“Welcome to Agness Town,” one of the harsh-voiced men said. Someone planted a hand in his back and pushed. There was laughter as the prisoners tumbled inside to collapse on a filthy straw tick.
Neither bothered to move from the exact spot where he rolled to a stop. It was a chance to sleep. For the moment, that was all that mattered. Again, there were no dreams — only occasional twitching as abused muscles misfired through the rest of the day, the night, and all the following morning.
Gordon awakened only when bright sunlight rose high enough to shine painfully through his eyelids. He rolled aside, groaning. A shadow passed over him, and his eyelids fluttered like rusty shutters.
It took a few seconds to focus. Recognition came some time after that. The first thing that occurred to him was that there was a tooth missing from the familiar smile.
“Johnny,” he croaked.
The young man’s face was blistered and bruised. Still, John Stevens grinned cheerfully, gap and all “Hullo, Gordon. Welcome back among the unlucky — the living.”
He helped Gordon sit up and steadied a ladle of cool river water for him to sip. Meanwhile, Johnny talked. “There’s food over in the corner. And I overheard a guard say something about gettin’ us cleaned up sometime soon. So maybe there’s a reason our balls aren’t already hanging from some asshole’s trophy belt. I guess they brought us all this way to meet some bigshot.”
Johnny laughed, dryly. “Just you wait, Gordon. We’ll talk rings around the guy, whoever it is. Maybe we can offer to make him a postmaster, or something. Is that what you meant when you lectured me about the importance of learning practical politics?”
Gordon was too weak to strangle Johnny for his incredible, jarring cheerfulness. He tried to smile back instead, but it only made his cracked lips hurt.
A scuttling movement in the corner opposite them showed that they were not alone. There were three other prisoners in the shed with them — filthy, wild-eyed scarecrows who had obviously been here a long time. They stared back with saucer eyes, obviously long past human.
“Did… did anyone get away from the ambush?” It had been Gordon’s first lucid opportunity to ask.
“I think so. Your warning must have buggered the bastards’ timing. It gave us a chance to make a pretty good fight of it. I’m sure we took out a couple of them before they swamped us.” Johnny’s eyes shone. If anything, the boy’s admiration seemed to have increased. Gordon looked away. He didn’t want praise for his behavior that night.
“I’m pretty sure I killed the sonovabitch who smashed my guitar. Another one—”
“What about Phil Bokuto?” Gordon interrupted.
Johnny shook his head. “I don’t know, Gordon. I saw no black ears or… other things… among the ‘trophies’ the crumbs collected. Maybe he made it.”
Gordon sagged back against the slats of their pen. The sound of rushing water, a roar that had been with them all night, came from the other side. He turned and peered through the gaps in the rough planks.
About twenty feet away was the edge of a bluff. Beyond it, through ragged shreds of drifting fog, he could see the heavily forested wall of a canyon cut by a narrow, swift stream.
Johnny seemed to read his thoughts. For the first time the young man’s voice was low, serious.
“That’s right, Gordon. We’re right in the heart of it. That down there’s the bitch herself. The bloody Rogue.”
11
The mist and icy drizzle turned back into flurries of snow-flakes for the next week. With food and rest, the two prisoners slowly regained some strength. For company they had only each other. Neither their guards nor their fellow captives would speak to them in more than monosyllables.
Still, it wasn’t hard to learn some things about life in the Holnist realm. Their meals were brought by silent, cowering drudges from the nearby shanty town. The only figures they saw who weren’t emaciated — besides the earringed survivalists themselves — were the women who served the Holnists’ pleasure. And even those worked by day: drawing water from the frigid stream or currying the stable of well-fed horses.
The pattern seemed well established, as if this was an accustomed way of life. And yet Gordon became convinced that the neofeudal community was in a state of flux.
“They’re preparing for a big move,” he told Johnny as they watched a caravan arrive one afternoon. Still more frightened serfs trudged into Agness, pulling carts and setting up camp in the swelling warren. Obviously, this little valley could not hold such a population for very long.
“They’re using this place as a staging area.”
Johnny suggested, “That mob of people might offer us an advantage, if we find a way to bust out of here.”
“Hmm,” Gordon answered. But he didn’t hold much hope for aid from any of the slaves out there. They’d had any spirit beaten out of them, and had problems enough of their own.
One day, after the noon meal, Gordon and Johnny were ordered to step out of their pen and strip naked. A pair of shabby, silent women came and gathered up their clothes. While the northerners’ backs were turned, buckets of cold river water were thrown on them. Gordon and Johnny gasped and sputtered. The guards all laughed, but the women’s eyes did not even flicker as they left, heads bowed.
The Holnists — dressed in green and black camouflage, their ears arrayed with golden rings — competed in lazy knife practice, flipping their blades in quick, underhand arcs. The two northerners clutched greasy blankets in front of a small fire, trying to stay warm.
That evening their cleaned and patched clothes were returned to them. This time one of the women actually looked up briefly, giving Gordon a chance to see her face. She might have been twenty, though her lined eyes looked far older. Her brown hair was streaked with gray. She glanced at Gordon for only a moment as he dressed. But when he ventured a smile, she turned quickly and fled without looking back.
The sunset meal was better fare than the usual sour gruel. There were scraps of something like venison amidst the parched corn. Perhaps it was horsemeat.
Johnny dared fate by asking for seconds. The other prisoners blinked in amazement and cringed even farther into their corners. One of the silent guards growled and took their plates away. But to their surprise he returned with another helping for each of them.
It was full dark when three Holn warriors in floppy berets marched up behind a stoop-shouldered servant bearing a torch. “Come along,” the leader told them. “The General wants to see you.”
Gordon looked at Johnny, standing proud again in his uniform. The young man’s eyes were confident. After all, they seemed to say, what did these jerks have that could compare with Gordon’s authority as an official of the Restored Republic?
Gordon remembered how the boy had half-carried him during the long journey south from the Coquille. He had little heart anymore for pretenses, but for Johnny’s sake he would try the old scam one more time.
“All right, postman,” he told his young friend. Gordon winked. “Neither sleet, nor hail, nor gloom of night…”
Johnny grinned back. “Through bandit’s hell, through firefight…”
They turned together and left the jail shed ahead of their guards.
12
“Welcome, gentlemen”
The first thing Gordon noticed was the crackling fireplace. The snug pre-Doom ranger station was stone sealed and warm. He had almost forgotten what the sensation felt like.