The Scourge of God c-2

by S. M. Stirling

  "Welcome to Underground Pendleton," Murdoch said, a little nervous as he went on: "Dug by the Chinese."

  "Chinese?" Hordle said.

  "There were a lot of Chinese workers here once," Murdoch said; he seemed to have a perverse pride in local history, even the more questionable bits. "They dug tunnels so they could get from one part of town to another. It's easy, the rock's soft and cuts like cheese."

  "Why not use the streets?"

  "Because the local Anglo-Saxons had a habit of shooting them on sight for no particular reason besides a dislike of Chinamen," Murdoch said.

  "I've 'eard of the underground economy, but this is ridiculous," Hordle said. "Roit useful for what we've in mind, though. You said there was tunnels, but this is a bloody maze, mate."

  "Then they used part of it for illegal businesses, and then for tourists before the Change," Murdoch went on. "It's all shut up now, too dark and stuffy to be useful. Officially I just have some storage chambers down here… but your people have been going over the plans and… ah, here we are!"

  He came to a stout door and knocked three times quickly and three times slowly before opening it, letting out light and warmer air and a pleasant smell of burning pinewood. The chamber was brightly lit, by lamps and by a small hearth built into-or dug out of-one wall; Hordle blew out his lips in an expression of relief at the score of figures seated within around a long plank table, with the remains of a meal scattered about.

  The burble of Sindarin conversation died away as the door opened, though several waved to BD as to an old friend. BD understood the Elven-tongue well enough, since she'd been hiring Dunedain Rangers for caravan security for years, and it was the language they usually spoke among themselves. She'd been working with them as long as they'd existed, in fact, though to listen to some of them you'd think their grandparents had stepped off the boat from Numenor, having quietly skipped the Fourth Age somehow.

  Sometimes she shuddered to think what the generation born in steads like Stardell Hall in Mithrilwood would be like, raised by crazed Changelings with their heads full of stories they believed.

  And they make me feel old, she thought.

  Hordle and Alleyne Loring were the eldest of them all at forty. Astrid Larsson and Eilir Mackenzie were thirty-six; and they'd been the founders of the Dunedain. The rest of the party were in their late teens or their twenties. All of them were in Dunedain working gear-black leather and wool, mostly, and soft-soled elf-boots, but with the tree-stars-and-crown blazon on their chests done in dark gray, rather than silver-white. One of the nearest was a striking woman in her thirties with bowl-cut hair that was naturally the color that dye had given Hordle's own brown curls, and leaf-green eyes the same color as her mother, Juniper's.

  Hello, luv, Hordle Signed to the black-haired woman; she looked up with a smile from a litter of maps.

  And aloud, since the three bright lanterns hung from the rocky ceiling and the firelight gave ample light for Eilir's lip-reading skills:

  "Well, dear, I'm 'ome."

  No, you're in a cave under an enemy city full of thousands of people who'd like to kill us all, Eilir replied; she was still smiling, but there was a bit of a bite in the gestured speech. Our children are back home in Stardell wondering where the hell we are and when we'll be back.

  Hordle winced.

  "No problem with the weapons, John?" Alleyne Loring said, mercifully changing the subject.

  He spoke English for Murdoch's sake, in an accent as British as Hordle's, but of the manor-and-public-school variety, and smoothed his close-trimmed yellow mustache with a finger.

  "Dead easy." A deep chuckle. "No better way to smuggle weapons than in wagonloads of… weapons! No problem getting our lot in?"

  "You're the last, old chap. They've tightened up their security, but they're still not stopping harmless unarmed wanderers in ones and twos."

  "You'd better get the gear unloaded and get ready," Murdoch warned. "I don't think the Bossman will send his people over for his weapons tonight, but I'm not absolutely sure he won't… and there are more men in town than you expected."

  "Cutters. And Boise regulars," John Hordle said, repeating the details that Sandra Arminger's spy had given him. "Seems the Bossman got an attack of the nerves and decided 'e needed some friends."

  "Tsk," Alleyne Loring said. "He forgot the origins of England."

  Murdoch and BD looked at him, and there was a grim smile on his handsome fine-boned face as he went on:

  "The first English in England-two outlaw chiefs from Jutland named Hengist and Horsa and their merry, hairy band of pirate cutthroats-"

  "Sound like lads after me own heart," Hordle observed.

  "-were invited in by a chief of the Britons named Vortigern. The Romans had withdrawn, and Vortigern had a problem with the Picts kicking up their heels. He decided that the obvious thing to do was hire some Saxons to fight the Picts for him rather than go to the dreadful bore and bother of doing it himself."

  "What happened then?" Murdoch asked.

  The smile turned wolfish; for a moment it was easy to imagine Alleyne in a bearskin tunic, leaping out of a Dark Age war-boat with a seax in his fist.

  "Shortly thereafter the Jutes and their Saxon and Anglian relatives had England, and the Britons had… Wales. Despite all King Arthur could do. And Vortigern made that mistake despite a late-Roman definition of rapacity: He could teach piracy to a Saxon. "

  A tall woman who'd been sitting with her legs crossed and her hands resting on her thighs opened her eyes and swung her legs down from their lotus position. Her head came up, crowned with white-blond hair in a tight-woven fighting braid, and she met Murdoch's eyes. The Association spy shivered a little in that pale gaze, the hyacinth-blue pupils rimmed and shot with silver threads. She stared silently for a few seconds, and the man who Pendleton knew as an importer squirmed.

  BD sympathized; people meeting the Hiril Dunedain for the first few times often had that reaction. She'd known the girl… woman. .. since she was fourteen, and still felt that way sometimes herself.

  "We aren't expected at the Bossman's feast," Astrid Larsson said. "But I do think we'll drop in anyway."

  Alleyne smiled. " Crashing the party, rather like thirteen dwarves coming by unexpectedly for tea."

  "But even less welcome and more troublesome," his wife said. "And if there are emissaries from our ultimate enemies there… so much the better. We'll spend tomorrow going over the details, but with luck and a little effort we can skip the war and go straight to the victory, which is always the best part anyway."

  Hordle rapped his knuckles on the wooden table. Murdoch muttered and retreated, banging the door behind him.

  Alleyne made a tsk sound and dropped back into the Elven-tongue. "You shouldn't spook him, my love, just because he works for Sandra Arminger. He's on our side now. The whole Portland Protective Association is. And he's been quite cooperative."

  "We're fighting the same enemy at the moment, bar melindo," she said. "That isn't exactly the same thing as being friends, darling."

  A dozen of the Rangers filed past and trotted up the stairs to fetch the gear. BD stepped aside as they left and nodded to the four leaders, then stepped over to look at the documents on the table. One was the blueprints of the Bossman's house. The other was a map that showed Pendleton, the modern town, in considerable detail. Across it-underneath it-lay a network of dotted red lines…

  "Well, that's imaginative at least," she said, as the details of the plan leapt out at her. "It's going to be tricky, though. Particularly the 'getting away alive' part."

  And I'm glad I sent my people out of town!

  Eilir nodded and replied in Sign: Don't worry. Murdoch has really done a very creditable job with these tunnels since the end of the war. The last war, I should say.

  "Just like Sandra Arminger to have a literal mole here, burrowing away for the past twelve years," Astrid said dryly, and they chuckled. "She isn't called the Spider for nothing."

&
nbsp; A clatter of footsteps, and the Dunedain returned with boxes and crates and barrels carried on their shoulders, or slung between them by the rope handles. A little brisk hammering opened them, and men and women crowded around.

  "Ah!" John Hordle said, seizing his four-foot bastard longsword and running his hand along the double-lobed grip. "Felt naked without this, I did. A big bloke's not worth buggery without 'is bastard."

  Which sentence sounds absolutely indescribable said in Sindarin with a Hampshire yokel burr, BD thought with a mental groan.

  Meditatively, glancing at Astrid, Hordle went on: "Aren't we supposed to be generals? Sitting around map tables looking important, while the younger generation do the work? This is too 'ands-on for my taste, now I'm past forty and a dad and sensible."

  Astrid smiled and spread her long-fingered hands. "Are there any among our people better suited to lead this endeavor, my brother?"

  "No, I suppose not," Hordle grumbled, shrugging into a mail-coat covered in dark green leather and cinching it with a broad belt.

  BD stretched her own back with a silent groan. Her mail-vest was light, but she'd worn real armor now and then, and detested every minute of it. Hordle was probably so accustomed to it that he didn't even notice. It was like the sword; he didn't feel natural without it.

  "But I thought we came here to fight a battle?" he went on plaintively, turning his head slightly so that he could wink at Eilir unobserved; she giggled silently. "There's a murdering great army out there west of town, thousands of them sitting on their arses with nothing better to do than eat and scratch themselves, and here we are doing their work."

  "The best battle is the one you win without fighting," Astrid said serenely.

  Hordle rolled his eyes and spoke to Alleyne Loring. "I hate it when she gets all profound like that!" Then to Astrid: "And you put Tiphaine d'Ath in to look after the troops."

  Astrid's smile was slightly cruel now. "That was her punishment. Do you imagine there's anywhere in the world she'd rather be than here, right now, John? And when the bards make their song, they'll sing of us, while Tiphaine gets three lines saying she looked after the troops well enough while we were gone."

  The smile grew broader, and unexpectedly she giggled like a school-girl. "She'll be snarling about that when she's ninety."

  "Let's hope the song doesn't say she gallantly avenged our 'eroic deaths instead," he replied.

  "I intend to die heroically of extreme old age and general debility, in bed, with my great-grandchildren gathered around weeping," Alleyne said crisply. "BD, you should have something to eat and get some sleep. It's going to be a busy day tomorrow."

  BD did, with John Hordle pitching in beside her; there was cold roast beef and pungent kielbasa and fried chicken, bread and butter and hot pickles, tortillas and beans, tomatoes and radishes, with sharp cheese and apple tarts to follow. She'd been too worried to be hungry up until that point, despite the eight hours since lunch; suddenly she was ravenous, and constructed several sandwiches as massive as her dentures could handle. Anyone who didn't think wrangling wagons all day was hard physical labor had never done it. Hordle ate enormously but neatly as he joined in the planning session.

  When BD finished she tapped the small keg by the door for a mug of the beer. So did John Hordle, but apparently it didn't make him feel sleepy; of course, he was a generation younger, in superb condition, and had a hundred and sixty extra pounds of mass to sop it up. There was bedding down in the other end of the chamber; she wrapped herself in blankets and sheepskins, and felt herself fading swiftly. As she did she overheard Astrid:

  "Besides, it is not by force of arms alone that we will prevail in this war. We keep the enemy's attention on us and that helps Fr… ah, Rudi and the others."

  "Inspiration's one thing. Plagiarism is something else again," Alleyne said in a severe tone, and the four laughed.

  BD sighed and prayed: Oh, Apollo, guard your priestess! Artemis of the Hunt, let me not be the prey! And look out for Rudi and the others too. They're going to need it.

  TheScourgeofGod

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Curse and ill-wishing have no power

  Save that the heart lets them in

  Hard the lesson learned by the undefeated

  That strength and right may end in ill From: The Song of Bear and Raven

  Attributed to Fiorbhinn Mackenzie, 1st century CY

  EASTERN IDAHO, HIGHWAY 20, EAST OF PICABO

  SEPTEMBER 13, CHANGE YEAR 23/2021 AD

  Rancher Jed Smith yawned and turned over in his bedroll, conscious of the growing light in the east and the frosty air on his face.

  That was a good dream, he thought sleepily. It's good luck to dream of home.

  He'd been there, out where the horizon went on forever. Where the grama and wheatgrass brushed against your stirrups and ran in rippling waves beneath the biggest sky in the world, cloud shadows racing the wind across prairie green with spring and thick with blue lupine and white pennycress and golden gromwell, so beautiful it made the breath catch in your throat… and the air was fresh enough to hit like a shot of whiskey. Riding his own range and his herds had been around him, red-coated, white-faced cattle up to their hocks in the good grazing, sheep fat with the grass of a year with no drought, a promise that all his folk on Rippling Waters would be full-fed and warm come the blizzard season.

  Dry mild wind on his face, a good horse beneath him, his sons Ted and Andy and Mark riding by his side, grown to tall men and talking horses and hunting, grass and cattle. The land at peace again, not even a feud on his borders. Then somehow he was at the head of his table, forking steaks from the serving platter onto plates, while Katy spooned out beans and Lorrie came in with a basket of biscuits in each hand and the kids were young again as they bowed their heads for the grace from the Book of Dzur…

  He yawned again and shook the last of it off; it wasn't quite dawn, and he could go back to sleep for another half hour. One of the perks of being the Rancher was that you didn't have to stand a guard-watch yourself, but he always got up and did the rounds himself at least once a night, in enemy territory. And at unpredictable intervals.

  Dad taught me that. But he forgot, that once.

  And he and Gramps and that whole party had been left stripped and butchered by a gang of road people who crept past a sleeping sentry. Jed had been only twenty then, but he'd held the Rippling Waters spread together and led them into the embrace of the Dictations.

  It was pleasantly warm inside the glazed leather sleeping bag; it was made of sheepskins with the fleece turned in, and the girl who shared it with him now was as good as a campfire. She'd been much less sullen last night, and the thought and the feel of her and the scent tempted him to have another go while he had the chance-women generally didn't like it in the morning, and a sensible man didn't push his wives that way too often. It wouldn't be the same even with the bought gals they kept, when they got back to Rippling Waters.

  Whatever the priests said should be, a man's wives did object if he diddled the slave girls openly in his own house, in the morning or otherwise. And Church law might say a man could correct his wives with a quirt if they scolded or back talked, but a man who tried that too often was asking for trouble with them and maybe with their kin, and it didn't make for a happy home life either. The only worse thing than having your women quarreling was having them gang up on you.

  He was a man who liked tranquillity and smiles under his own roof-tree, not sulks. Everyone on the ranch had to pull together for things to go well-though an occasional quick one behind a haystack did no harm.

  And I'm not nineteen no more, he thought. C'mon, Jed, get up, take a leak, lead the morning prayers, get some breakfast and chicory inside you and git this outfit on the road. Those Newcastle men'll be splittin' off today; good riddance. Long way to home, so up an' at 'em! Sooner we're back, the sooner we can start getting the place back running smooth.

  The decision saved his life. He pushed the woman as
ide and was yawning and stretching rather than helpless on his back when she turned, snatched his bowie knife and drove it at his throat.

  He'd grown to manhood in the years after the Change when chaos and death went stalking through the Hi-Line country, and survived them. There was nothing wrong with his reflexes, even in the strait confines of a sleeping bag. The blade slithered along his forearm in a shallow cut as he blocked it, turned his hip to take the attempt to knee him in the crotch on his hip bone, and smashed his forehead down into her face. That hurt him, but nose and cheek bones crunched under the blow and she screamed in shock and agony. The bowie dropped from her hand. He snatched the hilt; the cutting edge was turned in and he stabbed downward twice with all the strength in his lean corded arm and shoulder. The scream cut off in a gurgling, choking sound.

  There were more screams as he pushed himself clear of the twitching body and climbed to his feet. And a shout he recognized all too well from the past few years:

  "Come, ye Saints!"

  Though he wasn't used to hearing it in high-pitched female voices. The dim light showed a heaving, thrashing confusion in the rocky flat where they'd camped; he dropped the bowie and snatched out his shete just in time to cut down another woman running at him with a wood-chopping ax already wet with blood.

  "Rippling Waters men! Here, here, here! " he shouted in the rally call.

  "Back to back!"

  He quickly stamped his feet into his boots, which were the only part of his clothes he had taken off to sleep, and caught up his shield. A man came running, limping with blood on his knee but with his shield and shete. Another, and another… and his horse came trotting as well, and then a clump of men. He jerked his cow-horn trumpet loose from the pile of gear on the ground as they formed up around him and blew a long dunting blast, huuu-hhhhrrr-uuuu!