He had read and reread and committed to memory as much as he could of certain of the ancient books of his great-grandfather’s extensive, well-thumbed library, then he had undertaken the retraining of his command … and barely in time, too.
After being sanguineously repulsed by the fort and the well-defended inner perimeter of the station compounds, a mounted band of some thousand or so prairie rovers began to despoil the lands and pastures round about the station, whereupon Colonel Ian Lindsay marched out his infantry and cavalry to do battle. The pikesquare stood rocksteady under charge after furious charge, while the crossbowmen at the corners and the mounted horse archers massed in the center emptied saddle after rover saddle.
When, finally, the rovers broke and began to stream away from the field of battle, the square opened and the mounted troops poured out to pursue and harry, half of the pikemen trotting in their wake with swords and axes, while the other half went about dispatching wounded foemen on the stricken field before returning to the fort. There had been counted over five hundred bodies of dead rovers, but Ian Lindsay had lost nearly a hundred killed on the field or in the pursuit and half a hundred more who had died since of wounds. He still mourned them all.
At a brief rap upon his door, Colonel Ian Lindsay broke off his rememberings. “Come.”
The man who entered was about Ian’s own age, with close-cropped yellow-gray hair and a red-and-gray mustache plastered to a sweaty face drawn by deep lines of care and worry and discouragement.
As Ian Lindsay was the hereditary colonel of the 228th Provisional Battalion, so was Emmett MacEvedy the hereditary director of the station and therefore in official charge of all nonmilitary personnel. Emmett and Ian had been good friends in childhood, and the two worked closely together at all times, as indeed they must in order to keep their people alive, secure and reasonably well fed in this savage world.
Colonel Lindsay poured an old, chipped mug half full of a straw-pale whiskey and pushed it across the age-darkened desk, waving toward a facing chair. The newcomer sank wearily into the chair, drained off a good half of the whiskey, then simply sat, staring moodily into the mug.
“Well, Emmett?” queried the colonel, after a few moments of unbroken silence. “Say you have some good news for me.”
The man sighed deeply and slowly shook his head, then sighed once again and looked up. “I do have news, Ian, but it’s hardly good. It’s not just the wheat and the barley this year, Godhelp us. The rye is affected, too, and the oats, and even the maize. Not a spear or an ear I examined that doesn’t show signs of the damned blight… and I was through most of the fields. We might get silage out of those fields, but that’ll be about all.”
Knots of muscle moving under his ears as his clenched jaws flexed, the colonel stared at MacEvedy from beneath bushy brows, cracking his big, scarred knuckles one by one. At long last, he spoke.
“Well, we’ll just have to make do with potatoes again, I suppose.”
Once more the director sighed and shook his head. “I’d not count on it, Ian, not even on that. I checked the potatoes, too. The foliage is discolored and stunted, and those tubers that I had pulled up had none of them developed properly … and the beets and turnips seem to be similarly afflicted.”
Through force of habit, the colonel cast a quick glance around the office, then leaned forward, lowering his voice and speaking swiftly.
“Emmett, these last two years have not been at all good—you know it and I know it—and if we lose all of the grains and the potatoes this year, all of us will be in the shit for fair, for there simply are not enough remaining reserve foodstocks to feed everyone—your people and mine own—through to the next harvest. I know this for true fact, Emmett. I personally inventoried the fort stocks and those of the station quite recently.”
“I suppose we’ll just have to send out more hunting parties, Ian, and foragers with wagons, too, you know, for nuts, acorns, wild tubers, potherbs and the like. Hell, the prairie rovers have lived on them for generations—we ought to be able to subsist likewise for a few months, one would think.”
The colonel heard out his friend, then said, “Emmett, we can’t depend on game or on foraged foodstuffs, not unless we are willing to pay the price. That price is high and becoming higher and I, for one, think it’s already too high. My estimate of the situation is that each and every hundredweight of dressed game is costing us one man killed or wounded in brushes with the damned skulking rovers’ hunting parties, with whom ours are competing. If we start vying with them for plant food as well, every wagonload we bring back here is going to be paid for in blood.”
“Well …” The director hesitated, his brows knitted up as he carefully thought of his next words, then he let them go, all in a rushing spate. “If worst comes to worst, Ian, there are cattle and sheep can go to table without trimming the herds too much. And rather than see folk starve, we could eat the shire horses and the riding stock, as well, I suppose.”
The colonel snorted derisively. “And if we slaughter the shire horses, just what, pray tell, Mr. Director, will provide draft for the harrows and plows, come spring, eh?”
MacEvedy squirmed a bit in the chair. “Well … ahh, Ian… ahh, the really ancient peoples used oxen for draft work, you know, back before horses were bred up big enough to be worthwhile, and some of the prairie traders use them to draw wagons, too, you know, you’ve seen them.”
The colonel chuckled. “Yes, I’ve seen them, but they were an entirely different breed from our cattle. I know I’d not care to be the man who took it upon himself to try to hitch Old Thunderer to any plow or wagon.”
“Ian, Ian,” the director remonstrated, a bit wearily, “Old Thunderer is a stud bull, far too old and set in his ways to do more than what he’s always done. But I have quite a number of young steers that would be much more amenable to training for draft purposes. And the traders say that on level ground, a good draft ox can provide a stronger, steadier pull than even the best shire horse or mule.”
The colonel grunted and shrugged. “Emmett, the shire horses are yours and the cattle, and if you want to reverse the order of things—eat the horses and train the cattle to draft—that is purely your prerogative, but the shire horses will be the only horseflesh eaten, my friend. I draw the line at my horses.”
He raised a hand, palm outward, when he saw the heat in the other man’s eyes. “Wait—don’t explode at me yet. There are very good reasons why you can’t slaughter my horses. Drink your whiskey and cool down enough to think rationally, Emmett.
“Those troops of mounted archers and lancers constitute the only really mobile forces under my command anymore, and without them there will be no farming or herding at all. The damned prairie rovers will butcher every man and boy, carry off every woman and girl and drive off every head of stock that leaves the immediate protection of our inner perimeter, if they have no fear of my mounted patrols. Take away my horses and you doom every man, woman and child in station or fort to death or slavery.”