Rudi nodded himself. "He was a Society fighter before the Change. On the day, he lifted two big wagons and their teams from a… living-history exhibit, whatever that was… in Eugene on his way to Dun Juniper with the Singing Moon coven. And he loaded the wagons with food and tools and seeds he… picked up… along the way, and drove along cattle and pigs and sheep they acquired likewise, with worthless money or just by lifting them. This was before people had a chance to eat everything, you see, or even to realize what was happening, the most of them."
"There you are then," Odard said. "All our parents did that sort of thing. If you have to-"
"And he ran into a load of lost schoolchildren along the way, and picked them up too, and adopted three of them himself," Rudi finished, interrupting him. "Oak-he used to be named Dan-has three sons and daughters of his own now."
"Oh," Odard said, and cut himself a wedge from the cheese.
Rudi didn't say any more; Eddie Liu, the first Baron Gervais, hadn't been that sort of man, and everyone knew it.
In your father's day, Odard… Matti's father's day… your lot were just as bad as these Cutters, for all the fancy titles. Eddie Liu and Norman Arminger among the worst of them; not just hard men, but rotten bad. If they'd won the War of the Eye, you'd be worse than you are yourself, my friend, and even so there are things about you I don't much like.
And at least Arminger's had been a mortal evil, while the CUT seemed to corrupt everything it touched.
And… he remembered the dead man laughing.
"The times were very hard indeed," Rudi went on aloud, controlling a slight shiver at that recollection. "But hard isn't the same thing as bad. It depended on the leaders and what sort of things were in their souls, and what paths they led their folk down. My mother says a tribe is like a man; it becomes more itself as it gets older, and as what it does writes on the heart. Things were… loose, for a while after the Change. They could be turned this way or that. Now they're getting set again, for good and ill."
Ingolf shook himself and loaded his plate, doggedly plowing through eggs and ham and fried potatoes. When he glanced up at Rudi, the haunted look was gone for now and a tough shrewdness back in charge.
"I gather we're not just going to buy some supplies, and ransom some people, and ride quietly away, Rudi?"
"No, that we are not," Rudi said forcefully. "Not if we can do more. I won't command us to certain death-but I will take a risk."
" I'm the one who was raised on tales of knights-errant," Odard said dryly. "We have the Princess to think about, Rudi… and your precious Sword. We have a long way to go. We can't right every wrong we find, not when we're outnumbered fifty to four. We're fugitives, not an army with banners and trumpets. I don't mind a fight, but.. ."
Rudi nodded; that was true. And he didn't doubt Odard's courage. It had been shown often enough that there was no need for him to go out of his way to prove it.
"I'm not going to try to right every wrong," he said. "But when the Powers shove one under my nose, and it smelling no better than a goat turd on a hot day, then it becomes my business."
"Yes!" Edain said, his eyes bright.
Rebecca's blazed. " Thank you," she whispered. "Thank you both."
"You're welcome," Rudi said.
"Well, then we need more information," Ingolf said practically. "More than we can get cooped up here. And that Jed Smith may have acted real friendly, but he's no fool like his nephew Jack. He'll let us see just as much as he thinks is needful for him, and not a bit more."
"No, he's a dangerous man," Rudi acknowledged. "He'll keep a close eye on us."
"Not on all of us," Rebecca said.
A sharp scream came from the middle distance, and then sobs and the sound of men laughing. She shivered, but went on:
"My people here will know all we need."
TheScourgeofGod
CHAPTER SIX
Avenger the Archer high-hearted
Deadly the skill of the bowman's hand
Stronger still is fate hard woven
Than any shaft nocked by mortal man From: The Song of Bear and Raven
Attributed to Fiorbhinn Mackenzie, 1st century CY
Peter Graber, newly promoted Major in the third battalion of the Sword of the Prophet, was a believing man. He recited from the Dictations nightly, or the Book of Dzhur, and had since he was a child in the House of Refuge. He treasured the occasions when he could feel that chanting bring him into contact with the Beyond, a joy as great as holding his firstborn son in his arms, and greater than any his wives could furnish. The Ascended Masters would welcome his lifestream in time, and eternal glory would be his.
He believed that so deeply that danger to his life aroused only an animal wariness, not the fear some men felt. And his combat record had been excellent as he rose from trooper to squadron commander; against the Powder River Ranchers, the Sioux, the Drumhellers, and then in the great battles of the Deseret War and most recently at Wendell against the US of Boise.
But I still don't like this Seeker, even if he comes from the Prophet's right hand. There's something… wrong… about him.
Right now High Seeker Twain was just an unexceptional-looking man of about thirty-five, wiry and tough, with a dull red robe over his traveling clothes, huddled on his horse with a blank expression on his face as beads of sweat ran down through the dust. He rode well enough to keep up, but not to the standard of the Prophet's elite guard regiment, or even as well as the average cowboy. Graber would have placed him for a townsman, if he hadn't been so uncomplaining of hardship… but then, the Seekers had their own code.
Fifty of the Sword were spread out to either side, in a single rank to make it easier to spot any turning in the trail they followed. The dull russet brown of their lacquered leather armor faded against the volcanic soil in the distance, with an occasional eye-hurting blink as the lance-heads above them caught the harsh noonday sun. The men rode in disciplined silence except for an occasional order from an under-officer, the spiked helmets rising and falling with the walk-trot-canter-trot-walk pace.
The noise came from the slow steady pounding of hooves, the clatter of the hard metal-edged scutes of their war harness, creak of saddle-leather, the dull clank of a shete scabbard against a stirrup iron or the rattle of arrows in a quiver.
Unavoidably they raised a plume of dust, in this stretch where even sagebrush was sparse; they rode into a wind out of the east, so the dust fell behind them rather than hanging about to get in nose and eyes, but it would be visible for some distance. The remuda, the remount-herd, was behind them, and its cloud was larger. Most of the Snake River country wasn't so different from the plains of Eastern Montana or the Powder River ranges, though a bit drier. This particular eerie stretch of cinders and conical hills was strange, though, and he distrusted it.
"High Seeker," he said respectfully.
You told us to come this way, and now my battalion is scattered over a front a hundred miles wide. Now tell us how to get out of it! I'm going to lose horses soon, if we don't get to forage and water. May the Nephilim eat your soul in the Black Void if I'll lose good men without an explanation!
"High Seeker?" he repeated.
The man's pupils were shrunken to pinpoints, and his jaw worked as if he chewed a bitter truth. Graber shrugged with a slight clatter of gear and swung up a clenched fist. The unit halted within three paces, horses as well trained as the men. Dust smoked backwards; he could hear a slight hissing sound as the heavier particles fell out. Everyone dismounted; you stayed out of the saddle whenever you could, if you wanted your horse to last.
"We'll wait for the Scout," he called. "Loosen girths but keep the tack on."