"For everyone who is in the apprentice courses or not, you should be aware that the portion of the agreement that everyone made when arriving at Raven's Mill relating to defense of Raven's Mill was not just lip service. One of the things that the smiths are working on very hard right now is the production of defense weapons, primarily spears. Over the last two weeks the town council has been working on a charter for Raven's Mill and it will be presented next week. But one of the features of the charter that everyone should be aware of is a requirement that a person be skilled in one or more weapons of defense in order to be an eligible voter." At that there was a burst of surprised talking, although not as much as Herzer expected. It was pretty clear that many people either knew of the rule or expected it to be included. Edmund raised his hands to call for silence and waited until most of the talking had died down.
"The only exception to this are those who can show that they have clear philosophical or religious objections to violence. In which case they will be required to take training in the care of combat casualties. Everyone in this town will be prepared to defend it. Many of you had things taken from you by force when you were traveling here. Others still worse problems," he said, gazing from person to person in the crowd.
"Historically once bandits find that the pickings are slim on roads, they begin attacking towns. We will be prepared to defend this town. To emphasize this, Sheida Ghorbani is calling a constitutional convention with the intent to reconstitute the North American Union. It is my strongly held opinion, supported by Sheida and other council members, that this requirement, to be capable of defending one's self and the community, be a universal requirement within the North American Union."
"The fact is that we are in the midst of a civil war. It seems right now that we are not, but just as we are recovering and preparing, Paul and his faction are recovering and preparing. At the moment, the Council is fighting the Council, but that battle is effectively stalemated. So, in time, they will come for us. And we will be prepared. You have all gone through much hardship and these may seem somber thoughts for a day devoted to celebration. But they are important thoughts, things that we should all be thinking and talking about. And making our personal decisions. So that when the time comes for you to vote on these questions, you can vote with understanding and knowledge.
"And to tell you the truth I think that's enough to put on your plate for now. You should have plenty to talk about," he ended with a smile. "So as soon as these. uh. players get their breath back, you all go back to having a good time. Take care." He waved again and started to step down from the stage but turned back and raised his arms. "Oh, by the way, this requirement extends to minstrels!" At that there was a general laugh.
"Yeah? Well I swing a mean fiddle case," the redhead replied, swinging the case of her violin around her head.
"Well, we'll just see how you do with an axe," Edmund replied and stepped down from the stage.
A crowd had already gathered around Edmund so Herzer didn't feel it was the time to ask his questions. Instead he and Morgen wandered back to the patch by the stream that had been claimed by their group.
"He's right, that is a lot to talk about," Courtney said, flopping to the ground and leaning back against the balks of timber.
"Oof! North American Union!" was all Cruz said, shaking his head.
"Yeah, that's some deep stuff," Mike agreed.
"Well I don't think that it's right that everyone should have to use weapons," Morgen said angrily. "I don't have any interest in killing people. Or even hurting them."
"What if they are interested in hurting you?" Shilan asked quietly.
"Why would they hurt me?" Morgen challenged. "What have I done to them? If everyone starts getting ready for a fight, sooner or later you're going to have one!"
"People don't have to have a reason to hurt other people," Herzer said. "They just have to be the kind of people that enjoy it."
Shilan looked at him oddly for a moment then nodded.
"Listen to Herzer," she said.
"I take it you had trouble on the trip?" Courtney asked.
"Yeah," Shilan replied, sharply.
"What happened?" Morgen asked.
"I do not choose to discuss it," Shilan said. She wrapped her arms around her knees, pulling them tight to her and looking into the distance.
Cruz's face tightened as a muscle worked in his jaw. Then he looked off to the side.
"I'm sorry, Shilan," Morgen said. "I'm sorry for whatever happened to you. But I still don't agree. Violence never settles anything."
Herzer snorted and tried unsuccessfully to turn it into a laugh.
"What?" Morgen snapped.
"Sorry. sorry." he said, still trying not to laugh. "I was just. thinking. Maybe you ought to ask the Melcon AI if violence ever settles anything. Or the Carthaginian Senate or the Islamic Jihad."
"What are you talking about?" Morgen asked.
"Have you ever heard of the Melcon AI?"
"Yes, I've heard of the Melcon AI."
"Does it still exist?" Herzer asked with a smile.
"No. It was destroyed in the AI wars," Morgen said, standing up and putting her hands on her hips. "But this is the forty-first century not the thirty-first! Surely we've risen above that, wrestling in wars like boys on a playground!"
"This we defend," Herzer said, shaking his head. "Or not, as the case may be," he continued, looking at Shilan.
"What he is trying to say is, people have always been violent," Courtney interjected. "There have always been wars and as long as we stay human beings there will always be wars. The period of the last thousand years was a golden age. And it would be nice to go back to that. But if the cost of going back to that is letting Paul decide what is right and wrong. You can try to limit it by diplomacy but the diplomacy has already broken down. It broke down in the Council hall. When Paul attacked Sheida."
"Well, we only have her word for that," Morgen pointed out.
"Oh, good God," Courtney replied, throwing her hands up in the air. "Herzer, you try."
"Nope ain't gonna do it," Herzer replied. "Morgen, you can say that you just want to sit this out. That's fine. But people aren't going to let you sit it out. You can choose to leave Raven's Mill. I'm sure that there are going to be communities that are not going to enforce the requirements. You can even say that you have strongly held philosophical objections and train to handle casualties. But if you go elsewhere, to a community that says they just want to be neutral or 'violence never settles anything' sooner or later Paul's forces will take you over and not ask your opinion. Or you'll be in the way of Sheida's forces and they'll take you over and not ask your opinion. I for one am not going to let Paul Bowman tell me how to run my life. I know enough history to understand what that road leads to. And I would rather sit here on the ground in the rain and eat maggoty bread than allow him to gain absolute power over Mother."
"But there's no way to fight him!" Morgen said. "He's a council member! They're all council members. Let them fight!"
"It's stalemated," Herzer said with a shrug. "And Bowman wants the entire world under his sway. He is going to come for you, Morgen. And for me and Shilan. Because he thinks it's the right thing to do. It's his mission in life. You can sit on one side or you can sit on the other. But if you sit in the middle, you're just going to get trampled."
"That's just. paranoia," Morgen said, stamping her foot. "You're all. warmongers! And you can just go to hell, Herzer Herrick!" With that she stomped away.
"Not bad, Romeo," Cruz said, leaning back. "Pick her up in the morning, have your way with her all afternoon and she's gone by evening. Not bad!"
Shilan took this opportunity to hit him in the shoulder as hard as she could with a week's worth of built up muscle.
"Ooow! Jeeze!"
"Less than you deserve," Courtney said.
"I was just joking," Cruz replied, rubbing his arm.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
After the argument
Herzer hung out with the rest of the group as the afternoon descended into twilight. Two oxen had been roasting all afternoon and the evening meal was a communal barbecue. Reenactors who had either gotten quickly reestablished or who were permanent residents of Raven's Mill had contributed various side dishes. Herzer got his first taste of cream corn and collard greens and decided that he could live with them. But what mostly surprised him was the incredible diversity. Before the Fall, finding or inventing different food had been an almost universal pastime. For all that there was a sameness. Before the Fall, all dishes were blazingly hot, some to the point of insanity. The only difference seemed to be what type of acid was included, whether you got the delightful piquancy of sulfuric or the there and gone nuclear attack of fluoric.
These foods on the other hand had so much more diversity, not only in the secondary spices that they used but in the very fact that many of them didn't taste as if they were going to eat the insides off their containers. Some were dreadfully hot. He had a few bites of a cabbage dish and after a chewing on it for a moment he wondered why it hadn't eaten the spoon. But many of the others were not spicy at all. They were sweet or delicately flavored with subtle herbs.
He was spooning down mushrooms that had had simply been saut‚ed in butter, wine and just a hint of some herb, absolute ambrosia, when Shilan sat down next to him with two cups in her hand.
"Master Edmund has graciously agreed to let the town raid his wine cellar," she said, handing him a cup.
Herzer took a small sip and inhaled gratefully. The wine was heavy and sweet, with an almost earthy aftertaste and a decided kick.
"Ummm. This is good," Herzer said, setting down the cup and spearing more mushrooms.
"Are you referring to the mushrooms or are you being existentialist?" Shilan asked.
"Well the mushrooms, yes," Herzer replied, holding out some on the fork. "But what I really meant was this, here." He shrugged as she leaned forward and delicately pulled the mouthful off, nodding her head in agreement. "Better than being out in the woods."
"Not better than it was a month ago," Shilan said darkly.
"Yes, true," Herzer said, pushing the remaining mushrooms around. But there was an odd thoughtful frown on his face.
"Penny for your thoughts," Shilan said, cocking her head to the side with a smile. But then she laughed.
"What?"
" 'Penny for your thoughts,' " Shilan replied. "How old is that saying?"
"Yes," Herzer said, chuckling. "I mean, are you offering to pay a lot of money, or very little? It all depends on the value of the penny."
"I am willing to pay a lot for your thoughts, Herzer," she said, leaning forward again and looking him in the eye.
"Hmmm." he replied with a frown. A muscle in his left cheek worked for a moment. "You said that it was better a month ago and I agreed."
"Sure," she said with a slight shrug. That reality was inarguable.
"Yes. and no," he said, the muscle working again. "This. this." he said, waving his arms around at the groups talking and eating; in the distance was faint laughter.
"This is two things that were not a month ago," he continued. "One, it is real. It is not some Renn Faire where if the ground is too hard you can port in a pillow, and when it gets too late you can port home. This is real. If you want a pillow, you had better go out there and figure out a way to make a pillow. I don't know why that is important, but I can feel it in my soul." He held up his hand as Shilan started to say something.
"Hang on a second," he said. "Give me a little bit. The second thing is that it has soul. Before, did you ever see so much passion? So much intensity out of people as you see today? No. Why? Because this is real. Before, before the Fall, no matter what you were discussing, no matter what you were arguing, you knew that the next day you would be getting up and going back and doing more or less the same thing all over again. But the point was, you knew you were getting up! You knew that you were going to be alive the next day.
"Now, the questions are not trivial. Not only lives but generations depend upon them. These people know that not only for themselves, but for their children and the children that they will have, they must work and succeed. And that Mother will not catch them when they fall. That brings a passion and intensity to things that I have never seen before.
"Now if I could press a button and turn it back to the way that it was before, would I? Yes. But that does not mean that I would not have regrets. There is a soul to this, to everything thing here. A soul that did not exist before the Fall. So, yes and. no," he concluded, picking out one last mushroom. "Damn, it's cold."
"Wow," Shilan said, frowning. "That was like. a chit's worth!"
"Nah," Herzer laughed, shaking his head. "You know like. maybe a tenth."
"I begin to understand why you seem to have a girl on your arm whenever I see you, Herzer," she said, smiling.
"Maybe you could explain it to me. It's been a very recent and very unexpected thing. If you're talking about that philosophical wandering: Bast hadn't said a word to me until she walked up, looked me over like a piece of meat and told me that I needed a bath but otherwise I'd do."
"Hmmm." Shilan replied thoughtfully. She took a sip of her wine and cleared her throat. "Speaking of baths."
"They're probably packed." Herzer shrugged, taking a sip from his own cup.
"Nope, most people are still eating and sitting around," Shilan said.
Herzer looked at the crowd and had to admit that it was the vast majority of the town.
"If we hurry?" Shilan continued in a questioning tone.
"Okay," Herzer replied, then paused. "Don't baths." he started then cleared his throat. "Don't the baths make you feel uncomfortable?" he finally said in an absolutely neutral tone.
"Yes," she said. "But it would be less so if you were along."
Herzer started to smile, then an alarm bell went off in his head.
"Shilan, uhm. Cruz."
"Cruz doesn't have me staked out," she replied, tartly. "I'm not planning on bedding you, Herzer. The operative term here is 'bath.' "
"I'm aware of that," Herzer said, not sure if he was aware of it or not. "And you're aware of that. That the operative term is 'bath,' I mean. But Cruz's feelings are going to be hurt if we go wandering off."
Herzer suddenly realized, by the expression on Shilan's face among other things, that he was in a situation where he was going to piss someone off, either Cruz or Shilan or, possibly, both. Shilan was not taking his careful hints and Cruz was not going to accept his explanation. Look, buddy, it was either have her all pissed off at me or you all pissed off at me. All it was was a bath. Okay, so I saw your girlfriend nekkid and you haven't yet. Big deal! Nope. Definitely wouldn't work. And this image of an axe or a mallet descending upon his sleeping head, wielded by either Cruz or Shilan, kept flashing through his mind. Eenie, meenie, minie, moe. He finally came to the conclusion that if he was going to get bludgeoned to death anyway, he might as well see Shilan, who after all was a comely wench, naked before he died.
All of this flashed through his brain in well under a half a second, hardly a pause. He had just opened his mouth to seal his fate when he saw Rachel coming through the crowd.
"Hang on a second, there's a friend of mine," he said to Shilan, waving his arm. "Hi, Rachel! How've you been doing?"
"Hello, Herzer," she said, walking over with a slightly abstracted frown. "How are the hands?"
"They're fine," Herzer said, holding them up, palms outward to show the heavy calluses. "I think you guys have met, but I don't think you've met, met," he continued. "Hsu Shilan, Rachel Ghorbani. Rachel, Shilan."
"We met when you came out to the camp and gave us a briefing on. uhm." Shilan said then paused.
"Mother has dredged up the ancient term 'feminine hygiene,' " Rachel said with a smile.
"Oh, Lord, you're not going to start talking about that, are you?" Herzer chuckled.
"I certainly hope not," Rachel replied. "What are
you guys doing?"
"We were just headed over to the baths," Herzer said then paused awkwardly.
Rachel looked at both of them in the pause until Shilan chuckled.
"I think what he is avoiding saying is 'would you like to come along?' " Shilan explained.
"Well, two's company and three's a crowd," Rachel replied dryly. "And if it's just more company, I'm truly not interested."
John Ringo - Council Wars 01 - There Will Be Dragons Page 37
