“I’d been worried about that. How did you manage it, Your Majesty? I wouldn’t have thought the Force, ah . . .”
“Cared much what Artos the First desired? Yes, but they do care what the leaders of the Dominions want, and Drumheller may not wish to be part of the High Kingdom, but they do want good relations and they are our allies against the CUT. I merely wrote to Premier Mah politely asking a favor of her.”
“Thanks!” he and Ritva said simultaneously.
“You’re welcome. Just invite me to the handfasting. No need to inflict Rudi or Artos on any of the children. Now to business.”
He unfolded the map, and they went over it as dinner arrived. Since the army was now stationary, and newly come in a rich irrigated countryside that trusted the Montivallan forces to pay for what they ate, the food was better than usual; skewers of peppered grilled beef and onions, steamed cauliflower, fresh risen wheat bread, butter and the luxury of a green salad. After a while in the field you lusted after greenstuff the way a drunkard did for whiskey, not to mention needing the fiber to keep your guts in order.
“Mmmm,” Mary said, forking a piece of tomato. “Good thing we’ve been winning the battles—they didn’t have time to strip the countryside before we besieged the city, and we’re getting what the townies usually eat. I get so sick of trail mix and dog biscuit.”
Rudi’s fist slammed down on the table, making the plates jump. Everyone looked at him in surprise; he wasn’t much given to displays of temper.
“I’m tired of winning battles!” he said, controlling the flush of anger. “I’m tired of killing brave men whose only fault was to be born in the wrong place and to get levied from the plow! I want to win this bloody war, and get back to my proper work and my family and let everyone else do the same!”
He cleared his throat, feeling their eyes on him and feeling a bit self-conscious too.
“Sorry.”
Ingolf chuckled and spoke, a little unexpectedly—he was normally a little taciturn.
“No problem, Rudi. You’re too God-damned self-controlled for your own good, sometimes. Anyway I agree.”
Just then a snatch of marching song came through the open flap, in time to the tramp of boots:
“Dry your eyes—it’s no cause to weep
The weather is fine and the road isn’t steep
The world is still round, my compass is true
Each step is a step back to you
Each step is a step back to you.”
“And so do the troops,” he said.
Mary grinned and cocked her one eye at him with good-natured skepticism. “And what will you do, lover, when the reign of peace arrives?”
He shrugged. “Sleep a couple of years, and then try not to see anything more exciting than a field full of sheep eating grass and crapping where they please, ever again. You youngsters—”
“Hey, you’re only eight years older than I am!”
“Nine, but it feels longer. You youngsters don’t . . . look, guys, you take the dipper to the bucket long enough, the bucket’s going to run dry. And you only get one bucketful per life. I’ve drunk a lot of dippers on a lot of hot days.”
Most of the people around the table looked blank; Rudi suddenly realized he was the third-oldest there, which was a bit of a shock. He was used to thinking of himself when the word “youngster” was thrown about.
I’m still a young man, he thought. But I’m not a heedless overgrown boy leaping into the blue anymore, that’s true. Ingolf is sounding less and less cynical and more and more wise when he says something like that.
He’d had warnings from the Powers, direct and blunt, that he wouldn’t make old bones, too. Every year spent warmaking was a waste he couldn’t afford.
I’ve been that boy, but now I’m a husband and a father . . . and a King, to be sure.
Ignatius nodded slightly over his spare dinner of salad and bread, catching his monarch’s eyes and inclining his head towards Ingolf in silent agreement.
Rudi made a gesture of acknowledgment. “With luck, this will speed things up considerably. Now, here’s how we’re going to handle the timing. First the Rangers will—”
CHAPTER TEN
City of Boise
(formerly southern Idaho)
High Kingdom of Montival
(Formerly western North America)
June 25th, Change Year 26/2024 AD
The streets of Boise were dark. Cole Salander was used to that where he grew up—night simply was dark, unless there was a full moon—but normally the capital of the United States had gaslights along the main avenues, burning the by-product of the sewage plant. The incandescent mantles had seemed almost painfully bright to Cole the last time he’d been here, about a year ago. Now they were closed down, the iron posts just another hazard along the streets. Here and there a glimmer of lamp or candlelight showed, usually from behind shutters. The air was still and smelled of the smoke confined by the walls, and somehow of fear. In the distance, off to the east, a flare of light showed as a ball of napalm came over the wall, and there was a faint clanging as the fire-wagons headed towards the spot.
“I am completely insane,” Cole Salander said, sotto voce, striking along briskly with his right hand on the hilt of his short sword. “I volunteered for this. I rest my case.”
“Absolutely no dispute,” Alyssa answered in the same low tone, walking with a suitable humility, the (jiggered, non-locking) handcuffs on her wrists. “And I’m twice as absolutely insane as you are.”
He could sympathize. He certainly wouldn’t want to be a prisoner, particularly a woman, in this Cutter-controlled city. How thoroughly controlled had come as a bit of a shock to him—and, he thought, to Captain Wellman. Theoretically the Captain had come in to report to a general who was part of the Emergency Steering Committee about a possible intelligence asset; developing those was one of the things the Special Forces were for, after all. In point of fact there had been a red-robed High Seeker standing in the same room, arms crossed across his chest and shaven head gleaming. The general had slid his eyes in the man’s direction every few seconds, and there had been sweat on his forehead even though the building was cool. And a rayed sun pendant on the breast of his uniform.
Wellman had been silent for a long time when they came out of that; not that you expected an officer to be chatty with the enlisted men, but the Special Forces were a lot less stiff than the Regulars. He hadn’t doubted Cole’s cover story of prolonged flight and hiding; why should he? It was exactly what could have happened if they hadn’t run into that Mackenzie patrol, and he’d gotten a commendation and field-promotion to corporal out of it. Alyssa, complete with an excellent set of false papers prepared by her own side, had been his ticket into Boise; their story was that she’d talk to him and nobody else—it had produced a lot of embarrassing kidding. But the thought of how many things could have gone wrong along the way made him sweat even now.
Especially now. So close to pulling it off . . .
A hard multiple clatter of hooves made them halt. They didn’t run—that would be ruin—but simply stood back against the grill of a shuttered store that sold Planters, Reapers and Spreaders, made to order according to its sign. Cole stood at parade rest, with his right hand on the hilt of the short sword sheathed high on that hip. You couldn’t go far wrong by falling back on the drillbook.
About a hundred cavalry went by, heading eastward at a walk, and not in the neat ranks that even Boise’s ranch-country reserve mounted troops used—more of a shapeless clot, kept off the sidewalks only by an instinct to avoid the unfamiliar loom of buildings. A hundred horsemen took up a lot of space even in strict column of fours, and these loomed like an endless horde in the dark. One had a lantern on a pole, from the light containing a tallow dip or two that cast a flickering yellow glow on the hard scarred faces and shaggy plainsman’s horses.
Cutters. Ah, crap.
The light cavalry wore coarse homespun and leather and the gear that he’d
seen before on the Rancher levies of the CUT. Mostly steerhide breastplates and arm-guards studded with nail-heads or eked out with strips of salvaged washers or wire—the far interior was poorer in metal than areas closer to the coasts, and more people had survived to use it up. They had steel helmets, though, slung at their saddlebows and leaving bare heads bristle-cropped or shaven or shaven save for a scalp-lock, beards shaggy-wild or braided or trimmed to a tuft on the chin.
Uh-oh, Cole thought. Crap. Goat crap.
That style of haircut was a sign that these men came from areas that had been under the Church Universal and Triumphant’s control for a long time; the Prophet’s elite guardsmen out of Corwin shaved their heads, and they’d imitated it if not the regulars’ discipline. So was the way some of them had the rayed sun that was the CUT’s symbol tattooed on their foreheads. That meant they’d be harder-assed.
All of them had shetes at their belts or slung over their backs or strapped to the saddle—a heavy, slightly curved slashing-sword derived from the old agricultural tool, and common everywhere east of the Rockies. One of Cole’s older unarmed combat instructors had said they looked more like a liuyedao, whatever the hell that was with its pants on. They had recurve horn-and-sinew bows in scabbards at their knees and quivers and round leather shields as well, and there were a few rawhide buckets of short javelins or light lances.
Some of them had strings of scalps dangling from their saddles, too. That and the way they smelled—rather rank even for troops who’d been in the field for a while—made him think they came from the Hi-Line, the high bleak plains of central Montana near the Lakota territories. He’d heard that there was nothing to burn on those dry treeless expanses but dried cowflops, and that between fuel shortages and scarce water and long brutal winters folk had mostly gotten out of the habit of washing regularly there.
He blew out a breath of relief when they passed with just some hard looks, and the glow of the lantern disappeared around an intersection.
“Those stinkers were too close for—” he began.
Hooves clattered again; just two of the horsemen this time, one carrying a newly kindled torch that dripped sparks and shed a flickering globe of red light. They reined in, and the one who wasn’t carrying the torch turned his mount left-side-on to the two on foot. He had his bow in his hand with an arrow on the string and his drawing hand ready, though he carried the weapon point-down.
The archer was one of the shaven-headed ones, and wore a light mail shirt over broad bowman’s shoulders. Mail represented wealth out on the high plains, like the silver studs in his saddle; he looked about thirty, though heavily weathered, with a face marked by dusty white healed cuts on the forehead and cheeks and jaw, narrow blue eyes and a yellow tuft of billy-goat-style beard on his chin bound with leather thongs. The chest of his armor had a symbol picked out in brass rivets, like a number eight lying on its side, which was probably the brand of his ranch—roughly equivalent to the coat of arms of an Associate, which group Cole still privately thought of as those neobarb castle freaks despite the recent change in his political allegiance.
They smelled better, though.
“You,” the man said in the hard flat eastern accent. “Who are you, who’s the abomination bitch, and where are you-two going?”
“Sir,” Cole said—which was stretching a point; the man wasn’t in his chain of command in any way, shape or form. “I’m escorting this prisoner to the Special Forces battalion HQ for questioning.”
Actually my orders are to convey her to Boise garrison HQ at Fort Boise over on the east side, and we aren’t near either, which will look suspicious if this goat-raper knows the town at all. We are pretty close to this place that Fred Thurston heard about from his dad, and which nobody else alive probably knows . . . I really hate having my life depend on probably like that. . . .
It was hard to see the rider’s expression in the dimness of the flickering pine-knot torch, but Cole thought he could see the eyes widen.
“All enemy prisoners are to be turned over to the Church Universal and Triumphant—the blessings of the Ascended Masters be upon Its Prophet and the Seekers,” the plainsman said. “I’ll take this one now.”
Alyssa tensed. Cole saluted. “As you say, sir.”
He reached for Alyssa’s handcuffs as she backed away. “On three,” he said very softly.
“One—”
He grabbed the chain and heaved, links biting into his palm; she pulled backward and kicked him realistically in the shins—which hurt.
“Oww Goddamn two—”
“Three.”
He released the chain, staggering backward himself as if her tug and kick had shocked his grip free. Alyssa dropped flat and rolled under the torch-bearer’s horse.
“Catch her, sir!” Cole shouted.
As he’d hoped, the bowman in the mail shirt took his eyes off Cole. What wasn’t in the half-formed plan was that the other man dropped his torch and swept out his shete, the broad-tipped blade glinting along its honed edge as he leaned far over with a born rider’s casual skill and prepared to swipe at the slight figure on the pavement. Those things could leave a drawing cut a yard long and inches deep on an unarmored body.
“Shit!” Cole cursed.
He’d been unlimbering his crossbow since the instant the horse-archer turned his attention to Alyssa, and contrary to regs he’d been carrying it cocked and with a bolt in the groove in town. Instead of shooting the man in the mail shirt, he whipped it up to aim at the swordsman.
“Shit!” he said again, a strangled scream this time.
Alyssa had rolled out the other side of the horse, and as she bounced back to her feet her hand went to her collar and then whipped down the horse’s haunch. The animal gave an equine shriek of indignant hurt and went into a bucking, leaping twist; the punch dagger was razor-sharp, and had parted the beast’s hide in a slash that was shallow but twenty inches long.
There was no time to readjust. The crossbow went tung-snap in the darkened street, and the bolt tore through the steerhide armor over the man’s shoulder and gouged a groove through his deltoid. That was actually very good shooting even at pointblank, in the dark and at a twisting, jerking target. Unfortunately it was the left shoulder, and the man got his horse back under control almost immediately. He also didn’t seem to be the sort of guy whose concentration could be broken by a little pain.
The first one was already turning his attention back to Cole, standing in the stirrups and drawing the arrow back against the resistance of the thick composite bow. That was exactly the right decision tactically, since Cole was obviously the real threat. It would have been much nicer if the man had been stupid.
Cole dropped the crossbow—which was a hell of a way to treat a fine weapon, but needs must—and flicked out his gladius. He bounded forward in the same movement, jumping side-to-side as he advanced, to get to close quarters and crowd the horseman too closely to let him shoot.
Or shout for his buddies, for Christ’s sake, he thought desperately. If I can land a cut on that horse—
Unfortunately the man in the mail shirt was an even more superb horseman than his follower, and his horse was just as well trained; the pair operated like parts of the same organism. It skittered right back crabwise to a shift in the rider’s balance, backing up about as fast as Cole was advancing, and the man drew his bow to the ear. The pile-shaped point caught a last flicker of red light from the torch guttering out on the patched asphalt.
The other one had his horse in hand too, though its ears were back and its eyes rolling in a bite-and-stomp fit of temper, and he was boring in on the dodging form of Alyssa with a yard of edged metal in his hand, as opposed to her three inches of holdout knife. Unfortunately he wasn’t stupid enough to get in the archer’s line of fire despite the way she immediately tried to draw him into it.
Shit, isn’t this where I came in? Cole thought desperately as the horse-archer prepared to skewer his brisket. Only I’d rather have Old Eph, th
ere was only one of him and the big hairy fucker couldn’t shoot me!
• • •
I’m officially colonel of the First Readstown Volunteer Cavalry, and here I am sneaking around in the dark again, Ingolf Vogeler thought.
He’d always thought of himself as primarily a horse-soldier, which was how he’d spent the first four years after leaving Readstown at the age of nineteen. He’d joined the volunteers heading northwest from the Free Republic of Richland—what had once been southwestern Wisconsin—to Marshal and Fargo for the Sioux War because he’d quarreled with his elder brother and it was an honorable way to run away from home. He’d stuck all through the miseries of the Red River campaign, and then ridden with Icepick Olson’s band into the outright epic horrors of the Badlands Raid, mostly because he was too stubborn, or looking back on it too pig-ignorant, to quit. The learning curve had been steep, if you survived.
After the war petered out in mutual exhaustion he’d led what was left of the cavalry company he’d ended up commanding into salvage work, eventually into the high-return and insanely risky long-range branch, all the way to the dead cities of the Atlantic coast where the cannibal bands were only the worst danger.
But Icepick had been a scout-and-slash specialist, anyone doing that against the Lakota had to be good at it, and salvage work deep into the death zones didn’t involve many boot-to-boot charges or even the formal minuet of a horse-archery duel. Hence he’d often ended up in this sort of situation, paddling across a river with slow strokes and a crawling awareness that someone might be about to hit him with anything from a handy rock in their hand to a twenty-four-pound glass globe shot from a catapult, full of napalm and wrapped in burning cord. Luckily it wasn’t a very wide river, less than a quarter bowshot, about the size of the Kickapoo on whose banks he’d played as a boy.
It sure doesn’t get any more fun, though, he thought mordantly.
Those long rustling barefoot summer evenings by the water seemed a very long time ago, listening to the bullfrogs and watching the first stars come out.
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