blue-gray eyes went blank for a moment, as if he was looking at something within and taking the weight and heft of it.
“Now that, my friend, is an interesting question. Perhaps not, with so many. Perhaps yes, because what you said is the truth, and the Sword of the Lady reveals truth as surely as it cuts bone. But I will not use the Sword so. That is my choice, and let that be my responsibility, for good or ill.”
Fred was conscious of a feeling of relief; when Virginia blew out her cheeks it was an audible mark of the same emotion.
Rudi laughed. “It’s exactly that way I feel about the matter, do you see? For it shows that I am still… myself.”
“I doubt you’re as reassured as the rest of us, Rudi. Oh, and I think it would be a good idea, once I get the men in order, to let them go back and talk to their friends in the POW camp, individually or in small groups. Walking ambassadors, right?”
“And to be sure, you’re more than a pretty face, Fred.”
Fred frowned. “It’s not enough, though. I need something to convince the waverers, the ones in the middle who’re of two minds and who just don’t want to believe something so skanky could have put Martin in charge. And more officers would help. We need a lot of defections to even the odds.”
Rudi grinned at him. “ Air mo churam. Which is to say, it’s on my mind, Fred. Now as to where to use these men of yours when they’re ready… I was thinking of adding them to my Royal Guard, so I was.”
Fred nodded slowly. “They’ll appreciate the gesture, Rudi.”
“Not that it means following at my arse all the time, mind you. More a matter of stiffening the battle line at crucial points and being the ones who rush around to the hottest fires.”
“Sounds like… useful work.”
“Sure and if you’d said fun I’d have called for the healers of souls.”
As he turned away, Virginia slapped her husband on the shoulder. “Turns out you were right about how to handle your folks,” she said. “Just don’t let it go to your head, you hear?”
Fred laughed shortly. “One platoon? I don’t think that’s too likely.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
BOISE PROVISIONAL CAPITAL, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (FORMERLY BOISE, IDAHO) AUGUST 8, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
G eneral-President Martin Thurston looked down from the gatehouse. His aides glanced at each other; one was annoyed, the other sweating in a terror he could not have named even to himself. Martin knew it.
I know everything, some corner of his mind thought. The joy was unbearable yet detached. I am knowing. I need not do, only be. The detachment was the joy.
Existence spiraled downward. Beyond matter, beyond the decay of the last particle, there was only information. All that had ever known, all that had ever been, all that had ever thought. Falling inward towards nothing. It was gross material things no more; in some unimaginable future of cycle upon cycle it would never have been made of mere things. Only thought, from the flash as the high-dimensional membranes met at the beginning of a universe to the cold death of proton decay at its end and the cycle commenced again, a universe not merely permeated by mind but one that was Mind. Thought that was thought about thought, endless repetitions spiraling into-
“Sir.”
The vision crashed away in a stab of unbearable sorrow. Thurston turned with a snarl, his eyes locking with the officer’s. The man stumbled backward with a scream, the reek of his sweat harshly, hideously material in a way that made the ruler’s stomach knot; yet even vomiting was itself foul, contaminating. How could you vomit away the gross stuff of your self? One of the guards jumped forward in a clatter of armor and put his big curved shield between the man’s back and the top of the stone stairs at his heel, grunting as the officer’s weight came on the semicylinder of plywood and sheet metal and leather.
He staggered. A hand gripped his arm, and he shook his head, suddenly conscious of the looks of the others.
“What’s the problem, gentlemen?” he asked.
“Sir, you looked, ah, odd.”
He waved it away, slapping the vine-stock swagger stick in his right hand into the palm of his left. “We were discussing the logistics,” he said.
“Sir, with forty battalions that’s going to be very tight.”
We must move quickly. But we cannot see. The enemy fogs our vision, and above fly hungry birds, ready to eat the seeds we plant.
“Nevertheless, it has to be done. The enemy isn’t idle and we have to hit them before-”
You will not die, birds. You will never have been; yes, you and Those who sent you!
HASTY CREEK RANCH GRANGEVILLE COUNTY, CAMAS MILITARY DISTRICT (FORMERLY NORTH-CENTRAL IDAHO) JUNE 28, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
The Sheriff’s property was not far south of the little town of Craigswood; Ritva thought the core of it had been an inn-what the old world had called a motel-and probably picked because there was good water and a place for a mill at a nearby stream that ran down from high wooded hills to the open prairie. That part was far from the center now, used as housing for bachelor ranch hands. The rest was buildings of rammed earth or notched logs squared on top and bottom or mortared fieldstone, or combinations. Law in the United States of Boise had always frowned on private fortifications, but the layout of the ranch had a foursquare strength and the lower windows could all be quickly closed with loopholed steel shutters.
The Dunedain party arrived just as the purple faded in the west and the warm butter-yellow of lamps started to make stars of windows where the homeplace lay scattered below them. They rode down a gully through pine forest, out of the strong sappy smell and into the open; a wind from the east brought the homey odors of cooking and woodsmoke and manure. The grim-faced and silent older men and younger women who took their horses away and showed them to the quarters where they could stow their packs and wash before walking over to the main house asked no questions.
Sheriff Robert Woburn greeted them in the vestibule where they swapped their boots for slippers and hung up their weapons; no doubt in wintertime it also served to keep too much warm air from escaping. He was a lean man in his sixties, his white hair still thick, eyes a snapping blue and face craggy and seamed. His hand was strong but knobby, and rough as raw horsehide.
“I hope we’re unobserved,” Alleyne said.
“Less traffic here than at St. Hilda’s,” he said. “The Reverend Mother got me the message and I’ve arranged to get everyone I’m doubtful of off the place.”
“It will still leak,” Astrid said. “Just more slowly, hopefully.”
“No help for that. And this here is Major Hanks.”
“The man with the airship!” Ritva blurted; she remembered it vividly.
Not least because it saved all our lives. Though it’s a haywired sort of thing.
“The sort-of airship,” the soldier said; he was in plain civilian denim and linen, with a bristle-cut of graying brown hair. “I see you remember our little meeting in Boise and points east.”
“Considering how you saved us all, yes, I do,” she said, shaking his hand enthusiastically.
“How’s Father Ignatius? There was a man who appreciated good engineering!”
“He’s helping build a kingdom now, sir,” Ritva said. “Artos, the High King, he was Rudi Mackenzie when you met him, has appointed him Chancellor of the Realm.”
“Dang, a politician who does sensible things. I may die of shock,” he replied, with bitterness behind the smile.
