Sometimes the harshest lessons were the most valuable; as a sage had said before the Change, in plea sure God whispered, in logic He spoke, but in pain He shouted.
"Yeah," Hanks said proudly, following his gaze."If the Corwin crazies think they can fuck with us and get away with it, they can think again."
Chapter Twenty
Snake River Plain, East Of Wendell
Near The Boise/New Deseret Border
July 21, CY23/2021 A.D.
"Good looking farming country, but too hot and dry for my taste," Edain said.
Rudi nodded silent acknowledgment, hear ing the effort it took the younger man to sound casual. The Snake River plain was flat here, flat and rich with wheat and alfalfa and potatoes and orchards where the fruit swelled towards ripeness, wherever the irrigation canals from the old-time dams still stretched; silvery-gray sagebrush-filled fields had gone out of cultivation for lack of hands to work them or pumps to raise the precious fluid. Much still endured, tilled by the soldier farmers whose earth-and concrete walled villages dot ted the land, grain turning gold under the hot sun, nearly ready for the reapers.
But the fields looked empty today, nobody at work, the livestock driven within the walls for safety or to the distant hills on the edge of sight northward. The gates of the farm towns were tightly barred now, with families and older re servists anxiously atop the fighting platforms watching the army of the Republic march by… and their sons and husbands and younger brothers joining it, trickles that joined together to swell the endless river of green and brown and steel-sheen that passed, with a rumble of boots and wheels and hooves, a trail of dust and the strong smell of sweat and oil and metal.
Edain lowered his voice: "I'm a bit worried about Garbh, Chief. In a battle and all, a big one."
The big mastiff bitch looked up at her name, grinning and wagging her tail slightly, then going back to plodding in the dust.
"If it's any consolation, I don't think we're going to do any of the fighting. It'll be a spectator's position for us, like the watchers at a baseball game."
Cavalry patrols made their own trickle plumes of dust at the limits of vision, with sometimes a blink of light off the edged iron of a lance head. A glider hovered high overhead, riding the summer thermals and occasionally heading northward to climb again on the updraft over the rugged country there; it bore Boise's USAF blazon. Nobody seemed to know if the Church Universal and Triumphant had any aerial scouts, and if they did they weren't here now.
Mounted couriers or ones on cross-country bicycles dashed up to the command party now and then. The refugees from New Deseret straggling along the sides of the road or off in the fields to either side told their own story, and had since the day's march began. Rudi felt his inwardness wince slightly as a mother sitting on the bundle that must be all her household's goods watched him pass with dull beaten blue eyes, mechanically jog ging the infant that cried against her breast. Two older children sat beside her, and a white-bearded man who was probably her father slept on the hard dry ground limp with utter exhaustion.
Rudi saw his fellow clansman's eyes skimming over the refugees.
"Worried about Rebecca, too, eh?" he said-not teasing, but a real question.
"Well, we were friends," Edain agreed. "I'm sorry for all these folk, true I am, but it's different if you know someone in particular."
Another courier drew up with a spurt of gravel and dust from under his mount's hooves.
"Mr. President!" he said, saluting and pointing south eastward."The Saints' command group is about half a mile that way, with a couple thousand troops following. They're in pretty rough shape, sir-a lot more of their civilians and a lot of wounded, and they say their rear guard pulled out of sight of Twin Falls three days ago. The enemy's snapping at their heels."
"Thank you, Corporal," Thurston said. "Please give my compliments to their commander-"
"Bishop Nystrup, sir. Civil official."
"To Bishop Nystrup, and tell him we'll be with him shortly."
Rudi saw Edain's ears prick up at the name. Ragged tent camps appeared, set up by the civilian refugees and the Red Cross from Boise, and shapeless masses of exhausted people lying where they could in pasture and fallow land. More crowded around a field hospital and the advance guard of the main Boise force, who were handing out buckets of water and big loaves of hard dark bread from wagons.
But they're not trampling the standing grain, Rudi thought with sympathetic approval. That takes a special type of decency, it does, when you're hungry and hurt and fleeing for your life.
Just then Edain's head came around, a swift move ment like a hunting wolf's. He reined his horse aside and heeled it up into a canter, over to the field hospital, then leaned from the saddle and spoke to one of the helpers. When he came back, he was grinning, if a little lopsidedly.
"That was Rebecca! The Mother's hand is over her, and that's the truth!"A scowl. "They have some bad en emies, Chief. Those people aren't just hurt and hungry. Some of them…" He shook his head.
"Regiments… halt!" Thurston called, in a flat unmusical tone like angle iron hit with a hammer, as a dark thread grew visible on the road ahead.
The trumpets brayed, relaying the order down the long snake of men and animals that filled the old inter state for miles behind them. The marching regiments did halt, from the back of the column forward and in a ripple that brought the whole to a stop in less than a minute, without any of the collisions or stop and-start you could have expected among ten thousand troops on foot and half as many horses and mules.
"Command group, follow me!"
They legged their horses into a canter, the flag beside the ruler of Boise flapping in the hot wind of their passage; nobody had complained at Thurston's whim of allowing the youngsters from the farthest west along, though they got the occasional glance. A group of mounted men sat their horses at the head of the troops ahead, beneath another banner-dark blue emblazoned with a golden bee. Rudi recognized the Mormon leader who'd bought the horses from Rancher Brown, looking
…
Terrible, he thought. And I don't think he recognizes me… just doesn't have the attention to spare.
The bishop sat his horse among several other soberly clad bearded men, and a clutch of what were certainly soldiers and from their years most probably officers. They all wore olive-green uniforms and steel breast plates, mail sleeves, armguards, and round bowl helmets fronted with the golden bee. The armor was dinted and worn, and the square shields some carried were hacked and splintered, a few showing the stubs of arrows. Several wore bandages as well, some seeping red. As he watched one had to scrabble out of his saddle as his horse col lapsed. The stink of dried sweat from them was powerful even by the standards of soldiers in the field, and their faces were thickly covered with sweat-runneled dust.
"Thank you… Mr. President," Bishop Nystrup said as Thurston drew up, his commanders and aides beside him and the golden eagle and Stars and Stripes lofting above.
He spoke humbly; and unless Rudi was wrong, it was a difficult task for a proud man.
The army behind him was still proud too, but it was beaten, even the unhurt. A ragged bristle of pikes stretched backward in clumps that were not really units, mingled with archers and crossbowmen and a single field catapult that he could see; you could sense the weary shuffle that had brought the broken companies this far.
There were wagons full of wounded interspersed among those still walking, their moans and cries a soft threnody of pain below the sound of hooves and wheels on the broken gravel-patched pavement of old US 84. Supply columns from Boise were doing their best to feed them and take care of the injured.