Boise regulars, she thought. United States Army, as far as they're concerned. Sixth Regiment, from the shoulder-flashes.
There was plenty of time to watch the commander with the vinestock pace about examining the gate and the two square flanking towers, since the usual evening crush of wagons and carts was trying to get through-and moving more slowly than usual, as the guards checked them with extra care. The strangers in the odd armor weren't shy about getting in people's way, either.
"Christ, civvies!" their officer said. "It's thick and it's solid, and that's all you can say for it. You could bring a covered ram right up to the gate!"
"Fubarred," his companion with the sergeant's chevrons on the short mail-sleeve said. "Looks like they based the design on an illustration from a book of faerie tales my mother used to read to me, Captain."
The officer reached out, a slight smile on his hard clean-shaven face, and playfully rapped the swagger-stick on the man's helmet. The steel went bonk under the tough wood of the vinestock.
"That's Centurion, Sergeant. The rank structure's been modernized."
"Yessir, Centurion. Glad President Martin got around to it, sir. It's a wonder we… or someone… didn't take 'em over before this if this is their capital. Lewiston has a lot better defenses and it wouldn't be a pimple on Boise's ass."
"Considerations of high policy, soldier-and stick to business. It'll be a lot better with a couple of eighteen-pounders and some heavy darters up top, on turntables and with steel shields. We'll put the lifting triangle right there and-"
The line inched forward. The gate-keepers were militiamen, ordinary shopkeepers and craftsmen taking the duty in turn with their homemade armor over normal working clothes. One of the Bossman's personal guard was there too, besides the usual clerk to collect the customs dues-yet another local term for shakedown. He was a big young man in a hammered-steel breastplate and helmet with ostrich plumes, above tight red-dyed pants and elaborately tooled thigh-boots turned down to the knee; she guessed that someone had been looking through an illustrated book when they designed the outfit.
Or possibly the cover of a bodice-ripper, she thought wryly. Or maybe that book of faerie tales. If he had pointed ears and whiskers, he'd be a dead ringer for Puss in Boots.
A small mustache of the type Pendleton men favored was fiery red as well, naturally so judging from his milk-white-and-sunburn complexion. He took the letter and read it through slowly, moving his lips, then went and examined the opened box in the wagon.
"All right!" he said. "Fan-fucking- tastic. Go right on through, ma'am! I'll report this to the Bossman's House. No, you fool," he went on to the clerk. "Weapons imports are duty free for the duration of the emergency."
The Boise centurion looked up from a sketchbook. "Weapons?" he said.
Strolling over he looked into the crate and took one of the swords out. It was a straight longsword in a plain sheath of black leather over wooden battens, with aluminum at chape and lip; he drew the thirty-inch blade and looked down the edge, then hefted it to test the balance.
"Not bad. This is well-made equipment, for its type."
"Yeah, it is," the Bossman's guard said.
He didn't bother to keep the hard note out of his voice. There was a badge on his shoulder that had three intertwined capital R's, but despite the appearance it wasn't a Rancher's brand… exactly. That stood for Registered Refugee Regiment. Technically the man was a Registered Refugee, roughly equivalent to a slave in Pendleton, except that the men of the Regiment belonged to Bossman Carl Peters. Who had either come up with the idea on his own or gotten it out of some book on Middle Eastern history; its members had privileges ordinary freemen could only envy, and were correspondingly unpopular with townsmen and Ranchers both.
They were fanatically loyal to their benefactor and the two hundred of them were a major reason the current incumbent had managed to survive and hold on to power far longer than any previous overlord here.
The young man went on: "And they're for the Bossman. Our Bossman, His Honor Carl Peters. Any problem with that, straight-leg?"
"None at all, Lieutenant, none at all," the centurion said; he didn't seem at all put out by the unflattering term for a regular. "Our leaders are all in alliance to serve America, right?"
Which would have been more tactful if he hadn't used the tone a man would humoring a boy. BD left them talking with strained politeness as they went through into Pendleton proper. It was darker inside the walls; the streets were straight and fairly wide-especially Emigrant, down which they traveled-and the potholes had been repaired with packed gravel or remelted asphalt. But the town had been built up, two-or three-story structures of adobe or salvaged brick and wood frame standing cheek by jowl with others that had been kept unaltered for a century or more to preserve Pendleton's Old-West atmosphere before the Change. And…
"Hugh" was up walking beside her wagon now; his six foot seven was tall enough that they could talk quietly even with her sitting on the driver's seat and him hunched over and lurching. You tended to forget how tall he was until he came close, because he was even broader in proportion, built like an old-time high-rise, square from shoulders to hips.
"Lot of men in town," he said, in a voice with a soft drawling burr.
There were; young men, mostly. Many of them were ordinary cowboys from the ranches of Northeastern Oregon, but some were in uniforms of mottled sage-and-gray cloth, or coarse blue-green. Every second building seemed to house a saloon or eating-house or some combination on its ground floor, or to have been converted to such; the air was thick with the smell of frying onions and grilling meat, and sweat and horse manure and piss and beer and the sour tang of vomit, loud with raucous guitars and pianos and voices singing or shouting. And every building had the Pendleton flag flying, which was unusual.
As the sun dipped below the walls behind them the dark grew thick; Pendleton didn't run to streetlights, even lamps at crossroads like Sutterdown's, much less the sophisticated methane gaslights of Corvallis or Portland. The yellow glow from windows made it possible to steer the wagons without running over anyone… if you were careful of figures collapsed half off the sidewalks.
They came to their destination, a compound taking up half a block, with a discreet MURDOCH AND SONS, IMPORTERS over the main gate and a blank twelve-foot wall all around the perimeter, not quite a fortification, but a real deterrent in the sort of factional squabble the city had had before the current Bossman took over.
The building just before it had a large sign reading WORKING GIRLS' HOTEL, and it was in the ornate stone and terra-cotta style of long ago, a century or more before the Change. Some of the girls were leaning out of the upper windows wearing very little, and shouting invitations that sounded more than usually tired and frazzled. Just as the Plodding Pony wagons passed, a figure catapulted out through the swinging doors and sprawled in the dirt of the street with a thud. He'd come with a boot in the buttocks, and lay for a second sobbing with rage and frustration and the raw whiskey that made his movements vague and tentative.
"Whoa!" BD shouted.
Her not-cousin grabbed at the team's bridles. Together they kept three tons of Conestoga and sixteen hooves from rolling over the prostrate figure.
The man tried to get up again; it was Rancher Jenson's cowboy George. He lay for a moment with horse dung in the fuzzy sheepskin of his chaps, and then rolled aside to dodge the saddle, saddlebags, bedroll, quiver and cased recurve bow that were tossed after him. He clumsily scooped the arrows back into the quiver and used the saddle to push himself partially erect.