"-that means we have only about two thousand men as a mobile central reserve. If we commit our last reserve in one place and something goes wrong somewhere else, this whole war's fucked. The Lord Protector feels he should reinforce success. Hence, my lords, if we wish reinforcements, we must succeed."
Bishop Mateo spoke again; some of the warrior nobles started slightly. "You have yet to punish the Satan-worshippers," he said suddenly. "Let fire and sword teach humility, and show them the strength of Mother Church and Her loyal son and champion the Protector! If their walls are too stout to attack now, let them watch their lands burn!"
God, give me strength, Renfrew thought. He does talk like that all the time! I always enjoyed the tournaments and meetings before the Change, but you got to go back to the real world afterwards.
But now this was the real world; a reality that could be deadly. Aloud he went on:
"Your Grace, once the Mackenzies are conquered, you can lead them to the Truth, and punish any who persist in error. But my orders from the Lord Protector are to conquer these lands, not devastate them. The Lord Protector wants productive farmers and living towns to support fighting men and pay taxes. We already have more useless wilderness and ruins than we need."
Despite the churchman's glare, that brought yet another chorus of nods and even a few mutters of fucking right we do. They'd all been impressed by the well-cultivated Mackenzie farms, and the families represented around the table were all ready to jostle for a share after the war was over. And every nobleman in the Protectorate was acutely aware of the labor shortage. The territories the Association held could easily support ten times the numbers they had now, probably twenty or fifty. Their manors were all islands in a sea of resurgent brush and forest.
Mateo pointed eastward. "You could break down the aqueduct there," he said, waving towards the big water-furrow that directed water from the Sutter River south of town into Sutterdown, turning a number of mill wheels on the way. The mills were deserted-they were in the no-man's-land between the invader's pickets and the town walls, ground commanded by the catapults in the towers. "Let their bodies know thirst, even if their souls do not thirst for the Spirit."
And he wasn't even in the Society. He was a junior social worker, for Christ's sake!
Looking into the bishop's eyes, he knew that the cleric meant every word of it, too; you could feel it, coming off of him like the heat from a banked fire.
Oh, well, half of us survivors are a few cans short. I've done plenty of things I couldn't have imagined before the Change, God knows. The bishop's particular breed of crazy is what Pope Leo looks for. He's that variety of lunatic himself. Smart, very smart, but the wing flew off his nut when the Eaters captured him right after the Change.
"Sir Richard?" he said neutrally.
"Easy enough," the engineer said, tracing the way the canal took off from the river, several miles upstream to the east. "Wouldn't even have to wreck it, just block the intake here. Problem is, they've got a reservoir and deep tube wells inside the walls. I mean, they're not idiots, they wouldn't put up that wall with no interior water source and besides our spies got the plans."
He tapped a folder. "They'll have enough drinking water, though not much extra."
"But not enough for baths. The girls might be a bit smelly by the time we get to them," Sir Malcolm Timmins said, and there was a general laugh until the bishop glared around at them, whereupon a few muttered apologies and the rest made their faces grave.
Furness hadn't laughed; he had an old-fashioned squeamishness in many respects. Instead he went on: "It might screw up the sanitation system, yes. Risk of an epidemic if we do that, and it might spread."
"God and the Saints!" someone blurted.
This time everyone crossed themselves as well as nodding. Even those who'd been in their early teens during the aftermath of the Change remembered the plagues; they'd only burned themselves out when people grew scarce. Mateo took a look around and smiled sourly.
"I should not seek to advise you on your specialty, Grand Constable," he said. "You are the man of war here; I serve the Prince of Peace."
You are so right you shouldn't try to advise me, you fucking ecclesiastical commissar, Renfrew thought, but he bent his head with the others as Mateo signed the air in blessing. That hasn't stopped you yet, though. And you serve a fucking lunatic, if we're talking about Leo.
The bishop bowed slightly. "If you will excuse me, there is much work to be done arranging the infirmary with Sister Agatha and seeing to the army's spiritual welfare."
Everyone relaxed slightly when the cleric left. Renfrew spoke formally: "My lords, I suggest you all get your liegemen and contingents settled in according to the plan in the briefing papers, and we'll invest the city and see what we shall see. The patrol schedule is included in the folders. Sheriff Bauer, please remain for a moment."
When he and the Pendleton man were alone-except for Renfrew's personal guard-he raised an eyebrow.
"Well, I got all my boys answering to my orders," Bauer said.
I hope so, Renfrew thought.
"Only had to kill a couple-three of 'em, too." He worked his left arm as if the shoulder were sore. "I'll be good as new in a couple of days my own self."
The Pendleton area's spontaneous, homegrown version of neo-feudalism made the variety the Association had built out of books and Society make-believe look like Prussian centralization. The light horse from east of the mountains had come in the train of several sheriffs and half a dozen ranchers, and though they'd all theoretically been on the same side in the last civil war there, and all-equally theoretically-now accepted the Protector's overlord-ship, half of them had blood feuds born of previous abrupt switches of allegiances or just from the general bloody-mindedness produced by a decade of mutual slaughter.
The easterner went on: "Still, my 'chete-swingers ain't too happy. Nothing useful or pretty to pick up for the home folks, no girls to screw, not even much fightin'."
"They're getting paid regularly, aren't they?" Renfrew said impatiently. "The usual camp followers and sutlers will arrive soon enough and they can buy amusement. Or presents for their families. We've even got the postal service working as far as Pendleton; they can mail packages home."
"Yeah, but what's the point of a fight if you don't get to cut no throats or lift no cattle?" Bauer said.
Talk about rapid reversion to savagery! Renfrew thought. He's too young to have hem more than a high school student, hut I wonder what this hack-country clod's father did before the Change?
Conrad Renfrew had been an accountant, himself, when he wasn't playing at knights.
"Where are the Mackenzies' cattle and sheep, then?" he asked aloud. If anyone can follow a cow, these bastards can. Particularly if they're feeling sexual frustration.
"Near as we can tell, they drove some into town-probably salting those down to eat later-and sent some of the rest south, and quite a few head up into the mountains," Bauer said. "Lot of their folks went up into the high country too, judgin' from the tracks. Woods're heavy up there. Bad country for riders, just right for hiding if they got supplies stockpiled."
And our gliders are nearly useless there too, Renfrew thought. He waved a hand; southward, east to the vast mountain forests that stretched up into the High Cascades, and then west towards the Willamette with its brush and swamp and prairie.
"They're out there somewhere, Bauer. Eight hundred to a thousand kilties, and too mobile by half. They showed that when they corncobbed Lord Piotr."
With bicycles, they could be anywhere in the Willamette Valley south of here in a day or two; they might be hiding in the brush-grown lands between here and Corvallis, for that matter. The only good thing was that they couldn't get past him, not in any numbers, although that would be a reckless move even if they could. The mountain tracks to the east were too narrow and rough. He'd know it if they tried to go north in open country to the westward, and then he could move quickly to force battle on his own terms. Also, they didn't have any cavalry to speak of. Those were the only consolations he had, and he clung to them hard.