The Scourge of God c-2 Page 9

  "Ah… Dad always said you guys in Portland were even weirder, but you and Odard seem pretty… well, normal to me."

  "You haven't seen the court in Castle Todenangst," Rudi said. "The annual High Tournament, say. It's an improvement on a battle only because the food's better and there are regular rest breaks. That's their idea of fun."

  "It's traning," Mathilda said a little defensively. "We use blunt swords and barriers and rebated lances. There's hardly ever more than one or two people killed. And I hadn't noticed you refusing to break a lance or two, Rudi."

  "I have to take them down a bit, for their own good," Rudi said. "Knocking them off their horses corrects their humors, me being a mere pagan clansman and all who empties his own slop bucket. Most of the time your noble Associate can't swat a mosquito without getting a troubadour to list its noble lineage and compose an epic on the desperate battle it gave him."

  And young Fred's a bit smitten with Mathilda, Rudi thought tolerantly. Which is natural enough. She's a comely lass, my anamchara is, and I've always thought so, and you could warm your hands at her spirit on a cold night. Not to mention other parts, if that were her inclination, which alas it is not.

  It might cause problems, but he didn't think so; the young man seemed a sensible sort. And Mathilda had her faith's conviction of the importance of virginity right down in her bones.

  A convinced virgin-until-marriage and my two half sisters, Rudi thought. It's a merry time I'm going to have on this trip! Think about anything but sex, Rudi… think of ice and vinegar.

  He did, out of curiosity: an image slid spontaneously into his mind-one of a girl he knew named Niamh, naked, blond, lying on a bed and smiling as she raised a glass of iced vinegar and slowly licked the rim…

  Oh, by Priapus Himself, I'm twenty-two, how am I to think of anything else? Rudi thought, tugging at the bottom edge of his arming doublet.

  Then the image flashed back; this time it was Matti. That was even more disturbing. She wasn't conventionally beautiful, her face more strong-boned and handsome, but he could imagine how those brown eyes would light, and her breath catch as he kissed the hollow at the base of her throat and…

  She was laughing at his joke, her head thrown back, that laugh with a gurgling chuckle in it. He gritted his teeth. It looked like he'd have to learn to mortify the flesh, Christian or no.

  "Now, if you want weird, try the Dunedain," he said teasingly. "Living in trees and talking that fancy language-"

  "I heard that!" Mary-or Ritva-called from a few yards back. "You're just jealous 'cause our traditions are really old! And only some of us live in trees."

  "You do," Rudi pointed out.

  "It's a flet. And very comfortable in all weathers, and private. And bearproof."

  "You want to hear something really weird?" Frederick said, and waved a hand around: "This place used to be what they called a national monument. Dad was always going on about how we had to preserve them for the future."

  Afraid he'll offend if he joins in the chaffing, Rudi thought; you had to be really familiar with people to share the game of playful insults. But yes, he's lonely, I'd judge. And of course he's parted from all his family, his mother and his sisters.

  Rudi looked around at the arid desolation; the only reason they'd come this way was to throw off possible pursuit, and because they might as well use up fodder too bulky to carry far now that they'd abandoned the wagon.

  "Well, there's something to be said for every part of Their world," he said.

  The thought of harvest in the fields of home pierced his breast, and the reapers dancing in the Queen Sheaf to the squeal of pipes and rattle of bodhrans, whirling with corn poppies woven in their hair.. .

  "And the forest is sacred to the Horned Lord, of course, and very comely. But this is the sort of place only the Mother could love, I'd say."

  Rudi was a little relieved when Ingolf spoke; the big man had been nearly silent for too long now:

  "Yah, I noticed that sort of thing back home-and all the way East and West, from one side of the continent to the other. You'd see these National Monument signs, and it's never anything that could have been good fields, or orchards or anything. Mind you, the woods can be real pretty-the maples turn colors back in Richland that I'd ride a day to see-and sometimes it's something really impressive, like this mountain carved into faces in the Sioux country, but most of these National Monuments, it's just damn ugly wilderness, rocks and stuff."

  "I think they valued wilderness more, then, because there was so little of it and so much settled land," Ignatius said thoughtfully. "Strange…"

  "We can all agree on one thing," Mathilda said decisively. "People who grew up before the Change are… weird!"

  Everyone laughed agreement; Rudi nodded himself. Even his mother was strange that way sometimes, and you'd run into it like a brick wall you couldn't see.

  Mary or Ritva came trotting back from a forward scout. Ritva, he decided as she reined in.

  "Water a couple of miles northwest," she said. Her face was grim. "But there's complications."

  There were about two dozen of the Mormons at the desolate little spring, refugees twice over, the first time from the Prophet's invasion of New Deseret and now from the United States of Boise. They'd picked their spot well, a declivity at the base of a tall north-facing cliff with a bit of an overhang, and with good water bubbling in a crack in the rock. It ran downhill before vanishing into the coarse black volcanic sand, and that produced a bit of greenery, which their horses needed and were busy stripping. Rudi gave the people a quick appraising glance.

  They had tinder stacked and a couple of big camp-kettles next to it, but no fire going. About eight were women; nobody was under eighteen or older than early middle age. They all seemed to have at least one horse, but the mounts looked hard done by, and some of the people were wounded. And they all had a sword and bow or crossbow and a shield, marked with Deseret's golden bee on a blue background. A few had mail-shirts, or armor of sheet-steel plates hammered to fit and riveted onto leather jackets, both painted a greenish gray sage color.

  And the place doesn't stink, Rudi thought; there was only a slight natural smell of horses, leather, and sweat and smoke soaked into woolen clothing. Which with twenty-odd people is a good sign. They're taking care of things, tired as they are.

  Edain waved as he recognized a girl named Rebecca Nystrup-her father had bought Rancher Brown's horses for Deseret's army, back.. .

  Well, well. That was in May, and doesn't it seem the longest time?

  Edain had been quite taken with her, for which Rudi didn't blame him, the girl being well beyond comely and near his age. He'd have been tempted in that direction himself, under other circumstances. And she'd been friendly to Edain, in a very proper way. The young Mackenzie's smile died as he took in the grimness of the little party. Rudi nodded politely to the girl but spent his attention on the rest of her land-folk.

  "Colonel Donald Nystrup, 2nd Cavalry, Army of the Republic of New Deseret," their apparent leader said, a man in his thirties with light streaks in his brown beard and utter weariness in his blue eyes.

  "Rudi Mackenzie," the clansman replied, swinging down from his saddle and shaking hands. "You're kin to Bishop Nystrup, I'd be saying from the looks of you. Not his son?"

  "Bishop Nystrup was my uncle, and Rebecca's my cousin," he said. "But close enough."

  Rudi sighed mentally as he looked at the fugitives and noted the was. Bishop Nystrup had been a conscientious man who did his very best for his people, in the brief time Rudi had known him. The sigh also had a little regret that the refugees were going to consume most of the food that he'd expected to feed his party through the next couple of weeks.

  Threefold return, remember, he thought. If we have to pull our belts tighter for a few days, it won't kill us.

  "It's coming on for sundown," he said. "Shall we make camp together, and perhaps make some stone soup?"

  Nystrup looked puzzled for a moment-eviden
tly the story wasn't as common among his people as it was with Mackenzies-and then his shoulders slumped very slightly as he recognized the invitation to share supplies.

  "That would be a Chris-ah-kindly deed," he said. "We took what we could, but it wasn't all that much, and we lost the rest of our food in a skirmish two days ago."

  Ingolf came up. "You took horses and weapons," he said, giving the group the same once-over Rudi had. "That's the essentials, you betcha. You can get food if you have to, with a bow or a shete in your hand."

  Nystrup glanced at him. "I'm a soldier, but I'm not inclined to play bandit," he said, bristling a little.

  Ingolf shrugged; the two men were of an age, in their late twenties, but the Easterner looked older just then.

  "I was a soldier in a lot of places, straight-leg," he said; for a moment his dark blue eyes seemed lost in memory. "And I can tell you that sometimes the difference is sort of abstract. If you're planning to keep fighting the Prophet-"

  "False prophet!" Rebecca said defiantly behind her cousin, and ignored his frown.

  "Yah, I've got no problem with that false part," he said, touching his bruised face.

  "You were wounded fighting the CUT?" she asked with quick sympathy.

  Ingolf laughed, and she flinched a little. "You might say so. A spy from Corwin named Kuttner wormed his way into Vogeler's Villains-my outfit-got my friends all killed back East, captured me, dragged me off to Corwin, tortured me, screwed with my head, and when I escaped they chased me to Oregon; then they killed the lady I was with and damned near killed me, and just now they captured me and tortured me and screwed with my head again. You might say I've been fighting them. Not very effectively, but yes, I've got reason to do it with feeling."

  He turned his head away and swallowed. Rudi winced slightly; he'd been feeling hard done by because he'd been dragged away from home by all this. The Easterner had lost the only home or real kin he had.

  Ingolf faced Nystrup and touched his own face again; the swelling had gone down, but there was a spectacular range of colors under the dust and beard. When he spoke again his voice was altogether flat:

  "Fighting the false prophet, especially if you're not doing it in a regular army, then you're going to have to get flexible. It's a rough game, and on both sides. You can't let people decide to just sit things out and see who wins. Better not to try at all if you're not willing to see it through to the end."

  Rudi nodded soberly. Ingolf wasn't only a sworn enemy of the CUT; he'd been a wandering fighter for hire for years out East, in the fabled-and fabulously wealthy and populous-realms of the Mississippi valley, Iowa and Nebraska and Kansas. And after that he'd been boss of a salvage outfit which went deep into the old death zones, to the dead cities of the Atlantic Coast, which was just as dangerous and involved a lot of the same skills.

  "Hey, ndan bell, indo hun!" Mary called. Which meant strong back, simple mind, roughly. "Give us a hand! Not you, Rudi. The other strong back and simple mind. Ingolf."

  "What about me?" Odard said. "I'm always ready to help a beautiful damsel or two in distress."

  "If you have to ask, Odard, you'll never understand."

  The young Baron raised an eyebrow, shrugged, and went with Mathilda to help hobble their horses and the four mules who'd drawn the Conestoga before they dumped it. They both knew horses well, of course; Protectorate nobles might have grooms, but they learned their way around stables from infancy. Ingolf started unloading sacks of dried beans and jerky and barley from the pack-saddles at the twin's direction. As a boil-up it wouldn't be very appetizing, but it would keep you going.

  Then Ignatius got out the medicine chest, with Rudi assisting. Someone who knew what they were doing had done the bandaging-unsurprisingly, that turned out to be Rebecca-but the antiseptic ointments made from aloes and molds were useful. He'd never taken formal training beyond the first aid all Mackenzies learned in school, but Judy Barstow was both the Clan's chief healer and his mother's oldest friend and he'd been around Aunt Judy all his life. Ignatius was better than that, virtually a doctor; the Order wanted its knight-brothers to be able to turn their hands to just about anything, since they spent a lot of time on their own in places hostile, remote, or both.

  "There is nobody here who won't recover, given food and rest," the priest said to the Deseret colonel when he'd finished.

  "That… may be a problem," Nystrup said. Then he smiled: "I'd read about guerilla warfare in OCS-Officer Candidate School-and they went on about how valuable a sanctuary is to an insurgency, but it was all sort of theoretical. I'm just getting used to how much I relied on having someone to take the wounded off my hands. And yes, food's a problem too. I don't have a commissariat anymore, or local Stake storehouses."

  " We'd have more if we'd kept the wagon," Ritva grumbled, as she measured ingredients into the cauldron.

  We kept the essentials, Rudi thought. The weapons, the medicine chest, and the cash. But no need to go into detail; best not put temptation in our Mormon friends' way.

  "If we'd kept the wagon, we'd be thirty or forty miles that way"-Rudi pointed back towards the site of the rescue-"and someone would have caught us by now."

  "Yes, but it's the principle of the thing," his half sister said, getting out their salt-and-seasoning box. "All that lovely shopping we did in Bend, wasted. C'mon, Ingolf, let's give these people some help."

  The Mormon women made bannock out of some of the flour, and minced a couple of desert hares as their contribution to the stone soup; the rabbits would be lean, without the fat that kept you going, but every little bit helped. Things settled down when the chores were done, and everyone sat around gnawing on hardtack while the stew seethed, chatting easily-except for Ignatius, who kept a calm, cheerful silence, and Ingolf, who brooded despite the twins' attempts to draw him out.

  Rudi took another deep drink of the water; it was very clear, with a mineral undertang, and cold, which felt glorious. He'd taken the chance to strip and scrub down before the heat of the day left completely; this area was higher than it looked, and a clear night would be chilly even in August. Putting his sticky clothes back on had been a bit of a trial; he was a fastidious man, when circumstances allowed, if not quite as picky as, say, Odard.

  "I'm thinking then that you aren't altogether happy in Boise territory," Rudi said to Nystrup.

  "No," Nystrup said shortly, looking down at the sword he was honing.

  Then, thawing: "I could tell right away that the new President, Martin Thurston, wasn't going to keep his father's… He was talking about splitting up the refugees, settling them a few each in Boise towns and villages, or enlisting our troops in his army-and as individuals, not in units. That meant he wasn't planning on helping us get our homes back. And he said he wouldn't allow any 'raiding' over the border from the refugee camps. Said it might endanger the 'peace process.' "

  Rudi nodded, pursed his lips thoughtfully, and called: "Fred! The good colonel needs to talk to you. Colonel Nystrup, Captain Frederick Thurston. Yes, of the Thurstons."

  "Damnation!" the Deseret officer blurted, when the tale of Martin Thurston's treachery had been told, amid a babble of questions from his followers.

  That cut off sharply when Nystrup made a gesture. Rudi's brows rose; that bespoke real discipline and this collection of odds-and-sods wasn't a regular military unit. From what he'd heard, the Saints were an orderly folk, but it still said something about Nystrup as a man.

  "But didn't the CUT try to assassinate him along with his father and younger… and you, Mr. Thurston?" the colonel said.

  "Everyone thought so at the time," Rudi said. "I'd say the now that only the ones aimed at General Thurston were really trying to kill."

  "And the one behind me," Frederick said.

  "Perhaps," Rudi said gently. "He didn't have any real need to kill you then-you'd never have suspected. But perhaps."

  And perhaps you need to think as badly of him as you can, for your own sake. I'll not hinder it.

&
nbsp; "You think Martin Thurston's going over to the false prophet?" Nystrup said sharply. "Has already, secretly?"

  "Now, there I'm less certain," Rudi said judiciously.

  Odard Liu cut in; he'd been doing his share of the chores, and without any of the reluctance that Rudi half expected. Alex had done much of his master's work before the man revealed his true colors. Now the Baron wiped his hands and spoke:

  "I'd say it's an alliance of mutual convenience, not an affair of the heart. Ah, some people in the Protectorate-"

  Including your darling mother, Rudi thought. Who has all the faults of Sandra Arminger and none of her redeeming qualities, sure. And who Sandra will now undoubtedly kill.

  "-have been, ummm, negotiating with the CUT too. They evidently don't demand you convert in order to intrigue with them about politics."

  "Not at first," Ingolf said grimly from by the fire. "I was a prisoner in Corwin last summer. They really believe that horseshit, or at least most of them do. And they send out their missionaries everywhere they can reach."

  "Does anyone in Boise know about their President and what he's doing?" Nystrup asked eagerly.

  "That they do, naming no names," Rudi said.

  "It'd probably be a real threat to health to draw Martin Thurston's attention by talking up a version of the events that isn't his," Odard said judiciously.

  Frederick nodded. "But they'll be spreading the story quietly. Everyone knew Martin was… ambitious. Just not how ambitious."

  "That changes things," Nystrup said; a little of the lost look faded from his eyes. "We and Boise never got along well, but everyone hates the CUT. If we can get people in Boise territory to help us.. . hide us, give us shelter in between raids on the CUT garrisons and supply lines, give us food and horses…"

  "And everyone loved my father," Frederick said. "Well, nearly everyone. Nearly everyone in the United States." With bitterness. " Dad didn't want to be a king! With him it was everything for the country, nothing for himself."

  " Emperor is more what Martin has in mind, probably," Odard said, tuning the lute which someone had brought along from the Conestoga. "I got those vibrations off him"-he plucked the strings-"and we talked a few times. He was extremely interested in the balance of power out West, in the realms of the Meeting at Corvallis. I don't think he's going to settle down to quietly rule what he has now."