The Given Sacrifice (19 page)

It sure doesn’t get any more fun, though,
he thought mordantly.

Those long rustling barefoot summer evenings by the water seemed a very long time
ago, listening to the bullfrogs and watching the first stars come out.

Christ, the things I do!

The rubber raft bumped softly into the mud of the eastern bank and stopped as they
all pushed their paddles down into the muck for a moment; the city wall of Boise was
about one bowshot away, a looming black presence against the bright stars. The man
at the tip of the blunt wedge of the bows went overside with hardly a splash or sound
of boots in wet soil, which was very respectable considering that John Hordle was
a three-hundred-plus-pound slab of Anglo-Saxon beef halfway between six and seven
feet tall, none of it fat despite a legendary consumption of food and beer.

Not slowing down any that I’ve noticed, either,
Ingolf though.
Despite the way that red mop’s got some gray in it.

The older man heaved the inflatable boat and its dozen occupants forward and held
it steady with the casual grip of one great red-furred paw until he was certain they
hadn’t run into a welcoming committee. Which was all comforting to Ingolf, who was
thirty-something and beginning to feel that while he could still do nearly everything
he’d been able to do ten years ago, it took longer and cost more and sometimes he
just plain didn’t
want
to anymore. Hordle had to be around fifty; he’d been a young soldier over in England
at the time of the Change, in something called the SAS, arriving in Montival-to-be
years later by a series of wild accidents.

Though I wouldn’t be one to talk about wild accidents,
Ingolf thought.

He reached over his shoulder to make sure the thong holding his shete in its sheath
down his back was still in place and that his arrows weren’t going to rattle in their
padded quiver. His strung recurve was thrust through a set of carrying loops on the
outside of the quiver, a Mackenzie trick the Dúnedain had modified for their shorter,
handier weapons. It was very useful after a little practice, letting you switch weapons
quickly without dropping your bow. Checking stuff was so automatic he could do it
with about a tenth of his attention and it was obscurely soothing somehow, like stroking
a rabbit’s foot.

He and the Lorings came across the ocean, but I started out in Wisconsin and ended
up here after crossing the entire continent nearly four God-damned times, no less—Iowa
to Nantucket, Nantucket to the Pacific, all the way to Nantucket again and back. With
time out to be a prisoner in Corwin, most of which I still don’t remember and the
rest I wish I didn’t. Christ, the things I do. . . .

After an instant the one-time Englishman made a small clicking sound with his tongue,
lost in the usual humming and buzz of summer woodland—the strip along the river had
been a park before the Change, and largely left alone since. The crew went up past
Hordle in a smooth silent stream, spreading out just inland of the water. Ingolf and
four others gripped the rope loops along the side and helped haul the boat out of
the water and carry it into the shelter of a willow tree’s drooping branches. That
would keep the too-regular shape invisible from the wall towers. There were observation
balloons up in a circle around Boise, but the enemy didn’t have any flying after a
couple of hair-raising episodes early in the siege. Montivallan gliders had dragged
barbed forks of burning tow into their gasbags at the end of long ropes, and a couple
of the aircraft had even survived it.

I’m not surprised that Alyssa Larsson volunteered to go in there. She’s a glider pilot,
being crazy is a job qualification.

The Rangers were all nearly invisible in the moonlit dark, everything dull-toned and
non-reflective, their faces covered by the hoods of the war-cloaks, which included
masks with a slit for the eyes. Ingolf was relying on his helmet-cover and the brown
beard, which made his face less likely to glimmer in the dark. The brown acid-treated
steel of his mail shirt was good enough camouflage too.

I haven’t had time to get full Dúnedain kit . . . or maybe I’m afraid of feeling silly,
and the First Readstown is here and I do lead them now and then, and they certainly
think it’s silly-looking, except for the ones like my nephew Mark who think it’s unspeakably
cool. Granted it all works well, but . . .

Hordle clicked again, and they all ghosted up the slope and into the brush and woods,
fanning out in a semicircle around the place they’d landed. The big man came past
all of them, checking. Ingolf nodded with sober respect as he eeled past, and caught
a glimmer of a grin in return. Hordle’s personal weapon was over his back too—what
they called a greatsword around here, with a massive forty-inch blade broad as a palm
and a hilt as long as a man’s forearm. At nearly seven pounds he’d have thought it
too heavy to use effectively even two-handed, if he hadn’t seen the Dúnedain leader
walk down a row of oak pells, leaving a row of stumps behind him.

The big man was married to Eilir Mackenzie, Rudi’s elder half sister and co-founder
of the Dúnedain; Ingolf suspected that he and his compatriot Alleyne Loring were responsible
for a fair part of the Rangers’ military side. Not that they hadn’t had able pupils,
and by all accounts the recently deceased Astrid Larsson-Loring had been a natural
anyway. Ingolf had seldom met troops better at noise discipline on a night movement,
even his own Vogeler’s Villains in the old days. After a moment the only solid proof
he had that he wasn’t alone in the woods feeling the damp gradually soak up through
the padding under his mail shirt was the unmistakable mixed military odors; oiled
metal gone a bit rancid and amalgamated human and horse sweat and wood smoke soaked
into wool and leather. Even those were faint.

The undergrowth wasn’t too thick; obviously the riverbanks were used as turn-out pasture
in peacetime. A city needed a lot of working stock, horses and mules and oxen to do
everything from pulling streetcars to rich men’s carriages to hauling fodder in and
manure out. According to the intel reports the enemy had cancelled night patrols here
because they’d been losing too many deserters and needed their loyal troops to watch
the others. It didn’t really matter to them if the Montivallans landed men here, since
they could be annihilated at dawn once the artillery on the walls could see their
targets.

Or so they think.

The reports seemed to be accurate; at least they didn’t run into anyone as they pushed
out to establish a perimeter. It was dense-dark, and he moved slowly, feeling his
way with hands and the toes of his boots. The rest of the squad was an occasional
rustle, not even a broken twig marking their passage.

Ingolf went down on his belly again not far from where Mary probably was—she was extremely
good at being inconspicuous—and waited. Three more rafts grounded behind them, and
more of the Rangers filtered through the brush. Alleyne Loring came up beside Hordle,
and they conversed for an instant in Sign, holding their hands close to each other’s
faces in the darkness. Alleyne was about Ingolf’s height, though slimmer; next to
Hordle he looked like a teenager.

Of course, being with the Dúnedain means you have to learn
two
God-damned new languages, one with your fingers.

Sign was useful, he had to admit—though they’d made it compulsory originally because
Eilir Mackenzie had been deaf from birth and just wanted it that way, and Astrid loved
secret-rules-and-passwords stuff. The Rangers were core-practical enough now despite
the elaborate stylishness, but he suspected that back in the very beginning there
had been a substantial element of teenaged let’s-pretend-in-our-tree-house to it all.
A lot of them actually did live in tree houses, though the Ranger term was
flet
.

After that they all settled down and waited. Ingolf chewed on a couple of slices of
dried apple to keep his blood sugar up, and did silent exercises to keep himself supple,
setting muscle against muscle without moving. The inevitable bugs of summer woods
near a river he just ignored; that went with the job, and he’d been doing it since
he was seven and his father first took him out after deer.

An hour later he began to worry.

He could just see the North Star and the Dipper from here, between the leaves of two
cottonwoods, and he lined them up and did the trick. Draw a line through from the
North Star to the two top stars of the Dipper, treat that as the hand of a clock,
add an hour for every thirty days after March 7, double the figure and subtract it
from twenty-four. That gave you the time, and he made it oh three hundred hours give
or take. Which was much later than the signal was supposed to come.

Something had gone wrong.

He was worried, but not very surprised. This was a big complex plan, and in his experience
those never went off perfectly. You were ahead if they worked at all. The only reassuring
thing about it was that if nothing happened, they could just go back the way they
came and let the regular infantry and the engineers and artillerists get on with the
siege while they drank a toast to the memories of Cole Salander and Alyssa Larsson.

As long as we get back before dawn, unless we want a catapult bolt up the ass on the
way out. And dawn comes early this time of year.

City of Boise

(formerly southern Idaho)

High Kingdom of Montival

(Formerly western North America)

June 26th, Change Year 26/2024 AD

C
ole Salander knew he was going to die. He supposed it was something to do it with
your sword in your hand and facing the thing that killed you, though right now he’d
have settled for “in bed, asleep, at seventy-five.” Alyssa would have to look after
herself, which was a damn—

“Break left!”

Cole went down on the pavement in an automatic dive, landing on his forearms with
the sword laid on its flat so he wouldn’t cut himself on it, which was appallingly
easy to do.

Tung-snap!

The arrowhead started to follow him, then came back up, then released to arch out
into the darkness over the rooftops as a crossbow bol
t sprouted in the center of the archer’s chest. Cole heard it strike very clearly,
the metallic ping of the mail links breaking mingling with the hard crackle of bone
as it sank to the fletching. It must have cut the spine as well, because he went over
as limp as a sack of grain, thudded to the pavement and lay leaking from nose and
mouth.

Two more crossbows snapped less than a second later, there was the crisp sound of
steel hitting tallow-treated boiled leather, and the other Cutter horseman gave a
hoarse grunt and fell. He was still sprattling and trying to choke out a shout despite
having a couple of twenty-two-inch bolts crisscross through his torso; a man was surprisingly
hard to kill quickly unless you got lucky. Alyssa darted in, her hand moved in the
darkness, and the man gave a final jerk and lay still.

That little knife was
sharp
.

Cole rolled back to his feet. “Glad to see you, Captain Wellman, sir,” he said to
the officer, sheathing his sword—there was a trick to doing that without looking—and
standing at parade rest again.

’Cause it would sort of sound odd to say that I’m glad you didn’t trust me and followed
me to see what the hell I was doing.

The camouflage jackets and pants were unmistakable Special Forces issue, plus he knew
all the faces. Sergeant Halford was standing there too; he had a crossbow in his hands
and his brown face was absolutely blank as he worked the cranking lever,
clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack
-click. The half-dozen troopers behind him were also . . .

Giving me the hairy eyeball. It’s pretty obvious I was fibbing just a bit in my report
at this point . . . lying like a rug made out of dead fish, actually . . . and these
are all guys who’ve been with the Captain for a long time. I noticed that when he
picked them to come in.

Wellman nodded. “Maybe you’ll be glad,” he said, which was a little ominous.

Garcia and Jones had already gone for the horses, slinging their weapons and getting
the animals under control with practiced gentleness.

“You know where to take them?” Wellman asked.

“Sure, sir,” Garcia said. “My uncle Larry’s butcher shop is only a couple of blocks
away and he won’t ask any questions.”

I’ll bet he won’t
, Cole thought.

Politics aside, civilians in Boise were already down to a ration of a quarter-pound
of meat every second day per adult. The city hadn’t been properly provisioned before
the Montivallan armies closed in, another symptom of the way things had broken down.
And the High King’s men had carefully herded every possible Boisean and Cutter soldier
into the city, to put more strain on the supplies.

“He sells hamburgers as a sideline,” Garcia went on.

“Can he handle the bodies, too? That won’t cause questions?”

“Sure thing, sir. They’re really terrible hamburgers even when the city’s not cut
off, so I don’t think anyone will notice.”

Halford made a grinding noise, and Garcia went on hastily:

“Sorry, sir. Yes, he can hide them under his manure heap. That was my job before I
got called up—it was why I reenlisted for the Special Forces instead of going home.
Believe me, nobody looks there until the compost guy comes with his wagon.”

“Which with the city under siege isn’t going to happen soon. See to it and rendezvous
at the safe house soonest.”

The squad extracted the bolts and found Cole’s where it had stuck in a wall—that was
essential because they were easy to identify. The two men detailed to the job took
the blanket rolls strapped behind the saddles, wrapped the corpses so they wouldn’t
leak—cursing mildly when the wool cloth proved to be most certainly hopping with fleas
and probably lousy—and heaved them over the horses’ backs, and walked off looking
official. Two other men had taken the dead Cutters’ canteens, and emptied them to
dilute the stains.

“I take it you’re not actually named Maria Hernandez, or from Corvallis?” Wellman
said to Alyssa while the cleanup went on.

“No, Captain, I’m not,” she said coolly.

She’d wiped the holdout knife on the dead man’s pants and slid it back into the leather
sheath sewn into her collar, but there was a splash of blood down her right forearm.
She was rubbing her left in the elastic bandage and flat splints.

“You OK?” Cole asked.

“No compound fracture. Yet,” she said.

“Follow,” Wellman said.

The rest of the squad grouped around Cole and Alyssa; he noted that they were bracketing
the two without being obvious about it, and from the way she flicked her eyes so did
she.

“Ah, sir, it’s a long story but I have something time-critical to do—” Cole said.

“When we’re out of view, corporal,” Wellman said. “You can give me the condensed version
of why you’re trying to let someone else’s army into Boise.”

Well, that explains the
maybe you’ll be glad to see me
part,
Cole thought.
On the other hand, he’s obviously not just following orders himself, what with killing
those two Cutters who were about to do us.

He was sweating a little when they reached the safe house—which was a bunch of substantial
three-story pre-Change buildings that had been knocked together, plus a former parking
lot now surrounded by a twelve-foot wall of salvaged brick with broken glass cemented
to the top, and sheet-metal gates. Part of it was a dwelling-place for the owner,
and a little lamplight leaked out through shuttered windows. Wellman let them into
the courtyard through a smaller door in the larger gates, using a key; the men relaxed—very
slightly—when it closed behind them.

And a little more when they turned away from the dwelling-house into another section
of the U-shaped complex. Inside they made sure the shutters were closed before Halford
raised the glass chimney of a lantern, lit the wick from his lighter and turned the
knob down. The yellow light showed shadowy glimpses of big open rooms with treadle-worked
sewing machines and piles of cloth, in bolts or laid out over patterns on long cutting
tables, and racks of spools of thread and sacks of buttons and pine boxes of finished
product. From the olive-gray color and the shapes and the familiar slightly musky
lanolin smell of coarse linsey-woolsey he guessed that in daytime they would be busy
with seamstresses making uniforms on government contract.

Yeah, I heard the Captain’s older brother lives in Boise and is something big in cloth,
Cole recalled.

Buying raw materials from people who grew flax or kept flocks, spinning it all in
a water-powered mill in some convenient location, supplying looms to folks on credit,
then buying back the bolts from the weavers and dyeing and finishing the product at
his home-place, the usual system. You could make a lot of money that way, certainly
a hell of a lot more than a Captain’s pay. Though he didn’t know anyone except their
kin who actually
liked
putting-out merchant clothiers. Well, except by contrast with bankers. And even their
blood relatives . . .

There was supposed to be some sort of quarrel between them, but family is family and
kinfolk stick together at a pinch.

Sergeant Halford set the lantern down on a table and stood at Wellman’s right with
his hand on his swordhilt as the officer seated himself.

“Henson, Malurski, Jens, you’re on perimeter,” he said.

Captain Wellman leaned back and looked at the two quasi-prisoners, sighing and rubbing
a hand over his balding head; he was around forty, about Cole’s height but whip-thin
and wiry, with tired-looking green eyes. The other two Special Forces troopers weren’t
exactly pointing loaded crossbows at Cole and Alyssa. But then again they weren’t
exactly not pointing them, either.

“OK, let’s hear it, corporal,” he said. “As you said, time’s a-wasting.”

Cole exchanged a quick look with Alyssa and gave him the real story.

Well, no need to go into
all
the details just yet,
he thought, skipping over the bit where the Mackenzie
fiosaiche
had sent him to sleep and simply saying they’d caught him.

There was no way around the part about his being turned into an involuntary assassin,
though: his tongue stumbled at that, simply because words weren’t adequate, and he
still struggled with a flux of involuntary rage when he thought of it. Not to mention
a deep-in-the-belly cold wash of fear. Halford made a skeptical sound, and Wellman
stopped him with a gesture.

“Remember the one we . . . sent on, sergeant? That Seeker?”

From the noncom’s grimace, he did, and not fondly.

“Yes, sir. I’ve seen a lot of men die but nobody that slowly when they should have
been gone already.”

“Had to hold him below the surface of that latrine with a pole for what was it, five
God-damned minutes, as I recall.”

“Seemed longer, sir. Particularly considering how hard I hit him to begin with.”

“It eroded my natural skepticism a little. Not as much as seeing what Corporal Salander
says he saw would, but a bit.”

Wellman turned those tired, sharp eyes on Cole again.

“So you’re going to let the enemy into the city?” he said a few minutes later, his
face flatly unreadable.

“Captain, the
Cutters
are the enemy, and they’re already in the city. And three-quarters of the army around
Boise are our own people. The rest are Mackenzies and Bearkillers, mostly,” he went
on. “They’re disciplined troops, they’re not going to sack the place.”

“Bearkillers are very well disciplined,” Alyssa said. “That’s what I am, by the way.
There aren’t any Associates within a day’s march of Boise right now—Rudi . . . His
Majesty . . . is keeping them out of the picture because he knows they’re unpopular.
Not that the Grand Constable would let them get out of hand. Basically Frederick Thurston
is running the siege.”

Cole went on: “I’ve met Fred Thurston, sir, and I trust him to keep his word, and
he’s promising strict order and a general amnesty except for specific crimes, and
a free election.”

“And what does
King Artos
say to that?”

There was an official poster not far away, showing a bad artist’s conception of Rudi
Mackenzie in plate armor, flogging emaciated serfs pulling a wagon. The way things
had been since the old general died and Martin Thurston took over, you were well-advised
to buy the latest and stick them up. You never knew if someone was reporting to the
NatPols. . . .

“Well, he says that’s exactly what he wants too, sir, and he’s said it publicly. It’s
his policy that every member of the High Kingdom gets full internal autonomy. Boise
won’t be part of Montival unless we decide that on our own in a plebiscite, and we’re
to be completely self-governing with our own laws within our borders as of the old
general’s death if we vote yes. And I believe
him
too, sir. He’s . . . well, he’s . . . quite impressive. Sir.”

Unexpectedly, Wellman smiled slightly. “That’s what the old general said, too, about
Rudi Mackenzie,” he said. “He met the young man a couple of years ago, just before
he died himself at the battle of Wendell. I wasn’t there for that. Maybe if I’d been
at Wendell I could have saved . . . never mind. Go ahead.”

“I mean, hell, I intend to vote for Fred Thurston,
and
to vote for joining Montival,” Cole said bluntly. “Assuming I live that long. The
old general wanted to reunite the country, but he couldn’t. Montival, the High Kingdom . . .
well, it’s not the way he wanted to do it, but it’s going to be a great big chunk
reunited, with some of the same stuff he was for. No more fighting our neighbors,
for starters. Freedom of religion, and I sure as s . . . shoot know the Cutters don’t
have
that
in mind. And no slavery allowed—”

He jerked his head at the poster. “I mean, that’s complete bullshit, sir. Everyone
in Montival can move if they want to—it’s one of the few laws that they have that
applies everywhere. Which is also something the Cutters don’t have in mind, they don’t
even
call
their slaves something different like they do in some places, they just outright
call ’em
slaves
. Apart from all that thing about how half the human race are Spawn of the Nephilim
stuff and it’s abomination if women wear pants and who knows what else.”

Wellman closed his eyes for a moment. “You know,” he went on quietly, “I stayed in
the Army because of Lawrence Thurston. I never did trust Martin or the men around
him, but I didn’t want to believe his own son would . . .”

“Captain Wellman, I talked to the First Lady . . . I mean the old General’s wife . . .
hell, I talked to
Martin’s
wife. They agreed that Martin killed the old general in the confusion at Wendell
to cover up his coup; and that he was . . . changed, somehow. After he met Sethaz,
the Prophet. He went from being an ordinary evil son-of-a-bitch to . . . something
else.”

“Yeah, I noticed that,” Wellman said dryly. Then he shook his head: “Witches, spells,
prophecies, red-headed kings with magic swords . . . Christ. What’s next, dragons?
And I never even liked playing D&D.”