The Tears of the Sun tc-5

by S. M. Stirling

  Not just Cutters. Not rancher levies. That’s the Sword of the Prophet.

  The savage training of the House of the Prophet in Corwin bit deep, and it marked a man more than the scars of fire. She let herself look alarmed and curious, with a bit of a gape; it was a mark of the discipline of the riders that not one of them turned his head aside to glance at a good-looking young woman. When the last of them rode by and the short train of two-wheel carts that carried their minimal bagged had passed she blew out her cheeks

  “Those guys look serious,” Ian said quietly.

  “ Tell me. We had a bunch of them chase us from not far east of here all the way to Nantucket. Nothing stopped them except killing.”

  “That frightened off the others?”

  “No, I mean nothing stopped them except killing them all. All except the last five.”

  “Determined.”

  “ Ai, you have no idea. There were over five hundred to begin with.”

  “ Very determined. So five gave up?”

  “That was after my big brother had the Sword of the Lady. That can

  … do things… even to them.”

  “Oh.”

  “Note that the Sword of the Lady is a long way away from us, right now. But the Sword of the Prophet is right here, and so are some of the Seekers.”

  “Yeah, that had occurred to me now and then.”

  Traffic took a while to unsnarl, but eventually it started moving again and they crossed, over the tree-lined river and to the high steel portals of the gate-complex, then through its tunnel darkness and into the city. The city wall was high, about the same as Portland’s, but they hadn’t bothered coating it in stucco-old Lawrence Thurston had been an inhumanly businesslike man. She didn’t know if Boise really smelled a little worse than it had last time, or that was her imagination; it certainly wasn’t bad compared to some she’d sniffed, and positively fragrant next to the coal-smoke reek of giant Des Moines. There was no way to cram tens of thousands of human beings and their fires and forges and animals inside a wall and not have it smell bad to country-bred noses.

  “Ah, the smell of civilization,” Ritva said.

  Ian snorted, then said: “I think we drop off the sheep here inside the gate. Isn’t that the sign Woburn told us about? And I’d better become mute, it’s what it says on my draft exemption papers.”

  A broad avenue led eastward from the river gate to a golden-domed building that had been the State capitol; the walled citadel that held the General-President’s residence was south of it.

  Last time here I was an honored guest, when we were heading east to the Sunrise Lands. Now I’m a spy and I’ll be tortured and killed if they catch me. It’s an up-and-down life in the Dunedain Rangers!

  Like most walled cities there had been a lot of infilling since the Change, second stories added to houses and new workshops built. Like the more closely regulated cities, Boise also had a stretch of cleared land just inside the fortifications, letting troops move quickly in an emergency. It also served as holding pens for livestock; each dealer had a sign with his name and license number. It was all very orderly, as far as anything concerned with sheep and other beasts with wills of their own could be. They turned the flock in between the wattle hurdles and into the corral. They quieted quickly; sheep weren’t intelligent enough to figure out what humans had in mind for them. Unlike pigs. Pigs were dangerous in large numbers, for exactly that reason.

  The contractor who’d bought Woburn’s sheep was a weathered middle-aged man; he took a look at the flock with an experienced flick of the eyes, scanning for sickness or scrawny individuals. Then he went through and checked a few at random to make sure they were what they appeared. The sheep were mostly overage ewes, sold off when their best wool and lambing days were done. The hides would bring nearly as much as their tough stringy meat, with leather in such demand for the war, but soldiers weren’t picky eaters either.

  He had an assistant, a youngster in his late teens with stained working clothes and a shepherd’s crook. He was staring at Ritva, which wasn’t unusual, but there was as much hostility as jittery adolescent lust in it. He was silent until she handed over the invoice with Woburn’s signature.

  “What are you doing with that?” he said. “Why isn’t the man handling it?”

  “I’m giving it to your boss, stranger,” she said mildly. “And you should mind your own business.”

  “ You’ve no business handling that, girl,” he said. “You should be home, and dressed decent. Let men do men’s business. The day is coming-”

  Ritva stuck a finger in the young man’s face, the point almost touching his nose, and he jarred to a halt in astonishment.

  “Who is this asshole?” she asked the dealer.

  “He badgers the flocks for me around the town pens,” the man said. “And he’s my cousin’s kid, for my sins. That side of the family has been listening to the new preachers.”

  “He pisses off the people you do business with,” she said; Ian was keeping quiet, in case anyone was struck by his accent. “And my brother here is mute, or he’d be pissed off.”

  Which accounts for why he isn’t in the army, she thought.

  “The little dick ain’t me,” the dealer pointed out. “And the sheep don’t mind his disposition.”

  He signed the spare copy, and took out a checkbook with the grizzly bear logo of the First National Bank of Boise on its cover. Ritva had just turned to untie her horse string when the sheep-badger spat on her foot.

  “Sorry,” he said with a sneer. “Aiming for the dirt.”

  Very slowly, she turned around again and smiled at him. The grab and twist that followed were almost too swift to see; the young man had just enough time to clutch himself and screech before he folded up and fell to the ground, with his tongue waving in his speechless mouth like an undersea weed.

  Ritva waited for an instant, then kicked the fallen man twice with cold deliberation, hard enough that the steel-reinforced toe of her boot made thudding sounds with a very satisfying undertone of crunch but not hard enough to kill. He began to whimper, and then vomit in helpless choking, gasping heaves. Blood and bits of tooth came along with the contents of his stomach, a sour bite under the warmer musky smells of sheep and sheepdung and straw.

  “Any problems?” she said to the contractor, using the fallen man’s hat to wipe her boot and then throwing it into the puddle of puke.

  He grinned. “Wanted to do that all this year myself, but he is family. Let’s get you gone before the Natpols”-he meant the National Police, who were Boise’s constabulary-“show up. Here’s the check and give my regards to Rancher Woburn. I’ll take care of the dogs the usual way.”

  She folded it and tucked it into a pocket; she’d cash it if possible. Woburn’s cover story was that she and Ian were bandits who’d jumped the legitimate drovers and run off the flock and stolen the documentation, and he had cowboys of his own ready to swear to it. Whether that would help if the current regime in Boise decided he was guilty was another matter, but he was ready to take the chance. When they were far enough away not to cause any curiosity about a mute speaking, Ian muttered: “Wasn’t that a bit conspicuous?”

  “Only in the right way. Judging from the people we met on our way here, that was a perfectly credible reaction. People in Boise the city think of cowboys… and cowgirls… as the type who take offense. And he did spit on my foot, sweetie.”

  “Remind me never to spit on you. Of course, I doubt I’d be inclined to. You play rough, don’t you?”

  Ritva shrugged and made a slight moue of distaste. “The little orch was a Cutter. I’ve hardly ever met a Cutter I didn’t want to kick to death, and I’ve met quite a few. And my father had a saying… I’m not old enough to remember him saying it but Aunt Astrid is… that you should always kick a man when he’s down. It’s much easier then.”

  “You don’t think he’ll come after you?”

  “Probably not. He might have if I’d left it at th
e playful little tweak to the crotch. But as Dad said, if you leave the mark of your boot-leather on a man’s face, he’s going to remember who won the fight every single day.”

  She added parenthetically: “Men are sort of silly that way. You have to… to… be firm with them sometimes. Not sensible ones like you, of course.”

  Ian nodded, giving her an odd look. Then he said: “Should we be looking around ourselves so much? I mean, it’s a big city but we’re supposed to be natives.”

  “No, we’re supposed to be hicks from the backlands,” Ritva said. “Believe me, we’d stand out if we didn’t gawk.”

  “It is big, bigger than Lethbridge. I’ve never seen anything this size. Amazing! It reminds me of my parents’ stories about Edmonton. They lived there before the Change, then they got out early and went to join my uncle on the farm up in the Peace River country. Is Portland this big?”

  “Boise’s even bigger than Portland. By about a quarter, say seventy thousand people. Only half the size of Des Moines, but that’s just ridiculously big, like everything there. Iowa gave me hives.”

  It had been only two years since the Quest passed through Boise, and much remained the same; people still moved with a brisk purposefulness, there was less noise than you’d expect, and squads swept up even the horse dung almost as soon as it fell.

  But some things have changed, oh, yes.

  The big, vividly tinted posters on four-sided hoardings still marked every crossroad within, color lithographs of the type you might see advertising a merchant venturer’s ship fitting out in Newport or an upcoming tournament or guild festival in Portland. But the emphasis was very different. Before, they’d mostly been of implausibly square-jawed men and women doing various tasks; soldiers, of course, but also nurses, farmers, smiths, weavers, potters, scholars, mothers, all looking forward with set purpose and some patriotic slogan below to complement the industriously patriotic things they were doing above.

  Now they came in only two varieties. One showed the faces of President-General Martin Thurston and the starved-wolf, shaven-headed countenance of the Prophet Sethaz, both looking off into a distance of blue sky and white clouds and glowing sunlight. Beneath the picture was printed:

  TOGETHER WE ASCEND in great block capitals.

  The rest were of a soldier in Boise’s hoop-armor and big shield, advancing forward with only his eyes showing over the rim and his sword held down for the thrusting stroke; behind him were a stolid-looking farmer or laborer hoeing, and a woman carrying a child and wearing an ankle-length skirt with her eyes cast down beneath a kerchief. The words read:

  FIGHT! WORK! BELIEVE! OBEY!

  “Now, tell me. Is this the viewpoint of the good side or the bad side?” Ritva murmured very quietly.

  “Well, it’s not so different from what the PPA puts out, sometimes.”

  “Oh… well, they’re not that bad. Not anymore.”

  They turned into a side street, past a mouth-watering display of fruit and vegetable shops that extended back into the low buildings like Aladdin’s cave of treasures: baskets of blackberries glistening like dark jewels, raspberries red as blood with cherries a darker color, golden apricots and orange pumpkins and red-yellow blushing peaches and nectarines, vividly colored peppers and aubergines, lettuces and radishes and more. Boise ate well from the intensively worked small farms in the rich irrigated country round about. That gave way to a stretch of leatherworkers specializing in saddles-everyone there seemed grimly busy on government contracts-and then a series of two-, three-, and four-story buildings that had been linked together and reworked with more chimneys and other modern improvements including automatic-valve watering troughs along the pavement outside. A newbuilt wall surrounded what had been a big parking lot, now courtyard and stables, and wrought-iron letters above the gate proclaimed: DROVER’S DELIGHT INN COWBOYS WELCOME FIGHTS ARE NOT CLEAN FACILITIES FOR ALL BUDGETS MEALS REASONABLE HOT WATER FREE

  “This is where we stay. Or get arrested for torture and death, if anyone blabbed,” Ritva said cheerfully.

  Privately she was prickly aware of all her weapons; she didn’t intend to be taken alive.

  Am I getting more nervous as I get older? Or is it just getting more real to me. I remember how Mary and I used to go whooping in having a high old time and being excited and everything… says the crone of twenty-two. Oh, well.

  Everything looked normal enough. In particular there was no ominous quietness; in fact everyone was dashing around with the normal quotient of quarreling and laughing and the odd drunk snoozing in corners. As they watched, an active one was ejected by three of the staff, one on each arm and one holding his legs. They gave a concerted heave-ho, and he landed in a trough with a tremendous splash and a volley of screamed curses. A nearby Natpol trooper in leather armor and green uniform laughed and strolled over. His crossbow was slung over one shoulder, and his dagger and short sword at his waist, but he had a yard of nightstick in his hand, made from dark heavy iron-hard mountain mahogany. He twirled it around by the thong above the handle, then stood tapping the business end into his left palm as the inn’s staff led out a saddled horse and followed it with a hide sack that probably contained the drunk’s worldly goods.

  The drunk sobered rapidly, between the cold water and the grinning policeman; he swung into the saddle with a wet slap of soaked denim against leather and walked his horse into the traffic.

  “You save me a lot of trouble, Charlie,” the Natpol said to the man who’d been on the legs. “Sometimes I think I should split my pay with you, damned if I don’t.”

  “Damn cowpokes get sand in their throats and think they can wash it out with whiskey,” Charlie grumbled. Then he nodded to Ritva and Ian: “Help you?”

  “We just got in and dropped off a flock from Hasty Creek ranch up in the Camas prairie country, with an army contractor name of Wadley,” Ritva said. “My brother and I need the usual for a couple of days. Got some business to do before we head back.”

  “Hasty Creek?” Charlie said; he was in his late thirties, a heavyset man with glossy brown muttonchop whiskers, light eyes and muscle under fat, and a white apron over his clothes. “Your credit’s good, then. Settle up the day before you leave, but just to be sure you pay for a full day if you’re not out by noon that day.”

  “That’s fine.”

  The Natpol was about Charlie’s age, but trimmer; he walked with a slight limp, probably from his army service. She remembered from her last time here that the police were a reserved occupation for veterans, with those who had non-disabling injuries getting special preference. Lawrence Thurston had always taken good care of his followers, though Ritva disliked the whole concept of a single police force.

  Well, you could call the Dunedain a police force in peacetime, I suppose, but nobody has to use us and we don’t patrol streets and look for petty thieves, we chase real bandits and things like that. And Ian’s people, the Force, the redcoats, got their start about the same way. This National Police thing with one of them in every village still seems unnatural and I don’t like it.

  “Your papers, miss, sir?” the policeman said courteously. “Just in?”

  “Just in this morning,” Ritva said; it was around noon. “My brother can’t talk. Never could, nobody can tell why.”

  She handed over the passportlike folders. The trooper checked through them rapidly, looking up to confirm the photographs; duplicating those quickly without attracting attention had been the most difficult part of the help Woburn and St. Hilda’s had given them. Luckily Woburn was a district magistrate, and the monastery had a photographic section as part of its high school. There was a central record, and…

  We’re fucked if he goes to the trouble of checking it, but that would take a while anyway, she thought, as she smiled sweetly at the man.

  He read them conscientiously. They stated that Jane and Jacob Conway had been adopted by a couple of Woburn’s retainers after being found wandering emaciated and alone in the winter of the secon
d Change Year. That was towards the tail end of the utter chaos, when such things were still common even in areas of high survival like Iowa. It would account for Ian’s muteness too. People scarred by their experiences in the terrible years were common enough, and would be for another generation.

  “This is all in order. Please remember that the rules have to be tighter in a city with so many people living together.”

  “See you, Charlie,” he added to the innkeeper.

  “See you, Johnny,” the man replied.

  Ian and Ritva dismounted, and Charlie casually went on: “Impressive, those bones, aren’t they?”

  “Mammoth, Mr. Gleam,” Ritva said.

  That was the primitive sign-countersign they’d arranged; besides being a business partner of Woburn’s, Charlie Gleam had a sister who was a member of St. Hilda’s, and Woburn had foreseen the need for a quiet channel into the capital years ago.

  Gleam bustled them into the courtyard, with just enough care for the retainers of an important man but not enough to make anyone wonder why two nondescript-

  Well, unusually and strikingly good-looking but otherwise nondescript.

  – drovers were getting special treatment. The staff hurried off with their horses, Gleam handed over a key and told them their room number, and they both made a beeline for the bathhouse. That was pointedly encouraged by several signs and heavy hints from the staff, too. If an inn wanted to keep the bedding free of miniature freeloaders that was essential. From what she’d heard people in the business say, the Brannigans in Sutterdown for instance, it was a never-ending struggle anyway, an insectile version of the way the Rangers had to keep whacking down bandits in the outlands with strong soap and hot water the equivalents of blade, bow and noose.

  The facilities were segregated by gender, as was common almost everywhere in traveler’s inns, even in those run by peoples like Mackenzies or Dunedain who didn’t bother among themselves. She grinned at the attendant, grinned even more at the sight of the boiler and buckets, and turned her clothes and the replacements in the saddlebags over to be washed. The locked trunk on one of the packhorses would be deposited in their room safely enough; the worst possible thing she could do would be to hover over it like a mother hen.