"Higher with the drifts," Rudi agreed. "Best we make as much distance as we can. Snow's bad, but this time of year it could warm up and melt right up to the saddle of the pass-and that would be worse."
Chapter Twelve
Rover Territory, Eastern Oregon
April 15, CY23/2021 A.D.
Joseph Kuttner's single eye gleamed in the light of the fires as he sat in the folding canvas chair. The Rover chiefs squatted across from him, all hair and eyes and teeth and a strong outdoor stink of badly cured leather and horse and sweat, and of lanolin from the sheepskin cloaks some of them kept around their shoulders against the evening chill. Sparks flew upward into the huge star-flecked dome above, and the gnawed bones of a roasted sheep littered the ground.
"You want us to chop some CORA folks for you?" one of them said, grinning. "What for y'want that? We'd do for our own selves, if them western bastards come on our land."
He spit into the fire, a brief hissing sound. Kuttner nodded politely; he was very glad a dozen Cutters stood behind him, fully armed. These new nomads of the sage brush country weren't former Eaters like the savages you found east of the Mississippi… not quite. They were nearly as dangerous to outsiders; a little less likely to attack, but much more effective if they did.
"I want them dead because one of them gave me this," he replied, touching the scar that traversed his empty left eye socket.
That brought more grins, as he'd expected. It was motivation they could understand.
"And they're enemies of the Prophet and His Son, and so of the Ascended Masters and the Unseen Hierarchy."
A few of them nodded; the mission was going well here. The Rovers' extreme poverty was a major reason. It wasn't that the land here couldn't yield a reasonable living, given how few and thinly scattered the dwellers were. What they lacked were the tools and the skills to make them, or anything much to trade for them in more fortunate areas. The Church Universal and Triumphant was willing to supply them, for allegiance and fighting men rather than for profit. It wouldn't be the first time that readiness to seek out the folk who'd had the most trouble recovering from the Change had aided the sacred cause.
What was that old-world expression? He searched his memory. Ah, "rice-bowl Christians." But from that comes true faith, in time.
"They're soulless pagan idolaters, minions of the Nephilim," he amplified. "Nine of them, and they'll be traveling with a large wagon and many good horses."
They all nodded at that, with eager greed. This was a hard place to scratch a living, even by Montana standards. Men who didn't grasp at anything they could with both hands hadn't survived here.
"And there will be CORA men as well, probably-from Seffridge Ranch. Rancher Brown's cowboys."
That brought more scowls and muttered curses, but a little apprehension as well as anger; they recognized the name of the holding, and of its lord. Kuttner made a gesture with one hand, and a Cutter came forward with a bundle of shetes. The fine steel glittered in the fire light as he laid them out with their hilts towards the four chiefs, and the brass pommels glowed.
"Two dozen good shetes. And many fine bows, and many arrows for each. If you kill them, the Church promises two slaves who understand bowmaking… for the most deserving of you, of course."
The chiefs glanced at one another, calculating who would get the most, and how it would affect their own balance against one another. Making horn-and-sinew horseman's bows wasn't a skill that was common around here, and such weapons were precious beyond words, even more than fine forged swords. Many of their men made do with javelins, or carefully preserved pre Change hunting bows. Those were good of their kind, but they seldom had a draw weight sufficient for modern war. Deer didn't wear shirts of steel, or even cured bullhide.
They didn't kill you if you missed, either.
One of the ones who'd been stubborn about the Church's preaching leaned forward. "Tell me more about the Prophet," he said. "If'n he can hand out gear like that, maybe God does favor him."
Seffridge Ranch,
South-Central Oregon
May 7, CY23/2021 A.D.
"Well, that's a relief, Chief, and no mistake," Edain said, looking back at the mountain peaks.
It was the moment just before dawn, when a few stars still lingered in the western sky. That was cloudless, but the mountains there were snowcapped all along the horizon, like a jaw full of white fangs pointing at the heavens, high enough to catch the ruddy light before groundlings could see the sun rising. The great peaks of the Three Sisters were just visible at the northern edge of sight, eighty miles away and more beneath the endless darkling blue.
"I'll not be arguing with you the now," Rudi Mackenzie said.
The younger Mackenzie was smiling as he grumbled, and his pride was obvious. They'd come through a crisis-not an earth shaking one, but they could have died if they hadn't acted swiftly, and it had been a hard slog afterwards.
"Still, it was interesting," Rudi went on.
Ingolf groaned: "Too much like nearly freezing to death again for my taste, and to hell with interesting."
"Where's your sense of adventure?" Rudi asked with a snort.
"It died with a Sioux arrow through the gut about seven years ago," Ingolf said, genially enough to take most of the sting out of it.
"It wasn't that cold," Rudi said aloud.
To himself: And I'm not that much younger than you, my friend. And I'm in charge. Then: And there was that dream… I don't know Who sent it or what it meant, but I do know it frightened the squeezings out of me.
"Cold enough to get you and your friend out of your kilts," the easterner went on. "For a while."
Rudi and Edain were back in the pleated skirtlike garments, and had their plaids pinned at their shoulders.
It isn't that I really mind wearing pants, Rudi thought. It's just that I'd rather not unless there's a good reason.
Garbh plodded at her master's heels with her tongue hanging out, occasionally raising her shaggy barrel-shaped head to sniff with interest.
About the way I feel, Rudi thought.
Not near the end of his tether, but it was good to be down out of the high country, and next time he went that way he intended to wait until June.
They walked on southeast down a gentle slope, through open forest of ponderosa and lodgepole and jack pine, tall straight trees but more slender and less close packed than the fir woodland on the western slope. It was inter spersed with grassy meadows bright with golden-orange blanket flowers and nodding lilac-colored mariposa lilies; pine and strong-scented sage filled the cool thin high-desert air, stronger than the scents of leather and sweat. The snow was gone, but at better than four thou sand feet May wasn't what you'd call warm; it got a little less chilly as the sun cleared the horizon and sent long fingers of light through the trees.
"At least our packs are a lot lighter," Rudi said cheerfully.
"That's because we're about out of food," Edain teased.
"Where's your sense of direction?" Ingolf asked Rudi. "Not as dead as my sense of adventure, I hope."
"It's been years since Mom and I visited out here, and we came over Highway 20 through the Santiam Pass and then down the railway from Bend," Rudi said. "But…"
He closed his eyes for an instant and called up the terrain, half maps he'd seen, partly his teenage memories of the visit, partly a picture those made in his head. They'd crossed the old Burlington Northern tracks yesterday evening, so…
"… that was Bedpan Burn back there, I'm pretty sure. Silver Lake Road should be a little east of here. That'll take us right south to the ranch."