Rudi cut in: “And sure, I’ll give Fred a job like that if you don’t want him.” He snapped his fingers. “There aren’t so many good men who are true to their word about that I’d want to waste one. Carry on; just making that clear.”
The speaker nodded at him and turned back to Fred: “But you want us to be part of a kingdom?”
Fred nodded crisply in turn. “Yes. The High Kingdom of Montival. My Dad wanted to put America back together. He was a great man, he made a country out of chaos and plague and people terrified they were going to die. A lot of you wouldn’t be here today if he hadn’t been that sort of man. Hell, I wouldn’t. He went back into Seattle to get my mom out when he came back from the scouting mission to Idaho and found things had gone to shit. But by the end of his life, he hadn’t even put all of Idaho back together. Part of Idaho, and a few chunks of what used to be Washington State and Nevada. He didn’t want to make war on ordinary people to do it, either. I know Rudi Mackenzie . . . High King Artos, the redhead on the horse over there. We went all the way to the Atlantic together. Some real strange shit came down.”
“Tell us!” someone said. “The way that witch . . . she’s his mom, right? The way she put us all to sleep . . . and held off that Seeker asshole . . .”
“It’s a new world. The rules changed at the Change. But the High King can do some of what Dad wanted done—put a big chunk of the country back together. In a different way, sure. But it’s one that a whole lot of people have already agreed to. So the names are different, big fat fucking hairy deal. It’ll mean no more wars among ourselves, no more marching around and burning farms and getting your head knocked in because . . . someone . . . wants to be first in line at the Parade of the Assholes. He’s promised, and I believe it, that we’ll be able to run our own affairs the way we please. We’ll have our own laws, and our own army to back it up. All we have to do is admit that everyone else gets the same privilege, and if they want to dance naked in the woods with antlers on their heads”—there was a general laugh at that—“that’s between them and the mosquitoes. We’ll put joining the High Kingdom to a vote too. I’m for it.”
“I’m for getting back home, Goddammit,” someone called. “I want to get back to my girl and the farm and anyone else can call themselves kings or barons or Chiefs or bossmen or the fucking Wizard of Oz as far as I’m concerned. They leave me alone, I’ll leave them alone.”
“Right,” Fred said, nodding vigorously at the roar of assent. “Are there any crazy bastards here who want a war? We’re all soldiers. We know what fighting really means. Sometimes you have to do it, but that doesn’t mean anyone who doesn’t have his head up his ass goes looking for one. Not just because it sucks for us, but because of the risks to everyone else back home too. Martin’s not only got us into a war here, he’s got the Dominions and the Midwesterners into the fight. The Canuks and the Iowans and their friends are marching right now. Marching towards our homes while we’re dicking around on other people’s ground.”
“Is that really true? And do they mean it?” a soldier asked anxiously.
“People, believe it. Do you think all these Mackenzies could get together and put a story over on you?”
“Hell, no,” the sergeant said thoughtfully. “A lot of the time they can’t agree on the time of day. They argue for the fun of it, like it was a poker game. Sometimes they argue and then switch sides and argue the other way’round just for something to do. Someone would have talked to us. It’s true, or at least they all believe it is, and they’re not stupid.”
“Right. I saw the Midwesterners forming up outside Des Moines with my own eyes, and people, there are a hell of a lot of them and they’re not stopping for shit. The CUT killed their Bossman and tried to kill his whole family; his widow’s running the show there now and she’s out for blood, and the rest of them are baying on that track like hounds after a cougar.”
“We didn’t kill her man,” someone pointed out.
“Sure, the Prophet’s boys are first on the menu . . . but they and Martin are joined at the hip. He’s already pulled troops out of this theatre to go east, you must have heard about that before you got captured. Are you all that hot and bothered to go get killed to defend Corwin? Or seeing your neighbors and cousins marched off to do it?”
A brabble started to break out, and Fred held up a hand. “I’m not telling you to make up your minds right away. Go think it over. Anyone who wants to come with me . . . that’ll be a hard row to hoe. It’ll be dangerous and in more ways than one. You can stay here and be safe and get three squares and a place to flop whatever happens and whoever wins, if that’s what you want to do. Like I said, think it over. You’re free men; make your own decision.”
He stood, looking at them steadily. The gathering had turned from a drill-parade formation to a circle of interested men. Now it began to break up into groups arguing or talking, softly at first and then more loudly as they walked away. And some weren’t leaving, around a hundred.
Fred waited impassively until it was plain who was doing what. Sergeant Saunders, the man he’d talked to first, was the highest-ranking.
I’m not surprised. Martin’s made all the officers from company-grade up swear an oath to him personally. It’ll take something heavy to shift them. They’ve got more to lose, too; it would be easier to retaliate against their families than against a lot of anonymous rankers.
He looked at the sergeant and raised an eyebrow; that was a habit of his father’s he’d picked up.
“Sir, I don’t know about anyone else here, but I’m volunteering to follow you. I believe you and that makes Martin a murderer and a traitor who’s sold us to the CUT. Word about that’s been going round . . . and I don’t like the way a couple of people who got too loud about it disappeared, either. Shit, that’s a big fat fucking load of proof that it’s true right there. I want to be able to speak my mind without looking over my shoulder and wondering who I can trust! That’s no way for free men to live.”
“Good man,” Fred said, keeping the smile off his face; the last thing he needed was to look like a grinning kid.
Then he raised his voice a little more. “That what the rest of you think?”
Murmurs, and then a chorus of Yessirs.
“OK, think about this a little more, people. If Martin gets his hands on you, he’ll have you executed as traitors to him, sure as God, sure as fate. It’s win or die if you enlist with me. And I have the High King’s word he’ll try to avoid having us fighting our own people, use us against the CUT’s men . . . but there’s no guarantee there.”
Heads turned to Rudi; he shrugged and turned both hands up. “I do promise I’ll try. I don’t give oath I’ll always succeed because I don’t promise what I know I can’t do. That comes back to bite you on the arse, sure and it does, and you end up paying when you can least afford it. As your commander here said, there are no guarantees in war. If you enlist with him, you enlist with me, and soldiers under my command do what they’re told whether they like it or not, and it will be not quite a lot of the time.”
Saunders laughed. “That sounds familiar, sir. I’m in. This needs doing. I don’t expect to like it. I don’t expect an egg in my beer.”
A few edged out from the back, but that left over ninety; about as many as had refused to even listen to him.
“Get the men organized by squads, Sergeant,” Fred said.
“They mostly are already, sir. I can shift the others ’round.”
“Do it. And collect any personal possessions from barracks right away. I don’t want a battle here. Oh, and one last thing. All of you remember, if you sign up, you don’t get to change your mind while this war’s on. Anyone who tries is a deserter and gets what deserters usually do. Understood?”
“Yes, sir!”
“He can’t hear you!” Sergeant Saunders said.
“Sir, yes, sir!”
“Get them moving, Sergeant.”
Several hours later the tents were going up much
nearer Sutterdown. They were standard US (of Boise) issue; so was the hoop armor and curved oval shields with the thunderbolt and eagle, the short swords and daggers, the heavy throwing spears stacked while the men worked. It had all been captured with them, and there was more than enough. They’d even been able to match individuals to their own gear for the most part, though Boise soldiers were taught how to modify equipment to fit. Fred smiled as one of them patted the worn, sweat-stained bone hilt of a short stabbing sword in passing, like someone greeting a favorite hound. They hadn’t looked beatendown in the POW camp, but they were walking noticeably taller now, with no fence around them and weapons to hand.
“One thing,” he said to Rudi.
The High King of Montival was busy; a messenger handed him sheaves of papers, and he flipped through them in a way that looked casual but wasn’t. Every so often he’d drop his hand to the Sword and close his eyes for an instant.
“Fred?” Rudi said without looking up.
“You said you couldn’t make them believe anything . . . but you could, couldn’t you?”
“Ah,” Rudi said, handing over the sheaf of reports.
His right hand went to the crystal pommel of the Sword, moving his palm on it with a caressing motion. The blue-gray eyes went blank for a moment, as if he was looking at something within and taking the weight and heft of it.
“Now that, my friend, is an interesting question. Perhaps not, with so many. Perhaps yes, because what you said is the truth, and the Sword of the Lady reveals truth as surely as it cuts bone. But I will not use the Sword so. That is my choice, and let that be my responsibility, for good or ill.”
Fred was conscious of a feeling of relief; when Virginia blew out her cheeks it was an audible mark of the same emotion.
Rudi laughed. “It’s exactly that way I feel about the matter, do you see? For it shows that I am still . . . myself.”
“I doubt you’re as reassured as the rest of us, Rudi. Oh, and I think it would be a good idea, once I get the men in order, to let them go back and talk to their friends in the POW camp, individually or in small groups. Walking ambassadors, right?”
“And to be sure, you’re more than a pretty face, Fred.”
Fred frowned. “It’s not enough, though. I need something to convince the waverers, the ones in the middle who’re of two minds and who just don’t want to believe something so skanky could have put Martin in charge. And more officers would help. We need a lot of defections to even the odds.”
Rudi grinned at him. “Air mo chùram. Which is to say, it’s on my mind, Fred. Now as to where to use these men of yours when they’re ready . . . I was thinking of adding them to my Royal Guard, so I was.”
Fred nodded slowly. “They’ll appreciate the gesture, Rudi.”
“Not that it means following at my arse all the time, mind you. More a matter of stiffening the battle line at crucial points and being the ones who rush around to the hottest fires.”
“Sounds like . . . useful work.”
“Sure and if you’d said fun I’d have called for the healers of souls.”
As he turned away, Virginia slapped her husband on the shoulder. “Turns out you were right about how to handle your folks,” she said. “Just don’t let it go to your head, you hear?”
Fred laughed shortly. “One platoon? I don’t think that’s too likely.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
BOISE
PROVISIONAL CAPITAL, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
(FORMERLY BOISE, IDAHO)
AUGUST 8, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
General-President Martin Thurston looked down from the gatehouse. His aides glanced at each other; one was annoyed, the other sweating in a terror he could not have named even to himself. Martin knew it.
I know everything, some corner of his mind thought. The joy was unbearable yet detached. I am knowing. I need not do, only be. The detachment was the joy.
Existence spiraled downward. Beyond matter, beyond the decay of the last particle, there was only information. All that had ever known, all that had ever been, all that had ever thought. Falling inward towards nothing. It was gross material things no more; in some unimaginable future of cycle upon cycle it would never have been made of mere things. Only thought, from the flash as the high-dimensional membranes met at the beginning of a universe to the cold death of proton decay at its end and the cycle commenced again, a universe not merely permeated by mind but one that was Mind. Thought that was thought about thought, endless repetitions spiraling into—
“Sir.”
The vision crashed away in a stab of unbearable sorrow. Thurston turned with a snarl, his eyes locking with the officer’s. The man stumbled backward with a scream, the reek of his sweat harshly, hideously material in a way that made the ruler’s stomach knot; yet even vomiting was itself foul, contaminating. How could you vomit away the gross stuff of your self? One of the guards jumped forward in a clatter of armor and put his big curved shield between the man’s back and the top of the stone stairs at his heel, grunting as the officer’s weight came on the semicylinder of plywood and sheet metal and leather.
He staggered. A hand gripped his arm, and he shook his head, suddenly conscious of the looks of the others.
“What’s the problem, gentlemen?” he asked.
“Sir, you looked, ah, odd.”
He waved it away, slapping the vine-stock swagger stick in his right hand into the palm of his left. “We were discussing the logistics,” he said.
“Sir, with forty battalions that’s going to be very tight.”
We must move quickly. But we cannot see. The enemy fogs our vision, and above fly hungry birds, ready to eat the seeds we plant.
“Nevertheless, it has to be done. The enemy isn’t idle and we have to hit them before—”
You will not die, birds. You will never have been; yes, you and Those who sent you!
HASTY CREEK RANCH
GRANGEVILLE COUNTY,
CAMAS MILITARY DISTRICT
(FORMERLY NORTH-CENTRAL IDAHO)
JUNE 28, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
The Sheriff’s property was not far south of the little town of Craigswood; Ritva thought the core of it had been an inn—what the old world had called a motel—and probably picked because there was good water and a place for a mill at a nearby stream that ran down from high wooded hills to the open prairie. That part was far from the center now, used as housing for bachelor ranch hands. The rest was buildings of rammed earth or notched logs squared on top and bottom or mortared fieldstone, or combinations. Law in the United States of Boise had always frowned on private fortifications, but the layout of the ranch had a foursquare strength and the lower windows could all be quickly closed with loopholed steel shutters.
The Dúnedain party arrived just as the purple faded in the west and the warm butter-yellow of lamps started to make stars of windows where the homeplace lay scattered below them. They rode down a gully through pine forest, out of the strong sappy smell and into the open; a wind from the east brought the homey odors of cooking and woodsmoke and manure. The grim-faced and silent older men and younger women who took their horses away and showed them to the quarters where they could stow their packs and wash before walking over to the main house asked no questions.
Sheriff Robert Woburn greeted them in the vestibule where they swapped their boots for slippers and hung up their weapons; no doubt in wintertime it also served to keep too much warm air from escaping. He was a lean man in his sixties, his white hair still thick, eyes a snapping blue and face craggy and seamed. His hand was strong but knobby, and rough as raw horsehide.
“I hope we’re unobserved,” Alleyne said.
“Less traffic here than at St. Hilda’s,” he said. “The Reverend Mother got me the message and I’ve arranged to get everyone I’m doubtful of off the place.”
“It will still leak,” Astrid said. “Just more slowly, hopefully.”
“No help for that. And this here is Major Hanks.”
“The man with the airship!” Ritva blurted; she remembered it vividly.
Not least because it saved all our lives. Though it’s a haywired sort of thing.
“The sort-of airship,” the soldier said; he was in plain civilian denim and linen, with a bristle-cut of graying brown hair. “I see you remember our little meeting in Boise and points east.”
“Considering how you saved us all, yes, I do,” she said, shaking his hand enthusiastically.
“How’s Father Ignatius? There was a man who appreciated good engineering!”
“He’s helping build a kingdom now, sir,” Ritva said. “Artos, the High King, he was Rudi Mackenzie when you met him, has appointed him Chancellor of the Realm.”
“Dang, a politician who does sensible things. I may die of shock,” he replied, with bitterness behind the smile.
The main hall of the ranch house reminded Ritva a little of Stardell in Mithrilwood. The decoration was entirely different, but the tight-fitting logs squared on top and bottom on a fieldstone base were similar, and so were the exposed rafters above. There was a big stone fireplace in one wall, empty and swept on this warm summer’s night, and a trio of tile stoves in corners that probably did more in blizzards even if they lacked the cheery crackle. The walls held hunting trophies, elk and bear, cougar and wolf and tiger. And against the far wall was a skeleton, with the door to the kitchen beneath the place where its belly would have been . . .
“Valar bless!” she blurted. “What’s that?”
Woburn laughed, and his soldier guest from Boise chuckled. That was the bones of an animal that must have been twelve feet at the shoulder, with a massive skull and two long curling tusks.
Emberverse 08: The Tears of the Sun Page 15
