ReVISIONS (11 page)

And so they left the wall undefended.

Now, Signore, the Horse's head opened right up, like one of Leo's pictures of cadavers opened out, and from his platform the gunner opened fire over the wall, but not with a cannon! No, this was a machine with rotating chambers, fired hundreds of little shells, looked like bright confetti flying, but where they came down there wasn't no carnival, you see?
Boom boom boom,
black smoke and red flame, men flying to pieces, little pieces, arms and legs blown everywhere! We found them for days afterward, all over the park.

But that ain't the best part.

The Horse's behind had a room in it, too, and three men in there got busy, cranking the reciprocating gears, and the Horse's prick—is that the word in English, not too rude? Well, saving your presence, but that's what came out of the Horse, an iron prick turning as it came, with a burin on the end, all sharp points. It bit into the wall. Oh, we laughed like hell! Round and round it went, boring at the wall, one big screw!

When the screw had gone in deep, the men set the Horse in motion, thrusting and pounding at the wall like it was a mare. I thought the duke was going to rupture himself; he laughed so hard the tears were streaming down his face.

But when the wall broke, when it fell in with a crash like thunder, he was all business: he gave the order and his men charged the breach, shrieking. They poured through, looking like silver ants below the Horse. Not that there was much work for them to do, when they got inside. You never saw such a sight in your life, Signore. Most of the condottieri burned black, or blown to bits, or both. It was fantastic. Magnificent. You wouldn't believe ordinary men could do it, but we did.

What happened afterward?

Well, ingratitude is a terrible sin. The duke got to thinking, I guess, that he could conquer the world, as long as he was the only one with these machines. He figured the only way to be sure nobody else got them was to see Leo and me didn't go nowhere, and the only way to be sure of that was a nice unmarked grave for us. Tognazzini put a word in my ear. Me and Leo were out of Pavia on fast horses the same night, you can bet.

. . . The girl? Oh, Fiammetta. Funny thing about that . . . she hanged herself, after the battle. Women! Eh?

But we went other places, made stupendous things. We never made another Horse, but
il Orrendo
got what was coming to him when it blew up the next time he tried to use it. That's how God punishes bad men. Plenty of other great princes were happy to see us! War ain't like the old days, Signore, oh, no. You don't need hundreds of peasants to send in waves against your enemy's walls; all you need is a few smart guys with a good machine or two.

And you don't need hundreds of peasants to work your fields, either, if you got the steam-powered plows and mowers Leo invented.

But that didn't go so good, with the riots and all; maybe you heard about that? Well, it's all quiet over there now. After we helped Cesare Borgia take over France, Machiavelli called us in. He said, so nice and polite: “What do we do with all these useless, disobedient peasants? Nobody needs them anymore. Please, Ser Leonardo, with your brilliance in solving logistical problems, with your unparalleled talent for orderly arrangement and innovative thinking—could you not propose a final solution to this problem?”

And, you bet, I kept Leo's nose to the grindstone until we had one.

But, can you believe it? Even with us being big shots with defense contracts, there's always some rich man after Leo's valuable time, trying to get Leo to paint his wife's portrait or some other foolishness. And that's the reason—well, that and a few other things, like Cesare Borgia getting murdered—that Leo and me thought we needed a nice vacation someplace besides Europe. So, we try our luck here in England, eh?

 

The satyr falls silent, gazing intently at his host. The melancholy man for whom he speaks appears disinterested in the conversation; he has watched the shadows on the wall the whole time.

The nameless man smiles, sips his ale, refills the satyr's tankard. With a slightly apologetic air, he explains that all this is most impressive; it is certainly an honor to converse with the men who fathered modern warfare. His master found the flying machines, in particular, of great use in the late civil strife. And it is a shame, before God, that such artistry of invention has not been suitably rewarded. However—

England has no need of the redundancy camps nor the crematoria. Two generations of dynastic war have left it with a shortage of peasantry, if anything; and in any case, it is a country of smallholdings. Steam plows, able to subdue vast acreage in Europe, might prove impractical in a country of lanes and hedgerows. Even if that were not the case, it has of late been rumored abroad that in Europe corn is so plentiful now, as a result of the new devices, there is even a glut on the market. His master is a thrifty man; it would scarcely be in his interest, therefore, to invest in steam-farming.

Perhaps his guests have another proposition?

The satyr narrows his eyes. He is silent a long moment, pulling thoughtfully on his lower lip. He glances at his silent friend, who does not respond. At last he smacks the table with the flat of his hand, laughing heartily.

 

Well, sure, we have lots of ideas!

And it's a good thing for your master we're here, and I'll tell you why.

You had those Roses Wars over here, right? First the Red Rose up, then the White, then Red, then White. Now your Henry Tudor's on top, but for how long?

England's confused. That makes the crown slippery on the head. I heard about those two little princes in your Tower, eh? Pretty convenient for you that they just disappeared like that. Who done it? Nobody knows what to think. What you need, Signore, is to
tell them what to think
.

Leo and me, we're old men, now, and we know something about human nature. You got to tell your story like it was the truth. Make it such an exciting story everybody wants to hear it, and make sure your version is the only one they get to hear. Then everybody will believe it. So, what do you do?

You get some smart poet to write a play, and you send actors to every village in England. Not just one troupe of actors, but a hundred, a thousand, and Leo will build steam-coaches to get them everywhere fast. Not in threadbare old costumes but in scarlet and purple silks, cloth of gold! Leo will make it so gorgeous the people have to look. He'll make it a spectacle, with fireworks, music, dancing! All to show how Henry Tudor is the best thing that ever happened to England.

You got to get your message out, Signore. That's how you'll win wars, in the future.

W
INTER followed him down from Utah's Marka gunt Plateau.

Neil's breath came in clouds of white as the temperature dipped down for the night, ending a sunny day of painfully blue sky for the crisp middle-desert night of brilliant stars and familiar constellations.

The chill itself he didn't mind. The unseasonable clouds moving in from the west . . . those could pose a problem. Cold rain to chill his bones, sicken his animals, and rile the already furious river. Cold rain to trap them east of the crossing, vulnerable to wolves, to coyotes . . . to the pieds.

All of them, bound together in modern times by an age-old pastoral system. Neil, his two sturdy little tolting ponies, his gelding guard llama, and most of all, the five hundred sensible Churras under his charge.

As sensible as sheep ever got, anyway. Even personable, some of them. Neil had his favorites; all the
partido
herders did. With nearly five hundred ewes and another fifteen rams to service them, any herder picked out a few individuals for special attention. The uniquely spotted ones, with striking splotches of black and white among the brown, black, and graying animals who made up the herd. Those with odd horns—the rare polled ewe, entirely hornless among a flock of ewes with stumpy scur horns and rams with three to four horns apiece. Or the ram he'd named Screw not only for his enthusiastic performance but the curly twist of his upper horns.

They were commodities of wool and meat and breeding stock, left to his care and entirely isolated from modern society and conveniences. Throughout the summer he moved them around the high plateau's natural pasturage, receiving supplies from the roving camp boss and keeping the Churras close by dint of the tolters, bells on a few tethered sheep, and pure determination. Keeping them well-fed while protecting the range from overgrazing, keeping them safe from the thriving wolves, the bears, and mountain lions that called these rugged highlands home even in the late twentieth century.

But the Churras would die if they were trapped here.

Not from the cold. That would come upon them regardless, if more slowly in the winter lowland pastures that spilled out south of the Mukuntuweap Canyon and just north of the Arizona line. And not from the lack of forage, for they wouldn't last that long—none of them. Not the sheep, the guard llamas who so fiercely protected their herd and territory, or the swift, tireless tolting ponies.

A thin ululating cry startled the air, swiftly joined by others. A gleeful cry.

A hunting cry.

Neil lifted Zip's reins, halting the tolting pony along the eastern Mukuntaweap rim to listen carefully, pretending he could ignore the goose bumps the sound raised along his spine. The white dun's short, fat ears swiveled within a thick brush of pale mane and forelock, also listening. Unalarmed.

Neil took his cue from the tolter. Short, stout enough to carry any man, the tolters came in every shade of dun from near-white to near-black, red to sand. Bred for thriftiness, herding drive, and their amazingly smooth tolting gait, they made it possible for one herder to manage so many sheep in this high, craggy country. And now Zip as much as told him that the pied wolves were on the other side of the river, separated from them by the roiling North Fork and several thousand feet of canyon walls. Safe. For now.

But down at the river's edge and the south entrance of the canyon, the Churras would be smack in the middle of pied wolf territory. Caught there by unseasonable rain and rising water, they'd have to wait for the river to drop—and not even Neil's wickedly accurate shooting eye would keep them alive.

For the moment, he hesitated, the dark bulk of Watchman Peak looming before him and the flat expanse of the east rim behind him. He'd meant to push on tonight. Now he wondered if the smarter course would be to return to the station he'd just passed, spending several days there to wait out the rain and the river.

The pieds might find them there, too. But they preferred the lower elevations.

All except the one.

On cue, a lonely yip from well outside the herd perimeter gave tentative reply to the call of the pack. The loner. The exception.

Tenaciously pack-oriented were the pieds, notoriously so. Modern scientists said man had once tried to domesticate them, fifteen thousand years ago.
Give or take a year
, Neil thought, and snorted softly. He didn't believe it, himself—in spite of DNA evidence. The creatures worked together in an eerie fashion, so tightly knit as to read each other's very glance or the flick of a huge, upright ear on the run, shifting formation, surrounding and harrying their prey with deadly skill. The only thing Neil believed of the scientists' claims was their interpretations of the archaeological digs where ancient pied and man had died together. Where man had let the pieds too close, and paid the price. Massacre. Betrayal, if one could call it such from a species so self-serving as to be traitors by nature.

Unlike the llamas, who understood their place in the herd and embraced it with fierce intent. Unlike the many domesticated creatures who served man—the miniature horses who guided the blind, the compact scenting pigs who inspected vehicles for drugs and explosives alike, the loud-mouthed, sharp-clawed Siamese cats guarding hearth and home, highly territorial after thousands of years of specialized breeding. Unlike the tolters, who trusted him so deeply they had defied instinct to save him from landslide, from predator . . . and now, he hoped, from flood.

No, the pieds knew only how to cleave to themselves, forming the large packs who harried every rural farmer, herder, and unfortunate hiker across the lowlands of Utah and the southwest, into the midwestern states and even against the edges of the more populated southeast. They effortlessly shared territory with the larger predators in the hard-to-tame western states, avoiding conflict with anything bigger and toothier than themselves. They evaded even the latest predator detection devices, already in widespread use in populated areas—where headlines constantly blared of yet another clash between bear or big cat or wolves and mankind. Indeed, the pieds looked after their own with a wily skill that permeated folklore and news broadcasts alike.