The Scourge of God, page 14
Nigel faced her as she turned. “My dear,” he said, putting a hand beneath her chin and kissing her. “You are without doubt the bravest of us all.”
“He is?” BD said, her weathered, wrinkled face blank for an instant. “Murdoch is a spy for Lady Sandra?”
Astrid Larsson leaned back in the chair and nodded—not smugly, she hoped. The little chamber was very private, with only one narrow slit window high up on the curving outer wall; Castle Todenangst was full of places like that, nooks and crannies you could get to without anyone being the wiser and leave unnoticed.
Unless someone’s watching from a secret passage, of course. I think Sandra did a lot of the detail work on the plans for this castle.
The light was good, gas-lamps with incandescent mantles, unaccustomed brilliance for an hour this late and reflecting off wainscoting of blond oak. There was a table of fine polished mahogany, a few chairs, a rug, and a bottle of wine and glasses by a bowl of raisins and walnuts and hazelnuts. Despite the charming little fireplace with its tiled surround of hummingbirds and meadowlarks it was a bit oppressive after a life spent mostly in the wilds or on the open roads, or at most in Stardell Hall with its loose scatter of homes through forest.
She could feel the uncounted tons of steel and concrete above, almost smell them under the odors of wine and burning fir-wood. And imagine the dungeons below, and the great foundations where the Fortress of Death-Anguish gripped the soil of the land.
But there are advantages, she thought. Privacy seems easier to come by amid many people. Odd.
She sipped at her glass of wine and watched the older woman think.
“He’s good, then,” BD said. “I’ve dealt with Murdoch and Sons every time I swung out that far East, and I’d never suspected he was her man in Pendleton.”
BD was from the Kyklos, a scatter of independent villages around Silverton, not far north of the main Dúnedain holding in Mithrilwood. Besides being a High Priestess of the Old Religion she ran the Plodding Pony service, which delivered high-value freight over much of Oregon, and which had employed Rangers as escorts almost as long as there had been Rangers in this Age of the world. That sort of business led to the collection of information as naturally as breathing. It also made you a shrewd judge of character.
Astrid went on: “Murdoch has been working for Sandra since before the War of the Eye. She planted him in Pendleton when we made the Protectorate withdraw from the area, after her husband was killed. And he’s got . . . connections there. Sort of an underground.”
BD looked down at the map and her eyebrows shot up. “I’ll say! But how are you going to use them?”
Astrid shrugged. “I’m not altogether sure,” she said. “But I’m a little uneasy about just marching up to Pendleton’s walls and telling them to surrender so we can guard them against Boise and the CUT whether they like it or not. We can’t even prove that either power is planning to move on them.”
“You don’t think you can beat the Pendleton Round-Up?”
“I don’t want to beat them in a stand-up battle and I certainly don’t want to burn down the city or lay the countryside waste. We Rangers generally don’t go in for mass head butting. It’s . . . crude. And Pendleton’s just badly governed, not evil like the CUT and its Dark . . . Prophet. Every man we kill will be one who isn’t on our side later, in the real war, when Rudi returns with the Sword. We ought to be able to make something of an asset like this Murdoch and his . . . connections.”
She leaned forward. “You’ve been there in person. Tell me about the Pendleton Bossman, Carl Peters. The things that don’t get into written reports.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Cold falls the night where nothing sounds
Save weeping and the grief of the weak
Hot his heart and ready his hand
He and his companions sworn and trusty
Blade and bow ready for avenging of wrongs
Though wiser it were to think of the Sword
That waited where the Lady had bidden—
From: The Song of Bear and Raven
Attributed to Fiorbhinn Mackenzie, 1st century CY
EASTERN IDAHO, NEAR PICABO SEPTEMBER 10, CHANGE YEAR 23/2021 AD
Caravan, Rudi Mackenzie thought. They’re putting together a big one, for a place that size. Or a big one’s passing through. Not about to leave just now, though.
They were a lot farther north and closer to the edge of the mountains now; the stark foothills of the Pioneers were just ahead on the other side of Silver Creek, mostly summer-bleached grass up steep slopes, with shallow valleys leading northward. A little higher he could see groves of quaking aspen—and, alarmingly, some of them were beginning to turn, a hint of gold where none should shine. They had to get over the Rockies, and soon, if they weren’t to risk being hit by bad snowstorms in the passes. The ones they could use, at least; the lower ones would be strongly garrisoned by the Prophet’s men, or even fortified.
Maybe we should have headed south through Nevada and tried the mountains there!
The creek was about a mile away, flowing from west to east and flanked by a narrow band of fields watered through irrigation channels. Most of them were dun yellow reaped grain with dust smoking off the stubble at this time of year, but the alfalfa was so deep a green that it seemed to hum, and there were fields of potatoes and apple orchards as well. Split-rail fences marked off the cultivated land, an island in a huge rolling wilderness of lava beds and gritty sagebrush-dotted soil southward, mountains to the north.
The settlement wasn’t large, no bigger than a Mackenzie dun, room for twenty or thirty families if they didn’t mind living tight. It had a well-kept fifteen-foot rammed-earth wall on a fieldstone base, topped with a sloping roof of timber and sheet metal, with one square tower beside a gate. Barns and sheds, corrals and vegetable gardens lay outside, but nothing higher than a man’s knee rose within bowshot of the wall. The gate was open, and there were animals and people and wagons milling around before it, and herds of horses under the eye of mounted cowboys moving across pasture and stubble to the north and west.
“Get me Nystrup,” he said softly, lowering his binoculars and tapping them thoughtfully on the red-gold stubble on his chin. “I don’t like this. There’s something wrong.”
Ritva nodded. “Not enough people working. Too many horses. And where are their herds? And there should be more smoke from inside the town, too—more cookfires and a couple of smithies.”
She ghosted away. A sage grouse walked past Rudi a few minutes later, pecking at a grasshopper, and overhead two hummingbirds fought a dive-and-buzz duel like ill-tempered flying jewelry before flitting off towards the river. Some sort of black-and-white insects were a haze over the creek, almost like slow-motion snow; when he brought the glasses back up he could see the silver forms of trout leaping for them now and then. The banks of the stream were green with willows and dense with reeds, and blue herons stalked through them with their beaks cocked. Ducks swam on the waters as well, cinnamon teal and mallards.
It would have been a remarkably pleasant-looking place after weeks of short rations and fear, but . . .
Nystrup slid into place beside him. “It’s one of our settlements,” he said without preliminaries. “About two hundred and fifty people, and it was the center for some outlying ranches; the last big thing to happen here was moving a bunch of people up from Pocatello right after the Change, part of our resettlement program. I don’t know how it’s fared just recently.”
A warm breeze stirred across the land, raising dust devils. It fluttered out a flag from the pole atop the gate tower; a many-rayed sunburst, gold on crimson. The banner of the Church Universal and Triumphant. Below it was a smaller triangular flag, with three triangles outlined in white on blue—some Rancher’s brand mark, the personal sigil of whoever commanded the CUT’s forces here.
“Well, that answers the question as to how they’ve fared,” Rudi said. “Not well. Ritva, keep watch.”
His half sister settled in behind a clump of gray-green rabbitbrush, a tall shaggy plant that had clumps of yellow flowers and smelled like a sweaty saddle. She went still beneath her war cloak; even at only a few feet, and knowing where she was, Rudi found her hard to see.
He eeled backwards on his belly until they were well out of sight before standing. Nystrup turned and made an arm signal; by the time they were back at their cold camp most of the Mormon guerillas were there too, leaving only the minimum perimeter of lookouts.
Rudi glanced at Ingolf. The Easterner shook his head. “I passed a lot farther south than this, when I came west. Around Bear Lake.”
“We can swing around them,” Mary said. “Move south, then back north to cut the road again.”
Rudi shook his head in turn. “We’re out of food and we haven’t been able to hunt much,” he said. “I don’t know how they’ve been able to press us so hard . . . but they have. We’ve spent more time covering our tracks than running, and we’ve been running farther north than east.”
Silence fell; they were hungry, in the way you could only get when you combined not enough food with working hard. Several of the wounded Mormons had died; the hale members of their band weren’t weakened much . . . yet.
But we don’t have much time before we are, Rudi thought unhappily. And the horses are losing condition. I wouldn’t like to have to rely on them if we had a running fight, or the enemy were in sight and we had to break contact. We need to get them good grazing and rest.
They might have been able to make more progress if they’d kept all the food they’d had and cut the Mormons loose immediately. On the other hand, that would probably have been bad luck as well as wrong . . . if there was a difference.
Ingolf rubbed his jaw thoughtfully, the cropped beard scritching under his callused fingers. The sight made Rudi’s face itch slightly and he consciously stopped himself from imitating the gesture; he hadn’t been able to shave for the past week, and the silky stubble was annoying. Plus the hairs came in white along the thin scar on his jaw, making him look ridiculously older than his real not-quite-twenty-three.
“You know, we haven’t seen any sheep or cattle or horses around here. But the range has obviously been grazed. Until lately, at least,” Ingolf said.
“There’s stock in the corrals,” Rudi said. “And a lot of horses. Hundred, hundred and thirty.”
“That would mean fifty or sixty Cutter levies,” Ingolf replied. “The Cutter soldiers are mainly Ranchers, or even Rovers”—which meant nomad, more or less—“not full-time fighters like the Sword of the, umm, false prophet. They get hives if they don’t have at least one remount for every fighting man. It makes them feel pinned down.”
Nystrup sighed. “We were always being surprised by how fast they could move, and how many men they could throw at us,” he acknowledged. “It hurt us, and more than once.”
“The Church calls them up to fight when they’re needed,” Ingolf said. “A ranch isn’t like a farm—the old people and kids and women can keep it going pretty well for quite a while, at a pinch. Cowboys can make most of their own war gear, too, and their ordinary work is damned good training to fight.”
“Besides the horses there were six or seven hundred sheep, maybe half that number of cattle,” Rudi went on.
“Not as much as there should be,” Nystrup replied. “I’ve never been here myself, but from the reports and the taxes they paid and the way it looks, this is good land.”
Ingolf made a gesture of agreement. “I’d say what’s likely happened is that a couple of ranches’ or Rover bands’ worth of levies hit the place just recently, on their way home. Some of them have already left with part of the stock. The ones there now plan to loot it bare before they leave—they’re shorter on craft-workers than you Saints are and they’re always short of tools and so forth likewise. I’d say they’re about halfway through the process here in . . . Peekaboo?”
“Yes,” Nystrup said grimly. “We counted on that, their being backwards, too much during the war, and on their absurd superstitions about gears and machinery.” He looked at Ingolf shrewdly. “You have an idea?”
“Sort of. We have to know what’s going on in there, and if we can get some supplies and fresh horses for your people, Captain. It would take a pitched battle to fight for them, and we’re not in shape for a stand-up fight, and they outnumber us. But if we send in some people who can pass for . . . oh, I don’t know, merchants from one of the Plains towns come West to buy up plunder, that sort of thing. There are a few places like that in the Sioux country, tributary to the tribes. Then we could buy what we need. Last I heard, the CUT and the Sioux had made peace.”
“We don’t have much contact with the Sioux,” Nystrup said. “The CUT was always between us and them. Most of the Indians in new Deseret are . . . were . . . friendly and part of our Church. I don’t think any of my people could fool the Cutters.”
“Well, I’ve had a lot of contact with the Lakota tribes,” Ingolf said, with a lopsided smile. “Mostly not too friendly, as in, contact with their arrows and shetes and tomahawks. That was my first war, when our Bossman in Richland sent men to help the Republic of Marshall fight ’em. And later when I was working for some traders in the Nebraska country, I rode guard on a caravan they sent out West, to Newcastle, and I got caught there for the winter. There was this girl . . . anyway, I can’t pass for a Sioux, but I think I could buffalo outsiders who’d never seen the place into supposing I came from that town.”
Rudi felt a broad smile growing. “Sure, and that is an idea. You think it’s possible?”
“Like I said, most of the Cutter levies are just cowboys, or a few are farmers or townsmen,” Ingolf said. “Yeah, they believe in that crazy religion—or say they do, if they’re smart, anywhere Corwin controls— and they’re suspicious of outsiders, but they’re just . . . men, otherwise. I saw a fair number the first time I was a prisoner of theirs; they let me out a bit once I’d convinced them I’d swallowed their line of bullshit.”
“Well, if we were to try it, certainly you’d have to be one of our spies,” Rudi said musingly. He looked around. “Their leader, in fact. I’d be another . . .”
Ingolf spoke again: “Three or four men would be the maximum. No less, though. Corwin makes a big noise about how safe their territory is for traders, but nobody travels with a lot of cash all by himself. And there should be a woman—a Mormon woman.”
Rudi blinked. “Why?”
“Camo-cover, Rudi. We’d be refugee-traders as well as buying loot in general.”
“Slaves, the Cutters call them, don’t they? It seems a bit too honest for them.”
“Refugees is the word out East, and some places allow that sort of thing; everyone’s always short of working hands. Say four men and ten, twelve horses—we’d have the horses to carry stuff. We’d be pretty popular, too; coin’s a lot easier to transport, and they’d want to change some of what they’ve taken into hard cash.”
“We don’t have any of the CUT’s minting,” Rudi mused. “Or any from farther East. Boise currency might do at a pinch, but not the Association’s or Corvallis.”
“The Sioux don’t coin, but they do use gold and silver. A bar of gold’s a bar of gold. And at the least we could buy up some folks and get them out to their kin, and enough supplies.”
Rudi winced a little; he hated the thought of playing slaver even as a deception, but it was a legitimate ruse of war.
“I’ll go if they need a woman,” Rebecca Nystrup said.
Her cousin opened his mouth, then closed it again. It was good protective coloration. Rudi sympathized with him as he visibly suppressed the desire to say that she’d do no such thing—he could scarcely order one of the other women to do it, when his own kin had asked for the nasty, dangerous job.
“I volunteer!” Fred Thurston said.
“Sorry, Fred,” Ingolf said. “You’d stand out too much.”
Frederick looked at him blankly for an instant, then struck the palm of his hand against his forehead. “Right. Damn, I hadn’t thought of that. We haven’t gotten far enough away from Boise for people to just take me for myself.”
Black folk were even thinner on the ground here in the interior of the Northwest than they were on the Pacific Coast—Mrs. Thurston was Anglo, but her husband’s African strain was plain in her son, too plain for him to pass for Hispano or Indian.
And since his father had been ruler of Boise ever since he brought order out of plague and chaos in the first Change Year, the association of young black man and Prince of Boise—specifically, fugitive prince with a massive price on his head—would be all too likely, even for Cutter levies from beyond the Rockies. Their leaders at least would have some familiarity with local politics.
Rudi ran the rest of his band through his mind. They couldn’t take any of their own women; Cutter females were close-kept, even more so than in the Protectorate back home. Which left . . .
“Edain . . . and Odard, I think,” Rudi said. “Would Edain’s accent pass? Or mine, for that matter?”
“Sure,” Ingolf said. “You get all sorts of funny ways of talking in little pockets and backwater settlements, nobody can keep track of them all. These Montanans all sound like hicks with head colds to me anyway. You’ll have to leave the skirts”—he grinned at Edain’s bristle—“pardon me, the kilts, behind. Odard’s OK too—you could pass for part-Injun, my lord Baron. Most of the folks who call themselves Sioux look pretty much like white-eyes these days, mostly because they are white-eyes, but the important families are likely to have the old blood.”
Odard Liu nodded; his father had been half-Chinese, and it showed in his coarse crow-black hair, high cheekbones and the fold at the corners of his blue eyes. Father Ignatius had similar looks save for black eyes, courtesy of a grandmother from Vietnam, but his tonsure wasn’t the only thing that made him too unmistakably a Christian cleric.
“Happy to volunteer,” the Association noble said dryly. “Even ex-post-facto.”
