"It's the mobilization," Murdoch said defensively. "The town's bursting at the seams right now-it's worse than the Whoop-Up. And you saw the foreigners?"
"Yes. The Boise men I recognized, but…"
"CUT," Murdoch said grimly. "Not just the wandering preachers-we've been getting them for years-but soldiers and officials out of Corwin."
"When?" Hordle said.
"A few of them two weeks ago, then the rest just the past three days; and it's not just troops, there are high officers of both them and the Boiseans quartered at the Bossman's House. The Cutters are acting in concert with the Boise people. Carl Peters invited them in, but…"
"But the bugger has forgotten the saying about the camel's nose. Quick work on the villains' part, though," John Hordle said. "And we're not before time, eh?"
Murdoch put the lantern down on a desk for a moment, and then stepped to the rear wall of the office where a picture hung.
"I could let you down with the winch," he said. "But that section's closed off from the rest on the inside. This part doesn't officially exist-"
The picture was a Remington print set in an ornate frameCoronado's March, all desert and dust and lances and armored Conquistadores. BD glanced at it, then suddenly realized…
You know, down in the Southwest, something precisely like that might be happening right now and that could be a photograph of it.
She shivered slightly and set the thought aside. If you'd lived through the past couple of decades, you got used to things like that; you also got used to pushing them away when they hit you again.
There was a click as the merchant-spy's fingers explored the frame of the print, and then a section of wall the size of a small door swung open. He led them into the staircase beyond; the temperature fell as they descended through dirt held back by boards and then into a broad tunnel of coarse light-textured volcanic rock like hard dense pumice.
The lantern left a moving bubble of light in darkness Stygian enough to make the nighttime streets seem like noonday, showing ancient posters and even dust-choked storefront windows. There was a cold smell of abandonment and mouse droppings, like an old house where nobody had lived for a while.
"Welcome to Underground Pendleton," Murdoch said, a little nervous as he went on: "Dug by the Chinese."
"Chinese?" Hordle said.
"There were a lot of Chinese workers here once," Murdoch said; he seemed to have a perverse pride in local history, even the more questionable bits. "They dug tunnels so they could get from one part of town to another. It's easy, the rock's soft and cuts like cheese."
"Why not use the streets?"
"Because the local Anglo-Saxons had a habit of shooting them on sight for no particular reason besides a dislike of Chinamen," Murdoch said.
"I've 'eard of the underground economy, but this is ridiculous," Hordle said. "Roit useful for what we've in mind, though. You said there was tunnels, but this is a bloody maze, mate."
"Then they used part of it for illegal businesses, and then for tourists before the Change," Murdoch went on. "It's all shut up now, too dark and stuffy to be useful. Officially I just have some storage chambers down here… but your people have been going over the plans and… ah, here we are!"
He came to a stout door and knocked three times quickly and three times slowly before opening it, letting out light and warmer air and a pleasant smell of burning pinewood. The chamber was brightly lit, by lamps and by a small hearth built into-or dug out of-one wall; Hordle blew out his lips in an expression of relief at the score of figures seated within around a long plank table, with the remains of a meal scattered about.
The burble of Sindarin conversation died away as the door opened, though several waved to BD as to an old friend. BD understood the Elven-tongue well enough, since she'd been hiring Dunedain Rangers for caravan security for years, and it was the language they usually spoke among themselves. She'd been working with them as long as they'd existed, in fact, though to listen to some of them you'd think their grandparents had stepped off the boat from Numenor, having quietly skipped the Fourth Age somehow.
Sometimes she shuddered to think what the generation born in steads like Stardell Hall in Mithrilwood would be like, raised by crazed Changelings with their heads full of stories they believed.
And they make me feel old, she thought.
Hordle and Alleyne Loring were the eldest of them all at forty. Astrid Larsson and Eilir Mackenzie were thirty-six; and they'd been the founders of the Dunedain. The rest of the party were in their late teens or their twenties. All of them were in Dunedain working gear-black leather and wool, mostly, and soft-soled elf-boots, but with the tree-stars-and-crown blazon on their chests done in dark gray, rather than silver-white. One of the nearest was a striking woman in her thirties with bowl-cut hair that was naturally the color that dye had given Hordle's own brown curls, and leaf-green eyes the same color as her mother, Juniper's.
Hello, luv, Hordle Signed to the black-haired woman; she looked up with a smile from a litter of maps.
And aloud, since the three bright lanterns hung from the rocky ceiling and the firelight gave ample light for Eilir's lip-reading skills:
"Well, dear, I'm 'ome."
No, you're in a cave under an enemy city full of thousands of people who'd like to kill us all, Eilir replied; she was still smiling, but there was a bit of a bite in the gestured speech. Our children are back home in Stardell wondering where the hell we are and when we'll be back.
Hordle winced.
"No problem with the weapons, John?" Alleyne Loring said, mercifully changing the subject.
He spoke English for Murdoch's sake, in an accent as British as Hordle's, but of the manor-and-public-school variety, and smoothed his close-trimmed yellow mustache with a finger.
"Dead easy." A deep chuckle. "No better way to smuggle weapons than in wagonloads of… weapons! No problem getting our lot in?"
"You're the last, old chap. They've tightened up their security, but they're still not stopping harmless unarmed wanderers in ones and twos."
"You'd better get the gear unloaded and get ready," Murdoch warned. "I don't think the Bossman will send his people over for his weapons tonight, but I'm not absolutely sure he won't… and there are more men in town than you expected."
"Cutters. And Boise regulars," John Hordle said, repeating the details that Sandra Arminger's spy had given him. "Seems the Bossman got an attack of the nerves and decided 'e needed some friends."
"Tsk," Alleyne Loring said. "He forgot the origins of England."
Murdoch and BD looked at him, and there was a grim smile on his handsome fine-boned face as he went on:
"The first English in England-two outlaw chiefs from Jutland named Hengist and Horsa and their merry, hairy band of pirate cutthroats-"
"Sound like lads after me own heart," Hordle observed.
"-were invited in by a chief of the Britons named Vortigern. The Romans had withdrawn, and Vortigern had a problem with the Picts kicking up their heels. He decided that the obvious thing to do was hire some Saxons to fight the Picts for him rather than go to the dreadful bore and bother of doing it himself."
"What happened then?" Murdoch asked.
The smile turned wolfish; for a moment it was easy to imagine Alleyne in a bearskin tunic, leaping out of a Dark Age war-boat with a seax in his fist.
"Shortly thereafter the Jutes and their Saxon and Anglian relatives had England, and the Britons had… Wales. Despite all King Arthur could do. And Vortigern made that mistake despite a late-Roman definition of rapacity: He could teach piracy to a Saxon. "