"Something smells," Rudi said bluntly.
Nobody looked like they disagreed. "That was the most counterproductive assassination attempt I've ever seen or heard of," Odard said thoughtfully.
"Guaranteed to produce just the wrong results if any thing went pear-shaped," Edain agreed. "So unless these Cutter people are stupid-"
"They aren't," Ingolf said flatly.
"By no means," Father Ignatius said. "Wicked, and I would say almost worshippers of evil in some senses, but extremely efficiently so for the most part."
"Then there's something crooked going on," one of the twins said. "Someone's angling for the Boromir Award."
"By which you mean treachery, in the common tongue," Mathilda said with heavy patience. "Is it really important to us? We're just passing through."
"We want to keep alive while we pass through, or we'll be staying-six feet under," Ritva said.
"There is that," Rudi said. "They were trying to kill us, too. And the assassination… it would probably have worked if we weren't there. But then what would they have gained, with Thurston and his sons dead? They aren't his heirs anyway, are they?"
"No," Father Ignatius said. "There's a vice president, Colonel Moore, who is an old friend of the general's and beyond suspicion. And a competent man."
"We need to get a bit of a grip on what's going on here," Rudi said. "Since we're guests… or at least it wouldn't be the wisest thing to leave right now, as it were."
Chapter Nineteen
Boise, Idaho Provisional Capital,
United States Of America
June 11-15, CY23/2021 A.D.
The practice ground occupied the clear space just inside the city wall, paved with blocks of asphalt cut from old roads. It was mostly deserted with sunset only a half hour off. Mostly…
Edain unstrung his bow and held out his hand. Six of his arrows were neatly grouped in the bull's eye and one more had been pushed three inches out by a backdraft; none of the others had come close to matching that. The sight made him a little nostalgic; it had been years since he did much shooting at a beginner's target like that.
"Here!" the Boisean cavalryman who'd proposed the match said, and slapped green bills into his hand.
He did it hard enough to sting, if Edain's hand hadn't been covered with calluses as thick as his own. As it was, there was a dull thock sound.
"Many thanks," Edain said, as several of his comrades followed suit. "And sure, anytime you feel like shooting a few again…"
Garbh rose and came over, looking up in his face and wagging her tail slightly because she sensed his enjoy ment. He'd been raised to know the value of a dollar, mostly because it represented sweat and sore muscles, often his own, and partly because even near Dun Juni per clansfolk didn't use coined money much, still less the paper kind. Bets like this were just for fun, though; found money you could waste without being guilty about it, like a prize for winning a game at a festival.
The infantrymen who'd been watching laughed, slapping one another on the back, which produced a series of tonk sounds as hard palms hit steel armor; then they started collecting their bets from the horsemen of the cavalry troop who'd shot against him, or who'd bet on those who did. It had been natural enough to fall in with them; they were all conscripts doing their term of service, and close enough to his own age.
Their grins were the reverse of the cavalry's sulks. The remaining cavalry woman smiled, though; she was Rosita Gonzales, the sergeant who'd greeted them back on the road. And she'd seen him shoot before, for real, at that.
"Notice I wasn't putting any money on you losing," she said.
"Why am I not surprised, Rosita?" he said, batting his eyelashes theatrically. "Would a lady as brave, beautiful and skilled as yourself be anything but wise? Now, if I could spend some of these fine winnings on a drink for the both of us, that would set the flower crown of spring upon my happiness, so it would."
She snorted laughter. "Yeah, try to butter me up. I'm too old for what you've got in mind, kid! Or you're too young for me."
"Now, why would you be thinking I had something in mind?" he said.
" 'Cause I know guys your age are hard-ons with legs and you always have something in mind."
"Not more than every thirty heartbeats or so. And you're not too old for anything you choose," he said.
Sincerely, since she was short of thirty and comely if you liked women wiry and dark and muscular. Which he did; being nineteen, he liked them almost any way except elderly or unripe or wolverine trap ugly.
"Keep smiling like that and I'll lose my resolve to be good, so I'm off." She paused to rumple Garbh's ears, which the mastiff permitted, having been introduced. "See you later."
Edain shook his head and put the folded bills in his sporran, watching her depart-or at least the part working in her rather tight black leather riding breeches-and sighed.
"Christ, man, how'd you get Iron-ass Gonzales so friendly?" one of the foot soldiers said.
"Not iron, I'd say; just pleasantly squeezable, from the look of things," he said, strolling over to retrieve his ar rows. "Not that I've had the opportunity to test the notion, alas."
"Ah, I always thought she liked girls. Maybe it's your skirt she likes."
"Which would show good taste," Edain said. "For it's true I like both the wearing of the kilts and the kissing of the girls myself."
Which got him more laughs; he snorted and slid the unstrung longbow into the carrying loops.
"No, it's me winsome charm and the archery that wins the ladies, and I don't doubt it'll work here in the big city too."
"You wish. It's pretty good duty otherwise, being stationed here in the capital, but with all the goddamned army swinging dicks around you can't get laid without paying for it, and even that's expensive as fucking-you know what I mean-hell. Two-fifty a day and your keep is good money out in the sticks, someplace like Lewis-ton, but it doesn't go too far here in Boise."
There were half a dozen of the soldiers, and they were all friendly now.
Now that I've earned them all a week's pay or more, he thought.
Most of them came from little farms and villages that didn't sound all that much different from Dun Fairfax, if you allowed for the fact that they were Christians of various sorts-Protestants and Catholics and Mormons, he thought, though he wasn't altogether clear on the dif ferences and none of them seemed to be much bent out of shape about it either. He'd been nervous and out of place in General Thurston's house, but these lads he understood right off.
"Thanks for the tip on the bets," one of them said; he was a towhead named John Gottberg, and the file closer, which meant roughly a corporal. " I heard about the thing where you and your bossman saved the president's life, but most of those donkey dongs were just in from road patrol and hadn't got the word."
He extended his hand towards Garbh-cautiously, which wise men did, with a dog who weighed a hundred and twenty pounds and came up above their waist.
"Friend!" Edain said.
She sniffed politely but didn't radiate anything beyond tolerance.
"She's a bit of a one man dog," Edain said.
"Best kind. Hunting dog?"
"Hunting, guard… raised her from a pup, that I did."
"Nice to see the burro bangers taken down a bit," said a freckle-faced redhead called Kit Mullins, returning to the discomfiture of the cavalry. "Fuckers think they're hot shit 'cause they come from ranches and ride around. We're the backbone of the army, by God. It's us who stand and take it and dish it out when the metal hits the meat."