They all gave way as the Lord Protector's fleet went by, the galley Long Serpent in the lead, with thirty oars to a side, rowing a scaloccio with three men to each of the great shafts. Catapults squatted on turntables on the low planked-in forecastle and quarterdeck; the middle of the ship was open save for a catwalk down the center. The long looms rose and fell, rose and fell, every blade striking the water at a precise angle and breaking free in a trail of spray, to the slow boom… boom… boom … of the hor-tator's mallets on the drumset under the forepeak. The rowers were big brawny men, hugely muscled, wearing only short leather pants, their torsos and shaven heads gleaming with sweat, silent save for the explosive huuuuff! of breath as they rose and fell, rose and fell with the rhythm of their work. Half a dozen boys went back and forth with canvas water bottles, directing a squirt into open mouths when they were called. The smell of the rowers was rank and somehow surprisingly dry, like oxen who'd been working in the sun. A score squatted on the forecastle, waiting to relieve the next section due for a rest.
"Row well, and live," Loring murmured under his breath.
Classical reference, he thought—though in fact the film had been wrong about that. Greek and Roman rowers were free men; galley slaves were a medieval and Renaissance invention. To his surprise, Norman Arminger caught the quote.
"No slaves," the Protector said dryly, pausing as several attendants armed him. "That isn't really practical for war-craft, I've found."
Nigel nodded; he'd seen the swords and axes and bucklers clipped to the bulwarks between the benches on the trip up from Portland. From the sewer smell, less fancy tow boats pulling barges loaded with troops and horses and supplies did have crews chained to their benches. They'd passed other arrangements, one where bicycle pedals drove a propeller, and one where a big windmill whirling amidships did the same. Probably they were too complex and failure-prone to be practical just yet. Or the Lord Protector just thought galleys made a good show.
"And now if you'll excuse me… unless you'd care to spar yourself?"
"Not just now, thank you," Sir Nigel said.
Normally he tried to get in at least a little practice every day, usually with his son—who'd taught him the sword, after all—but Alleyne wasn't there. Wasn't with the flotilla, at all, although John Hordle was leaning on the railing not far away, left hand tapping idly on the long hilt of his sword. Loring didn't intend to let a potential enemy get a close-up look at his personal style with a blade. Or perhaps not so potential an enemy, either.
Nobody called Alleyne a hostage, Nigel thought, with fury that didn't reach his face. Not quite.
Arminger pulled the practice helm with its protective face screen over his head and nodded to the commander of his troop, a squat muscular man with cold blue eyes peering out of a face ugly with thick white scar tissue; that and the shaved head made it difficult to tell his age, but Loring estimated it at about forty.
"Salazar! Johnson!" Conrad Renfrew barked. Then to Arminger: "The usual reward, my lord?"
Arminger nodded again, taking up a practice sword—a yard of oak with an iron core, probably rather heavier than the two pounds or so of the real thing. The two young guardsmen did likewise. One was a little below six feet, the other a trifle above, one fair and one dark, but otherwise they were similar; in their early twenties, broad-shouldered, long-limbed, moving with deft ease in their throat-to-ankle armor despite the light pitch and roll of the deck.
"Let's see if either of you can win that horse," the ruler of Portland said. "Salazar first."
The man raised his shield and advanced; Arminger pivoted on his right heel as they circled, sword over his head with the hilt forward and blade back, the rounded top of the big kite-shaped shield up under his eyes. Then the younger man sprang. The thump and clatter of the match made good cover for a private conversation, especially when you added in the chuckle of water and the hoarse mass breathing of the rowers and the dull boom of the drum; and they both knew how to talk softly without obviously whispering. Loring leaned on the rail beside Hordle, his mild eyes blinking at the sun-sparkles off the water.
"Notice we're not on the same boat as Nobbes's folk," Hordle said. "Keeping us separate on shore too, like, as much as he can without being too obvious about it."
"He's no fool," Loring said.
"Thinks highly of himself, though, just a bit," Hordle said.
"I hope we can make something of that," Loring replied.
"Think he'll scrag us, sir? If we get the VX for 'im."
"I wouldn't put it past him," Loring replied. "But I think he'll try to enlist us first."
"But with Mau-Mau conditions."
"Quite."
That terrorist movement in Kenya had made its recruits break their own culture's taboos, acts so obscene and horrible that they felt cut off from everything but their new allegiance. They weren't the only ones who used that trick, either; it had the dual merit of securing loyalty and weeding out those with inconvenient scruples. Cannibal bands had done the same during the terrible period right after the Change.
I'm almost glad Maude didn't live this long. Things would be very awkward if she were here.
"Still, there's opportunities," Hordle said.
His eyes took in the countryside. And we've heard something about Mr. Arminger's enemies, they both thought. Anyone who disliked the Lord Protector had to have something to be said for them, and it would be strange if men with their skills couldn't make an escape. Which is why Alleyne is somewhere they can keep an eye on him.
Hordle sighed. They both knew that, too. His wide frog-like slit of a mouth quirked at Sir Nigel. He and I rescued you—now you and I will have to rescue him!
They looked up at the mountains to the south. A heliograph blinked from the top of one, a code but not Morse: blink… blinkblink... blink-blink-blink…
They looked casually down at the water sweeping by. "That's quick. Six knots."
And the heliographs would be quite quick enough to report our absence and order Alleyne killed. Their eyes met. We're going to have to be very careful about this.
"I'm sure the Lord Protector will have nothing to complain about for some time."
The white water of the Columbia broke over the snagged ruins of Bonneville Dam with a toning roar that shook the world, the bright noon sun making the froth shine like cataracts of lace fringed with diamonds as it surged between the remaining fangs of ferroconcrete. Nigel Loring shaped a silent whistle; there was no doubt at all that things were simply bigger in this part of the world, starting with the mile-wide expanse of river. The dam itself spanned that breadth across an island; the central portion with the sluicegates was the core of the ruined portion. It wasn't hard to see why, either; the rusted wreck of a big river tug rested halfway through, prow high in the air. The huge barges it had been pushing lay tumbled before it at the base of the dam's low wall, except for one tilted against its side and showing the gravel that had been its cargo; the combined weight must have been thousands of tons, and traveling fast on the crest of a flood wave from the looks of it. What the steel-and-stone battering ram of the barges had begun, the wild water of eight years had continued, until the rapids were not much worse than they'd been before the river was tamed.
"Goddamned inconvenient," Norman Arminger said from not far away, using the point of his wooden sword to indicate the broken dam and then lowering it to the deck. "For transport, that is."
The two young men-at-arms he'd been sparring with stepped back as Arminger pulled off the practice helmet with its facial mask. Below it his flushed countenance ran with sweat, and he was breathing hard; he'd just spent a goodish while sparring in relays with two men who were at least twenty years his junior, trained to a hair, and obviously not holding anything back. Nigel Loring was moderately impressed; he wouldn't have lasted quite so long before tiring dangerously himself, but then he was in his fifties rather than the Protector's midforties. The standard of swordsmanship had been high as well, though the style
was different from the one the royal forces used in England, rather more edge and less point, and more use of the bigger shield.
He looked at Hordle, and the big man nodded, seconding his impression: Quite good, but not quite of the very first rank.
Arminger tossed his gear to an attendant and pointed to their left, towards the south bank and the locks. A swarm of men and animals and cranes labored around it; their shouts and the clatter of gears came faintly through the distance, until the unearthly scream of a water-powered saw grinding rock cut through the blurring thunder.
"Repairing and adapting the locks is taking years. It was a domino effect—dams started breaking up on the Snake in the first Change Year, and when one let go the flood would go downstream, picking things up as it went. But I've got the locks at the Cascades back in operation; those were easier, built in the nineteenth century. At least it's improving the salmon catch. That's been noticeable the last couple of years."
I think the Protector is a lonely man, Nigel mused, with cold appraisal. Doesn't have many people he can talk to. And he probably thinks it's safe to talk to me, the simple straightforward soldier.
He'd been a soldier, yes. But a soldier of a particular sort; the SAS was supposed to operate behind enemy lines, and in contact with foreigners. You had to be a good judge of men, and not just of your own countrymen or the sort you'd invite to the Club.
Big Chinook salmon were thick in the water below the dam, their fins cutting through the smoother water below. Dozens leapt at the white torrents every second, falling back to rest and try once more or making it through the froth and into the solid surge above. Birds hovered and struck, ospreys and bald eagles and types he couldn't identify. A half-dozen substantial fishing boats were dipping nets slung out on booms, hauling up mounds of struggling silver.
They paused as the Protectorate's fleet came into view: sailing barges full of troops, horses, supplies; and more pulled against the current by rowing-tugs with fifteen oars a side. The Lord Protector's Long Serpent was something different, a real warship, long and low slung.
He looked around; the northern bank was hilly but fairly low, closer than most places on this enormous river; the south was steeper, rising to low mountains—or what the
Yanks might call big hills, somewhere around two thousand feet or a little less—sparsely forested in pine. One about a quarter of a mile from the water held the turreted concrete-gray bulk of a castle on a shoulder spur. Banners flew from the turrets, and the drawbridge over the dry moat was down. Lances twinkled as toy-tiny figures trotted down towards the small town that lay beside the locks. You could cover the whole area to the other bank from there, with heavy trebuchets, and most of it with dart-throwers.
The town had a wall under construction—timber forms for the concrete, and he could see wheelbarrows of head-sized rock fill going up board ramps.
"Transportation chokepoint," he said to Arminger. "But you must have a threat nearby?" The castle would have been expensive.
"The Free Cities of Yakima," Arminger said. "North of here. They survived the Change annoyingly well, all that irrigated land, and they've been even more annoyingly independent since."
Nigel nodded. Which leaves the Columbia as a long, thin corridor of your territory between hostile forces to the north and south.
Crossing Tavern, Willamette Valley, Oregon May 14th, 2007 AD—Change Year Nine
"Not exactly," Mike Havel said judiciously, methodically demolishing another fried egg and loading more hash-browns on his plate. "He holds the Hood River Valley and the Mount Hood country. It's Renfrew's fief—he's Count of Odell, as well as grand constable of the Association."
Juniper pursed her lips. "Even so, he's not going to send many men much farther east than that, not for long, not while we're at his backs. The Yakima towns are safe as long as we stand—not that they've ever helped us, the creatures."
"Don't know how long the Pendleton folks can hold him off, now that they're fightin' amongst themselves," Hutton observed.
"Or he could be relying on those castles," Havel said. "Sorry, Sir Nigel. Old strategic discussion." Loring nodded. "We saw that—"
Near Boardman, Columbia Valley, Oregon April 12th, 2007—Change Year Nine
The small earthwork fort had been in a strong position, near the crest of a low hill, with a canal between it and the Columbia, and a stretch of irrigated farmland dark-green against the lighter olive of the.higher land southward. The hilltop position hadn't helped it, or the people living in the little town near it. Bodies lay tumbled between the burnt-out snags of frame houses and double-wide trailers, or in the empty corrals. The corpses had been here for several days and that made unsightly tumbled death worse; despite the coolish weather the meat-gone-off stink was fairly bad, sweet and musky and foul at the same time, like having rancid spoiled soup spilled down the back of your throat. Nigel Loring had been fairly case-hardened even before the Change, and he had watched the death of a world after it. He still let his eyes slide slightly out of focus, which was easy for him and one of the few advantages of advancing years and the rock dust in that wadi long ago. From the look of things, by no means all of the people had died fighting, or quickly. Many still bore the broken-off stubs of arrows, or lay near the black fan of blood left when sword or ax struck. Some of them had been clumsily scalped—the whole of the hair removed, rather than the proper coin-sized patch, the work of someone who'd heard about scalping but never seen the real thing done in the old style. Some of the bodies were very small. Flies buzzed in clouds, also not as bad as they would have been in high summer, but bad enough.
The local man cursed at the sight; his horse shifted uneasily under him. They were well outside the Portland Protective Association's territory now, and they'd picked up local auxiliaries from one of the several warring parties ripping up northeastern Oregon. Sheriff Bauer had sixty riders with him, a wild-looking crew and mostly younger than his thirty-odd. Like him they wore crude helmets of hammered sheet metal, small shields—most of them with metal covers cut from old traffic signs—and breastplates of leather boiled in wax or tallow and picked out with riveted straps of metal on the more vulnerable points. Their weapons were horn-and-sinew recurve bows, knives, and heavy-bladed sabers . that looked like scaled-up machetes slung from their belts or over their shoulders.
"It's them murdering redskin devils," Bauer said; the remarks from his followers tended more to scatology. Then he looked up sharply as Arminger snorted, and barked: "You think that's funny, mister?"
"No, no, not at all, Sheriff Bauer," Arminger said, rather obviously fighting down a smile, and holding up a hand when his guards bristled at the local leader's tone. "It's just… that I've never actually heard anyone say 'murdering redskin devils' before. Not… not in real life, that is."
The leader of the horsemen visibly restrained himself. Arminger can't resist taunting, Loring thought. Bad tactics, Lord Protector. You need this man.
The sheriffs restraint was hard won, but it was there. The Protector's personal guard probably helped, twenty knights in their black mail, mounted on big glossy-coated horses. The little army of four hundred men marching along the graveled road up the slope behind helped even more, their spears neatly aligned and glittering in the spring sunshine, the ripple of lance points, slung crossbows swaying, the beat of booted feet and ironshod hooves. Light carts followed behind, some carrying supplies; a few bore dart-throwers on two-wheeled carriages. The roadway was gullied in spots where flash floods had struck or culverts blocked, and some of the bridges were down, but it was still passable for wheeled traffic if you weren't in a tearing hurry.
"I suggest you go look for the, ah, murdering redskins, Sheriff," Arminger said. "Take some of my scouts with you."
The sheriff did; the scouts were on range-stock quarter horses, lightly armed with horn bow and sword and dagger, wearing only mesh-mail vests and open-faced helmets beside their wool-and-leather uniforms. They spread out in a broad web and trotted off; B
auer's riders shook themselves out into clumps and bands and straggled away after them over the rolling country eastward, some of them whooping and showing off with riding tricks, standing in the saddle for a moment, or running along beside their trotting horses and leaping back up.
"What are they fighting about?" Loring asked, as the Protector and his men fell in at the head of the column, heading eastward and a little south of the river.
"Who's to rule, essentially," the lord of Portland said. "This is harder country to make a living off than the Willamette, particularly without powered farming machinery or pumps or hybrid seed or fertilizers. And there were more survivors here initially, so the rare good bits like this irrigated land are precious. It's just sinking in that the only way to avoid a lifetime of very, very hard work is to skim off somebody else's hard work and nobody wants to volunteer to be skimmed. That's it when you boil it down and subtract the personal feuds and the slogans." He smiled. "I've acquired quite a few valuable followers from around here in the past year or so."
One of the Protectorate scouts rode up: a small, wiry young man on a light, fast horse; the binoculars at his saddlebow marked him as an officer.
"About three miles that way, my lord, and coming fast when they don't get in each other's way," he said. "Four hundred strong, give or take fifty. The locals are mixing it in with them, but not doing too well."
He pointed eastward and offered a folded map with his thumb marking a place. The Protector's guard captain grunted and glanced a question; the Protector gave a slight jerk of his head, and a volley of orders and trumpet calls followed. The force from the west shook itself out from column into a line that straddled the road-—blocks of spearmen alternating with crossbows, with the lancers on the right where the ground was more open. The men's faces were mostly blankly impassive under the helms, sweat cutting runnels through the road dirt; a few grinned eagerness or the semblance of it, and a few others looked tightly nervous.
The Protector's War Page 50