Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman

CHAPTER 23

THE EMPEROR WAS A PART-TIME SCHOLAR. With the help of a young political-science professor who was also a popular author, Filpeo Harq had written a book. It was a book Brownpony not surprisingly had sent to the Holy Office as soon as he saw it. The Holy Office duly added it to the Index Librorum Prohibitorum, although it bore the imprimatur of the Cardinal Archbishop of Texark, and carried an introduction by a monk of Saint Leibowitz, who, unfortunately for his career, happened to agree with the Imperial Mayor that the restoration of the Magna Civitas could only be accomplished by secular science and industry under the protection of a secular state against the resistance and hostility of religion. It was such a self-evidently wicked book that the Holy Office wrote neither an attack nor a commentary; the work was filed under “Anticlericalism.” Its author was already so thoroughly anathematized that further curses from eternal Rome would seem petty.

But Filpeo was a scholar, and among other things, he had been able to restore several ancient pieces of music, including one of regional origin which seemed well suited to become the new national anthem for the Empire, and he published it in his book. The tune was now well known. Its ancient words were English, but the Ol’zark translation scanned well enough. It began: “The eyes of Texark are upon you.” The Mayor wanted his subjects to feel well watched.

Every priest in the Empire who read the crusading bull Scitote Tyrannum aloud from the pulpit or who publicly observed the interdict imposed on the Texark Church by the Brownpony papacy—there were only thirteen of them—was arrested and charged with sedition. Two bishops who had suspended Masses and confessions in their dioceses in obedience to the bull joined the priests in jail. In six out of seven parishes throughout the Empire, however, the religious life went on as if Amen II had never spoken. After so many decades of a papacy in exile, the people of Hannegan City and even New Rome had lost sight of the Pope as a real player in their perceived world. He was distant, and his anger was like that of a player on the stage, except that the people only read the reviews without seeing the play. The communications media—mostly paper since the telegraph line to the west was down—kept them informed, but the media were deferentially kind to the relatively absolute ruler of the state.

Scitote Tyrannum, therefore—however binding it might be in Heaven—was the least of Filpeo’s worries on Earth. The Antipope’s forces were going to march, and the Antipope had used the treasures of the Church to arm the wild Nomads with superior weapons to be used against civilization. Filpeo always spoke of him as Antipope, although there was no competing Pope. Filpeo stood for the renewal of the Magna Civitas, and Brownpony the Antipope opposed it. It was that simple, from the Hannegan’s point of view. Brownpony was the past waging war against the future. He armed the barbarians and would soon send them against civilization’s holy places, if not against the City of Hannegans itself. Filpeo was confident he could defend the city until the new firearms were delivered, and after that his forces would be able to drive the spooks back to the Suckamints and herd the Jackrabbit into the southwest desert, push the Wilddog north of the Misery, and herd the Grasshopper into formerly Wilddog lands, so that the two northern hordes would be forced to fight each other for living space.

The Imperial Mayor hoped to win the Nomad outlaws over to his side, and he sent an ex-pirate to recruit them. Admiral e’Fondolai promised them Grasshopper lands in the aftermath of victory. Filpeo was amused to hear of it at first, but after giving the matter some thought, he decided that he would, if possible, honor the promise Carpy had so rashly made. If the motherless ones could marry farm women and be assigned enough land, they could raise fully domesticated cattle and live in fixed homes, and trade with the farmers and the cities. In such circumstances, they would not develop a society anything like the hordes. Very likely the taboo against capturing wild horses could not survive without the Weejus to enforce it, and the motherless ones, once they settled down, were not likely to restore the matrilineal inheritance of wild Nomads. They would acquire property and fight to defend it. In the Mayor’s dream, in the wake of his certain victory, the Grasshopper and the Wilddog and the motherless ones would each be at war against the others, and the Jackrabbit would straggle back out of the desert to be arrested and put to work repairing war-damaged properties.

Filpeo was well pleased with his admiral, but not his general.

When General Goldæm went to the university and demanded Thon Hilbert’s cooperation in teaching the troops how to contaminate wells in the Province and infect cattle with the new diseases, Thon Hilbert refused. General Goldæm went to the War Office and got him inducted into the Texark Army as a private. Then he ordered him to teach. Hilbert cursed the general personally, then cursed his Monarch. The general had the professor put in jail for sedition. The Hannegan summoned the general to his quarters, fired him, and retired him at half pay. He then put Admiral e’Fondolai, alias Carpios Robbery, in charge of the project. Because Hilbert’s assistant at the university agreed to teach the military whatever was required, Hilbert remained in jail, pending an apology to the Hannegan. The apology was not immediately forthcoming.

Three months after he fired General Goldæm, Filpeo watched with delight as Admiral e’Fondalai’s model strike force, led by Carpios himself on horseback, marched past his reviewing stand. The Imperial Mayor had never seen such a burly gang of cutthroats outside of a prison yard. They were armed with the several dozen repeating arms which had already been delivered by the gunsmiths, which was quite an investment, and one which Filpeo had been reluctant to make at first. Carpios made the point that for an effective assault force, firepower was everything, so the Emperor placed his most advanced weaponry in the hands of ruffians dressed in wolfskins and chewed leather. He watched them march under a banner that depicted a bird being roasted on a spit over a fire; the bird was branded with both the Weejus symbol for the Buzzard of Battle and with a pair of crossed keys. Filpeo laughed aloud at the sacrilege, called the old pirate back to the stand, and awarded him the ancient title of “Vaquero Supreme of the Plains,” which had been claimed by the Hannegans since the time of their Nomad roots, but which dropped out of use after Hannegan IV fell off his horse.

Part of Filpeo’s delight was at Carpios’ expense, for the sight of the bearded pirate in admiral’s white uniform riding at the head of three hundred bathless ruffians dressed in wilddog skins was hilarious. After the parade, Filpeo not only gave him the title of Vaquero but promoted him to field marshal—“so you can choose your own uniform” was the way the Emperor put it. But he made sure to let the old seaman know that when he finished the project, he would be made commander in chief of Texark forces. There was something oceanic about the Great Plains. The admiral sensed it too, and became enthusiastic about the wars that plainly lay ahead.

There was no clear Texark military doctrine for Nomad warfare, not since Hannegan IV fell off his horse, and the admiral’s job was quickly to develop such a doctrine. The Plains resembled the ocean in that there was nowhere to hide, and no naturally defensive terrain in which to take refuge. Most land west of the last timber was equally accessible from all directions, and therefore as inhospitable as the storm-tossed sea. A cavalry battle there could be like an engagement between two ships of war—short, savage, and with only one surviving side.

The admiral thrice visited Thon Hilbert in jail. He informed his ruler of the visits, and affirmed their obvious purpose; he promised an account of the ultimate outcome, but declined to give a running report. The jailer told Filpeo that during the admiral’s third visit, they played Old Zark chess and talked about nothing but the game. What came of the meetings was also nothing, but Carpy wanted the Mayor to let the professor go anyway. Filpeo refused. He had no use for an apology, but apology or no apology, Hilbert would stay in jail until the university’s cooperation with the military was satisfactory and assured.

“Thon Hilbert’s disease is hindering them in the South,” a field commander told him. “A few cases have appeared among Brownpony’s armies, but it is becoming endemic only in the Province. Because of it, the spooks and the Jackrabbit rebels are exhausting their military energy for the time being. We can soon launch a counterattack.”

“And no cases of the disease have appeared among our troops?”

“No, as I told you, as long as they drink Hilbert’s preventative every day. It tastes bad, and they don’t like it. But there is a standing order than any trooper who catches Hilbert’s disease shall be immediately shot. To prevent further contagion is the stated reason.”

The Mayor shifted restlessly. “That sounds unnecessarily cruel.”

“Well, if carried out, of course. The threat is necessary to prevent contagion; it is only meant to insure the men drink the preventative.”

The War Dog was a constellation in the Nomad night, but he was also the mythical pet of the Lord Empty Sky. That ancient hero had led even wilddogs into battle against the army of the Farmer King. Nomads had always sent their dogs against the enemy whenever practical, but Empty Sky’s battle was unique in that his dogs were wild-dogs, and in that their elder Weejus bitches had elected Empty Sky to be sharf of the Horde of Wilddogs, while his sister thought the dogs were merely being loyal to the Qæsach dri Vørdar to whom all loyalty was due. The fact that the Horde of Wilddogs had elected him as its own rival to the human Wilddog sharf suggested that the office was usually held by a dog. That this dog had an equal claim on human Wilddog loyalty and young Wilddog women was a Grasshopper conceit. It was a conceit that sometimes led to fighting between rival bands of drovers of the northern hordes.

But the War Dog was still a Nomad mythic reality, and Swimming Elk had begun his reign as sharf by ordering a return to the old practice of keeping attack dogs trained to accompany horsemen into battle against an unmounted enemy, and he awarded a monopoly on the training of war dogs to the family of his brother’s wife. Which is a Nomad way of saying that he gave the job to a brother-in-law, Goat-Wind by name, who happened to be good at it. Goat-Wind persuaded all the adolescents of his extended family to organize parties for raiding lairs of wild bitches and stealing their puppies. He turned the management of puppy collections over to his sister, with an injunction against killing bitches except in self-defense, and another against taking pups younger than six weeks.

A Weejus minority held that stealing wild puppies was an offense like stealing wild colts, but Eltür’s sister asked them scornfully, “Who are we offending? The Høngin Fujæ Vurn is not the Wild Bitch Woman. The dogs belong to Empty Sky, for whom the sharf speaks. We don’t even punish the motherless ones for roasting wild puppy.”

Demon Light wanted results within two months, so Goat-Wind collected every available dog with any experience at all as a working companion to a horseman. Even now in late July results were apparent. Thirty-five willing warriors had been given thirty-five dogs to work with, and eighty-one younger dogs were already in school.

There was no way to test dogs in the occasional skirmishes with Texark cavalry, for dogs could never effectively join one side in an encounter between mutually mounted war bands. The dogs could participate in a cavalry attack on infantry, but since Nomad wars were usually ceremonial conflicts between hordes, there had been no reason since the time of Høngan Ös to bear the expense of feeding a large war pack—until Eltür began contemplating battle against the standing armies of the Hannegan. The spirit of the dog-man-horse war entity was still alive in the tribes, however, and Demon Light’s attempt to awaken it was immediately popular. It added Empty Sky’s blessing to his leadership. But any Nomad-speaking Texark agent—and there must have been at least one—who learned about the training of dogs for war would know that dogs were only for fighting unmounted armies like the defenders of Empire. They would be useful for incursions into Texark space.

His brother Kindly Light, when he broke through Texark border defenses and rode all the way to New Rome, had needed dogs. With dogs, Hultor might have lost only half as many men, even if it cost him all the dogs. A dog was a lethal loyal weapon, once the man and the dog and the horse became melded into a single spirit, which was then merged into a spirit of a pack. Man became more horselike and doglike. Dog and horse became more human, and more like each other. It was a spiritual unity, but probably the only outsider to notice it as such was that old Christian shaman of the Wilddog, Father Ombroz, a man Eltür much admired, although he begrudged his influence on the Wilddog shamans. The epiphany of the dog-horse-man unity was, when experienced, a Nomad sacrament—according to Ombroz. Monsignor Sanual had called it “a bestial form of diabolic possession,” a remark which Eltür found flattering.

It was the issue of the War Dog that saved Chuntar Cardinal Hadala and his officers from death at the hands of a Grasshopper war party. The occasion of the issue being raised was a council called when the news of Hadala’s invasion first came to the Grasshopper leadership. Demon Light became livid, and was quite ready to launch an immediate attack on the cardinal’s forces. For negotiating purposes, it always behooved a Grasshopper sharf to take a harder line in council than he expected the grandmothers to approve. But it was his own sister who used the issue of the War Dog against him after Eltür proposed killing Hadala and anyone else who resisted a seizure of the militia’s wagons.

“It is a complete betrayal, my sister,” said Demon Light before he yielded. “Brownpony’s plan was for the Suckamint spooks to attack in the Province, and the eastern allies to strike at the other shore of the Great River. The Grasshopper was to keep the peace until Hannegan took the forces which now face us to the defense of his allies. Now here comes this army of farmer clowns out of Valana tramping toward Glep Valley with guns! How is Filpeo Harq not to notice them coming? Every motherless one south of here has seen them and tried to sell the information to Texark. The first one who tried probably got paid.”

“Yes, and I wonder,” his sister said thoughtfully, “if the motherless one who told Texark about your war dogs was properly paid. And whether your dogs will affect Hannegan’s temptation to weaken the forces that face us. No, I don’t think Grasshopper justice demands killing the fools; it demands they turn back. You should let them choose: take their guns with them or surrender them to you. And that, my sharf, is the Weejus consensus.”

Demon Light let his battle fury subside, as it usually did in the face of the Weejus consensus, if no Bear Spirit objection arose. After the council, Bråm assembled a force of eighty warriors and led them south by east to intercept this mounted militia of townsmen from the mountains. His men had armed themselves with new five-shooters as well as traditional lances, but Eltür ordered ten repeating rifles brought along for killing officers at a distance if they met resistance from the townsmen.

Then he took an action which changed the course of the war. He sent for Black Eyes, who had been captured during Hultor’s raid. The man had been imprisoned by the Hannegan and had met Cardinal Brownpony in jail, but he was released months later to carry a message from Filpeo to his horde. Both Demon Light and the Emperor knew Black Eyes was a double agent, but as such he could be useful to both.

“Tell your contacts about Hadala’s expedition,” said the sharf, “so they can mount a defense in that area. And tell them I told you to tell them. If they want to know why I let them know, explain that I want hostilities to cease between the Grasshopper and Texark.”

“The farmers will be glad to hear it,” said Black Eyes with a snicker; he left camp immediately for the frontier.

Demon Light was not really turning on his allies, because he was not convinced of his own complaint of betrayal by the Pope, for while Brownpony alone might be foolish enough to launch such a venture, Brownpony had good advisers on Nomad affairs. Some were sent to him by Holy Madness, Lord of the Hordes. And Eltür thought highly of one of the Pope’s secretaries, the Nomadic interpreter monk Nyinden, who spoke Grasshopper so well. None of these counselors would allow Brownpony to believe that Chuntar Hadala’s incursion into Nomad country was acceptable to the Grasshopper, even were it not militarily stupid on the face of it. When his initial berserk reaction to the news of the advent subsided, Demon Light expected his war party to be confronted—not by a force of official crusaders launched by a Pope, but by a motley parade put in motion by the lunacy of lesser men.

When Brownpony first learned about Hadala’s mission, he himself cried betrayal, and his anger was stirred against his successor in the Secretariat of Extraordinary Ecclesiastical Concerns. The Pope could think of no reason why Sorely Nauwhat would betray him or lend support to a harebrained scheme to arm and assist such dubious allies as Hadala’s flock of gleps in the Valley, at the cost of probable hardening by Texark of its western frontier. Hadala had gone crazy in the service of his flock, the Pope decided. He would think thus: If Brownpony can arm the Nomads, I can arm the real Children of the Pope—not the spooks in the Suckamints, but the gleps in the Watchitah and Ol’zarks. The Pope could understand Hadala’s passion for his own people, but not Sorely Nauwhat’s duplicity in the ridiculous undertaking.

The possibility that his old friend Nauwhat had simply gone over to the enemy never occurred to Brownpony until it was put to him by Abraha Cardinal Deacon Linkono, the New Jerusalemite schoolteacher who was invited to join the Curia because he knew everyone in this nation now playing host to the papacy.

“But what could Filpeo Harq possibly offer that would tempt Sorely Nauwhat to betray us?” Pope Amen II wanted to know.

“The papacy perhaps?” the schoolteacher guessed.

Stung by Linkono’s speculation, Brownpony sent an immediate message to Valana ordering Cardinal Nauwhat and Brother St. George to appear before him. By including Blacktooth in his summons, the Pope hoped to alleviate suspicion in case Sorely really was guilty. Within two weeks, however, the messenger returned with the news that Blacktooth had gone with the Valanan Militia, and that Nauwhat had disappeared shortly after their departure. The news was very depressing to Brownpony. He called his Nomad messengers and instructed one of them to pursue Hadala’s militia and order him to turn back. He deputized another as an Officer of the Curia to arrest Nauwhat on sight if found in Nomad country and to arrest Hadala if he disobeyed the order to retreat. He sent a third messenger to assure the Grasshopper sharf that Hadala’s sortie was not authorized, for the Pope feared the wrath of Demon Light.

The Nomad messenger-service families, both Wilddog and Grasshopper, had for decades enjoyed a monopoly on a High Plains relay parcel delivery between Valana and New Rome. They kept fixed camps, and for this un-Nomadic practice they were not admired within their hordes. Sneering warriors would ask to see their “vegetable patches.” But they had made money, and they used it to buy horses from outsiders, thus freeing themselves from family obligations incurred by both buyer and seller when the seller was a Nomad mare woman. Brownpony had always used the relay families for communicating with the sharfs and the tribal chiefs. Now he used them for keeping in touch with the Qæsach dri Vørdar, and he was encouraging the families to establish relay stations north of the Misery River and well beyond the reach of Texark patrols. He had already sent messages toward the King of the Tenesi and several other rulers beyond the Great River, and he was awaiting news from that front.

To New Jerusalem Brownpony had brought two Wilddog and two Grasshopper riders to open a branch office of the families’ service. In the abrupt wake of Nauwhat’s and Sorely’s defection, he now found need for three of them. To one Grasshopper rider he gave a message for Demon Light. It “authorized” Bråm to exercise the papal warrant for the arrest of two princes of the Church in his territory with authorization to imprison them humanely. Forgetting for a moment that the Pope understood their dialect, this Grasshopper rider said to his kinsman, “Our sharf will surely appreciate these new powers in his own realm.”

“Your family must send us someone less sarcastic,” Pope Amen said to him in half-decent Grasshopper. “You can pass your message on to the next Wilddog relay rider tomorrow. Then you can start riding home to tall-grass country. Your family can send us your replacement when you get there.”

He stopped looking at the man and spoke to the Wilddog rider. “You can be home tomorrow, and relay my message to Hadala from there. It will get to him quicker that way. We can’t give arrest powers to a Wilddog in Grasshopper country. We do deputize you to arrest Nauwhat anywhere else you may find him. There will be a reward for him. Spread the word on that.”

He turned to the second Grasshopper. “You must chase Hadala all the way to Ol’zarkia if you need to. Give him a copy of the same message. If he’s not already obeying it and coming home by the time you catch up with him, you can read aloud to his men paragraph seven. It excommunicates all Hadala’s followers who do not disband and desert at once. Arm yourself, but try to get help from your sharf in making the arrest.” He then looked pointedly at the maker of the sarcastic remark.

“When you see a man you can’t control about to take the law into his own hands, you might as well save yourself embarrassment and put the law in his hands yourself.”

The man—having already been fired—answered back: “Nevertheless, Your Holiness will be embarrassed when I tell Sharf Eltür you said that.”

Brownpony glared at him for a moment, then broke out laughing. “All right, you can come back here after you pass the message for Bråm to the relay. Someday we’ll need an insolent rider with a gift for blackmail.”

Grandmother Grasshopper raised insolent colts and children. “Maybe I’ll come back, and maybe I won’t,” the relay rider said.

Chuntar Hadala’s war party and ammunition train traveled faster than anyone expected. The moon was nearly full again in the late days of July, but when it left the world dark, setting before dawn, Blacktooth could see distant points of light on the eastern horizon. They looked like fires. Would farmers keep night fires burning? Nimmy knew that a relay messenger had come from the west with a message for Cardinal Hadala on the 28th. The messenger had seemed surprised to find Cardinal Nauwhat with the train. Of course, the Cardinal Secretary had left Valana two days late, and by night, so that no one in the city could be sure of his destination or whereabouts. The messenger left again, but the effect of the message on the cardinals was to command a forced march. The troop rode eastward until midnight.

The next morning, the sun arose above the distant hills where Nimmy had seen points of firelight in the night. Beyond those hills would lie the sprawling glep settlements of “the Valley.” After a fast breakfast of biscuits and tea, the militia rode on toward them.

Two days later, near sundown, the Grasshopper sharf with a war band overtook them from the west. The militia had already camped for the night. After conferring with the cardinals, Major Gleaver ordered the wagons arranged in a defensive array and the men to take cover in expectation of an attack.

“This is crazy, Nimmy,” Aberlott said. “They are allies.”

“Just don’t obey any order to shoot. I’ll talk to them.” Blacktooth walked out of the defensive position and went to meet the Grasshopper warriors as they approached. He could hear Major Gleaver yelling at him to come back, and he stopped once when a Nomad raised a rifle at him; Demon Light spoke a word, and the rifle was lowered. He recognized the monk and beckoned him on.

A bullet struck the ground near Blacktooth’s feet. The report came from behind him. The Nomad who had lifted the rifle lifted it again and returned fire. Nimmy looked back in time to see one of the lieutenants standing beside Gleaver drop his pistol and fall to the ground.

“For God’s sake, stop shooting, you fools!” Nimmy yelled.

“I’ll try you and hang you!” the major yelled back.

Behind Gleaver stood Chuntar Hadala, looking grim.

Sharf Bråm lingered just beyond gunshot range, and he sat there for several minutes while the monk came up to him.

“You remember me?” Blacktooth asked.

Bråm nodded. “But what is the Pope’s servant doing with these men?”

“I’m not the Pope’s servant now. My master left Valana without me.”

“Yes, I knew that. I took him south to meet Dion. He thought you abandoned him. Did you?”

“Not intentionally. I was not in the city when the Palace exploded. When I came back, he was gone and I was drafted into the militia.”

“You seem not to have been told the news.”

“What news is that, Sharf Bråm?”

Demon Light, unable to read for himself, handed the monk a letter. Blacktooth read it with mounting dismay, looked at Eltür, then back at the cardinals.

“This must be the same message Cardinal Hadala got.”

“You go tell him what it says, and ask him. Then tell him if he continues east, I shall not arrest him if he travels alone.”

“Alone? I don’t understand. What about Cardinal Nauwhat?”

It was Eltür’s turn to be surprised. “Is he here? Then they can travel east together. The rest of you will stay here.”

“I don’t understand. They seem to be expecting you to attack.”

“They expect me to arrest them. Doesn’t the message say that? What they don’t know is that I already sent a messenger to the Texark border guard. The enemy knows you’re coming, and he knows why. The only way Hadala can keep the guns from the Hannegan is to give them to us. And the only way the cardinals can escape from me is to surrender to the Hannegan’s border guard. Then the rest of you go home. Remind them what Høngan Ösle Chür did to Esitt Loyte. We can do as much for them, if we have to arrest them.”

The letter Blacktooth had read said nothing about handing the cardinals over to the Hannegan, but he chose not to argue. When he returned to the camp, everyone was watching him and Ulad was waiting to seize him. At the last moment, he changed direction to put a group of recruits between himself and the spook sergeant. He spoke quickly to Aberlott:

“The sharf has orders from the Pope to arrest the cardinals. If we resist, we are all excommunicated. And the enemy is ready for us, because Bråm warned them we were coming. Tell the men, especially Sergeants Gai-See and Woosoh-Loh. Tell them to pray, and let Hadala see them praying.”

He tried to get to the cardinals before Ulad got to him, but the giant was fast. He arrived in a headlock and was forced to his knees. Sorely Nauwhat since joining the expedition had seemed anxious to avoid Blacktooth, and he now hurried away. Chuntar Hadala bent over the monk. He was a glep himself, his skin dappled with various shades of brown—a common mutation—but he was a handsome man in spite of it, with a goatee and a long mustache that had once been golden.

“Well, Brother, tell us about your conversation with the Nomad warlord,” said the Vicar Apostolic to the Watchitah Nation.

“Your Eminence won’t shoot the messenger?”

“Nobody sent you as a messenger!” the cardinal snapped. “And the major may yet have you shot. Just tell us what you found out.”

“Have you seen the fires in the east at night, m’Lord?”

“Yes, they are our people’s beacons. They know we’re here.”

“So does Texark. The sharf warned them you were coming. The fires belong to the cavalry.”

The lighter patches of the cardinal’s skin drained of color. “They are supposed to be allies!” he gasped. “Why does he sell us out to the enemy?”

Blacktooth, under threat and afraid, decided not to mention the Pope’s letter directly. Hadala already possessed a copy.

The monk resumed: “He says he will not arrest you and Cardinal Nauwhat if you surrender to the Texark troops. He orders the rest of us to surrender the weapons to him and get out of his country.”

Hadala sputtered, and went in search of Nauwhat. Soon he came back with an order.

“Go see him again. Invite him here to parley. We will stay out in the open where his men can see us. If he comes alone, he may come armed. Do you think an oath by me that he will not be harmed or taken captive would help?”

Blacktooth thought about it for a moment. “No. He might find it insulting.”

“Do the best you can without it, then.”

The sharf was not reluctant. He borrowed a second pistol from a warrior, tied the leash of a heavily built war dog to his belt, grasped the monk by his uniform collar, and began walking toward Hadala’s encampment with a gun to Nimmy’s head.

“I’m not going to hurt you.”

“I’m no good as a hostage, Sharf Bråm. They won’t care if you kill me.”

As they stopped before Hadala, Gleaver, and Hadala’s Grasshopper guide, Eltür released Blacktooth, untied the dog’s leash, and barked a single word at the animal, who began to growl and stare at the cardinal.

“If I’m shot, the dog kills you.”

Hadala spat venom at Demon Light for trafficking with the enemy, and Blacktooth translated it.

The sharf ignored it. Bråm waved an arm toward the east and spoke in short sentences; between them Blacktooth translated:

“This eastward lane here will be kept open. It goes from your camp to the hills yonder and to sunrise. When an armed man steps into the lane, we shoot him. An unarmed man gets one warning shot. But you and the other Red Hat may pass, going east. Take with you any disarmed officers you wish. Red Beard ordered me to arrest and hold you. I am Sharf of the Grasshopper Horde. I give orders here. Empty Sky is my Pope. The Wild Horse Woman is my sister. Høngan Ösle is my Lord.” Demon Light gestured broadly at the sky, at the earth, and again toward the northwest prairie where his Lord would be encamped. After a pause, he went on grandly. “I, the sharf of this country, offer you Grasshopper hospitality. You will be required to gather dry turds for the kitchen fires. And the women will make you shovel horseshit. They will tease you a lot, but you will not be hurt. When Red Beard sends for you, you must go to him. If you don’t accept our hospitality, you just march east. Without arms and without men. The Hannegan’s men will take you in. He may be glad to get you.”

“Are you including Major Gleaver?” Hadala asked sourly.

Eltür grew impatient, and began talking in longer sentences. He knew nothing of Gleaver. He had already been told he could take unarmed officers. Bråm made scattered remarks about the cardinal’s stupidity. Blacktooth waited for him to pause and then summarized.

“Let Major Gleaver cooperate in his own disarmament, he says. The sharf will leave him in command to hold the men together on the trek back home. He says the rabble will get out of his tall-grass country quicker if we are under command. But if Gleaver wants to surrender to Texark, Sharf Bråm will let him pass.”

“He knows we outnumber his men nearly four to one. What makes him think…”

“He can stop us? Shall I ask?”

“Ask him if two of his men are equal to seven of ours.”

The sharf chuckled as soon as Nimmy translated, then shared a few private jokes with his interpreter. Hadala became angry.

“What does he say? Stop having your own private conversation.”

“He says seven-against-two would be fair, if you leave your wagons undefended. Your seven men with seven guns might chase his two men with two guns for several days, inconclusively, but you would lose the wagons. If we defend the wagons, we’ll just be pinned down and starved out. And if you don’t make up your minds soon, Texark will come out and get the wagons.”

“Are those his words, or yours, Brother St. George? Be careful you don’t go too far.” After this admonition, Hadala began speaking slowly enough for Nimmy to translate simultaneously.

“Look, we are as worried as you are that the wagons will be intercepted by the patrol as we try to take them in. So why don’t you help us? Your people have been well supplied with arms, and you don’t need my wagons. The occupied territory ahead is just a narrow strip along the western frontier of the Watchitah Nation. It’s hardly more than a double roadway. The outer road is patrolled by Texark troops; they look outward toward your country. The inner road is patrolled by the Valley Customs Service; they look inward at the Watchitah Nation, my people. I myself am on the Customs Service Board, for the Church. Their patrol will help us, once we’re past the Texark troopers and the patrol sees who I am. If you could just help us hold back the Texark riders until we get the wagons through, we’ll all cut and run afterward.”

“You are another Christian war sharf? Another military genius in a red hat? There are so many of you.” Blacktooth found himself unable to avoid echoing Bråm’s sarcastic tone, although he could see that the cardinal was beginning to seethe. “But what will stop the Texark cavalry from riding right straight into the heart of the Valley of the Gleps to take the wagons away from you?”

“Why, we hoped to cross over by night, unknown to them. But you ruined that by warning them. And the treaty between…”

Hadala’s explanation was cut off by a Grasshopper war cry. Someone shouted that a large dust cloud and a probable party of horsemen was seen in the east.

“They’ve decided to come and get you themselves, glep priest,” said Bråm with a savage smile. “Now, we are going to get out of the way. Aren’t you lucky? You can fight them instead of us.”

All Nomads took immediately to horseback, and Blacktooth watched them ride away toward the northwest. He was tempted to mount up and ride after them, but Ulad had threatened to shoot him in the back for desertion if he again broke ranks.

Hadala looked at him for a moment. “Do you have an opinion, Brother Corporal St. George?” he demanded sternly.

“Those riders will be here in a few minutes. That is my opinion, Your Eminence.” Blacktooth turned and broke into a trot toward the wagons. Sorely Nauwhat and the major had been standing there watching the meeting between Bråm and Cardinal Hadala until the shouting started, but Nauwhat had faded from view.

“Cardinal Hadala’s done with you, Private St. George!” Gleaver snapped at him. “Report to Sergeant Ulad. Get your arms buckled on, and get in the saddle.”

Still wearing corporal’s chevrons, Nimmy took note of his reduction in rank without openly acknowledging it. Earlier in the day, the major had been yelling at him about a court-martial and the gallows, so the demotion was a welcome commutation of sentence. When Ulad looked at him, however, he could still see a readiness to kill.

Having observed the Grasshopper withdrawal, the Texark commander halted his advance just beyond rifle range. The troopers dismounted. Some of them began digging.

Demon Light drew up his warriors in a half circle just out of range to the west of the Valanan brigade’s position. Blacktooth had no doubt that they would fight to prevent the guns and ammunition from falling into the hands of the imperial forces, but they would not begin to fight until Hadala and his men were defeated by those forces. The Valanan light horse, untested troops and their spook commanders, were sandwiched between two superior war bands.

It was almost nightfall on Tuesday the 2nd of August. The moon rose an hour after sundown. During that hour, Sorely Nauwhat vanished, never to be seen again west of Texark frontiers.

“There is going to be a mutiny,” Aberlott whispered to Blacktooth at the first opportunity, “unless the glep cardinal quits.”

Nimmy shook his head. “These townsmen could mutiny in Valana, but not out here between two unfriendly armies.”

Chuntar Hadala remained at the head of his command. Sergeant Ulad shot a deserter who made a break for Grasshopper lines during the night. When the body was dragged back to camp, it turned out to be the cardinal’s Grasshopper guide, who was only quitting his job to return to his people.

Blacktooth told Aberlott: “He was the sharf’s man, and here we all are in the sharf’s jurisdiction—so look at the sergeant now.” The monk was remembering how Ulad at their first meeting in Valana had expressed hate for all Nomads. But now that he had killed one, he showed in his face not satisfaction but an astonishing fright.