The Scourge of God c-2

by S. M. Stirling

  What the pseudo-Hugh was looking at was a cluster of men examining the gate and its heavy valves of metal-sheathed timber.

  BD had never seen the gear they wore, but she'd heard of it, and seen sketches by agents and far-traveling merchants. Armor of steel hoops and bands to protect the torso and shoulders, fastened with a complex set of brass latches; high boots; rounded helmets with neck-flares and hinged cheek-pieces and short cap-bill pieces over the eyes. All of them carried broad short stabbing swords, worn high on the right side of their belts… except for the man with a transverse crest on his helmet, who had his on his left hip. He also bore a swagger-stick or truncheon of twisted vinestock, tapping the end into his left palm. Closer and BD could see that he had a red kerchief tucked into the neck of his armor.

  Boise regulars, she thought. United States Army, as far as they're concerned. Sixth Regiment, from the shoulder-flashes.

  There was plenty of time to watch the commander with the vinestock pace about examining the gate and the two square flanking towers, since the usual evening crush of wagons and carts was trying to get through-and moving more slowly than usual, as the guards checked them with extra care. The strangers in the odd armor weren't shy about getting in people's way, either.

  "Christ, civvies!" their officer said. "It's thick and it's solid, and that's all you can say for it. You could bring a covered ram right up to the gate!"

  "Fubarred," his companion with the sergeant's chevrons on the short mail-sleeve said. "Looks like they based the design on an illustration from a book of faerie tales my mother used to read to me, Captain."

  The officer reached out, a slight smile on his hard clean-shaven face, and playfully rapped the swagger-stick on the man's helmet. The steel went bonk under the tough wood of the vinestock.

  "That's Centurion, Sergeant. The rank structure's been modernized."

  "Yessir, Centurion. Glad President Martin got around to it, sir. It's a wonder we… or someone… didn't take 'em over before this if this is their capital. Lewiston has a lot better defenses and it wouldn't be a pimple on Boise's ass."

  "Considerations of high policy, soldier-and stick to business. It'll be a lot better with a couple of eighteen-pounders and some heavy darters up top, on turntables and with steel shields. We'll put the lifting triangle right there and-"

  The line inched forward. The gate-keepers were militiamen, ordinary shopkeepers and craftsmen taking the duty in turn with their homemade armor over normal working clothes. One of the Bossman's personal guard was there too, besides the usual clerk to collect the customs dues-yet another local term for shakedown. He was a big young man in a hammered-steel breastplate and helmet with ostrich plumes, above tight red-dyed pants and elaborately tooled thigh-boots turned down to the knee; she guessed that someone had been looking through an illustrated book when they designed the outfit.

  Or possibly the cover of a bodice-ripper, she thought wryly. Or maybe that book of faerie tales. If he had pointed ears and whiskers, he'd be a dead ringer for Puss in Boots.

  A small mustache of the type Pendleton men favored was fiery red as well, naturally so judging from his milk-white-and-sunburn complexion. He took the letter and read it through slowly, moving his lips, then went and examined the opened box in the wagon.

  "All right!" he said. "Fan-fucking- tastic. Go right on through, ma'am! I'll report this to the Bossman's House. No, you fool," he went on to the clerk. "Weapons imports are duty free for the duration of the emergency."

  The Boise centurion looked up from a sketchbook. "Weapons?" he said.

  Strolling over he looked into the crate and took one of the swords out. It was a straight longsword in a plain sheath of black leather over wooden battens, with aluminum at chape and lip; he drew the thirty-inch blade and looked down the edge, then hefted it to test the balance.

  "Not bad. This is well-made equipment, for its type."

  "Yeah, it is," the Bossman's guard said.

  He didn't bother to keep the hard note out of his voice. There was a badge on his shoulder that had three intertwined capital R's, but despite the appearance it wasn't a Rancher's brand… exactly. That stood for Registered Refugee Regiment. Technically the man was a Registered Refugee, roughly equivalent to a slave in Pendleton, except that the men of the Regiment belonged to Bossman Carl Peters. Who had either come up with the idea on his own or gotten it out of some book on Middle Eastern history; its members had privileges ordinary freemen could only envy, and were correspondingly unpopular with townsmen and Ranchers both.

  They were fanatically loyal to their benefactor and the two hundred of them were a major reason the current incumbent had managed to survive and hold on to power far longer than any previous overlord here.

  The young man went on: "And they're for the Bossman. Our Bossman, His Honor Carl Peters. Any problem with that, straight-leg?"

  "None at all, Lieutenant, none at all," the centurion said; he didn't seem at all put out by the unflattering term for a regular. "Our leaders are all in alliance to serve America, right?"

  Which would have been more tactful if he hadn't used the tone a man would humoring a boy. BD left them talking with strained politeness as they went through into Pendleton proper. It was darker inside the walls; the streets were straight and fairly wide-especially Emigrant, down which they traveled-and the potholes had been repaired with packed gravel or remelted asphalt. But the town had been built up, two-or three-story structures of adobe or salvaged brick and wood frame standing cheek by jowl with others that had been kept unaltered for a century or more to preserve Pendleton's Old-West atmosphere before the Change. And…

  "Hugh" was up walking beside her wagon now; his six foot seven was tall enough that they could talk quietly even with her sitting on the driver's seat and him hunched over and lurching. You tended to forget how tall he was until he came close, because he was even broader in proportion, built like an old-time high-rise, square from shoulders to hips.

  "Lot of men in town," he said, in a voice with a soft drawling burr.

  There were; young men, mostly. Many of them were ordinary cowboys from the ranches of Northeastern Oregon, but some were in uniforms of mottled sage-and-gray cloth, or coarse blue-green. Every second building seemed to house a saloon or eating-house or some combination on its ground floor, or to have been converted to such; the air was thick with the smell of frying onions and grilling meat, and sweat and horse manure and piss and beer and the sour tang of vomit, loud with raucous guitars and pianos and voices singing or shouting. And every building had the Pendleton flag flying, which was unusual.

  As the sun dipped below the walls behind them the dark grew thick; Pendleton didn't run to streetlights, even lamps at crossroads like Sutterdown's, much less the sophisticated methane gaslights of Corvallis or Portland. The yellow glow from windows made it possible to steer the wagons without running over anyone… if you were careful of figures collapsed half off the sidewalks.

  They came to their destination, a compound taking up half a block, with a discreet MURDOCH AND SONS, IMPORTERS over the main gate and a blank twelve-foot wall all around the perimeter, not quite a fortification, but a real deterrent in the sort of factional squabble the city had had before the current Bossman took over.

  The building just before it had a large sign reading WORKING GIRLS' HOTEL, and it was in the ornate stone and terra-cotta style of long ago, a century or more before the Change. Some of the girls were leaning out of the upper windows wearing very little, and shouting invitations that sounded more than usually tired and frazzled. Just as the Plodding Pony wagons passed, a figure catapulted out through the swinging doors and sprawled in the dirt of the street with a thud. He'd come with a boot in the buttocks, and lay for a second sobbing with rage and frustration and the raw whiskey that made his movements vague and tentative.

  "Whoa!" BD shouted.

  Her not-cousin grabbed at the team's bridles. Together they kept three tons of Conestoga and sixteen hooves from rolling over the
prostrate figure.

  The man tried to get up again; it was Rancher Jenson's cowboy George. He lay for a moment with horse dung in the fuzzy sheepskin of his chaps, and then rolled aside to dodge the saddle, saddlebags, bedroll, quiver and cased recurve bow that were tossed after him. He clumsily scooped the arrows back into the quiver and used the saddle to push himself partially erect.

  "I want my money back!" he screamed from one knee, fumbling at his belt for his shete. "And my horse!"

  A thick-set woman in a sequined dress came to the doors and leaned out. A massively built man loomed behind her, a classic whorehouse bully in a tight crimson shirt and expensive blue jeans, belt with a silver-and-turquoise buckle and tooled boots with fretted steel toe caps, his eyes flatly impassive and an iron rod in one fist. He pointed with it, and the cowboy let the hilt of his blade go. It was the woman who spoke, in a harsh raw voice:

  "Kid, at your age if you can't get it going after twenty minutes with the Buffalo Heifer, you need a doctor, not a whore."

  There were grins and laughter up and down the street as she went on: "And you didn't have enough money to pay for what you gambled anyway. Be thankful we didn't keep the rest of your gear for kickin' up a fuss. Next time leave the sheep alone for a while before you come into town, rube."

  The young cowboy staggered on past, the saddle flung over one shoulder. BD caught his gaze for an instant; it was sick with an unfocused rage that must be eating at his soul like acid, and she winced slightly in unwilling sympathy.

  And some of the strangers were looking around them entirely too alertly for soldiers whooping it up before action. The crawling sensation between her shoulder blades didn't go away until they'd swung the wagon train into Murdoch's courtyard.

  "Welcome, BD!" Murdoch said.

  He was a middle-aged balding man, heavyset in a way rare nowadays, with thick brown muttonchop whiskers whose luxuriant curls compensated for his bald spot. He also wore what Pendleton currently regarded as a respectable businessman's evening dress-a good imitation of pre-Change copper-riveted Levi's tucked into tooled boots with pointed toes, fancy belt with ceremonial bowie knife, ruffled white shirt, floppy string tie, a cutaway tailcoat in good brown homespun, and a waistcoat embroidered in gold thread, with a watch and chain as well. The formal felt Stetson with its band of silver conchos was in his hands, and he looked as if he was not crushing it with an effort of will.

  "Good to see you, BD, good to see you," he burbled. "Let's get the cargo into place!"

  Grooms had led the teams away. Workers appeared and began unloading the wagons, and a steward led the Plodding Pony employees to a bunkhouse. BD stopped her chief guard with a hand on the arm.

  "Tia?" he said.

  "Don't get settled in, Chucho," she said quietly. "Just water and feed the horses, load some oats, then hitch up. Tell the gate guards and the people at the barricade out on 84 that you're heading for the Circle D, but don't turn off at Jenson's place. Keep going west; push the horses as hard as you can without killing them."

  He nodded, unsurprised. They were working for the Kyklos and the Meeting, and they were getting paid for it… but the family business could do without losing its capital assets, too.

  And I like Dobben and Maggie, she thought. I've traveled a lot of miles staring at those equine rumps.

  "Hugh" helped with the crates, slobbering and grunting but heaving two at a time up onto his broad stooped shoulders. When the last of them was stacked, Murdoch made a production of giving his day laborers their pay, with a little extra for the ones who worked for him regularly.

  "You boys get on home to your families," he said. "And Sim, tell the house staff they can go home early. With my wife and the boys off visiting relatives, I can shift for myself tonight."

  One of them grinned at him, a youngish man. " I'm goin' next door, patron," he said.

  "It's your money now that I've given it to you, Stan," Murdoch said. "Remember, tomorrow's a holiday-time off for the Bossman's speech. See y'all at the House!"

  They left, swinging the big entry doors of the warehouse closed. Murdoch's smile ran away from his face as they did, and he checked the lock on the smaller entry door beside it, moving confidently in the darkness, as a man did when he was intimately familiar with a place.

  "This is bad tradecraft, letting two agents know each other's identities," he said in a voice that was much colder and had less of the twanging local accent when he turned to face them. "All these years we've been doing business and I didn't know you worked for the Lady Regent until I got that message-"

  " With, not for, Ben," BD said patiently. "I'm a perfectly genuine businesswoman. I just do… things on the side sometimes."

  And pull yourself together, Ben. It's hard enough to control my own nerves without having to deal with other people's.

  "And maintaining your cover isn't going to be important soon," she went on. "Or do you want to be here when the trebuchets start throwing thousand-pound rocks and bundles of incendiaries over the wall? Even Sandra can't make sure a siege engine doesn't drop a boulder or a jug of napalm on your head."

  He was silent for a moment, fiddling with an expensive incandescent-mantle lantern; then it lit with a hiss, and a circle of yellow-white light drove the dense blackness back.

  "No," he said quietly. "That's why I got my family out on the train to Walla Walla last week. But I've… been here and in this character for a long time. Since the War of the Eye. I keep slipping mentally and thinking I am my cover. And… I've got friends here. My wife was born here, and so were my children. I don't want to see Pendleton wrecked 'in order to save it.' "

  "Going native?"

  A sigh. "No, not really. It's not such a bad place…"

  "If you don't end up sold to the woolen mills, or the Working Girls' Hotel, or worse," BD said. "Besides, hopefully we can make things a lot easier on the ordinary people. I'm not a great fan of the PPA, but even they don't do that sort of thing."

  Anymore, she tactfully left unvoiced, and went on aloud:

  "That's what this mission is all about, at least as far as I'm concerned. Plus the strategic stuff about keeping the Prophet and Boise at bay."

  Murdoch nodded. Then he started as the big man beside BD straightened, took the soft pieces of rubber out of his cheeks, spat on the concrete floor, and pulled a pillow from under his coat. Suddenly he seemed much bigger… and not simple at all. And when he took off his gloves, the auburn fuzz on the backs of the great spade-shaped paws was a horrible mismatch for the raven thatch on his head.

  Murdoch's eyes bulged. "You're-"

  "John Hordle, at your service," he said, in the rich accent of rural Hampshire, still strong after a generation here in the Western lands.

  "You're Little John Hordle! The one who killed Big Mac!"

  "The very same. That disguise works a treat, even if you 'ave to drool an' slobber a bit. A bit undignified, innit? Still, it's worth it. Not so easy to hide, when you're my size."

  Murdoch nodded. "Come on, then."

  "You know," the big man said as they walked towards the office that was partitioned off from the floor of the two-story warehouse, "back when I was a nipper in 'ampshire growing up around the Pied Merlin-me dad's family's pub-I always fancied the Wild West. Clint Eastwood an' all them old shows on the telly. Shame to have me romantic notions ruined, innit?"

  He jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the doors and the courtyard, and the street beyond:

  "Or maybe it was different before the Change, the first time?"

  "Not much," BD said. "Except they had guns so it was louder, and there wasn't a city wall, so it might have been less crowded. There were forty saloons and sixteen bordellos here back when it was a real cow-town with about two thousand people."

  "It's the mobilization," Murdoch said defensively. "The town's bursting at the seams right now-it's worse than the Whoop-Up. And you saw the foreigners?"

  "Yes. The Boise men I recognized, but…"

  "CUT," Mur
doch said grimly. "Not just the wandering preachers-we've been getting them for years-but soldiers and officials out of Corwin."

  "When?" Hordle said.

  "A few of them two weeks ago, then the rest just the past three days; and it's not just troops, there are high officers of both them and the Boiseans quartered at the Bossman's House. The Cutters are acting in concert with the Boise people. Carl Peters invited them in, but…"

  "But the bugger has forgotten the saying about the camel's nose. Quick work on the villains' part, though," John Hordle said. "And we're not before time, eh?"

  Murdoch put the lantern down on a desk for a moment, and then stepped to the rear wall of the office where a picture hung.

  "I could let you down with the winch," he said. "But that section's closed off from the rest on the inside. This part doesn't officially exist-"

  The picture was a Remington print set in an ornate frameCoronado's March, all desert and dust and lances and armored Conquistadores. BD glanced at it, then suddenly realized…

  You know, down in the Southwest, something precisely like that might be happening right now and that could be a photograph of it.

  She shivered slightly and set the thought aside. If you'd lived through the past couple of decades, you got used to things like that; you also got used to pushing them away when they hit you again.

  There was a click as the merchant-spy's fingers explored the frame of the print, and then a section of wall the size of a small door swung open. He led them into the staircase beyond; the temperature fell as they descended through dirt held back by boards and then into a broad tunnel of coarse light-textured volcanic rock like hard dense pumice.

  The lantern left a moving bubble of light in darkness Stygian enough to make the nighttime streets seem like noonday, showing ancient posters and even dust-choked storefront windows. There was a cold smell of abandonment and mouse droppings, like an old house where nobody had lived for a while.