather wouldn't have disturbed their cargos much, from the description; the goods had been tightly sealed in metal boxes, under tight-strapped canvas tilts on Conestogas whose bodies were mostly steel. The problem was that the local inhabitants might well have been busy at them.

  "Your Excellency, that's a bargain," Rudi said calmly. "Now, if you'll give the order for the release of my friends and our goods and gear, we can be about your business."

  "You can go wherever you want, you mean, as soon as you're over the Mississippi," the Bossman said, a slight jeering note in his voice. "No, no, there can be only one. I said you can go and fetch the treasure."

  He looked speculatively at Odard and Mathilda. "These and Vogeler will be safe enough here."

  "Look after Matti, Odard," Rudi said softly a week later, and held out his hand. "This is going to be hard on you all, but hardest for her, I think."

  "I will," Odard said seriously. His grip was firm for the brief shake. "I'm going to get all the help I can, too."

  Rudi Mackenzie nodded and swung into the saddle. Epona danced sideways half a dozen steps as she sensed his tension, and the hooves beat hollowly on the pavement of the bridge. He made his face calm as he nodded to Mathilda; her face held an iron pride, but her eyes were reddened and slightly swollen.

  "Did you see the follower?" she asked in halting Sindarin.

  "Am I blind?" he replied, and gave her a brief grin.

  Captain Denson of the Iowa State Police was standing near her; a full mounted troop of his men were on either side.

  "Tell the Bossman that I'll be back as soon as possible," Rudi said politely, gathering up the leading rein of his packhorse.

  Denson grinned like a shark. "Most of the wild-men over there aren't cannibals anymore," he said. "Or at least so they say."

  Rudi nodded again, and gave a last look at the walls of Dubuque, and the spire of the cathedral rising over them.

  "Guard my soul-sister," he murmured quietly to it. "Brigid, be at her side; Dread Lord, be their shield."

  He took a deep breath of the air, full of the damp warm river scent, silt and greenery, then signaled Epona up to a fast walk. The bridge stretched ahead, a mile or more of embankment and concrete piers, the center section suspended on cables from a horseshoe-like arch of steel truss beams.

  A galley went by underneath as he rode, the oars stroking the blue river water into foam in centipede unison; he could hear the drum of the speed setter faintly through the rush and rumble of the current past the footings of the bridge. The eastern shore loomed ahead, wooded hills like those behind him… but the only buildings were ruins, and a single small fort flying the Iowan flag.

  I'll be back, he thought. And Mary and Ritva and the others are there now, and they can act without my holding their hands, can they not?

  Eyes were probably watching him from those hills, looking at his gear and horses. He shrugged and sat taller in the saddle; that straightforward greed was easier to deal with than the treachery of princes and the unsleeping hate of the Prophet's men and their demon lords.

  "And sure, I'm looking at them," he said softly; Epona's ears flickered back. "The savages, and the foes behind me too. And if they'd stand in my way… well then, the worse for them!"

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