Amen tried to reassure him that the men would be paid, but the list of complaints was not ended.
“Furthermore, the Wilddog offered Monsignor Sanual food and shelter.”
“I would have thought Benefez’s man would stay with the Jackrabbit delegates,” Specklebird remarked.
“Oh, yes, he wanted to. There are Christian priests among the Jackrabbit Bear Spirit delegates. The Jackrabbit delegates are in danger of seeming to be puppets of the Texark Church.”
“There is only one Church, my son.”
And so went the journey.
According to the Treaty of the Sacred Mare, any farmer or soldier of the Empire who entered Grasshopper territory while bearing arms could expect attack, and any armed Nomad within musket range of the Empire’s frontier could be fired upon. Thus, when the Pope’s party crossed the hill overlooking the frontier checkpoint, Hultor Bråm and his men halted. The warriors were still grumbling to their sharf about not being paid, but the sharf was watching the confrontation at the border crossing.
“One way or another, you’ll all be paid,” he insisted, “maybe sooner than you think.”
As the procession of prelates approached the gate, Amen Specklebird descended from his coach and brushed the dust of the Plains from his white cassock. He approached the officer who stood with folded arms in the center of the road. Flanking him were two soldiers with double-barreled weapons, probably loaded with buckshot.
“By orders of the Hannegan, you cannot pass,” the officer announced. “If you try, you will be arrested.”
“Do not bar the way, my son. Bow to God’s will.”
“Show me God’s will.”
“Pick up your right foot, and look.”
The officer obeyed, and reddened.
“I see my right foot’s shadow,” he said, ignoring the horseshit with his footprint in it.
“His will is already done,” said Specklebird. “Too bad.”
“Such a smartass! They call it your ‘wisdom,’ don’t they? Forgive me, but it is a pain in the butt to me, Your, uh, Holiness. I don’t think the Lord Mayor will find it a pleasure, either. Why don’t you say something new, in plain Ol’zark?”
Amen grinned at him and pointed to the sun while squinting. The colonel’s eyes may have flickered, but he resisted looking and said, “Nice try, old man. There are good frauds and bad frauds, I guess. You’re pretty good, aren’t you?”
“I never thought of it that way, my son, but my office requires it of me, doesn’t it?”
“I don’t know whether to spit on you or kneel to you, old fool. But make it easy for yourself and go home.”
“Colonel, why trap yourself in dualism that way?”
“What are you calling dualism?”
“Spitting God or kneeling God.”
“I have my orders from the Hannegan himself. Get back in your coach, turn around, and go back to Valana, or you will find yourself in Hannegan City, facing a heresy trial. Say another word, and I’ll testify to everything you say here.”
“Bless you, my son, and thank you.”
The colonel snorted, spoke in an aside to a captain, then mounted and rode away in a huff. The captain pointed a cavalry pistol at the Pope’s thin black face. Two cardinals caught the Pope’s arms and a third pushed him back toward the train.
Thus was the road to New Rome closed to New Rome’s bishop.
The Grasshopper warriors parted to allow them to pass, but made no move to escort them back, even when Golopez Cardinal Onyo beckoned to Bråm. Bråm frowned and shook his head. His warriors stood there watching until they became a patch of dust in the west. Wearily, Amen’s party (a good part of the Sacred College) turned to remake the long journey. From far behind came the faint sound of shouting and gunfire, but there was nothing the prelates could do about it, and Pope Amen was a little hard of hearing. From the patches of forest at the east, through scrub and tall grass, through open grassland, through blistering days and chilly nights in the near-desert, some of it irrigated at last, and finally to the mountains they passed. Along the way, they accepted Nomad charity, and they were intercepted at one point by a delegation from the breeding pit.
Chür Ösle Høngan had married the Fujæ Go. The new Qæsach dri Vørdar, Lord of the Three Hordes, whose wife was the Day Maiden, knelt to kiss the Pope’s ring and swore allegiance to His Holiness forever, in the name of God and His Virgin.
Before they parted, Golopez Cardinal Onyo called Holy Madness aside and told him about the behavior of Sharf Hultor Bråm after they had been turned back by the border guard. “They did not return with us, and I heard gunfire and shouting. I cannot be sure, but I think there was fighting.”
The Lord of the Three Hordes sat astride his stallion and gathered a slow frown. “If he did what I’m afraid he did, I’ll have his head.”
“The Pope knows nothing,” Onyo told him.
“I’ll send to find something out immediately.” He grunted an order to a subordinate, then rode away with his party back toward the breeding pit. The subordinate rode east.
There was something to find out. At the border that day, the Grasshopper escort, standing half a mile distant from all events at the gate, began to move. As soon as the dust of the Pope’s party had dwindled beyond the hills, War Sharf Hultor Bråm ordered his ninety-nine elite fighters to take the road to Rome by a feat of arms. They circled south, and cut the road to Hannegan City toward which the colonel who had defied the Pope was riding homeward. He was among the first of many troops to die that day.
They turned north again. The road to Rome was swiftly taken, but only on a very temporary basis. These born-in-the-saddle man-animals cut through the Texark Light Horse, leaving other men and animals full of arrows and spear wounds on the ground. Slow firearms fell back before rapid and accurate bows. Many Grasshoppers used captured sidearms, but only as backup weapons. The Nomad horses were faster and better, and together with their fighters they became for the unseasoned troopers truly the riders of the Apocalypse, ninety-nine of them and a leader with a demonic attitude. They had not been paid, for nobody had brought the papal treasury. They cut the troopers to pieces, killed 146 farmers, raped their wives, daughters, sisters, mothers, sons, and then cut their way back to the frontier through fresh but green reinforcements—cut their way back, yes, all thirty-three of them, adrenaline-drunk, exhausted, including aleader with a brooding attitude and a bad leg. But their saddlebags bulged, and once on the Plains again, they made travois to carry some of the loot. Now they had been paid.
The foray had been just a hell of a good party for the survivors, who came back to their grateful and waiting wives, some of whose hearts and crotches quivered with anxiety and hope, with mostly overworked and limp male members! It took amatory ingenuity on a warrior’s part that night to convince a wife that he came home from battle with a real lust for her sexual candy, but most pleaded combat fatigue and went to bed alone.
Being at war was more fun—no doubt about that: even with the odds at two to one you’d die before you got to rape, steal, and burn barns full of newly baled hay.
There was both celebration and mourning that night in late September in the encampment of the sharf’s own mother clan. The war cries almost drowned the sound of women crying.
“I set fires! I set fires!”