Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman

CHAPTER 20

FOR MORE THAN A YEAR NOW, IT SEEMED TO Blacktooth that he was always on the road. This time there was no coach to Valana. Eight men with sixteen horses rode the papal highway north. Several miles south of the side road which led to Shard’s place and on into the mountains of New Jerusalem, Cardinal Brownpony stopped, called Blacktooth and Wooshin to his side, and announced a detour around that whole area.

Blacktooth protested. “M’Lord, the only one who needs to take a detour is me. I can ride east out into the scrub, travel a few miles north, and then catch up with you on the road before dark.”

“No,” said the cardinal. “I want no more than one of us to be seen. Wooshin, pick a man to ride past the glep guards and take a message to Magister Dion. The message is really for Shard as much as for the Mayor, but Shard will accept orders only from Dion.”

“Why not send me?” Axe offered.

“No. Shard remembers you.”

Nimmy said, “He may remember any or all of us. He went for his gun and came out shooting when we were on our way to the abbey last fall.”

Axe went to consult the warrior monks. When he came back, he said, “I suggest Gai-See. He’s the smallest target and rides the fastest horse. If he can’t find a way around, he can wait until dark and gallop right up Scarecrow Alley. There’s moon enough.”

Brownpony nodded and beckoned to Gai-See, then instructed him to avoid any contact with the families that guarded the passage. “Tell this to Dion: ‘On the east, open gates to the Wilddog and to the Grasshopper. On the west, send gifts to the Curia.’ Now repeat that, please.”

“On the east, open gates to the Wilddog and to the Grasshopper. On the west, send gifts to the Curia.”

“Good! Then remind him of what Nimmy and I saw in the hand of the Hannegan. I sent him a message about it from the abbey. If he got it, he will know what has to be done. Afterward, he will provide you with a well-laden pack mule. Leave New Jerusalem from the west and come on to Valana as fast as you can.”

Gai-See dismounted, bowed to the cardinal, and sat down beside the trail. “He’ll wait until dark,” said Axe. “I too think it’s safer that way.”

Brownpony looked at Blacktooth. “Why so disappointed?” he asked.

“It’s nothing, m’Lord.”

“You were hoping someone would be able to find out if Ædrea is in her father’s house?”

“I know it’s not practical. It would be dangerous.”

“Never mind. Gai-See can ask the Mayor about her.”

“And get the same kind of truth about her as he gave to me?”

Brownpony shrugged. “I can’t tell Dion what to say or do, except with my own property.”

It was the first time the cardinal had spoken of the arsenal as his own property, but that was not Blacktooth’s concern.

“M’Lord, I wish Gai-See would not mention Ædrea to Dion.”

“Why not?”

“Because he will be wondering about a spy or a traitor when Gai-See tells him about the gun we saw in Filpeo’s hand. And Ædrea ran away from home during that time. We know where she went, but the Mayor may not believe her.”

The cardinal looked down at Gai-See. “Did you hear and understand that?”

“Yes, m’Lord Cardinal. I’ll be discreet.”

“We’ll see you in Valana. Now, let’s ride a mile or so back into the juniper scrub.”

Three days later, they camped in the scrub half a mile east of the papal highway on the evening of Monday, April 3rd. It would be the night of the Paschal full moon of Holy Week, but the sun was not yet set, and because their food supply was running short, Nimmy went forth in search of roots and edible greens that might be beginning to sprout, while Wooshin took the party’s only firearm and went to hunt small game while the cardinal’s warriors gathered wood and tended the fire. Brownpony himself, clearly exhausted from the long journey and developing a nasty cough, wrapped himself in blankets and with his head on a saddle, fell asleep before dark.

Blacktooth dug up a few bulbs of last year’s wild onions from the bank of a half-frozen creekbed; they had little value except as seasoning, in case the Axe came back with meat. Of course it was a day of Lenten abstinence, but it was also an emergency, especially for the cardinal, who had never fully recovered from his ordeal in the breeding pit. Nimmy tried to keep track of his direction from camp by watching the sunset, the stars of twilight, and finally the glow of the campfire in the distance. He found yucca, and uprooted some skinny tubers from the hard ground with a sharp stick.

He heard two gunshots, and decided that they came from Wooshin’s pistol, but they were closely followed by a third—too closely for the Axe to have reloaded. A horse galloped past along a creekbank at the foot of the hill, and he caught a glimpse of a Nomad rider. There was a burst of shouting from the direction of the camp, accompanied by one more gunshot, but he could make out only the voices of Foreman Jing and Woosoh-Loh in their native tongue, until he heard Axe shout a death threat in poor but understandable Wild-dog, and a weaker echo from the cardinal that the threat was real and enforceable.

Nimmy hurried back toward the firelight as quietly as possible. Two Nomad outlaws were sitting on the ground with their hands tied behind them, surrounded by Brownpony’s guards. The cardinal himself was sitting up in his bedroll. A strange small horse was tied to a juniper, and two unfamiliar muskets were propped against a log.

“Nimmy, where are you?”

It was Brownpony’s voice. Blacktooth hurried into the firelight and dumped the yucca and wild onions beside the body of a dead wilddog. The cardinal winced at the odor of the onions.

Wooshin explained. Three motherless ones with only one horse among them had tried to steal two horses from the cardinal. One had succeeded but the men who had dismounted to search and rob Brownpony had been surprised and captured by Axe and the others who had heard their approach.

The scruffy Nomads were looking around in terror at the strange warriors with their long blades.

“Nimmy, you tell them what the situation is,” said Axe with a wink.

Blacktooth brushed the root dirt from his robe and went to stand behind his master. Facing them across the fire, he drew himself up, pointed at one of the men, and said in impeccable Grasshopper:

“I know you. You haunt this region. Now you have accosted the Vicar Apostolic to the hordes, to whom even the Qæsach dri Vørdar Ösle Høngan Chür comes for counsel, not to mention the Grasshopper sharf, Eltür Bråm. Your fellow bandit has just stolen the horse of the High Shaman of all Christendom, the next Sharf and Great Uncle of the Holy Roman Catholic Church. He has also been chosen by the Buzzard of Battle; the Weejus have announced it.”

“Don’t overdo it, Nimmy,” said the cardinal in Churchspeak.

“Horse for horse!” said the bolder of the two. “You take this horse, Great Man. We even.”

Nimmy ignored him and spoke again to the man he recognized. “You! It was Holy Madness himself, now Lord of the Hordes, that stopped you from raping Ædrea last year near Shard’s place, not far from here.”

The outlaw shrugged but seemed suddenly meek.

Brownpony picked himself up out of the bedroll and went to inspect the scruffy mustang. Having walked around the little mare, he faced them and said sternly in Wilddog, “She belongs to the Høngin Fujæ Vurn. You dare to violate a mare of the Wild Horse Woman! Lord Ösle Høngan Chür would have you eviscerated and fed to the dogs. Wooshin, release the animal at once.”

The Axe flipped his sword twice, once to slice the hackamore that made her fast to the limb, the second time to swat her behind with the flat of the blade. The mustang snorted, kicked, and clattered away into the night. Since Gai-See had not taken an extra mount on his gallop through Scarecrow Alley, they still had an extra horse per man, but neither Brownpony nor his aides were ready to let the matter lie.

“Who is your master?” the cardinal asked.

“His name is Mounts-Everybody.”

“How far is his camp from here?”

“Almost a day’s ride, Great Man.”

“How many men in your band?”

The outlaw seemed to be counting on mental fingers for a moment. “Thirty-seven, I think.”

“And women? Children?”

“Yesterday there were five captives. Today maybe more, maybe less.”

“And how many bands like yours?”

“I don’t know. Sometimes we encounter other no-family people. Sometimes we fight, sometimes we join together. There are many bachelors along the fringes of the Wilddog range, and to the south along the Nady Ann.”

“Do you ever fight or rob farmers?”

“It is not a wise policy.”

“Does it happen?”

“Sometimes.”

“Would you like to be paid for fighting farmers?”

The captives looked at each other and shifted uncomfortably. Brownpony elaborated:

“There is a war between the Grasshopper and the Hannegan’s farmers.”

“We know, but we are at war with both.”

“But suppose the Grasshopper accepted you as allies?”

“That they would never do, Great Man.”

“Did the monk here tell you that I am the Christian shaman to all the hordes?”

“We don’t know what that means.”

“It means,” said Blacktooth, “that the word of His Eminence has power with all three hordes.”

“Would you fight against the Hannegan under Demon Light?”

“There is no possibility.”

“What about a Jackrabbit sharf?”

The idea of a Jackrabbit sharf brought roaring laughter from the bound men.

“Let the cowards go,” Brownpony ordered. “You whimpering wild puppies go tell your Mounts-Everybody to come and see me in Valana, unless he’s a coward, and bring back the horse you stole. Otherwise, you will be driven south of the Nady Ann and east of the Bay Ghost. The Hannegan will know what to do with you. Now go.”

Easter arrived before they reached Valana. Brownpony concelebrated the Mass of the Resurrection in a wayside Church with a circuit-riding mission priest who stumbled through the liturgy, too frightened by high rank to get anything quite right.

Some days later a fast rider from Pobla, where they had spent the night, brought word of their coming to Valana, and Sorely Cardinal Nauwhat and the SEEC guard Elkin were waiting for them at the Venison House Tavern, where the cardinal had entertained Kindly Light the previous year. It was close to sundown, so they ordered dinner. The two prelates with their assistants sat together, while Wooshin and the Yellow Guard took an adjacent table. Sorely Nauwhat was a fast talker, and he had a lot to explain.

Before submitting his resignation, which Nauwhat, like Brownpony, regarded as revocable if not wholly invalid, Pope Amen had broken with a recent tradition and created new cardinals, as many as forty-nine of them, and had been induced to take the almost unprecedented action of stripping forty-nine others of their cardinalates. This shocked Brownpony, but it made the attempt at a conclave understandable, if not legal.

Amen Specklebird, who insisted that his resignation had been duly submitted to the Curia, had retired to his former residence, the old building which seemed to grow out of the side of a mountain and which had been at one time a root cellar, and before that a cave whose deeper recesses had never been explored, and which the old man had reopened “to let the mountain spirits come and go.” Here the cardinals of the Curia came to consult him, to scold and beseech him, to no avail.

And there was news from Texark. Although the text of what purported to be Pope Amen’s resignation had appeared there, by telegraph, the original signed copy of the document, if it existed, could not be found in Valana or anywhere else. One enterprising forger in the Empire’s capital sold a clever counterfeit of the original to the Archdiocese of Texark for ten thousand pios, a sum paid after a police expert affirmed that the handwriting was that of Amen the Antipope. But afterward, another expert showed that the document contained egregious errors of the kind often occurring during transmission of text by a telegraph operator, including several pure operating codes, such as ZMF, meaning “break, more follows.” The forger escaped into Jackrabbit country and was never seen again.

“As I told you, the Pope refuses to live in the palace,” said Nauwhat, “and he has returned to his old home. He said Easter Mass at home, not at John-in-Exile. He will see anyone who comes to him, and cheerfully submits to any indignity. He has signed blank bulls, perhaps by the dozen. He will press his seal of approval into the wax of almost anything. I don’t know if he always reads it first. Did he really appoint all these new cardinals, or was it done for him? I should know, but I don’t Because he found out about some guns at SEEC, and he thinks I am responsible.”

“Well, I must confess to him on that—”

“No, don’t do it. I am responsible now. His actions are those of a man who has lost his bearings, if not his sanity, but not his good humor. You, Elia, he speaks of constantly, and he will rejoice that you have returned. You must go to see him tomorrow. You and Brother Blacktooth as well.”

“Of course. But what are the agenda, if not weapons?”

“It was he who placed your name in nomination as Pope. His only agendum, probably, will be to submit to you as Pontiff.”

“I must set him straight on that.”

“Well, you can try. But besides the new cardinals, the College is coming into town again in numbers. And some from the East are bringing the military officers and envoys you invited. They pass for bodyguards.”

“In response to the same summons I got? Who was it wrote that foul thing?”

“Domidomi Cardinal Hoydok.”

“Do I know him?”

“No. He’s one of the new ones. He’s from Texark, but Benefez excommunicated him for supporting Pope Amen, so the Pope created him cardinal. He is a civil lawyer, not a priest.”

“How are the Easterners getting here?” Brownpony asked.

“Mostly through the Iowa country. There, the farmers seem to get along better with the Grasshopper. They trade a lot. Only a few Texark patrols go north of the Misery River, and they wouldn’t stop a cardinal there, even if they knew he was coming to conclave.”

“Misery River?”

“The old name was ‘Missouri,’ m’Lord,” Nimmy put in.

“‘Misery’ better suits it now,” said Sorely. “Before the occupation of the farmlands, it was a natural route to New Rome.”

“Of course. My memory is slipping. The first thing I must do tomorrow is send a messenger to Holy Madness and Swimming Elk to come here for a conference, and to send a war party to New Jerusalem for the new weapons.”

“Swimming Elk?”

“Sharf Eltür Bråm, Hultor’s brother. The Grasshopper sharf.”

Dinner was brought to them. This time there was venison and a good red wine. They were nearly starved after the long Lenten trip on light rations. Nimmy wondered absently if he should confess to eating barbecued wilddog on abstinence days, even though the cardinal had granted dispensation in an emergency situation.

“How are things in Texark, by the way?” asked Cardinal Nauwhat.

“Well, the Province is seething with revolt. And of course there is sporadic fighting with the Grasshopper. In Hannegan City, little has changed, except they are importing some desert animals from Africa for warfare in dry country. And they know about our guns.”

“Two bad omens.”

“And one other thing.” He glanced at the adjoining table and tapped Wooshin on the shoulder. “Axe, I think I forgot to tell you of one small change.”

“M’Lord?”

Brownpony looked at Blacktooth. “You tell him.”

“His Imperial Majesty the Mayor has replaced you with a mechanical head chopper, Axe.”

Wooshin shrugged. “A man without shadow and form, when he chops heads, becomes a chopping machine. No change.”

This caused a murmur, apparently not of approval, but perhaps of recognition, from the rest of the warriors present.

“A remarkable man,” Sorely said with a shiver in his voice as Wooshin turned away again.

“One without shadow and form,” Brownpony mused aloud.

Four weeks had passed since they last saw Gai-See, and they had just begun to fear that he had been shot down in Scarecrow Alley when he arrived, not with the well-laden pack mule with “gifts for the Curia” as in Brownpony’s message, but with Mayor Dion, Ulad, eight heavy wagons, and a whole brigade of light-horse infantry, bristling with new and superior arms. The secret of New Jerusalem was no longer secret. Brownpony showed no surprise, and Nimmy realized that the message to Dion had been code.

There was no way Valana could accommodate both the influx of cardinals and a whole brigade of light horse, of whom the citizens of the city were quite frightened as the word was quickly passed around that these armed men were spooks. But Magister Dion had no intention of imposing. His troops immediately set about building a fortified encampment on a hill well outside the city. As soon as the wagons were unloaded, they were returned to New Jerusalem for more supplies. Regular convoys were planned to supply his men with food, ammunition, and other necessities of military life. They would sleep in tents, at first, but within four days, a permanent log structure was built, with a basement beneath it, to store ammunition and to reload brass cartridges. The reloading machines were simple and portable, so that they might follow an army in battle.

Seeking information about Ædrea, Nimmy had approached the gate of the newly constructed fort in the hope of obtaining an interview with the Magister, who was now in the role of commanding general. He was told politely to wait, and a guard left for the armory. He struck up a conversation with the other guards.

Blacktooth noticed that their rifles were similar to the pistols in having revolving cylinders, with six chambers instead of five. A guard showed him that the ammunition was of the same caliber as the handguns, and used the same brass; only the weight of the bullets and the weight of the powder charge differed. The pistol ammunition might be fired with safety from the rifles, with a lesser range, but it was unsafe to shoot the more powerful loads from the handguns. With copper being so scarce, it was essential that empty brass be saved after firing, even in battle.

After three hours of waiting, the guard returned. Nimmy was given a polite excuse from Magister Dion and turned away. He returned to the Red Deacon’s own private mansion outside the city, where all of them were temporarily living.

Brownpony had obtained a list of new cardinals created by Pope Amen during their absence. He gave a copy of it to Blacktooth for his own information, along with two copies of a summons for all incoming cardinals to register at the Papal Palace with a clerk of the Secretariat of State, which again had been placed in the hands of Hilan Cardinal Bleze by Pope Amen after the interregnum. He told Nimmy to post one copy of the summons in John-in-Exile Square, then to hire a town crier immediately to shout aloud the text of the second copy at every intersection in Valana.

When he had finished these chores, Nimmy returned to his old residence, where he was rather mournfully greeted by Aberlott, who had fallen in love with the younger sister of the late Jæsis.

“It seems to me,” said Aberlott with unusual gravity, “that those people in those mountains are just as intolerant of outsiders, as the outsiders have always been of spooks. They actually look down on us.

“Ædrea never did.”

“I know. And she’s under arrest.”

“Oh my God! Did you see her?”

“No, I was not allowed.”

“What are the charges?”

“She left without permission some months ago. That’s all I know.”

Through his employer’s intervention, Blacktooth obtained an interview with Magister Dion. Dion listened politely to Nimmy’s account of Ædrea’s trip to Leibowitz Abbey, and thence to the Mesa of Last Resort, where she had given birth.

“And then she went home to her father’s place,” he finished. “That’s all she did.”

“And her father beat her and brought her to me. We can’t have people leaving without permission.”

“But she always had permission to come to Valana!”

“No, she had orders.”

“But her father would have killed her babies.”

“Babies?”

“Twins, old Benjamin said.”

“Well, what you think you know, you got by hearsay. I’ll consider it, but she will remain in custody for the time being. Think of it as protection from her own family. You are never going to see her again. Neither your cardinal nor I will allow it.”

Blacktooth left the camp, fuming with anger at both the Mayor and Brownpony. On the way home, he meant to stop at the hillside home of Amen Specklebird and ask for his intervention, but there were at least forty people in a queue outside the door, many of them cardinals, and the Red Deacon himself was tenth in line. So he pretended not to see him, and went instead to a nearby Church to pray his anger away.

On the first day of May—normally a Nomad holy day—in response to Brownpony’s call to a war council, Chür Høngan, his half-nephew Oxsho, Father Ombroz, and Demon Light with one of his lieutenants rode into town together. Brownpony was surprised to learn that Oxsho, in spite of his youth, had been chosen Wilddog sharf after Holy Madness was made judge and leader of all three hordes. The Wilddog leaders bowed and kissed the cardinal’s ring. Eltür the Demon Light refrained, but offered a Nomad military salute.

From the south on the following day came Önmu Kun, cold sober, and wearing a leather helmet with his family badge. He introduced himself as Jackrabbit Sharf. Knowing of Önmu’s reputation, the others demanded documentation. He presented a roll of soft deerskin with Weejus beadwork depicting a manlike figure with the ears of a Jackrabbit. From his saddlebags, he produced a crest of buzzard feathers, also of obvious Weejus design; the sacred talisman was to be worn on the helmet of the sharf only in battle. After brief discussion, and some shaking of heads, his credentials were accepted by the others. Brownpony, who wished to honor them all, consulted with others of the Curia, then had the Nomad leadership housed in the Papal Palace, since the Pope had retired to his remodeled hillside cave and refused to return.

A military conference was scheduled for Thursday the 4th, at SEEC, and an invitation was sent to Commander Dion to come and bring his senior officers. Then a great embarrassment rode into town on the night of the third, and by the light of the full moon rode on through town and up to Brownpony’s private estate, where he made a great clatter at the main entrance. Wooshin and Woosoh-Loh immediately rushed from the dining room to investigate the visitor, but then called for Blacktooth.

Nimmy stared out at the spectacle standing there in the moonlight. Three hundred pounds of muscle and black hair confronted them with folded arms and an angry glare. He uttered obscenities in bad Grasshopper and demanded to see “the Christian shaman who boasted to my men that he was married to the Burregun, and then called me a coward.”

Blacktooth swallowed hard and went back to the dinner table. “There seems to be a motherless one at the door who wishes to speak to Your Eminence.”

“Who?”

“I think they called him ‘Mounts-Everybody.’ Remember the outlaws you released? They spoke of their leader—”

The cardinal blotted gravy from his lips, got up, and strode to the entrance.

“Where is my horse?” he demanded of the burly outlaw.

“Tied to the gate, you damn grass-eater.”

“Then come in and eat beef with us, you damn thief.”

The man came in, surrounded by suspicious warriors with short swords in hand. Because of a foul odor about him, the cardinal had him seated at the foot of the table. Most of the others had finished eating. A servant carved him a few slices of roast beef and fetched him a hot baked potato and roasted onions from the kitchen. It was too early in the season for anything the Nomad would call “grass,” but he grunted a few complaints about the lack of “inner meats” to go with the beef. Nimmy knew that Nomads usually ate virtually the whole animal, except for the hide, horns, hooves, and bones. It was the basis for the Venerable Boedullus’s prescription for radiation sickness. The outlaw ate with his hands, wrapping slices of beef around bits of potato. The cardinal spoke.

“I thank you for returning my horse. But do you know that all the sharfs of the hordes and the Qæsach dri Vørdar himself are here in the city?”

Mounts-Everybody stopped eating and glowered. “You invited me here. They are enemies. You intend to have me killed?”

“No, all I wanted was my horse.”

“You spoke to my men of fighting farmers. For money.”

“I asked them questions.”

“Which farmers are your enemies? Those nearby?”

“No, those are under the protection of the Bishop of Denver.”

Blacktooth put in a word here. “His Eminence is trying to use your word for ‘citizens,’ and he means specifically the subjects of the Hannegan, and even more specifically the armed forces of Texark. He does not mean peaceful people who work the soil and grow crops. Many of them were formerly Nomads, including my own family.”

“Thank you, Nimmy,” said Brownpony with a trace of irritation, then to Mounts-Everybody: “Just how many fighting men could you muster, if you were inclined to do so.”

Mounts-Everybody seemed to be doing mental arithmetic. “That depends on the pay. For gold, not many. We need good horses. The families kill us when we take wild ones. Offer us two good horses and a woman for every man, and you get a small army.”

“Horses, yes, but no women. How small an army?”

“Maybe four hundred warriors. But the Grasshopper is at war against the farmers in the east. We cannot fight beside them.”

“I realize that. What about the Jackrabbit?”

Mounts-Everybody was suddenly suspicious. “Wormy-Face told me you threatened to drive us south of the Nady Ann into Texark lands.”

“Gai-See, fetch one of the new rifles.”

The small warrior stepped into the adjacent room and returned with one of the west-coast weapons.

“Load it and take him outside for a demonstration.”

Brownpony and Blacktooth remained sitting at the dinner table while a servant cleaned up after the meal. There were six loud shots in as many seconds, followed by a frightened whinny and hoofbeats in the roadway.

Wooshin came back inside with the outlaw, who was holding the empty rifle and staring at it in awe. “I’m sorry. Your horse ran away,” said the Axe.

“When they find him, give him to the sharf of the outlaws here, and also the rifle.”

The burly guest stared at Brownpony in amazement. “I made you no promises!”

“I know. And you won’t get the gifts until you do.”

“No promises!”

“Well, all I want you to do is stay here all night, and most of tomorrow. You can’t come to the meeting tomorrow, because I’m afraid someone would kill you. On your way into town, did you observe the fortress on the hilltop?”

“Yes. It is new.”

“Tomorrow night, you will go to the fort and talk to Magister Dion and the Jackrabbit Önmu Kun. Any men you recruit will be under their command, as will you, and you will not be driven south of the Nady Ann. You will go there well armed and with other forces.”

“I will think about it.”

The cardinal looked away. “Axe, see that he takes a bath, cuts his hair and beard, and dress him as a mountain man. He can stay here until moonrise tomorrow.”

Mounts-Everybody growled angrily and started to his feet, but six half-drawn swords had a calming effect. He allowed himself to be led away.

Brownpony looked questioningly at Blacktooth.

“M’Lord, those men live by murder and plunder.”

“And that is war, is it not?”

Nimmy prayed earnestly for peace that night, but he feared the Virgin would not listen. If the cardinal came to be elected Pope, he would make the Virgin a commanding general of the hordes.