Saint Leibowitz and the Wild Horse Woman

CHAPTER 26

WHEN THEY TOLD BLACKTOOTH WHAT HAD BEEN done to Ædrea, they were prepared to restrain him and tie him down until he listened to the whole story, including their master’s promise to commute her sentence as soon as the Pope could leave New Jerusalem. Instead Nimmy listened in silence, wept a little, but in the end said, “Good! But what about Gai-See? Has he come back yet?”

“We have heard nothing,” Axe told him.

Nimmy wanted an audience with the Pope, but Axe convinced him the time was not right. They waited five more days for the warrior’s return. Then Blacktooth said to Foreman Jing, “Come with me to Arch Hollow.”

“Why?”

“Because I am no longer the Pope’s servant. Nor was Gai-See when he started obeying Hadala and Nauwhat. The guards will not answer my questions. They may talk to you.”

Jing agreed. They left the municipal area in the early morning and were back to their servants’ quarters before sundown. Blacktooth allowed Jing to tell Wooshin the bad news.

“Gai-See arrived at Arch Hollow a few days after Blacktooth and Aberlott. The guards there seized him, charged him with murder, and escorted him straight up through the mountain passes. They took him to Slojon’s court in the central square. There he was indicted, and thence he was sent to the cage. Slojon went directly to the Pope and informed him of the action. They met alone with no witnesses.”

“I remember that meeting!” said Axe. “I did not know what it was about.”

“Of course,” said Qum-Do. “You were there too,” he said to Jing.

“So, why aren’t you looking angry, Axe?” Blacktooth asked.

“At whom?”

“At the Holy Father, of course! For approving Gai-See’s arrest.”

So unthinkable was the suggestion, so irreverent to their master, that they all glared at him.

“Well, false friends, I am going to see the Pope about Gai-See!” said Blacktooth.

“No you’re not,” said Wooshin, laying a hand on his arm. “His Holiness is not ready—”

Having called him a false friend without provoking him, Blacktooth slapped him. So unexpected was the event that Axe failed to evade the blow. Nimmy stepped back defensively.

“You’ll have to kill me to stop me, Axe, and your master won’t like that.”

“But you’re not supposed to crash in without—”

“That’s not for you to say. I am going to see the Pope. Come along if you want, all of you.” He glanced at Ri’s warriors. Qum-Do and Foreman Jing were standing at hand-on-sword alert. Either of them would abandon Gai-See to his fate without protest, if their master so much as frowned at him. So would Axe.

Nimmy turned his back on them and walked out of the house. He could hear them coming behind him. He had recovered from the beating he had taken from the outlaws. The earth felt good under his feet again. However briefly, he had visited his ancestors. While with them he had seen something within himself as in a mirror. The earth, any earth, was his to walk on now. Moreover he had seen the Nomad wife of the Pontiff, red as the sunset, soaring over the corpse-strewn landscape. Gai-See was only the beginning of what he wanted to see the Pope about. Blacktooth was vaguely conscious of casting aside his vow of obedience, but felt no qualms about it this time. Ædrea was in his mind like a vision, but he had nothing to say about her.

At the entrance to the audience room, a member of the Papal Guard armed with a halberd blocked the doorway. Blacktooth stamped the guard’s slipper with his heel, seized the halberd, and rammed his stomach with the butt of it to get inside the door. His Oriental companions watched the fight without comment. Once inside the doors, he was seized by Cardinal Linkono and the Grand Cardinal Penitentiary. Axe stepped in to assist them now, but Brownpony called out from the throne.

“Let him in. Let them all in.”

Blacktooth strode up to the dais and fell to his knees before his Pontiff. The Pope reached down to lift him up, but the monk evaded his hands and stood erect. Brownpony regarded him with faint amusement.

“Is this so urgent, Brother St. George? We were discussing policy with our eminent brethren. About Ædrea—”

“It’s not about Ædrea. Who do you see here besides your eminent brethren?”

“Why, I see an unhappy monk, and three of my personal guards.”

“Why not four of your personal guards, Holy Father?”

“Oh. I did not know that you and Gai-See were close. It is unfortunate.”

“We were not close at all, and your betrayal is worse than unfortunate.”

Brownpony frowned as if not quite believing his ears.

“I see it is possible for a Pope to do evil.”

Against these insulting words to the master, swords were drawn.

Nimmy turned his back on the Pope and faced his companions. “If your master wills my death, cowards, why do you hesitate? Hit!”

Immediately he turned to Brownpony again. “Can’t you see what you’ve done? Right here before you, they’re ready to do what Gai-See did. Except that Gai-See thought he was right and they know they are wrong. And Your Holiness accepts this kind of loyalty in good conscience?”

Brownpony was watching his former Nomadic secretary in apparent fascination. Blacktooth heard one sword return to its sheath. That would be Foreman Jing, he guessed. Wooshin would kill him without the Pope’s nod if he thought the Pope’s best interest would be served by the killing.

“Blacktooth, you were always a quick study, but this is a new role, isn’t it?”

“Holy Father, as a Catholic, I have to believe that what you bind on Earth is bound also in Heaven, and I have to believe that when you are speaking about faith and morals, the Holy Ghost prevents you from speaking any error.”

“You have to believe, but do you?”

“I have a question. Is a declaration of war an assertion about faith and morals? Ever? Even if you call it a holy war? Father Suarez taught—and he was extending Saint Augustine’s teaching—that a war to convert the heathen can never be just. Can a war against heretical Christians be holy, if a war against the heathen is unjust?”

“The war is against neither heathens nor heretical Christians. It is against a tyrant who usurps the apostolic power and oppresses the whole world.”

“But it’s heathens and Christians who are killed, while the tyrant still lives and the apostle is still in power.”

Brownpony seemed to swear under his breath for a moment, then recovered. “You wrote me that you killed a man in battle, Nimmy. Is that what’s wrong with you now?”

Blacktooth nodded and spoke slowly. “The man in a Texark uniform was a child of yours, Holiness: a glep from the Valley. I meant to miss him. My aim was bad, and I hit him in the belly. What he wanted from me then was a bullet in the brain, but I cut his throat instead, because a sergeant was watching. Yes, I think that is what’s wrong with me, Holy Father. Eltür Bråm, because I had already killed, would have made me a Nomad warrior with only the initiation, without the ordeal of battle. Then they would stop calling me ‘Nimmy,’ he said, and stop laughing about it. I don’t mind the name or the laughter. I want never to kill again. But I don’t want to see Gai-See punished. He saw Hadala as a fugitive from your commands. He couldn’t arrest him or Gleaver; he did what he thought was necessary.”

“He had no license from me.”

“You accepted his services as a warrior. Did you really withhold from him the license that he assumed was his?”

Pope Amen frowned and called out for everyone but Blacktooth and one guard to leave the room. It was the guard with the sore stomach who stayed, and who sealed the doors after the others were outside.

“Go on, finish what you have to say.”

Blacktooth looked around to make sure Cardinal Linkono was gone. “For one thing, Gai-See is a member of a religious order, and—”

“I see,” Brownpony interrupted. “I claimed jurisdiction in Ædrea’s case, why not in Gai-See’s? Because no pope has yet recognized the Order to which Ri’s men say they belong, that’s why. I meant to do it sooner or later, but I can’t do it just to free Gai-See. It’s too transparent. But go on, if you have more to say.”

“I cannot, Your Holiness, speak to the Vicar of Christ on Earth as freely as I did to my former employer, the Secretary for Extraordinary Ecclesiastic Concerns. I don’t know the Vicar of Christ.”

“It seems to me you’ve been speaking freely enough. But suppose I just take off my zucchetto and tell you that the Vicar of Christ has taken the day off. I am still Elia Brownpony—the bastard son of a lesbian nomad and a Texark rapist. So, Nyinden, farmboy Nomad, sometime monk, sometime lover, speak your mind. I may throw you out, but I won’t throw you in a dungeon.”

“Then release Gai-See from a dungeon.”

“I didn’t imprison Gai-See. Cardinal Linkono did.”

“Without your permission?”

“You don’t understand the situation here, Blacktooth. We are the guests of the city. I won’t say we’re captives here—until I try to return to Valana and see if they let me go. Cardinal Linkono informed me of Gai-See’s arrest. Chuntar Hadala played bishop to these people, because he was bishop to the Valley whence they came. Slojon and everybody here knows that I sent men to arrest Hadala, and, well—”

“Oh. So when Gai-See killed him, they thought you ordered the execution.”

“Not yet, but they will certainly suspect it if I secure his release now. He killed a bishop, and prince of the Church. Cardinal Hadala was popular here.”

“I was there when it happened, Holy Father. All along, Gleaver and his officers had been shooting those of us who wavered or held back. In that light, Gai-See shot in self-defense and the defense of us all. But first he crawled up to me under fire. He asked if it was true that Cardinal Hadala was defying your orders, and betraying you. I told him it was so. I knew what he might do when I told him that, and I hoped he would do it. So I am the one who sentenced the cardinal to death. Have them arrest me too, Holy Father.”

“I’ll see what I can do,” Brownpony said darkly, and beckoned to the guard and breathed a quiet order. The guard with the sore stomach seized Blacktooth’s arm, led him straight to jail, and put him in Gai-See’s cell. Gai-See embraced him. During the embrace, the guard reached through the bars and punched Blacktooth hard in the kidney with the butt of the halberd.

“I’ll be back for you soon,” he said with a sweet grin.

Gai-See was not alone in jail. Two men who claimed to be political refugees from the Empire and who now sought asylum in New Jerusalem were imprisoned there until their claims were thoroughly investigated. One was Urik Thon Yordin, S.I., the Ignatzian who was also a professor of history at the secular university at Texark, and whom Brownpony had suspected of hiring the thugs who tried to kill them on Easter before the last conclave. How desperate the man must be to escape Texark, that he should come here for asylum! He glanced at Blacktooth once, but neglected to recognize him.

The other man was Torrildo.

“Blacktooth, my God! You can’t imagine what that beast Benefez did to me!”

Nimmy sat down on Gai-See’s bed and fell to questioning the warrior. He tried to ignore Torrildo’s confession of the intimately brutal sins the Archbishop of Texark had perpetrated upon his person.

According to Gai-See, Yordin and Torrildo were refugees, not from a terrible Emperor, but from a furious Archbishop who had suddenly been made to realize that he could never be Pope, even if his nephew conquered all of his enemies. At the university, Yordin had made the mistake of saying openly that Benefez was now non papabilis, and Torrildo himself was part of the Archbishop’s problem which insured that he would never wear the tiara. In each fugitive’s case, it was his own confessor who, after hearing the rumbles from the top of the mountain, advised his penitent to do his penance in some land far from the reach of the Imperium and the Diocesan Ordinary. So there they sat in a New Jerusalem jail, hoping to be of some value to a Pope who had the power to set them free. Blacktooth found this interesting and ironic, but decided not to concern himself with their fate.

After a while, the guard came back for him and they returned to the throne room. He asked Wooshin in a whisper if he knew about Yordin and Torrildo, but the Axe ignored him.

“Is Gai-See sick?” Brownpony wanted to know. “Is he mistreated or badly fed?”

“He is sick at heart. Keeping him caged is mistreatment, and so is the food.”

“If you had not been hiding out with Amen Specklebird when they blew up the Palace, none of this would have happened,” Brownpony told him. “You would have come here with me. Now you are furious, as if it were my intent that you fight or kill in battle.”

“I was not ‘hiding out’ with the Pope.”

“Just praying?”

“Not quite. We talked. One thing we spoke of was war, and I made the traditional mention of ‘the Church Militant on Earth, the Church Suffering in Purgatory, and the Church Triumphant in Heaven.’ But the Pope said to me, ‘There is no Church Triumphant in Heaven, although I have heard that foolishness before.’ I asked him why he said that, in disagreement with all the elders, and he told me, ‘John says it. Chapter Twenty-one, Apocalypse, ‘‘And I saw no temple therein.’’ In the presence of God, the Church is a discarded crutch.

“What I am saying to you, Holy Father, is that if the Church Militant on Earth does not produce members of a Church Triumphant in Heaven, then its militancy is not…”

“Stop. I bow to all the words of my predecessor, but not to your explanation of them. Especially not on the subject of war.”

Nimmy fell silent, feeling stupid.

“It wasn’t murder, when you accidentally shot that man. You don’t need absolution for it—but I can shrive you if you like.” The Pope stared at Blacktooth’s face for a time, and began to frown. “I think you would not accept absolution from me if I gave it to you!”

“You have already given me a plenary indulgence and a passport to paradise in Scitote Tyrannum, Holy Father. What more could I ask?”

Brownpony reddened at the sarcasm, but Blacktooth persisted in standing there with his hands spread wide as if to receive gifts. In reality, he was frozen in fright by what he had said.

“Get out of here!” Brownpony erupted. “Go visit your patron saint at the priory. I don’t want to hear this.”

“May I be excused now?” Stupid again!

“Yes. Go.”

Blacktooth glanced at the Pope’s hand. Brownpony did not lift his ring, and Blacktooth did not reach. He made a fast genuflection and beat a faster retreat. He did not see Brownpony again during that winter.

He took residence at the Priory of Saint Leibowitz-in-the-Cottonwoods, where Prior Singing Cow St. Martha assigned him work in exchange for room and board. He was not required to assist in the Divine Office, but he was not forbidden either. So he added his voice to the choir, took dictation and penned letters for the prior, washed dishes and took his turn as cook. The brothers were kinder to him here than at the abbey, although they were the same monks; he had known them all at the monastery in the desert. They were all specialists. Brother Jonan, who used to wake Blacktooth every morning for Lauds, was a mathematician. Brother Elwen, who had been Torrildo’s lover and went over the wall, had come back repentant and become skilled in his previous studies: mechanics and engineering. Old Brother Tudlen, whom Blacktooth had barely known because he had been on leave from the abbey for so many years at sea, was a naval architect, astronomer, and navigator; he seemed somehow out of place this far from the ocean, but Brownpony, like Filpeo, had ambitions. Tudlen had built a schooner in old Tampa Bay, and it was supposedly the property of the Order; here in the mountains where the air was thin and clear, he was grinding a telescope mirror. The others were specialists in Church history, in political and military history, and in the work of Boedullus among other authorities on the Magna Civitas and its catastrophic collapse.

Persuading Mayor Dion to permit the opening of the Leibowitzian priory in New Jerusalem had been no small undertaking. Singing Cow had only high praise for the Pope as a persuader and as a devotee of their patron saint. “His Holiness convinced Dion that we would be of educational value to the community here. But so far, no schools have called on us; Linkono runs them. These spooks don’t want their superbabies growing up to be monks. There are two layers of religion here: Catholic above ground, and New Adventist below ground. They’re out to save the world. Hadala was typical.”

“The old Jew Benjamin told me about them,” said Blacktooth, “but he kept mumbling, ‘It’s still not him, still not him,’ and I don’t know what he meant.”

Singing Cow smiled as if he knew but said nothing.

He confessed to Father Prior “Mooo,” as the Brethren sometimes called him. As one ex-Grasshopper farm kid to another, it proved a strange experience for them both.

“Were you taken into the Nomad war cult, my son?” Father St. Martha asked, in connection with Blacktooth’s confession of killing a man in battle.

“No, Father. The Grasshopper people treated me with kindness, as they would a boy who had not yet passed through the ordeal. I did not intend to shoot the man.”

“Of course not, but you intended to cut his throat, did you not?”

“I thought he was begging me to. I still think so.”

Singing Cow, who sometimes liked to think of himself as a Nomad, mentioned that the Church frowned upon assisting a suicide, but that he would probably have done the same; still it was an act to be repented.

Nimmy failed to mention disobedience among his many sins. Singing Cow did not remind him. Absolution was forthcoming, and the penance was mild: pray five mysteries of the rosary and begin singing for his supper.

One cold night he and the Cow were walking home through the snow after singing Compline in the neighborhood Church which they shared with the local pastor and his small flock. Compline was the night prayer of the Church, concerned with sleep and wakefulness, life and death, sinning and receiving grace. But it was no lullaby, and left him feeling lonely.

“I can tell you something I think you’ll want to hear, Father.”

“Tell away,” said Singing Cow.

“Remember when we ran away and tried to join the Grasshopper? They fed us, let us rest two days, and then drove us out of the camp with whips in a snow like this. Were you as bitter as I was?”

“Those rope whips! Listen, I still don’t know what we did to offend them. I used to think that you or Wren must have made a pass at a girl. Because our parents farmed? Was that why? Yes, I was bitter, and Grasshopper Nomads still make me uncomfortable.”

“If we had fought back, we might have had a chance; instead, we just cringed and ran. There is a Grasshopper Weejus there who thinks she remembers three wandering orphans at about the time we visited their tents. She explained to me why they offered us no more than food, water, and two nights’ sleep.”

“Explaining cruelty doesn’t absolve it.”

“Perhaps not. But I’ll try to repeat what she told me as best I remember. ‘Who wants to adopt a teenage nimmy,’ she said, ‘no matter how he was raised? A Weejus spends four or five years feeding him, clothing him, and teaching him the horses. In exchange for what? Unskilled and lazy labor. He’s horny and he gets in fights. He starts trouble with other families. Maybe she catches him coupling with one of her own daughters, but they can’t be married under the breeding rules. Or worse, he runs off to marry a daughter of her horse-breeding rival! A family that mourns a dead son would be better off adopting a young cougar than another boy.’”

Singing Cow laughed. “She knew about your kitten?”

“I was carrying Librada when I visited her. She herself had adopted a pubescent orphan girl. But among Nomads, when a girl grows up she stays with her mother. A boy grows up and leaves her and her whole family when he marries. Motherless boys are as welcome as leprosy there, unless they can fight and join the war cult.”

“Rope whips.” Cow was ruminating on it.

“That was more than twenty years ago, Father. This year, the sharf himself wanted me to stay and tutor his nephews. I would have been adopted, at my age.”

“Well, I’m glad you told me why they were cruel. Charity’s rarely convenient; sometimes it’s completely impractical.” Singing Cow thought for a moment. “The sharf’s grandmother probably believed your vow of chastity protected all of the daughters,” he added.

Blacktooth looked away and blushed. “You’re supposed to forget what I tell you in confession!” he complained as they entered the monks’ dormitory.

At the small priory, each man took his turn at cooking or menial labor. Blacktooth had been told by the Axe that the Pope had wanted his recipe for summonabisch stew, and when his turn came to cook, he asked Father Mooo’s permission to prepare the dish for all the Brothers, who needed permission to eat meat. When permission was granted, Blacktooth bought the ingredients from a local butcher, prepared the feast, and sent a quart of it to the Papal Palace. The lack of a response seemed an indicator of the Pope’s disfavor. Librada consumed the leftovers with gusto. She had caught a mouse on her first day, thus insuring her room and board.

“Why did you name her Librada? What does it mean?” Cow asked.

“It was Spanish, and means ‘set-free.’ Because that’s what she’ll be, before she’s much bigger and eats one of us.”

The winter of ’45–’46 was the mildest in memory. Most of the Wilddog Horde moved their cattle south as usual. Hannegan’s agents among the motherless outlaw bands observed the migration, but saw nothing unusual to report until March, when all the warriors of the horde assembled as an army under Lord Høngan himself, with Oxsho second-in-command. They rode swiftly eastward for several days, then south to the river. Before Filpeo Harq learned about the movement, the Nomad horsemen had forded the Nady Ann and attacked from the rear those Texark forces dug-in along the east bank of the Washita. With them they brought three Grasshopper dog trainers and nearly a hundred dogs who would kill any unmounted man who did not smell like a Nomad. At least six of Sharf Oxsho’s warriors were bitten for not having the usual Grasshopper aroma; by the light of the full Pascal moon the dogs tore out the throats of Texark soldiers in the trenches along with some of their reluctant Jackrabbit allies who ate too many onions to smell friendly. The dogs’ attack on the night of Holy Saturday enabled the forces of Önmu Kun to cross the Washita without coming under fire until they charged the fortifications with fixed bayonets. By Easter’s sunrise, the trainers had regained control of ravening dogs and the battle was won without further Jackrabbit casualties, and Mayor Dion’s well-rested men crossed the river to carry the war eastward on horseback.

After the fray, Høngan Ösle Chür met with Önmu Kun in the middle of a battlefield at dawn; he then rode with the Jackrabbit’s forces without taking command. This was his reason for defying his shamans. The Jackrabbit were lacking in respect for Önmu the smuggler. Their respect for the Lord of the Hordes was enhanced by the fact that he was not Jackrabbit. Such was the self-contempt of a conquered people.

Father Steps-on-Snake had recently come to the vicinity and he now celebrated the Mass of the Resurrection at noon on March 25th—the earliest Easter in many years—and gave the Eucharist to Lord Høngan Ösle together with Sharfs Oxsho Xon and Önmu Kun in the sight of all the warriors and the Jackrabbit population of the region. Thus did the faithful rejoice in the victory of the Nomad over tyranny at the same time as the victory of the Christ over death. Never in the memory of old Steps-on-Snake had the subject people expressed such jubilation on this highest feast day.

Holy Madness spent nearly a week building up the Jackrabbit’s esteem for the Jackrabbit sharf by accompanying him everywhere, listening to Önmu address the rebel fighters and civilian groups, then reinforcing the sharf’s words with a few of his own, bringing on rousing cheers from the multitude.

There were about seven hundred unwounded prisoners. Jackrabbit warriors had begun to maim them until Holy Madness put a stop to it. That Nomad custom had been abandoned soon after the Texark conquest, except for captured spies and saboteurs, but the Jackrabbit was only trying to honor the custom, for they had been told by Önmu what Høngan had done to Esitt Loyte.

But the forces of the Hannegan were rushing westward to rejoin the battle against the Jackrabbit rebels, and Önmu’s gathering army now marched to meet them following Dion’s light horse. Having destroyed the enemy forces in the immediate vicinity and inspired the Jackrabbit fighters with a new enthusiasm for battle, Høngan and Oxsho withdrew the Wilddog horsemen from the area by crossing the Washita and riding westward to cross the Nady Ann at a point where their movement would not be observed by Texark scouts.

When the warriors rejoined the rest of the Wilddog Horde at their wintering grounds, Høngan Ösle first sent messengers with an account of the battle to Sharf Bråm and Pope Amen. Then he summoned Father Ombroz as well as his senior Bear Spirit shaman and his own Weejus mother; he told them to prepare immediately to accompany him to New Jerusalem and the Court of Amen II.

The Lord of the Hordes and his party arrived in New Jerusalem at the end of April. They were greeted by the Pope and the Mayor— Dion was briefly home from the wars—with high ceremony. The Major General Quigler Durod was already in town as plenipotentiary from the King of the Tenesi. Durod had taken the trouble to learn a Nomad dialect (Jackrabbit, because in his youth he had served in the Province as a Texark mercenary), and he made friends quickly with Høngan Ösle. Besides Durod, armorers had come from the west coast, bringing samples of their latest model firearms.

Although Høngan Ösle as Qæsach dri Vørdar spoke for all three hordes, Brownpony expressed regret that Sharfs Bråm and Önmu Kun were unable to attend the council of war. Three days later, an angry Grasshopper emissary rode up from Arch Hollow to confront the Pope.

The Grasshopper messenger was not a Christian. He stood defiantly before Amen II and six members of the Curia to voice the demands of his sharf. “Unless you release Nyinden and the swordsman Gai-See into my custody, the Grasshopper will make war not against your enemies, but against you!”

“Perhaps your sharf has been lied to by someone,” the Pope said. “Nyinden is staying at the priory with the other monks. If he wants to go with you, there is nothing to stop him.”

“And the yellow warrior? Where is he?”

“He’s in the city’s jail. I did not put him there. The only man in this room with any voice in city affairs is Cardinal Linkono, who grew up here. Your Eminence, would you please?” He beckoned to a short man with a white beard who looked like a gnome wearing a red skullcap. Then he said to the messenger, “I think your sharf would want his message to go to the right man. I am the wrong man, and His Eminence Abraha is not the right man either, but he can take you to the right man.”

“Are you not the most powerful man in this awful place—not Pope Redbeard, the Lord of the Christian Horde?” the Nomad demanded.

“Not really Lord as you understand it. You might think of my office as that of a high priest.”

Linkono limped up to stand beside the Nomad, facing him, and spoke in a voice surprisingly deep for so small a man. His Nomadic was heavily accented but understandable.

“Young man, why is this an ‘awful place’?”

Brownpony himself explained: “The Nomads say evil spirits come down from the mountains, especially the Old Zarks, and inhabit wombs. The belief explains why a Nomad woman sometimes gives birth to a glep baby.”

“I see. Well, young man, compare our Pope to your oldest Bear Spirit shaman. Neither he nor your sharf has to obey the other. The sharf in this place is Mayor Dion. But he just left here to go back to the war. His son takes his place. This, the Church, is like the Bear Spirit Council. There is nothing we can do for you here, my nephew, except pray.”

Linkono was smart enough not to say “my son” to a Nomad, but this Nomad did not like “nephew” either.

“My only uncle is Demon Light, gray runt. My name is Blue Lightning, and I am the eldest son of his eldest sister. We both witnessed Hadala’s crimes.”

“Surely you mean the crime against Cardinal Hadala!”

“I mean Hadala’s crimes, for which he was executed.”

The gnome’s jaw fell. “Crimes under what law? Nomad law?”

“The Treaty of the Sacred Mare. He violated it by bringing an army into our lands. Hadala violated the law and defied our sharf. By his order, his officers killed his own men. If Nyinden and the yellow warrior hadn’t put him to death, my uncle would have done it.”

“I had not thought of it in that way before,” Brownpony said. “He’s right, you know, Abra. Hadala clearly violated the Treaty.”

“Holy Father, I can’t believe what I’m hearing!”

Blue Lightning grabbed the small cardinal by the shoulders and shook him. “I can make war or peace, little man. My words are my uncle’s words. Perhaps we cannot bring war to you here in your evil mountains, but we can join the war against your men who fight south of the Nady Ann. Take me to the man who jails the victim instead of the criminal.”

Linkono limped toward the exit as fast as he could move, with the burly Nomad crowding his heels. When they were gone, Brownpony turned to his personal guard. “Axe, go with them, and take Jing and Qum-Do. Keep that Nomad out of trouble, and make sure Slojon has to look you in the face when he talks about Gai-See.” Then, to the Cardinal Penitentiary who was also his personal confessor, he said, “Go to the guests’ quarters, please, and tell Høngan Ösle Chür what has happened here. Blue Lightning does not realize that his Qæsach dri Vørdar is in town.”

In the administration building, Slojon haughtily dismissed the Nomad’s claim. The Nomad grabbed him by the ears and hauled him, squeaking in pain, across the desk. A sergeant drew a pistol, and instantly three swords were in the air.

“Drop it, or lose your head,” said Axe. The sergeant dropped it.

Eltür’s nephew now stood behind Slojon with his arm in a hammerlock and a knife held to his throat. He pushed him toward the door. “This fart is going to jail,” said the Nomad.

Slojon screamed as he felt his own blood running down his chest.

“Stop him, Wooshin! Stop him!”

“Only you can stop him, Messér. Take him to the jail in peace.”

“Brownpony is behind this!”

“No, the Pope is not! The man behind it is also behind you, right now. You did violate the Treaty, Messér.”

“All right, we’ll go to the jail.”

The trip to jail was halted by the sudden entrance of Høngan Ösle Chür and his two shamans. Blue Lightning took one look at him, gasped, and released the Mayor’s son. He made a sweeping kokai to the chosen one of the Day Maiden, Husband of the Prairies, then fell silent to await orders.

The Lord of the Hordes asked for an explanation of the problem. Blue Lightning spoke first, then Slojon and Axe. Then the Qæsach dri Vørdar told the Mayor’s son that he, Høngan Ösle Chür, ruled in favor of the Grasshopper claim and made the same threat to Slojon that Blue Lightning had made. The hordes would turn against New Jerusalem for breaking the Treaty, and might even carry the conflict into these feared mountains. The Jackrabbit would turn on the spooks in battle and kill Slojon’s father as well.

Thus it came about that the charges were dropped and Gai-See was released into the protective custody of Blue Lightning. Because the Nomad claimed plenipotentiary power to speak for his uncle, Brownpony invited him to attend the council of war, which had all but ended upon the departure of Dion, but was now renewed in the presence of the Grasshopper. The Pope dispatched a message to Bråm through the Nomad relay network to assure the sharf that Gai-See and Nyinden were free. He also thanked him for sending Blue Lightning, who added to the document his initials—Blacktooth had taught him to draw them—and peace was restored among the allies.

After his harsh beginning, Blue Lightning proved a well-rounded diplomat. In spite of his initial threat to abandon the alliance and join the other side, he brought intelligence gathered from several sources. On balance, the news was good, but there were things to worry about. Filpeo had new repeating arms now, but not yet enough of them to turn the outcome of any foreseeable battle. The countryside surrounding New Rome was by no means demilitarized, but the occupation forces there were thinned out by the withdrawal of troops being sent to the Province to halt the eastward advance of the armies of Önmu Kun and Mayor Dion. Sharf Bråm estimated that no more than seven hundred men, Texark cavalry and glep mercenaries, remained to block access to the gates of New Rome.

And there was trouble in the Valley. Texark recruiters had been ambushed and killed. “I wonder who could be doing that?” Quigler Durod asked innocently, provoking laughter. Everyone present knew that Tenesi agents disguised as gleps had crossed the Great River and infiltrated the Watchitah-Ol’zark region. Further recruiting in the Valley of the Misborn was inhibited, if not halted.

“If we don’t strike now,” Høngan said, “the Emperor’s firepower will increase rapidly. We will lose the advantage the Pope’s weapons have given us.”

Blue Lightning murmured assent. General Durod wanted to know if it was possible to use the Nomad relay network to contact his men in the Valley.

“If you have a secure cipher, maybe,” said Blue Lightning. “There is a risk of a messenger being caught. He must not know what your message is.”

Pope Amen came to a sudden decision. “We shall mount an expedition to capture New Rome, and do it as soon as possible, unless one of you disagrees.”

Nobody objected. After so many decades in exile, the Holy See was going home.

Pentecost came on May 14th in 3246, and Blacktooth had known for a week that Holy Madness and other important guests were in town to consult with the Pope, but the consultations were private and he was as ignorant as any local citizen of what happened behind the closed doors. Prior Cow wanted all eight of them to attend the Pontifical High Mass in the Pope’s log-and-stone cathedral, but Nimmy begged off. Instead, he attended Mass at their usual neighborhood Church, sang the Veni Creator Spiritus with the small choir, and assisted the priest in distributing the Eucharist to local spooks and their beautiful children.

Singing Cow found him sitting in the garden, trying to extract a still fluttering pigeon from the jaws of his growling glep cougar. Librada slashed his hand and clamped down on the bird. Nimmy gave up. “I think it’s about time for Librada to be librada,” he said to the prior.

“We’ll take care of it, Nimmy. You’re going to be too busy.”

“It’s up to me, Father. I brought her here. She ought to be let go as far as possible from humans. She’s not afraid of anybody. And why do you say I’ll be too busy?”

“I think you will be. The Pope wants to see you right now. He’s going away.”

“Away?”

“To New Rome—as a conqueror, I believe. Now go bandage your hand and run over to the Palace.”

As soon as he saw that Gai-See had been set free, Blacktooth felt shame for his earlier impudence toward his Pope, and he looked for an opportunity to apologize. But Axe had assigned him to a place in the baggage train in the rear, and the procession had been in motion for three days before he found an opportunity to approach his former employer. They were both on horseback.

“Don’t thank me, thank God and the Grasshopper,” said the Pope after waving aside Blacktooth’s apology.

“I don’t understand, Holy Father.”

“You don’t have to!” Brownpony snapped, and after a pause relented. “Somebody told Sharf Bråm that you and Gai-See were both in jail for killing Cardinal Hadala. Hadala was violating the Sacred Mare Treaty by bringing an army onto Nomad land. The sharf would have killed him if Gai-See hadn’t I don’t know what made him think you helped kill him.”

“I did help, Holy Father. I told Gai-See that Hadala was defying you, and I knew what I was doing when I told him. Eltür knew this.”

“I see. Well, he became quite angry and sent his nephew with an oral message to Gai-See’s jailer.”

“Which nephew was this?”

“Stützil Bråm—Blue Lightning. He’s up ahead with Høngan Ösle’s party. At first he thought I was the jailer. He told everybody that unless you were released at once, he would make peace with the Hannegan and attack Dion’s forces wherever he found them. Høngan Ösle stepped in at that point and took over; he even threatened to hit New Jerusalem. So you can thank the Nomads, not me. I’m only bringing you along to satisfy Eltür Bråm.”

“So that’s why!”

“That and your prowess as a soldier,” said Brownpony, and spurred his horse to get away from the conversation.