A military conference was scheduled for Thursday the 4th, at SEEC, and an invitation was sent to Commander Dion to come and bring his senior officers. Then a great embarrassment rode into town on the night of the third, and by the light of the full moon rode on through town and up to Brownpony’s private estate, where he made a great clatter at the main entrance. Wooshin and Woosoh-Loh immediately rushed from the dining room to investigate the visitor, but then called for Blacktooth.
Nimmy stared out at the spectacle standing there in the moonlight. Three hundred pounds of muscle and black hair confronted them with folded arms and an angry glare. He uttered obscenities in bad Grasshopper and demanded to see “the Christian shaman who boasted to my men that he was married to the Burregun, and then called me a coward.”
Blacktooth swallowed hard and went back to the dinner table. “There seems to be a motherless one at the door who wishes to speak to Your Eminence.”
“Who?”
“I think they called him ‘Mounts-Everybody.’ Remember the outlaws you released? They spoke of their leader—”
The cardinal blotted gravy from his lips, got up, and strode to the entrance.
“Where is my horse?” he demanded of the burly outlaw.
“Tied to the gate, you damn grass-eater.”
“Then come in and eat beef with us, you damn thief.”
The man came in, surrounded by suspicious warriors with short swords in hand. Because of a foul odor about him, the cardinal had him seated at the foot of the table. Most of the others had finished eating. A servant carved him a few slices of roast beef and fetched him a hot baked potato and roasted onions from the kitchen. It was too early in the season for anything the Nomad would call “grass,” but he grunted a few complaints about the lack of “inner meats” to go with the beef. Nimmy knew that Nomads usually ate virtually the whole animal, except for the hide, horns, hooves, and bones. It was the basis for the Venerable Boedullus’s prescription for radiation sickness. The outlaw ate with his hands, wrapping slices of beef around bits of potato. The cardinal spoke.
“I thank you for returning my horse. But do you know that all the sharfs of the hordes and the Qæsach dri Vørdar himself are here in the city?”
Mounts-Everybody stopped eating and glowered. “You invited me here. They are enemies. You intend to have me killed?”
“No, all I wanted was my horse.”
“You spoke to my men of fighting farmers. For money.”
“I asked them questions.”
“Which farmers are your enemies? Those nearby?”
“No, those are under the protection of the Bishop of Denver.”
Blacktooth put in a word here. “His Eminence is trying to use your word for ‘citizens,’ and he means specifically the subjects of the Hannegan, and even more specifically the armed forces of Texark. He does not mean peaceful people who work the soil and grow crops. Many of them were formerly Nomads, including my own family.”
“Thank you, Nimmy,” said Brownpony with a trace of irritation, then to Mounts-Everybody: “Just how many fighting men could you muster, if you were inclined to do so.”
Mounts-Everybody seemed to be doing mental arithmetic. “That depends on the pay. For gold, not many. We need good horses. The families kill us when we take wild ones. Offer us two good horses and a woman for every man, and you get a small army.”
“Horses, yes, but no women. How small an army?”
“Maybe four hundred warriors. But the Grasshopper is at war against the farmers in the east. We cannot fight beside them.”
“I realize that. What about the Jackrabbit?”
Mounts-Everybody was suddenly suspicious. “Wormy-Face told me you threatened to drive us south of the Nady Ann into Texark lands.”
“Gai-See, fetch one of the new rifles.”
The small warrior stepped into the adjacent room and returned with one of the west-coast weapons.
“Load it and take him outside for a demonstration.”
Brownpony and Blacktooth remained sitting at the dinner table while a servant cleaned up after the meal. There were six loud shots in as many seconds, followed by a frightened whinny and hoofbeats in the roadway.
Wooshin came back inside with the outlaw, who was holding the empty rifle and staring at it in awe. “I’m sorry. Your horse ran away,” said the Axe.
“When they find him, give him to the sharf of the outlaws here, and also the rifle.”
The burly guest stared at Brownpony in amazement. “I made you no promises!”
“I know. And you won’t get the gifts until you do.”
“No promises!”
“Well, all I want you to do is stay here all night, and most of tomorrow. You can’t come to the meeting tomorrow, because I’m afraid someone would kill you. On your way into town, did you observe the fortress on the hilltop?”
“Yes. It is new.”
“Tomorrow night, you will go to the fort and talk to Magister Dion and the Jackrabbit Önmu Kun. Any men you recruit will be under their command, as will you, and you will not be driven south of the Nady Ann. You will go there well armed and with other forces.”
“I will think about it.”
The cardinal looked away. “Axe, see that he takes a bath, cuts his hair and beard, and dress him as a mountain man. He can stay here until moonrise tomorrow.”
Mounts-Everybody growled angrily and started to his feet, but six half-drawn swords had a calming effect. He allowed himself to be led away.
Brownpony looked questioningly at Blacktooth.
“M’Lord, those men live by murder and plunder.”
“And that is war, is it not?”
Nimmy prayed earnestly for peace that night, but he feared the Virgin would not listen. If the cardinal came to be elected Pope, he would make the Virgin a commanding general of the hordes.
CHAPTER 21
Whenever any important business has to be done
in the monastery, let the Abbot call together
the whole community and state the matter to be acted upon….
The reason we have said that all should be called
for counsel is that the Lord often reveals
to the younger what is best.
NIMMY SLEPT BADLY THAT NIGHT, AND AROSE twice from nightmares to pray before the crucifix. Once he had a visitor. Moonlight shining through the window fell on white bedsheets and he could see a dark figure in the doorway. By its bulk, he knew it could only be Mounts-Everybody. He came quickly to his feet, prepared to fight if the outlaw tried to live up to his name. But the hulk merely grunted and moved on. A few seconds later, another dark figure stole down the corridor behind the motherless one. That would be one of the Yellow Guard, shadowing him. Probably he was only looking for a place to urinate.
Nimmy went back to bed. He dreaded the morrow, for he saw clearly the direction of recent events, and how Brownpony was moving them. It was not as if the Red Deacon had drawn a map of the future, but he was bent toward one goal; whatever happened he examined it to see if it might be useful as a means toward that goal. Nimmy was not opposed to the destruction of the Empire, or the reduction of its power and the restoration of the New Roman papacy. That was Brownpony’s end. The means, in part, he might deem legitimate. There was such a thing as a just war; he did not doubt the ancient teaching. But Leibowitz had been a man of peace, had he not?—after a warlike youth—and he was still the Saint’s willing follower, although a half-unwilling member of the Saint’s present Order under abbots like Jarad and Olshuen. He had renounced the world, just as the abbots and his brethren had renounced it, but now he was in the midst of the world, and the renunciation seemed meaningless. He lay awake most of the night, remembering his devotion to Leibowitz and the Holy Virgin. When he did fall briefly asleep, he dreamed of Ædrea, woke up with an erection, and fought an urge to masturbate because it was dawn and people were moving in the hallway.