The redhead shook the outstretched hand. That won him more acceptance than he'd hoped for. The file shed and racked their armor at the gatehouse barracks. Edain did the same with his brigandine and bow and quiver, though it made him feel a bit naked so far from home and among strangers.
"Let's get that beer," Gottberg said. "And something to eat."
"They don't feed you?" Edain asked, surprised. A lord usually did, at least keeping table for his full-time warriors.
"Sorta-kinda." Kit grinned. "It's on the list of Soldier's Superstitions."
At Edain's raised brow he went on: "We all get it on a printed sheet when we're called up, with the rest of the paperwork. It's sort of a list of things soldiers believe. Like, 'It is very unlucky to get a spear in the guts on a Friday.'"
Gottberg went on:"The one he's thinking of is,'When the sun rises in the east, it is a sign that we shall have stew for dinner.' "
"Mystery meat stews with desecrated vegetables. And they say the stuff with it is beer. I say the quartermaster's horse has something bad wrong with its kidneys."
"We'll go to the Fife and Drum instead. That's where a lot of guys go off duty. It's a bit pricey but not too bad and it's all fighting men."
"I'm not much of one for brawling in taverns."
"Oh, they don't brawl there. Because-"
The city of Boise was an orderly, law-abiding place, like the rest of the United States governed from there. People mostly liked it that way, and those who didn't tended to meet the National Police and then either dance the hempen hornpipe on air or spend many sad and stress ful years working under extremely unsympathetic management in the National Infrastructure Reconstruction Battalions.
The Fife and Drum tavern was orderly and law-abiding too, usually, but the National Police didn't go there. Nor did the military police, nor did officers, and it wasn't a place where a civilian would last long either.
The loud raucous sawdust-floored atmosphere re minded Edain of some places he'd seen in Corvallis, stu dent hangouts around the university. The smell was the same-gaslights, cooking food, beer. There was a little more sweat, and the voices were harder, somehow, and there were a lot of battered weapons and hacked shields on the walls, down to one made from a pre-Change traffic sign with a spear that looked like a kitchen knife on a stick beside it.
It was more orderly than those Corvallan pubs, though; off along one wall were a series of booths in which most of the patrons were scarred middle-aged men with quiet gimlet eyes. Some of them were smoking pipes or cigarettes, or chewing wads of tobacco, habits that were nearly extinct elsewhere.
Young soldiers who wanted to fight and break things went to other places, establishments where noncoms didn't go either. They came here when they didn't want their dinners dropped into their laps by the arrival of flying bodies.
"He's all right," Gottberg announced to the room, and the stares at Edain's kilt and general foreignness turned less hostile; Garbh's hair lay back down on her shoulders. "And he's with us. And he's one of the guys that saved the boss."
"Is that Sergeant major Anderson over there?" Edain said with interest as they grabbed a table.
It was big enough for everyone if you didn't mind a little jostling; Garbh lay down at his feet, too disciplined to wander, but letting her nostrils wrinkle with the fascinating mix of scents.
"Yeah, and you don't stare at him. He's Sergeant major Anderson. The top NCO. That makes him a lot more important than most officers."
"Most officers lower than major," Kit said. "Or maybe colonel."
"Oh, I don't know," Gottberg said. "Lieutenants have their uses."
"Yeah, they're useful when it comes to stopping a spear that might've hit someone who works for their living."
"Oh, I dunno," Gottberg repeated thoughtfully. "I mean, the boss's kids, they're both pretty useful. Only what you'd expect, though."
A waitress came out with glasses and big pitchers of beer. Edain sampled his.
"Not bad," he said. "Nice and crisp. A little lighter than they brew it at Dun Juniper, where you eat it with a spoon, but well hopped."
"Hey, traveling the way you do, you must get to see a lot of different types of booze," Kit said enthusiastically.
"Some. More often, it's many different types of bad water."
"Tell me," Gottberg replied. He cast an eye at some of his men. "You can get the galloping shits that way… unless you're careful about purifying the water. Right? "
"Ah, hell, Corp, we never have to do that back home."
"And back home your mama still holds your cock while you pee, right? Jesus, what is this, an army or a nursery school?"
"You're starting to sound like Sergeant-major Anderson, Corp."
"Nah," Gottberg said, but he looked cautiously over his shoulder when he did it. "You haven't heard me talk about how great things were in the old army, have you? You know, the real US Army, where they had real soldiers, with guns."
The young men all laughed, a bit uneasily. The food came out-starting with corn on the cob, a rare treat in the Clan's territories, where maize grew reluctantly. Spareribs in hot sauce followed it, and grilled pork chops with sage and onion stuffing, mounds of fried potatoes, steamed cabbage and carrots, brown bread and butter; plain food and plenty of it, and more beer along with it. Everyone said their varieties of grace-including one that simply went, "Good God, good meat: Good God, let's eat!"-and then all of them dug in with thoughtless voracity.
"Ah, that's better than I've had in a while," Edain said, pushing back his plate and wiping his mouth. "Saving your top man's own table, and that was seasoned with nervousness, for me."
Crackling and crunching and slobbering came from under the table, where Garbh enjoyed the bones; her jaws were more than strong enough to crunch them like stalks of celery, except that they had roast marrow in the center, which explained the ecstatic slurping sounds.
"Apple pie and ice cream all round," Gottberg went on to the plain middle aged waitress. "Hell, Judy, bring the bucket, and make it chocolate!"
Her brows went up. "You boys just win a lottery, or sack the Prophet's palace in Corwin, or what?"
"Nah, we get him in a month or two, and I'll buy a plow team with my share. We won a bet today. Found money and it's burning a hole in my pocket."
More serious work with fork and spoon followed. The talk turned to politics; Edain kept mostly quiet but kept his ears pricked.
"So we replace those useless old farts with another bunch of old farts just a bit younger," Kit said. "Hell with it. Why do we need 'em? And who's going to run against the boss for president? That would be like trying to take God Almighty's job."
That brought a laugh, but one soldier went on seriously: "Well, God bless him, but the boss isn't going to be around forever. I mean, you wouldn't know it the way he keeps up in the field, but he's an old man too-nearly sixty. I mean, sixty… how many people do you know last much past sixty?"
The hard young faces suddenly went a little uncertain. Edain recognized the feeling; people got the same way back home, thinking of what Clan Mackenzie would do without the Mackenzie. She was the Goddess on-Earth, the one who'd brought their parents or their grandpar ents alive through the Change and given their world its shape and meaning.
Still, they had Rudi ready to take over the job…
"We should elect him a new vice president, a younger guy. The boss can have the top job as long as he wants… understand, I've got nothing against Colonel Moore, but…"