Kingdom River

'What a prospect. 'Bookish daughter' and a cut throat.' Sam closed his eyes against the lamplight. 'I doubt very much that the Queen is serious about my marrying her daughter. She's presenting the possibility, so I'll send troops to the Kingdom, help them against the Khan.'

'More likely,' Charles said.

Eric smiled. 'Still, a possibility may become… probable.'

'Worse,' Sam said, eyes still closed. 'Necessary. Now, I'm tired, and I would appreciate being left alone.'

'Alright.' Eric stood. 'Alright… but this girl the Boston people have sent – '

'It'll wait. Now, if you two will put out that lamp and leave, you will make me very happy.''

'In the morning' – Charles leaned to blow out the hanging lantern – 'back to Better-Weather?'

Sam spoke into darkness. 'Yes, we'll go, if the wounded can bear traveling. There's nothing useful at this camp but the dirt my dead are buried in.'

… He lay, feeling too weary to sleep. Heard Charles and Eric murmuring, walking away. Lauder already, apparently, with a good notion what had been intended down here, what had gone wrong with Ned Flores and his people.

Eric was a razor with a slippery handle – bad temper and arrogance his weaknesses as chief of intelligence… Charles, as administrator, hampered in a different way. His fault lay in fondness for Small-Sam Monroe, young enough to have been his son. And that, of course, the more serious weakness, leading to errors in judgment too subtle to be seen until suddenly damaging.

Fierceness and fondness… vulnerabilities balanced fairly enough between the two men most important to North Map-Mexico. Most important beside the young Captain-General, of course.

And now, it seemed the Khan was sending regiments south. A quick decision, probably, taken the last few days. It was interesting to study the Kipchak's Map-Nevada campaigns – see the pattern of them, far-ranging, swift, gather-and-strike, gather-and-strike. A herding pattern, a hunting pattern also, formed by generations lived in great empty spaces. A people, and an army, in motion. All cavalry.

They wouldn't care for close, tangled places. Wouldn't care for high, broken country, either.

Now, it seemed the Khan had decided, in the guise of two regiments, to greet and become acquainted with North Map-Mexico's Captain-General – as a wrestler might gently grip an opponent's arm, begin to try his strength and balance… Toghrul perhaps grown weary of being locked into the western prairie, his way east blocked by Middle Kingdom and its great river. A river, according to the little librarian, Peter, much greater – with even short summers' meltings of a continent of ice and snow – than it had been as the Warm-time Mississippi.

The Khan might have difficulty campaigning against that kingdom while leaving his underbelly exposed the whole winding length of the Bravo border. So, he was sending – gently at first – to see how the metal of North Map-Mexico rang when struck. A touch, and a warning.

And why was that news so welcome? So good to hear? Why seemed so rich with opportunity? The answer came like certain music as Sam began to drift to sleep… came as dreamed trumpet calls, sounding, Duty, duty, duty. What trumpet call did not?

…Had he taken his damn boots off? Couldn't remember.

CHAPTER 7

Martha had washed herself, and her hair – drawn it up into a loose knot and pinned it, then combed and finger-curled a long ringlet in front of each ear. Charlotte Garfield had told her that her long hair, dark as planting ground, was her best feature. 'Only feature,' Charlotte's sister had said, and had neighed in fun at Martha's size.

Though clean, her hair done, Martha was scrubbing homespun small-clothes – just discovered dirty beneath her father's bed – in the tub on the dog-trot, when she glimpsed metal shining through the trees. She took her hands off the rippled board, shook hot water and lye suds from her fingers, and watched that shining become soldiers marching up along the River Road.

There was a short double-file of men, East-bank soldiers armored throat to belly with green-enameled strips of steel across their chests… lighter steel strips down their thighs, sewn to the front of thick leather trousers. An officer was marching in front, and so must be a lieutenant. Lieutenants marched with their men, and never rode.

Martha watched them through the trees – her wet, reddened hands chilled by the early-winter air. Many soldiers traveled the River Road, now, because of fighting in Map-Missouri… Though that was the West-bank army, fighting over there. She'd heard that army wore blue steel.

As Martha watched, the lieutenant and his men reached the cabin path – then turned neatly and marched up it. They were coming to her father's house, something soldiers had never done before. These were crossbowmen – heavy windlass bows and quarrel bundles strapped to their packs, short-swords and daggers at their belts. Long, green-dyed woolen cloaks, rolled tight, were carried over their left shoulders.

'Daddy!' She thought surely William Bovey had died after all, and they were coming to take her to hang.

Her father came to the door, said, 'What is it?' Then saw what it was.

More than three Warm-time weeks before, Big William Bovey and two other large men had come out to the cabin, angry over a deal for a four-horse wagon team, and begun to beat Edward Jackson with sticks and their fists. It had seemed to Martha they were killing her father.

She'd run into the farry shed, taken up a medium hammer, and come out and brained William Bovey. Then she'd beaten his friends so bones were broken, and they'd run.

Bovey, a corner of his brain tucked back in, had been asleep ever since at his aunt's house up in Stoneville. It was the opinion of Randall-doctor that he would never wake up.

'No death done,' the magistrate had said, 'and some excuse for the fighting on both sides, since Edward Jackson is a horse-dealer and cheat. Yet his daughter, only seventeen, had reason to fear for his life.' The magistrate, who chewed birch gum, had spit a wad of it into a brown clay jar on his table. 'All parties are now ordered to both peace and quiet under the Queen's Law. Nothing will save any who break either.'

And that had been that. Until now.

'Run!' her father said – too late, as the old man was usually too late.

Martha stood waiting, drying her hands on her apron, and wished for her mother.

… The lieutenant was young, but not handsome, a freckled carrot-top in green-steel strap armor. His face was shaved clean, like all soldiers'. He swung up the path to the door-yard, and his men marched behind him – twelve of them and all in step, their steel and leather creaking, till he put up his left hand to halt them.

'Well – ' Though slender, the lieutenant had a deep voice. 'Well, Honey-sweet, you're certainly big enough.' His breath steamed slightly in the morning air. 'You are Ordinary Mattie Jackson?'

'What do you want here?' Martha wished her father would say something.

The lieutenant smiled, and looked handsomer when he did. He had one dot tattooed on his left cheek, two on his right. 'It's not what I want… not what the captain wants… not what the major wants… not even what the colonel wants.'

A big man behind the lieutenant – a sergeant, he seemed to be – was smiling in a friendly way. The sergeant was bigger than Martha, as a man should be.

'No,' the lieutenant said, 'it appears to be a matter of what Island wants. And Island's wishes are our commands.'

'You leave us alone.'

The lieutenant shook his head, still smiling.

Martha's father said nothing. Edward Jackson was worse than having no father at all.