“Ah were on a trainin’ course at CFB Suffield, me and two thousand others, just before the Change. Lucky as fuck that were an’ all!”
“You don’t know the ’alf of it, mate!” Hordle said feelingly.
“Aye, Ah do. An RN ship docked at Churchill three year back and dropped off a packet o’ English newspapers. Sounds laak it were raaght bad back ’ome for a while. Expected Leeds were totally fooked any road-seems Ah were raaght. Raaght bad all round, sounds laak.”
“Bad? Fuckin’ ’ell, worse than bad, mate. Worse than bad… but over quick, for most of ’em at least. How’d things go over ’ere?”
“It were raaght rough the first couple o’ years ’ere too; fuckin’ Calgary and Edmonton near dragged us down wi’ ’em an’ buggered t’lot o’ us. Would’ve, if hadn’t been so fuckin’ cold, that got most who walked out. Then we got things sorted out, laak. Ah’ve got a wife an’ kids and a bit o’ a farm goin’ a ways north o’ ’ere now. Till Ah got called oop fer this lot, any road.”
“We need some ’orses, Geoff. Quiet loik, away from pryin’ eyes. Paperwork’ll all be done roit later.”
“Ah think sommat can be dun,” the little man grinned. “If that there redcoat lends an ’and.”
“Good. ’Ave a sandwich, mate,” he added, taking one out of the basket in each hand and starting his own with an enormous bite. “S’goof,” he added through a mouthful.
“My picnic!” Ian said… but quietly.
“You Rangers can move,” Ian Kovalevsky said a week later. “Even by the standards of the Force.”
“They sold us good horses back at the Anchor Bar Seven,” Ritva said; they both had the habit of talking without looking at each other as they rode, which was useful-her eyes were moving ceaselessly and so were his. This was potentially hostile country. “And we have well-callused backsides.”
Ian grinned. “After the way you got wounded bringing the alarm about the Cutters and your brother Artos saved everyone’s bacon by showing up in the nick of time it’s not surprising. You guys could have had the horses for free, if you’d asked. With me thrown in.”
The Rangers-plus one member of the Force sent on special detached service by an amused and agreeable captain-were riding under a bright cloudless summer sky. Around them lay bunchgrass and bluestem turning from green to gold, whispering in long ripples to the end of sight and standing high on the horses’ fetlocks. Land crept by to the steady walk-trot-canter-walk pace, changing from flat grassland to occasional steep wooded hills, or cut by deep ravines and then subsiding to open level ground again. This high plateau that had been known as the Eye of Idaho once; white-topped mountains showed west and east, with the deceptive look of the big-sky country that fooled you into thinking something three days’ ride away was only a few hours’ distance.
The air was warm with summer, but not hot; they were four or five thousand feet up here. Small blue flowers starred the tawny-green grass in swales where the dark basalt soil was damper, and insects burst out of it before their hooves, or now and then grouse or partridge. Ahead, the party’s spare two-score remounts-the remuda, which despite the sound was a Spanish word, not Sindarin-grouped together in a well-trained knot, requiring only an occasional canter by the pair assigned to rearguard to keep them bunched. She was glad of that; leading reins were a trial, especially when you had three or four horses each. A big remuda was the way to travel fast, though. With enough remounts you could make a hundred miles a day or more in summertime, especially if there was good grazing or feed available along the way.
“Beautiful beasts,” he said.
Ritva nodded, watching with pleasure their glossy hides move. These weren’t the ones they’d taken south over the Drumheller border, through the lands where the Dominion, the PPA, the US of Boise and the Prophet’s domains met over hundreds of miles in a tangle of wilderness they all claimed but mostly didn’t control. They’d given the garrisoned fortress-city of Moscow a wide berth, and then Nez Perce supporters had supplied remounts at the northern edge of their territory; the nascent Bearkillers had made friends there and elsewhere in this district when passing through Idaho right after the Change, and Hiril Astrid had been with them then. She’d returned last spring, as well, and had renewed those ties with locals who didn’t care for President-General Martin Thurston and his wars.
These glossy Appaloosa-spotted beasts were still quite fresh, and they’d brought the Ranger party far and fast. Now it was time to meet the next set of helpers here in enemy territory.
Though I should remember Idaho and its people aren’t the enemy. The usurper Martin Thurston is the enemy, and his ally the Prophet of the Church Universal and Triumphant.
They swung westward a little to skirt a marsh where water glinted amid stands of reeds and patches of open water; the Rangers were in a loose diamond formation, carefully irregular so as not to attract attention from a distance by hanging up a we are military sign.
Ducks lifted thousandfold from the swamp, and white herons waded around its edges, probing for frogs; a line of old fence posts stood disconsolately in the shallow water, tilted and blackened, gaps showing like missing teeth and with a few strands of rusty barbed wire still clinging to them here and there. There was a dense fringe of youngish willows and cottonwoods and other water-loving trees tangled with undergrowth along its edges, and the horses snorted and shied as the party approached.
The Dunedain leaders had probably veered that way to keep the timber between them and prying eyes on the higher, drier ground eastward beyond the wetland. Ahead someone stood in their stirrups and raised a hand, then swung it leftward: investigate.
Ritva swung her horse into a lope with a shift of balance and the grip of her thighs, an arrow ready on the string of her recurve saddlebow. Her mount was usually a well-behaved beast, but laid its ears back as they approached the woods, and now and then snorted in a fashion that plainly said in Horse: Smells bad, boss. Are you sure you want to go there?
When its hooves started to squelch a little and the ground gave off a rich muddy smell she leaned far over, left knee bent and right heel hooked around the saddle horn as the horse walked slowly along the edge of the firm ground. The marks in the bare mud between two clumps of grass were unmistakable, cat-pugs about as broad as she could have spanned if she stretched thumb and little finger apart as far as they would go. Bigger and squarer than the more common cougar, and mountain lion didn’t like this sort of ground anyway. Tigers, on the other hand…
They do like a swamp, the stripe-kitties, when they can get it. Big snowshoe feet and they swim well too. Is it my imagination I can smell him? No, it’s there, like a tomcat, but even more rank. A male then, and big, warning off his brothers. The wind’s in my face, right from the woods, so he can’t be too close or the horses would be acting up more than they are. I wish we had Edain and Garbh along, she’s the best tracking dog I ever met.
The lead party had halted. They’d be looking at her with Astrid’s Zeiss binoculars, an heirloom from her father Kenneth Larsson. Ritva remembered her grandfather with affection-he’d died in a boating accident when she was about fourteen-and he’d loved gadgets, having been an engineer as well as a very wealthy man before the Change. The 20x60 S-type monstrosity was typical of the sort of thing he’d collected, with an utterly ingenious mechanical stabilization system that hadn’t been in the least affected by the Change, and it would make nothing of a thousand yards. She pulled herself back into the saddle with a flex of the leg, then slipped her bow back into the scabbard at her left knee and the arrow into her quiver, stood in the stirrups and brought her hands before her face, palms in.
Then she made claws of the fingers and raked them outward sharply, twice, making the gesture broad and obvious. That was Sign for tiger, and her honorary Aunt Eilir had made the visual language part of the Dunedain curriculum, back when she refounded the Rangers together with Astrid in the years after the Change. That was probably because she’d been deaf since birth, but also because it was extremely useful to be able to exchange complex information silently.
Two more of the party trotted back on the other side of the remuda, pushing the beasts towards the marsh and its fringe of woodland despite their unease. The commanders came up; Hiril Astrid was casing her binoculars in their padded-steel case.
“That was good scouting, Ritva,” she said with a nod.
“Thank you, my lady,” Ritva acknowledged.
Which was a bit formal, but they were in the field, not sitting over wine in Stardell Hall listening to a song or a reading from the Histories. The four older Rangers looked a little more worn than their followers; not that they were anywhere near their limits, merely that there was more discomfort behind their hard-held faces.
“Scout net,” Astrid said, and two more of the Rangers trotted away.
