The winter preceding had been an extremely hard and long-lasting one—the hardest one in the available records, in fact, a winter which had seen hardly any wild animals abroad other than the wolves—great marauding, hunger-maddened packs of the slavering beasts—on the prairie. There had been precious little sun for weeks at a time, with one long, bitter blizzard after another sweeping down from west and north and east, even, and a full meter thickness of hard ice covering the river bank to bank for the most of the winter.
The fort had then been in place for about fifteen years—it had been begun during the week of the present Ian’s birth and had been three or four years in the completion—but all of the other buildings and habitations had been erected even before the first Ian’s birth. They were solid and weathertight and well capable of retaining heat generated by hearth fires, stoves and other, esoteric devices then in use.
Even so, the folk and animals living in these sound structures of concrete and brick and native stone, adequately fed on their stocks of stored grain, canned or dried vegetables and fruits, smoked and pickled meats, silage and hay had suffered the effects of the long, hard winter to some degree. But the sufferings of the nomadic rovers—mostly existing in fragile, drafty tents, eating their scrawny, diseased cattle and sheep for lack of game and battling the huge, savage wolf packs for even these—must have been well-nigh unimaginable.
Nor had the following spring done much to alleviate the preceding months of misery and hunger and death. For one thing, it had been a late spring, a very late spring; for another, it had been an exceedingly rainy one and these torrential rains, coupled with the copious snow and ice melt, had transformed ponds into lakes and lakes into virtual inland seas, sent streams and rivers surging over their banks and rendered many square miles of prairie into swampland that discouraged the quick return of game.
Halfway through that terrible spring, the prairie rovers, from hundreds of square miles around, converged upon the fort and the other buildings and sprawling crop and pasture lands.
Young Ian remembered how the tatterdemalions looked from the wall of the fort, through the optics of a rangefinder. They went through the drizzling chill in rags and motheaten furs and ill-cured hides. The few whose horses had not gone to feed either them or the wolves were mounted, but the majority went afoot. There were thousands of them, it seemed, but mostly ill armed. Here and there was an old shotgun or ancient military rifle, bows of varying designs, a few prods and crossbows, but most of them bore nothing more than spears, crude swords, axes and clubs.
Later on that day, Ian had felt—still felt—both pride and despair at the dignified mien of Colonel Ian James Alexander Lindsay—pride, that he was himself come of such stock, despair, that he could ever affect such demeanor, could ever be so cool, so obviously self-assured in confronting the scruffy but deadly-looking leaders of the huge horde of invaders.
Flanked where he sat by his son, the younger Ian’s father, First Captain David Duncan Robert Lindsay, and the battalion second-in-command, Major Albert MacKensie, with the three other captains—Douglass, Keith and Ross—ranged along the paneled wall behind, Colonel Ian J. A. Lindsay had seemed to his grandson the very personification of all that an officer should represent: calm dignity, authority and long-established order.
In his mind’s eye, the present colonel could see that long-dead old officer as if the years intervening had never passed. The full-dress coat that had been Colonel Ian J. A. Lindsay’s own father’s was spotless, and its polished brass insigniae reflected back the bright electric lights. Ruddy of countenance, his dark-auburn hair and mustaches liberally streaked with gray, he had sat behind the very desk and in the very oaken chair now occupied by his grandson. A short, but stocky and big-boned, powerful-looking man, he had eyed his “visitors” in silence over steepled fingers.
Finally, he had rumbled in his no-nonsense tone of voice, “I agree that the winter past was a devilish hard one, gentlemen. But it was hard, too, on us, here. Our reserve stocks of nearly everything are reduced to a dangerously low level, far too low to allow us to even think of extending any meaningful amounts of aid to you all, even were you and your folk our responsibility … which you are not.
“And, gentlemen, none of the problems mitigates the fact that you are trespassing illegally upon a military installation and a classified experimental agricultural station of the Canadian government. Consequently, you are all …”
A cackle of derisive laughter from the paramount leader and main spokesman of the gaggle of ruffians—a tall, cadaverous, almost toothless man with dull, lank shoulder-length brown hair and a skimpy beard through which fat lice could be seen crawling—interrupted the officer.
“Canuck guv’mint, my ass, mister! It ain’t been no kinda guv’mints nowheres sincet my paw was a fuckin’ pup! An’ everbody know it, too, so don’ gimme none your shit, mister.”
Completely unflustered and in icy control, Colonel Lindsay had continued, “It is true that we have been out of touch with Ottawa for some years now, but this means—can only mean to a soldier such as I—that the last recorded set of orders to this battalion still stands. And gentlemen, do not mistake my purpose of commitment. I will see that those orders are carried out; I will protect the MacEvedy Experimental Agricultural Station from your inroads and depredations if I have to see each and every one of you done to death to do so. Do I make myself clear, gentlemen?”
Ian well recalled the feral gleam in the deep-sunk, muddy-brown eyes of that prairie rover headman. “You talks good, mister, real purty-like, but you don’ unnerstan’ too good. Look, it ain’t no deers nor nuthin’ out there to hunt no more and the damn wolfs got all our cows and horses and all what we didn’ eat our own selfs, las’ winter. We all is starvin’, mister, and we knows damn well you all got food. If you won’t give it to us in a peaceable way, we’ll kill ever man jack of you and take it. We ain’t got no choice, mister.”
The old colonel had sighed and nodded slowly. “Do not think, please, that I do not realize your quandary and personally sympathize, gentlemen, but …”
“Wal, then, mister, you jest give us all your wheat and corn and all. Let us take our pick out’n your cows and sheeps and horses, see, and give us some good guns and bullets for ’em and we’ll jest go on ’bout our bizness, see, an’ …”
It had been at that point that Colonel Lindsay’s broad, calloused palm had smote the desktop with a sound like a pistol shot. “Preposterous, sir, utterly preposterous! Do not attempt to overawe me with your threats. You are not now dealing with some hapless, helpless community of those poor, wretched farmers on whom you and your despicable ilk are habitually wont to prey. All that you will be given by us, here, sir, is a richly deserved death, long overdue.
“I am Colonel Ian James Alexander Lindsay, officer commanding the 228th Provisional Battalion (Reinforced). Our orders are to provide support and protection for and to the MacEvedy Experimental Agricultural Station and all its personnel. An attack upon the station or upon my fort will be considered by me to constitute an attack upon the Canadian government itself, and I shall repel such an affront with all necessary force, treating you all as the criminals that such actions will have irrevocably branded you.”
The first attack came howling and screeching at the walls a bare hour after the leaders had been shoved out the gates of the fort. It had been repulsed, of course, bloodily repulsed, and the remainder of that day and the night that followed it were made hideous by the moans and cries of wounded, dying, untended rovers and by the screams of injured horses.