The Given Sacrifice (18 page)

He cleared his throat, feeling their eyes on him and feeling a bit self-conscious
too.

“Sorry.”

Ingolf chuckled and spoke, a little unexpectedly—he was normally a little taciturn.

“No problem, Rudi. You’re too God-damned self-controlled for your own good, sometimes.
Anyway I agree.”

Just then a snatch of marching song came through the open flap, in time to the tramp
of boots:

“Dry your eyes—it’s no cause to weep

The weather is fine and the road isn’t steep

The world is still round, my compass is true

Each step is a step back to you

Each step is a step back to you.”

“And so do the troops,” he said.

Mary grinned and cocked her one eye at him with good-natured skepticism. “And what
will you do, lover, when the reign of peace arrives?”

He shrugged. “Sleep a couple of years, and then try not to see anything more exciting
than a field full of sheep eating grass and crapping where they please, ever again.
You youngsters—”

“Hey, you’re only eight years older than I am!”

“Nine, but it feels longer. You youngsters don’t . . . look, guys, you take the dipper
to the bucket long enough, the bucket’s going to run dry. And you only get one bucketful
per life. I’ve drunk a lot of dippers on a lot of hot days.”

Most of the people around the table looked blank; Rudi suddenly realized he was the
third-oldest there, which was a bit of a shock. He was used to thinking of himself
when the word “youngster” was thrown about.

I’m still a young man,
he thought.
But I’m not a heedless overgrown boy leaping into the blue anymore, that’s true. Ingolf
is sounding less and less cynical and more and more wise when he says something like
that.

He’d had warnings from the Powers, direct and blunt, that he wouldn’t make old bones,
too. Every year spent warmaking was a waste he couldn’t afford.

I’ve been that boy, but now I’m a husband and a father . . . and a King, to be sure.

Ignatius nodded slightly over his spare dinner of salad and bread, catching his monarch’s
eyes and inclining his head towards Ingolf in silent agreement.

Rudi made a gesture of acknowledgment. “With luck, this will speed things up considerably.
Now, here’s how we’re going to handle the timing. First the Rangers will—”

City of Boise

(formerly southern Idaho)

High Kingdom of Montival

(Formerly western North America)

June 25th, Change Year 26/2024 AD

T
he streets of Boise were dark. Cole Salander was used to that where he grew up—night
simply
was
dark, unless there was a full moon—but normally the capital of the United States
had gaslights along the main avenues, burning the by-product of the sewage plant.
The incandescent mantles had seemed almost painfully bright to Cole the last time
he’d been here, about a year ago. Now they were closed down, the iron posts just another
hazard along the streets. Here and there a glimmer of lamp or candlelight showed,
usually from behind shutters. The air was still and smelled of the smoke confined
by the walls, and somehow of fear. In the distance, off to the east, a flare of light
showed as a ball of napalm came over the wall, and there was a faint clanging as the
fire-wagons headed towards the spot.

“I am completely insane,” Cole Salander said,
sotto voce
, striking along briskly with his right hand on the hilt of his short sword. “I volunteered
for this. I rest my case.”

“Absolutely no dispute,” Alyssa answered in the same low tone, walking with a suitable
humility, the (jiggered, non-locking) handcuffs on her wrists. “And I’m
twice
as absolutely insane as you are.”

He could sympathize. He certainly wouldn’t want to be a prisoner, particularly a woman,
in this Cutter-controlled city. How
thoroughly
controlled had come as a bit of a shock to him—and, he thought, to Captain Wellman.
Theoretically the Captain had come in to report to a general who was part of the Emergency
Steering Committee about a possible intelligence asset; developing those was one of
the things the Special Forces were
for
, after all. In point of fact there had been a red-robed High Seeker standing in the
same room, arms crossed across his chest and shaven head gleaming. The general had
slid his eyes in the man’s direction every few seconds, and there had been sweat on
his forehead even though the building was cool. And a rayed sun pendant on the breast
of his uniform.

Wellman had been silent for a long time when they came out of that; not that you expected
an officer to be chatty with the enlisted men, but the Special Forces were a lot less
stiff than the Regulars. He hadn’t doubted Cole’s cover story of prolonged flight
and hiding; why should he? It was exactly what
could
have happened if they hadn’t run into that Mackenzie patrol, and he’d gotten a commendation
and field-promotion to corporal out of it. Alyssa, complete with an excellent set
of false papers prepared by her own side, had been his ticket into Boise; their story
was that she’d talk to him and nobody else—it had produced a lot of embarrassing kidding.
But the thought of how many things could have gone wrong along the way made him sweat
even now.

Especially now. So close to pulling it off . . .

A hard multiple clatter of hooves made them halt. They didn’t run—that would be ruin—but
simply stood back against the grill of a shuttered store that sold
Planters, Reapers and Spreaders, made to order
according to its sign. Cole stood at parade rest, with his right hand on the hilt
of the short sword sheathed high on that hip. You couldn’t go far wrong by falling
back on the drillbook.

About a hundred cavalry went by, heading eastward at a walk, and not in the neat ranks
that even Boise’s ranch-country reserve mounted troops used—more of a shapeless clot,
kept off the sidewalks only by an instinct to avoid the unfamiliar loom of buildings.
A hundred horsemen took up a lot of space even in strict column of fours, and these
loomed like an endless horde in the dark. One had a lantern on a pole, from the light
containing a tallow dip or two that cast a flickering yellow glow on the hard scarred
faces and shaggy plainsman’s horses.

Cutters. Ah, crap.

The light cavalry wore coarse homespun and leather and the gear that he’d seen before
on the Rancher levies of the CUT. Mostly steerhide breastplates and arm-guards studded
with nail-heads or eked out with strips of salvaged washers or wire—the far interior
was poorer in metal than areas closer to the coasts, and more people had survived
to use it up. They had steel helmets, though, slung at their saddlebows and leaving
bare heads bristle-cropped or shaven or shaven save for a scalp-lock, beards shaggy-wild
or braided or trimmed to a tuft on the chin.

Uh-oh,
Cole thought.
Crap. Goat crap.

That style of haircut was a sign that these men came from areas that had been under
the Church Universal and Triumphant’s control for a long time; the Prophet’s elite
guardsmen out of Corwin shaved their heads, and they’d imitated it if not the regulars’
discipline. So was the way some of them had the rayed sun that was the CUT’s symbol
tattooed on their foreheads. That meant they’d be harder-assed.

All of them had shetes at their belts or slung over their backs or strapped to the
saddle—a heavy, slightly curved slashing-sword derived from the old agricultural tool,
and common everywhere east of the Rockies. One of Cole’s older unarmed combat instructors
had said they looked more like a
liuyedao
, whatever the hell that was with its pants on. They had recurve horn-and-sinew bows
in scabbards at their knees and quivers and round leather shields as well, and there
were a few rawhide buckets of short javelins or light lances.

Some of them had strings of scalps dangling from their saddles, too. That and the
way they smelled—rather rank even for troops who’d been in the field for a while—made
him think they came from the Hi-Line, the high bleak plains of central Montana near
the Lakota territories. He’d heard that there was nothing to burn on those dry treeless
expanses but dried cowflops, and that between fuel shortages and scarce water and
long brutal winters folk had mostly gotten out of the habit of washing regularly there.

He blew out a breath of relief when they passed with just some hard looks, and the
glow of the lantern disappeared around an intersection.

“Those stinkers were too close for—” he began.

Hooves clattered again; just two of the horsemen this time, one carrying a newly kindled
torch that dripped sparks and shed a flickering globe of red light. They reined in,
and the one who wasn’t carrying the torch turned his mount left-side-on to the two
on foot. He had his bow in his hand with an arrow on the string and his drawing hand
ready, though he carried the weapon point-down.

The archer was one of the shaven-headed ones, and wore a light mail shirt over broad
bowman’s shoulders. Mail represented wealth out on the high plains, like the silver
studs in his saddle; he looked about thirty, though heavily weathered, with a face
marked by dusty white healed cuts on the forehead and cheeks and jaw, narrow blue
eyes and a yellow tuft of billy-goat-style beard on his chin bound with leather thongs.
The chest of his armor had a symbol picked out in brass rivets, like a number eight
lying on its side, which was probably the brand of his ranch—roughly equivalent to
the coat of arms of an Associate, which group Cole still privately thought of as
those neobarb castle freaks
despite the recent change in his political allegiance.

They smelled better, though.

“You,” the man said in the hard flat eastern accent. “Who are you, who’s the abomination
bitch, and where are you-two going?”

“Sir,” Cole said—which was stretching a point; the man wasn’t in
his
chain of command in any way, shape or form. “I’m escorting this prisoner to the Special
Forces battalion HQ for questioning.”

Actually my orders are to convey her to
Boise garrison HQ at Fort Boise over on the east side,
and we aren’t near either, which will look suspicious if this goat-raper knows the
town at all. We
are
pretty close to this place that Fred Thurston heard about from his dad, and which
nobody else alive probably knows . . . I really hate having my life depend on probably
like that. . . .

It was hard to see the rider’s expression in the dimness of the flickering pine-knot
torch, but Cole thought he could see the eyes widen.

“All enemy prisoners are to be turned over to the Church Universal and Triumphant—the
blessings of the Ascended Masters be upon Its Prophet and the Seekers,” the plainsman
said. “I’ll take this one now.”

Alyssa tensed. Cole saluted. “As you say, sir.”

He reached for Alyssa’s handcuffs as she backed away. “On three,” he said very softly.

“One—”

He grabbed the chain and heaved, links biting into his palm; she pulled backward and
kicked him realistically in the shins—which hurt.

“Oww Goddamn
two—”

“Three.”

He released the chain, staggering backward himself as if her tug and kick had shocked
his grip free. Alyssa dropped flat and rolled under the torch-bearer’s horse.

“Catch her, sir!” Cole shouted.

As he’d hoped, the bowman in the mail shirt took his eyes off Cole. What wasn’t in
the half-formed plan was that the other man dropped his torch and swept out his shete,
the broad-tipped blade glinting along its honed edge as he leaned far over with a
born rider’s casual skill and prepared to swipe at the slight figure on the pavement.
Those things could leave a drawing cut a yard long and inches deep on an unarmored
body.

“Shit!”
Cole cursed.

He’d been unlimbering his crossbow since the instant the horse-archer turned his attention
to Alyssa, and contrary to regs he’d been carrying it cocked and with a bolt in the
groove in town. Instead of shooting the man in the mail shirt, he whipped it up to
aim at the swordsman.

“Shit!”
he said again, a strangled scream this time.

Alyssa had rolled out the other side of the horse, and as she bounced back to her
feet her hand went to her collar and then whipped down the horse’s haunch. The animal
gave an equine shriek of indignant hurt and went into a bucking, leaping twist; the
punch dagger was razor-sharp, and had parted the beast’s hide in a slash that was
shallow but twenty inches long.

There was no time to readjust. The crossbow went
tung-snap
in the darkened street, and the bolt tore through the steerhide armor over the man’s
shoulder and gouged a groove through his deltoid. That was actually very good shooting
even at pointblank, in the dark and at a twisting, jerking target. Unfortunately it
was the
left
shoulder, and the man got his horse back under control almost immediately. He also
didn’t seem to be the sort of guy whose concentration could be broken by a little
pain.

The first one was already turning his attention back to Cole, standing in the stirrups
and drawing the arrow back against the resistance of the thick composite bow. That
was exactly the right decision tactically, since Cole was obviously the real threat.
It would have been much nicer if the man had been stupid.

Cole dropped the crossbow—which was a hell of a way to treat a fine weapon, but needs
must—and flicked out his gladius. He bounded forward in the same movement, jumping
side-to-side as he advanced, to get to close quarters and crowd the horseman too closely
to let him shoot.

Or shout for his buddies, for Christ’s sake,
he thought desperately
. If I can land a cut on that horse—

Unfortunately the man in the mail shirt was an even more superb horseman than his
follower, and his horse was just as well trained; the pair operated like parts of
the same organism. It skittered right back crabwise to a shift in the rider’s balance,
backing up about as fast as Cole was advancing, and the man drew his bow to the ear.
The pile-shaped point caught a last flicker of red light from the torch guttering
out on the patched asphalt.

The other one had his horse in hand too, though its ears were back and its eyes rolling
in a bite-and-stomp fit of temper, and he was boring in on the dodging form of Alyssa
with a yard of edged metal in his hand, as opposed to her three inches of holdout
knife. Unfortunately he wasn’t stupid enough to get in the archer’s line of fire despite
the way she immediately tried to draw him into it.

Shit, isn’t this where I came in?
Cole thought desperately as the horse-archer prepared to skewer his brisket.
Only I’d rather have Old Eph, there was only one of him and the big hairy fucker couldn’t
shoot
me!

•   •   •

I’m officially colonel of the First Readstown Volunteer Cavalry, and here I am sneaking
around in the dark again,
Ingolf Vogeler thought.

He’d always thought of himself as primarily a horse-soldier, which was how he’d spent
the first four years after leaving Readstown at the age of nineteen. He’d joined the
volunteers heading northwest from the Free Republic of Richland—what had once been
southwestern Wisconsin—to Marshal and Fargo for the Sioux War because he’d quarreled
with his elder brother and it was an honorable way to run away from home. He’d stuck
all through the miseries of the Red River campaign, and then ridden with Icepick Olson’s
band into the outright epic horrors of the Badlands Raid, mostly because he was too
stubborn, or looking back on it too pig-ignorant, to quit. The learning curve had
been steep, if you survived.

After the war petered out in mutual exhaustion he’d led what was left of the cavalry
company he’d ended up commanding into salvage work, eventually into the high-return
and insanely risky long-range branch, all the way to the dead cities of the Atlantic
coast where the cannibal bands were only the
worst
danger.

But Icepick had been a scout-and-slash specialist, anyone doing that against the Lakota
had to be good at it, and salvage work deep into the death zones didn’t involve many
boot-to-boot charges or even the formal minuet of a horse-archery duel. Hence he’d
often ended up in this sort of situation, paddling across a river with slow strokes
and a crawling awareness that someone might be about to hit him with anything from
a handy rock in their hand to a twenty-four-pound glass globe shot from a catapult,
full of napalm and wrapped in burning cord. Luckily it wasn’t a very wide river, less
than a quarter bowshot, about the size of the Kickapoo on whose banks he’d played
as a boy.