Emberverse 08: The Tears of the Sun

by S. M. Stirling

  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 Dúnedain 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 second 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 h
urried 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 Dúnedain 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.

  It’s even good luck that that detachment of the Sword of the Prophet was leaving when we came in. It made it less likely the gate-guards would search everything. That might have been awkward.

  Instead she stood naked on the concrete floor and poured the first, the most delicious bucket of the hot water over her head. Even in summer, washing with a cloth and basin, or even diving into a stream, just wasn’t the same. As she cleaned herself she chatted with half a dozen other women who were using the same big brick-walled room with its small high windows and drifting wisps of vapor, and smell of soap and steam and hot metal and rock. Outside the palaces of rulers and manors of great nobles she’d never been in a place where there were bathing facilities meant for individual use; it was simply too costly in terms of fuel and laid-on water and labor. The better class of inns had places like this, and analogues were common in villages and steadings and estates.

  Then she lathered up with the strong soap, suds all over and working it into her itchy scalp with vigorous fingertips, then another bucket and a scrub with a woven equivalent of a loofah and a rough washcloth, and more soap and water and then a blissful soak in one of a row of tubs under a sign that read clean out your own bath or pay fifty cents extra. Money wasn’t a problem, but staying in her role was, and she dutifully applied the brush and turned the tin tub over to drain and dry.

  When she had toweled herself she felt that a good part of the long hard drive down from Drumheller had gone down the wastewater drain too, flowing out to water and irrigate the city’s surroundings.

  I’ll bet the oldsters will feel even better, she thought with a slight smile.

  They and the rest of the Dúnedain commando would all be arriving at intervals, by twos and threes—lone travelers were rare enough to attract attention, if they came from any distance, even more than large groups. You had to let any suspicion that was aroused die down between parties, too. Infiltration was like hunting; patience was the first necessity.

  In the meantime . . .

  She pulled on the plain linen robe provided for five cents, pushed her feet into the cord sandals, left a few other orders with the attendant who promised to pass them on. Then she asked directions, which ended with the dread phrase you can’t miss it, and got thoroughly lost.

  The set of buildings was a maze, and many of the corridors had no windows and hadn’t been modernized with skylights, which left them very dim indeed. She would have been much more at home in an unfamiliar benighted forest or mountain canyon, since she’d been a country dweller all her life and a rover of the wilderness nearly as long; in the end she used her nose, moving away from the distinctive slightly musty-dusty scent that marked areas kept weathertight but not much used, and heading back into the occupied portions.

  “Four thirty-two?” a woman carrying two baskets said. “Hey, I’m headed that way. Follow me.”

  Ritva thought that the part of the complex they ended up in had probably been an office building before the Change; it had a dropped ceiling with acoustic tiles, some of which had been replaced over the years with neat squares of polished wood. She noted the fact absently, with the part of her mind that was always concerned with potential escape routes and avenues of attack, and made a note to check the old ducting. There were times it was big enough for people to crawl through, though fortunately or deplorably noisy.

  “Hi!” she said, as she opened the door.

  Ian looked up, but kept to his disguise of being mute and just nodded. Ritva felt a glow of approval; he’d picked up tradecraft very quickly indeed. The Force—it had Royal in its formal title, oddly since none of the Dominions were monarchies—was like the Rangers in that it patrolled against bandits, protected trade routes and put down the messier sorts of crime. Its military role in time of war was more conventional, though, probably because the Dominions had taken less of a beating after the Change than her part of the world. Drumheller and Moose Jaw and Minnedosa were all big, the same order of size as the PPA, they all had strong central governments, and they’d had less in the way of conflict and internal squabbling than the lands of Montival-to-be. The Dúnedain did a lot more in the way of clandestine operations.

  Which means we’re a lot better at sneaking.

  When the inn servant had put the baskets on the table, told them where the jakes were (without telling them they couldn’t miss it) and left, he did speak.

  “You must be clean,” he said, a little teasing. “I know that it takes women longer to wash than men—”

  “That’s because we actually wash, and have a better sense of smell,” Ritva said loftily.

  “But forty-five minutes?”

  “I went . . . exploring.”

  “Ah, you got lost too!”

  They both laughed. Ritva admired the way he did it, wholeheartedly but gracefully, with a hint of shyness.

  Maybe I’m getting over my Big Bad Boys fixation, she thought. By Ever-Young Vána of the Blossoms, I hope so. The bad boys can be a lot of fun, but they wear. Oh, how they wear! I grant Ingolf was big and bad but not a bad boy, but Mary won him. I will never, never let her use her own special lucky coin for something important again.

  Meanwhile Ian was unloading the baskets. “Nice picnic, eh?” he said.

  There was crusty bread, half a dozen types of cured meat, several of cheese, a double-walled crock that kept a savory-smelling ham and bean soup warm, a salad, and a bowl of fruit, along with various accompaniments, a jug of apple juice, and two bottles of a very decent red wine she remembered from her previous trip through.

  “But why not go down . . . oh, ah?”

  “This is the first time we’ve had any privacy in weeks, and not been exhausted and smelly to boot, right? I thought we should . . . use it to get better acquainted. The others could start getting in as early as tonight.”

  “Right. Absolutely right. Who wants a crowded common hall anyway?”

  Ritva gave a long slow smile. “And you’ve never done it until you’ve done it in Elvish, believe me.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  COUNTY OF AUREA

  PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION

  (FORMERLY CENTRAL WASHINGTON)

  HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL

  (FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)

  AUGUST 5, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD

  Bjarni Eriksson, King in Norrheim and often called Ironrede by his people, laughed with delight as he put his new horse through its paces in the warm late-afternoon sunlight. It was dry in this part of Montival, in the rain-shadow of the Cascades, and dust puffed up around its highstepping feet with a peppery scent that mingled with horse and man sweat. The mount was a six-year-old stallion, seventeen hands high and glossy black, long-legged, deep-chested, arched of neck, with nostrils like redrimmed pits. He almost expected it to breathe fire.

  Bjarni had ridden as far back as his memories stretched, and he’d been six at the Change. He could just barely recall bits and pieces of his father’s trek with his
followers from Springfield to Aroostook in northern Maine, and the founding of Norrheim, and sitting before his father in the saddle with one powerful arm around him. After that he’d been the son of a great chieftain with a big farm and scot paid by his followers besides, and able to keep a number of horses. He had thought he knew what there was to know, apart from a few specialist tricks.

  He’d never in all his life put foot to stirrup on anything like this, though. Riding the superbly trained animal was as much like dancing as anything he’d experienced before.

  He leaned his weight slightly to the front and clamped his thighs tighter, and the horse started forward as if sensing his very thought. Then there was a rushing speed, and it seemed to float upward over the white board fence. The landing was without breaking stride, and it was scarcely necessary to touch the reins to bring a halt once more.

  It made nothing of his weight, though he was a broad-shouldered, barrel-chested, thick-armed man of medium height, near two hundred pounds of tough muscle and heavy bones, with the large strong hands of a swordsman and woodsman and farmer. The brick-colored hair bound back from his face with a headband stuck to the sweat on his neck, and more ran into his short beard; his skin was reddened too, by long exposure to wind and weather and now by the fierce sun of cloudless summer in this part of Montival. The little blue eyes in his snub-nosed, high-cheeked face were calm and steady, a net of wrinkles at their corners even though he had just thirty-one years.

  He looked at the beast’s ears and grinned. It was sweating freely, but an hour spent at everything from galloping to jumping had barely scratched the surface of its energy.

  “You want to run, don’t you, boy?” he said. “Ayuh, you do! Soon, soon.”

  He swung down from the saddle, and ran a hand down its neck; then he reached into a pocket of his breeks and pulled out an apple. The horse plucked it from his palm and crunched it with slobbering pleasure. One of his followers who was horse-wise came to remove the tooled, silver-studded saddle and lead it away for grooming and watering.