She made no comment at these preparations, and in fact had not said a word since their departure, but when he had finished she sneered at him unmistakably.
Timothy seemed puzzled by such excessive precautions, but knew better than to say anything that might be construed as criticism of his commanding officer.
John was not bothered by Miriam's derision or Timothy's confusion. He knew that he was being more cautious than might seem necessary, but he preferred excessive caution to recklessness. Fewer men died of caution.
The next morning Miriam was visibly stiff, and awkward in mounting, treating John and Timothy to a flash of leg before she got the riding skirt in place. John toyed idly with the thought of raping her after all-but morning was not the time, and Timothy was with them. Timothy would have no objections, John was sure, to anything his commanding officer might care to do, but his presence still acted as a deterrent. John mounted his horse and led the way.
They camped that night on another undistinguished hillside, and by then John had forgotten his earlier lascivious interest in Miriam. For her part, she was utterly exhausted, her entire body aching, and John saw nothing particularly attractive about his dishevelled and dirty prisoner. He wrapped her up once again, though less carefully, and took no interest in the feel of her body through the heavy fabric.
The following day was similar, save that Timothy seemed to be growing ever more nervous. John tired of coaxing his companions onward, and they made camp early.
As they were eating a sparse supper of dried mutton and beans, John asked Timothy, “How much further?"
Timothy started. “How much further to what?"
“To Little St. Peter, of course."
“Oh. Ah, not far, sir. A few hours."
“Good,” John said, lifting the meat to his mouth.
“Yes, good,” Timothy echoed. He stared at the road stretching out to the east.
After they had eaten and tidied up and taken turns in the bushes John attempted to chat, to get to know his companions better, and to question Timothy further about his earlier journey. Miriam would say nothing at all, however, and Timothy's answers, which had to be carefully coaxed out of him, were brief, inconsequential, and often totally inappropriate to the question. John quickly gave up. He bound Miriam in her skirt for the night and went to sleep, leaving Timothy staring at the dying campfire.
The next morning Timothy and one of the horses were gone; hoofprints were visible on the road westward, back toward Marshside. John stared after him in disgust.
“He'll hang for this,” he announced.
Miriam, still tied in her skirt, finally broke her long silence with a great barrage of howling, derisive laughter.
“Oh, the great warrior, such an inspiration to his men!” she called.
John suppressed an urge to slap her; instead he simply left her bound while he prepared and ate his breakfast. When he was done he released her and handed her the leftover scraps.
“Don't think this changes anything,” he said. “We're still going to Little St. Peter, and you still can't afford to betray me."
“How can one betray an enemy?” she countered.
He made no answer, merely lifted her into the saddle.
It was mid-afternoon of that fourth day, the twentieth of April, when they finally reached Little St. Peter.
The town sat atop a hill, surrounded by a wall of stone braced with heavy beams of nearwood; at each corner stood a tower, and atop each tower a machine gleamed dully in the amber daylight. Looking at them, John was uncertain whether they were, in fact, machine guns; they appeared ridiculously large. There could be no doubt, however, that they were weapons. As the two travellers rode up the highway toward the western gate the guns on either side were kept trained directly at them.
Four soldiers were lounging at the gate; one called out perfunctorily, “In the Name of the Lord, Our God, state your business."
“Peaceful trade, by Christ's mercy,” John replied.
“Name yourselves, and your faith."
“Joel Meek-Before-Christ and my wife Miriam, of the Church of the Only God.” The Church of the Only God had been a small tribe comprising three villages along the westernmost extreme of the Upper New Jordan; John's cavalry had obliterated all three two years before. Since no one had escaped, he doubted the news had reached Little St. Peter.
“What are you selling?"
John shrugged. “A little of this, a little of that; woolens, mostly."
The soldier asked one of his comrades, “Do you want to bother searching?"
“Ah, let him go in,” the other replied.
The first shrugged and pushed open the gate. “Pass, friend, into Little St. Peter, free in faith under the protection of the People of Heaven. Amen."
“Amen,” John replied, startled by the open renunciation of any claim to the One True Religion. He spurred his horse and rode into the town, Miriam close behind, the pack horse trailing.
Chapter Five
“A faithful man shall abound with blessings: but he that maketh haste to be rich shall not be innocent."-Proverbs 28:20
By the time they had made their way through the broad paved square inside the gate and found an inn John had decided that Timothy had grossly understated the opulence of the town. He had never seen such colors and textures. Almost every woman he saw seemed to be wearing a new color-every shade of green, blue, and yellow he could imagine, and a handful of daring young things in pink. Even a few men wore colors, blues and dark greens, and those who did wear the more customary browns and grays often used shades he had not encountered anywhere else.
Strange green plants grew in tubs and windowboxes on every side, including some with brown-grey stalks that looked absurdly tall and thin; he saw no red plants anywhere, nor any of the more familiar green ones. Curtains hung in every window. A few rockers stood on porches, and as Timothy had said, every single one had a cushion-and some even had cushions on the back as well as the seat. Many were embroidered in vivid colors.
Strange plants, rich fabrics, new dyes, and incredible weaponry-John was more certain than ever that the People of Heaven were trading with other worlds. Where else could they get such things? Those tall plants were certainly nothing that had ever grown on Godsworld before.
The whole city was soft and decadent, he judged. What kind of warriors would men who sat on cushions make? Were it not for the weapons, he would have said Little St. Peter was ripe for plundering by men who still led the hard, clean life that God had intended men to live.
The guns on the towers were not the only firearms in sight; as Timothy had reported, many of the men wore pistols on their belts or had rifles slung on their shoulders. John wondered how much ammunition they actually had. He remembered the machine gun in Marshside and its feeder belt with almost three hundred rounds left, even after the wasteful spraying of the hillside during the battle; if the People of Heaven were trading with Earth or one of the other Satanic worlds, then they could probably get all the sulphur they would ever need to make more than enough gunpowder to provide every man in Little St. Peter with cartridges.
Were there any settled planets other than Godsworld that were not Satanic? John had never heard of any; he had been taught that all God's chosen people, the enlightened and saved, had come to Godsworld, leaving the other worlds to the multitudes of the damned. The People of Heaven could probably buy sulphur by the pound or even the hundredweight.
He reevaluated the town in that light; the people here could afford to be decadent. An open attack would be suicidal.
They found an inn readily enough, just beyond the market square inside the gates; the traditional banner hung above the open arch of the doorway, proclaiming “ST. PETER'S INN” at the top, the customary “ST. MATTHEW CHAPTER XXV VERSES 34-40” across the bottom, and “Zachariah Come-to-Grace, Prop.” in the lower right corner. A separate sign pointed the way to the stable entrance.