The Scourge of God

CHAPTER TWENTY

Wide is the land, and high under heave n

Many the folk, their gods and ways;

All Artos would see, and with them take counsel

Wisdom win from friend and from foe From: The Song of Bear and Raven

Attributed to Fiorbhinn Mackenzie, 1st century CY

"I could use a watermelon," Ingolf said, as the whole party slowed their mounts. "Kept nice and cool in a well. You cut it open with your bowie, and then that first bite into a big slice, crisp and sweet, with the juice just dribbling down your chin-"

"You're not helping," Mary said, and slapped him on the back of the head.

"It's not the heat, it's the humidity," Rudi added, and wondered why Ingolf laughed.

"Welcome to the Midwest," he said.

Mary groaned: "I'm sweating like a horse. I can't tell where my sweat stops and Rochael's begins anymore."

"You still smell better than she does, honey," Ingolf said, and reached over to pat her dapple-gray Arab on the neck. "Though she's mighty pretty, for a horse."

Ritva snorted. "I don't mind sweating, but it doesn't seem to be doing me any good-I'm still just as hot, only sticky too. Is it like this all the time?"

"Only about half the year. The other half's freezing cold and snows like hell," Ingolf said. Then he shrugged: "Actually there's a month or so of good weather in spring and fall, but we don't like to admit it."

They'd been ambling through farm country; now the land dropped away to a river valley, wooded with hickory and oak and cottonwood and spanned by a pre-Change metal bridge. Beyond it just past the immediate floodplain was a small walled town; rumpled hills rose gray-blue-green above the flats a few miles away eastward. Rudi could see several children sitting on the eastern bank, fishing or playing with a dog, their sun-faded tow hair bright against the dark earth. One of them rose and waved at the travelers, then turned back to his rod as the float on the string dipped below the water.

The stream was about medium bowshot across. Close to the middle a bald eagle's talons struck the water and punched up a burst of spray. The great black-and-white bird flogged itself back into the air with a fish twisting in its talons.

"Good luck to see an eagle striking," Odard said, and Edain nodded.

"Slow down here by the fort. They're likely to be a might testy about travelers," Ingolf said, and Rudi raised his right hand to signal the others.

"A testy man with a napalm shell on his catapult is not someone to offend," he agreed.

More quietly, Ingolf went on: "And the Bossman has reason to be offended with me," he said. "Remember, he paid my Villains quite a bit to go get that stuff for him from the dead cities."

"Not your fault Kuttner was working for the Prophet."

"I don't think so, and you don't think so, but the Bossman may not agree. Tony Heasleroad didn't strike me as being the forgiving sort."

"There's your friends," Rudi said.

"Yah. They've got pull. I don't know how much pull, not after years. We could go north through Marshall and Richland."

"And take months extra time. I lost us too much, when I was wounded and got us stranded in the Valley of the Sun. Things aren't going well back home. We must get that Sword, my friend."

Iowa held the western bank of the river where the bridge crossed; from what Ingolf had said, the Nebraska folk accepted that with sullen acquiescence. A strong fort of concrete reinforced with steel stood beside the road where the land started to dip to the wooded river valley; it was a rectangle with corner towers, and two more by the gatehouse. A dry moat-mostly dry, with puddles and mud at the bottom-surrounded it, filled with rusty sharpened angle iron and barbed wire and smelling of stagnant water and waste, and the drawbridge was down. From the gatehouse flew a flag with three broad vertical stripes of blue, white and red; when a puff of breeze lifted it for a moment, he could see an eagle in the central panel clutching a scroll in its bill, but the words were too small to read.

A swinging barrier came down to block their passage on the bridge as the party approached, and from behind the rusty metal an armed man shouted:

"Halt!"

Rudi duly halted, letting himself sink backwards in the saddle to signal Epona. He waited patiently, wiping at his forehead with his sleeve; she tossed her head, thumping at the gravel-patched asphalt with one hoof and flicking ears and tail against the flies. He'd packed his jacket and folded his plaid with his blanket roll behind the crupper, but his linsey-woolsey shirt was sticking to his back and sides and making patches black with sweat. Sitting the saddle in the grilling sun in a powerful cloud of human and equine perspiration and assorted insects wasn't pleasant.

"I would be sooo glad to sit somewhere shady and have lunch," Mary said. "Something besides beans and bacon and corn bread, too."

Ingolf smiled reminiscently. "There used to be a place in Hawarden"-he nodded towards the town on the other side of the river-"that did a great pepperoni pizza. And they made a fine beer there, too."

"I'd like to have a bath," Mathilda commented. "And get some pumice to sand the calluses off my backside. How long have we been in the saddle now?"

Virginia snorted, as befitted a Rancher's daughter who'd ridden before she could walk, but then admitted:

"It's a powerful big country; I never realized how big. I thought there was a lot of the Powder River range, but it's like a little corral compared to the rest."

"I didn't realize how much… muchness… there was either until I left home," Fred replied. "We'd been on the trail for a hell of a long time before you joined up, Virginia, and then since then.. . From the way Mom and Dad talked, I'd always thought it was a lot smaller. The maps don't tell you the half of it and the old books are useless. Worse than useless-they give you the wrong idea."

Father Ignatius nodded: "In your parents' youth, it was smaller. At least in terms of how long it took to travel across it. It wasn't a surprise to me intellectually, but then the Church has to communicate all around the world. We know how big the planet has grown. And it's still a shock when you experience it in person. My admiration for the couriers the Vatican sends out from Badia knows no bounds."

"Yeah, but Mom and Dad always sort of gave me the impression that America was a country, like Idaho. It's a world."

Rudi kept one ear on the byplay, but most of his attention on the fort; there were men moving on the ramparts, and a hot bright blink of sunlight on edged metal. Then a trumpet sounded, and a platoon's worth of troops double-timed out of the open gate of the fort with a bristle of polearms. Ingolf inclined his head towards them:

"Some bored officer's playing at soldiers because he can," he said. "This is a hardship post for guys someone in Des Moines doesn't like. Most of what trade there is goes through Sioux City, farther south."

The men were in full gear, jointed two-piece breastplates, arm-pieces and thigh-guards of polished steel, helms shaped like the old American army headgear, and metal gauntlets. The ones here all had either sixteen-foot pikes or something that differed from what the Willamette country called a billhook only in detail-a chopping blade on a six-foot pole, with a spike on top and a cruel hook on the back; short straight-bladed footman's shetes hung at their waists.

Ritva spoke softly: "I saw something move behind the firing slits on the north tower. Murder machine. And there are crossbowmen on the crenellations."

Odard nodded. "If they're just going through the motions, they're going through all of them."

Rudi took off his bonnet and fanned himself with it. He gave the pikemen a look of pity; they were only the length of their own weapons away, and he could see how red their faces were. At a guess, someone had rousted them out from their midday meal or the siesta after it. Though to be sure doing that occasionally was good training; here he suspected that it was sheer frustrated spite. A minute or two later a pair of men strode down the sloping roadway from the fort.

Ah, the one in the lead is in charge, Rudi decided.

If the soldiers' armor was polished, his was blinding with a luster possible only with chrome steel, and his shete was the long curved horseman's model.

I think this is a man who stands on his dignity. He dismounted, signaling the others to do likewise. As he'll be resentful if I look down at him from the saddle.

He couldn't help being six foot two and he was cursed if he'd slouch, but fortunately the Iowan officer was only a little shorter, and his helmet with its tall horsehair plume made up the difference. As the man approached, he muttered to the one beside him.

"Oh, all right, Sergeant."

"Thank you, sir. Stand at ease! Helmets off!"

There was a rattle and thump as the polearms were grounded and leaned against shoulders. The soldiers were unexceptionable young men; big, muscular and fair-skinned for the most part with a country-boy look as if they weren't long from the plow, their hair cropped close to their heads and their faces shaved. Rudi gave them a professional glance and decided that they were strong and used to hard work, well-enough drilled, and certainly splendidly equipped. But probably not very experienced. Nobody had dared to challenge mighty Iowa lately.

No reason to think they wouldn't fight well, given good leaders, he decided. But this man isn't the one to do it, I'm thinking.

The officer had a small yellow mustache and pale green eyes set a little too close together and an expression of permanent discontent.

"I'm Captain Schlenker, Iowa National Guard," he said, his tone suggesting that the name should mean something.

Which, hereabouts, it may, Rudi thought, with an expression of polite interest.

"In the service of His Excellency Anthony Heasleroad, Governor, President Pro Tem for Life of the Provisional Republic of Iowa, the Sheriffs' Choice, Protector of Farmers and Vakis, Bossman of All Hawk-eyes. You can stop your merry band right there until you've answered a few questions."

The Iowan had a flat harsh accent much like Ingolf's, one that turned the vowels in words like Mary and marry and merry into the same sound. It sounded much less agreeable in his mouth than in their companion's.

"So, who are you people?" he asked less formally.

Rudi introduced himself. "We're travelers from the Far West, sir," he said.

It didn't hurt to be courteous on someone else's land.

"Traders?"

"It may be, if we find anything to buy in Des Moines, which is where we'll be heading, to see the remarkable sights of the city, so far-famed it is," he said.

Schlenker's eyes narrowed. "We don't allow armed vagrants to wander around Iowa," he said.

For the first time he seemed to pay real attention to the party. Rudi had left his sword slung at Epona's saddle, but there was no point in trying to conceal that they were well armed, or the quality of their horses. With Mathilda and the twins and Virginia they were slightly implausible as a bandit gang… but they looked as much like that as anything else, and it wasn't absolutely unknown for women to take up that trade. Or for genuine traveling merchants to indulge in a little banditry on the side, if they saw an opportunity.

Sure, and Mary's smile would look more reassuring without the eye patch.

They certainly didn't have the wagons or pack-animals you'd expect of serious traders, and it would be ridiculous to claim they were traveling across the continent for the pleasure of it.

"We're well able to provide for ourselves, sir," Rudi went on. "If there's a regulation for posting bond, in gold shall we say…"

According to Ingolf there wasn't, but the officer's face brightened at the diplomatic offer of a bribe. When he still hesitated, Rudi continued:

"And we'll be staying with a friend near your capital, a Farmer and Sheriff. A Colonel Heuisink, with whom you may check if you'd be wishing it."

That brought a definite change in attitude. "Let's get into the shade," Schlenker said. "Sergeant Morrison! Bring them into the fort. And pull a watermelon and some beer out of the well."

You asked what land I love the best

Iowa, 'tis Iowa,

The fairest State of all the West,

Iowa, O! Iowa,

From yonder Mississippi's stream

To where Missouri's waters gleam

O! Fair it is as poet's dream

Iowa, 'tis Iowa.

See yonder fields of tasseled corn

Iowa, 'tis Iowa,

Where plenty fills her golden horn

Iowa, 'tis Iowa,

See how her wondrous prairies shine.

To yonder sunset's purpling line

O! happy land, O! land of mine

Iowa, O! Iowa.

And she has maids whose laughing eyes

Iowa, O! Iowa.

To him whose loves were Paradise

Iowa, O! Iowa

O! Happiest fate that e'er was known.

Such eyes to shine for one alone,

To call such beauty all his own.

Iowa, O! Iowa

Go read the story of thy past.

Iowa, O! Iowa

What glorious deeds, what fame thou hast!

Iowa, O! Iowa

So long as time's great cycle runs,

Or nations weep their fallen ones,

Thou'lt not forget thy patriot sons

Iowa, O! Iowa

The song rang out in children's voices as they climbed down from the railway; it came from a frame building not far from the depot, where a choir was apparently practicing. As the travelers unhitched their horses from the rearmost wagon the eight- and nine-year-olds spilled out clad in shorts and T-shirts, mostly barefoot in the warm summer afternoon. They came running down the dusty street to watch as the passengers disembarked, with the dust motes glowing golden in the slanting beams of the westering sun.

"All out for Valeria!" the conductor cried, walking down the line of cars and flourishing her speaking-trumpet. "Refreshments available in the station building! Train will embark for Des Moines in one hour!"

"What a surprise," Mathilda said, as they stretched and rubbed parts affected by the hard bench seats and Garbh growled at a village mutt that went into a dancing, barking frenzy until a boy pulled it away. "Another hot, humid, hazy day!"

"Could be worse-" Rudi said.

"-could be raining," Edain finished with a tired grin.

He nodded towards clouds on the eastern horizon-which were very visible, flat as the land was. They towered into the sky, black at their base and shading off into a froth like thick whipped cream at their summits, with the topmost heights starting to glow gold as the sun sank westward.

"Or hailing and storming," he added; they'd had enough time to realize how undependable the weather was here.

The station was a small four-square brick building, with a stable and paddock to one side where the spare teams were housed; the train's driver and his assistant led their tired beasts there to be turned over to the ostlers, and began assembling the replacement. The travelers clustered around the pump to one side of the station, taking turns to work the worn hickory of the handle. Once the trough had been filled and their own horses were dipping their muzzles into it the humans held their heads beneath the flow and drank heavily from cupped hands-the deep tube wells here were generally safe.

Rudi sucked down another draught of the cold, slightly mineral-tasting liquid, then splashed some over his head and brushed the long red-gold locks back, enjoying the momentary coolness in his sweat-itchy scalp.

"Gods of my people, you always feel like it's time for a shower here!"

"Welcome-" Ingolf began.

"To the Midwest," the rest of them chorused.

Valeria was a town so small that any Mackenzie dun would have made three of it, but the streets were crowded right now. Most of that was a convoy of big six-wheeled wagons drawn by huge gray horses much like those that pulled the train, just finishing loading from a series of warehouses of pre-Change sheet metal by the side of the railroad track.

Same breed, but better horses, Rudi thought, admiring their glossy spotted coats and hooves the size of dinner plates, thick arched necks and flared nostrils, the muscle that rippled in their massive haunches and flanks. Well tended, too.

A man came around one of them, talking to someone behind him, then froze as he saw Rudi and his party.

No, he's looking at Ingolf, Rudi thought, as the man walked slowly towards them, eyes wide with wonder.

Then he drew himself up, coming to attention. He was in his mid-twenties, Rudi's age, or nearly. A little shorter, a bit under six feet, but broad-shouldered and slim-hipped, with short auburn hair and blue eyes and a wide, snub-nosed face; that was emphasized by the small blob of scar tissue on the very end of his nose. Most of the little finger of his right hand was missing, and a bit of the top of the next digit.

Moves well, Rudi thought. Good balance. His eyes went to the wrists and shoulders, and the swing of the walk. Strong, and quick with it, but there's just a shadow of a hint of a limp in the right leg.

His clothes were plain but good quality; knee-boots and indigo-blue denim trousers with a horseman's leather inserts on the inner thighs. The trousers rose to a sort of bib with shoulder straps; he had a green linsey-woolsey shirt beneath that, a silver-studded belt with a shete, bowie and tomahawk around his waist, and a billed cap on his head. The bib overalls and cap were what farmers wore in Iowa; rather confusingly, hereabouts Farmer seemed to mean about what Rancher did in central Oregon. Or knight in the Association territories; a landed gentleman, or at least a member of the ruling class.

He faced Ingolf, came to attention and saluted briskly. "Corporal Heuisink, reporting for duty, Captain Vogeler, sir!" he barked.

Ingolf frowned like a thunderstorm. "Sloppy as a hog in a wallow, as usual, Heuisink! You're not on your daddy's farm down in Iowa now, by God!"

Both men burst into roars of laughter and fell into each other's arms, hugging like bears, dancing around in a stomping circle, pounding each other on the shoulder and back. Then they held each other at arm's length, each examining the other with wonder.

"Jack, you miserable son of a bitch!" Ingolf said, and mimed a punch to the face. "You couldn't get a message to me in Hawarden? You know how long we waited in that lousy oozing chancre on Iowa's fat ass, eating overpriced pizza and listening to ourselves sweat?"

The other man pretended to stagger. "You expect the heliograph net to work out there, you ignorant cheesehead?" he said. "There's a surface-mail letter on its way!"

"Ignorant? I left Readstown because I had to. You were the one who thought that being a hired soldier for those cheapskate dickheads in Marshall was going to be an adventure. "

"I ended up in deep shit, far from home. That is adventure."

Rudi laughed aloud; only someone who'd had adventures knew how true that was, though it wasn't the whole of the matter. Mary cleared her throat.

"Why is it that when men play, they always play at hitting and insulting each other?" she said.

Ingolf turned with his arm around the younger man's shoulders; he was laughing, and his battered, craggy face was more relaxed than Rudi had seen it.

Younger, in fact, he thought; as if the brown beard and scars had been removed. A lot of the time you forget he's only five years older than I.

"Mary, this is Jack Heuisink, who was dumb enough to run away from a perfectly good home and enlist in Vogeler's Villains back when we were fighting the Sioux War, up north in Marshall."

"I was a teenager," Heuisink said defensively. "More… hormones… than sense."

"I kept him alive long enough to come to his senses, which happened about the time he put his right hand in the way of an Injun tomahawk headed for my noggin."

"Good as new, what's left of it," Heuisink said, flexing it. "Gave me a decent excuse to come home, too."

"Jack, Mary Havel, my intended."

Jack's eyes went wide; his eye skipped from the patch to her face, down to her feet and up to the braided yellow hair. They also skipped to the worn hilt of her longsword, and the gear on the dappled Arab behind her, and then widened a little as he realized that Ritva was identical to her-except for the missing eye and the scar.

"Pleased to meet you, Miss Havel," he said, and shook hands. "Ingolf always did have more luck than he deserved."

"I keep telling him that," Mary said, smiling.

"He's not the only lucky one," Ritva said, and introduced herself. "And if you play dice with her, use your own."

That turned into a general exchange of names. Heuisink's hand was hard and strong in Rudi's; he could see the same instant calculation in the other's eyes as they measured each other- this one is dangerous. Then the Hawkeye looked along the line of travelers.

"Well, you've assembled another prime bunch of plain old-fashioned cutthroats," he said to Ingolf when the introductions were done.

"Even if they're prettier than we were on average," he added gallantly, with a slight bow to the twins and Mathilda and Virginia.

"Rudi's ramrod of this outfit, besides having the misfortune to be my future brother-in-law," Ingolf added. "I'm number two."

Heuisink's eyes went wider. "Where's Kaur and Singh and Jose and the others? Everyone wondered what the hell happened when the Villains didn't make it back from that crazy salvage trip to the East Coast. Hell, we thought you were all dead and eaten by the wild men."

"Everyone but me is dead," he said; the pleasure of the meeting leached out of Ingolf's face for a moment. Then he took a deep breath and pushed away grief with a visible effort: "Christ, it's years ago now. I haven't forgotten, though; and we're here to get some answers, among other things."

Heuisink grunted as if he'd been belly-punched. "Jesus, all of them?"

"Backstabbed by that little shit Kuttner… and that's something we need to talk to the Colonel about. But that's old news. The latest is we're here from the West Coast. Oregon, by God!"

That brought a silent whistle. "You are one traveling son of a bitch, Ingolf. How'd you get through the Sioux?"

"We spent a while in a hocoka, as a matter of fact."

The younger man ostentatiously craned his neck to look at the back of Ingolf's head. "And you've still got your hair?"

"Not only that, you're now addressing Iron Bear, adopted member of the Kiyuska tiyospaye of the Ogallala," he said. "Mostly courtesy of Rudi here, and Miss Kane."

"That I have got to hear about."

"How's the family? And Cecilia?"

"Dad's fine and meaner than ever, Mom's fine, my brothers and sisters are all fine-Louise got married to Sheriff Clausen's son Hauk over by Dubuque this May-and Cecilia and I just had a kid, a boy this time-"

"Congratulations!"

"-and young Ingolf is doing fine and crawling like a maniac, driving her and the nursemaid crazy. The farm's fine, our vakis are fine, and let's get the hell home! Man, we've got some serious talking to do! And drinking!"

He turned to his men: "Mitch, hightail it back to the house and tell my father we've got guests, Ingolf among 'em."

The man climbed into the saddle and trotted away down the road that led north from the little town. Heuisink turned to the rest of the travelers and waved.

"Let's get your traps on the wagons. Our house is your house, and any friends of Ingolf's are friends of ours! Stay a week, stay a month, stay as long as you damned well please."

Ingolf said his friends here were well-to-do, Rudi thought. They must be, to have nothing but smiles for ten hungry guests!

The land near Valeria had been intensely cultivated in small orchards and large gardens by the townspeople, the rows of lettuce and carrots and potatoes, sweet corn and onions and turnip greens against dirt black as coal. Beyond that was shaggy common pasture for their beasts, and then more of the same.

A ride always seems longer in open country like this, Rudi thought, as they turned off the road and under a tall timber gate with a hanging sign:

Victrix Century Farm est. 1878. Colonel Abel Heuisink, prop.

Then beneath that, in different lettering:

Emergency Evacuation Center and Registered Farm #21,726

"Almost home," Ingolf's friend Jack said. "This is my family's land, from here on."

Rudi's brows went up slightly; all he could see was land right now, rippling with grass sometimes chest-high on a horse, no houses or even tilled fields.

"What's the significance of the number?" he asked.

"Oh, that's our farm number… back at the Change, every farm that could keep going got a registration number, 'cause all the farmers were sworn in as deputies and Justices of the Peace to handle the evacuation. Last count I heard, there are…"

His eyes went up in the gesture of a man remembering a number: "Fifty-two thousand four hundred and thirty-two Registered Farmers in the Provisional Republic of by-God Iowa. Dad's a Sheriff too, of course… It's about another two miles to the house; that's square in the middle of our land."

The size of a Baron's fief in Portland, Rudi thought. Not much compared to a lot of ranches-but this isn't sagebrush where you need five acres for a single sheep, by Brigit's Sheaf!

"It's a fine stretch of country you have," he said sincerely.

The whole of Iowa was apparently laid out in squares a mile on a side with roads along the edges, and would probably look as geometric as a chessboard from a balloon or glider. That distance meant the Heuisink property must be at least two square miles, and probably three or four… which was very big even by local standards. Rudi looked around himself. Grazing stretched on either side as they entered the estate, but it was neatly fenced, with old-style posts and barbed wire, or in places by bristling hedges of multiflora rose.

Herds of black hornless cattle moved over the fields, their glossy hides tight with good feeding, and horses-some massive Percherons, others tall long-legged beasts that reminded him of Epona-as well as square-bodied sheep, still looking a little naked as their fleeces grew back from the spring shearing. There were herds of black-and-white pigs too, looking like giant moving sow-beetles as they ranged belly-deep in pasture; he could hear them grunting and snuffling as they fed. Occasionally animals of all varieties would wander over to a pond dug in the corner of a field to drink, or to a trough kept full by a skeletal windmill.

The younger man nodded with obvious pride. "None better in the state, and my family have held it since my great-great-grandfather's day; well, parts of it, at least. All of it's useable, too. You go a couple of days' ride north and half the country's gone back to swamp again, but ours is naturally dry."

"This looks to be as good for pasture or grain as you could want," Rudi agreed with perfect sincerity.

Though I might say something of the sort even if I weren't sincere at all, he thought, smiling to himself.

You couldn't go wrong complimenting a man's horses and cattle or his land. He didn't add that he thought it as boring a stretch of the Mother's earth as he'd come across, barring some that were even flatter.

I've seen enough prairies since we left home that they don't bewilder me anymore. At first he'd had a subconscious conviction they weren't moving at all, even when he knew they were. I still miss having something to measure distance by-woods, hills, mountains in the distance.

The land here wasn't really flat, not compared to some of the tabletop country he'd seen and-endlessly-ridden across. It had a very slight roll to it, enough that vistas opened out and closed in again, though slowly. There were few trees, only a clump of oaks and hickories and poplars here and there or a row along the edge of a field, and apart from the cottonwood and burr-oak groves along the banks of the odd slow-moving trickle of creek they all looked to have been planted by human hands rather than the will of the Mother. The grass by the side of the road was sometimes high enough to nearly hide the view beyond, though.

They rode at the pace of the wagons, which were loaded with heavy goods, brick and tile and tools and bolts of cloth and boxes that might be anything, and big bevel and wheel-gears strapped on top of one, machinery for some sort of mill. Besides the teamsters there were six mounted guards in crested helms and mail-shirts, armed with shete and bow; Heuisink had introduced them as our National Guard security detail.

Rudi mentally translated that as my father's household troops.

"Chief?" Edain said quietly, pulling his horse in beside Rudi's when the Iowan noble drifted ahead to Ingolf's side.

"Yes?"

"This is good land," he said, and offered a clump of grass with clods of earth attached that he'd stopped to cut out of one of the fields by the roadside. "You could plant bootlaces here, and by Brigid's Cauldron it would come up bootlaces!"

Rudi hefted the clod as they rode, and rubbed some of the black dirt between his fingers and smelled it. It was full of fine roots, and compressed easily like sponge cake when he squeezed some between thumb and forefinger, the good crumb structure keeping it moist days after the last rain. The scent was rich and almost meaty, as much like well-rotted mulch as soil. He touched his tongue to it, and the taste was neutral, without any acid sourness or alkali bitterness either.

"You're right," he said, dusting his hands off and spitting aside. "As good as any I've ever seen. Easy to work, too, I'd think. They do have a mortal lot of it here, don't they?"

There was fine farmland in the Willamette Valley, but not fifty thousand square miles of it in a solid block. That was more ground than everything from Bend and Sisters to the ocean and from the Columbia to the old California border south of Ashland, desert and mountain and dense Douglas fir woodland and the whole Willamette put together.

"And all this bit here belongs to Ingolf's friend?"

"Since that sign," Rudi said.

Edain shook his head, frowning. "That's not right," he said. "Not decent, by the womb of the Mother and the blood of the Corn King! One family shouldn't have that much."

"My friend, it's in total agreement I am," Rudi said; Mackenzie crofts differed a bit in size, but not even the wealthiest had much more than one family could till with a little help at harvest. "But mentioning it wouldn't be very tactful, if we're to be guests. We need this man's help. Also we're outlanders here."

Edain nodded and dropped back, half scowling as he looked around at the land about, half in sheer sensuous enjoyment of it; for it was a sight to delight the eye of someone who'd worked the earth since he could toddle, the thick pell of life on it promising food in plenty for man and beast.

Heuisink was obviously bursting with curiosity and even more eager to drag Ingolf away for reminiscence and questions, but he made a determined effort to be polite; he dropped back to talk with Rudi and the others every few minutes.

"The house is another half mile ahead of us."

"Fine stock," Rudi said, as a stallion went pacing along the roadside fence, brown hide rippling and neck arched.

"Dad was a breeder even before the Change," Jack Heuisink said proudly. "Pedigree stock. We've won State Fair blue ribbons three times in the past five years."

"Handsome beasts," Rudi acknowledged. "I don't think I've seen finer."

Though I was more impressed yet by the pasture; and the fact that your herds can't keep up with it. For all their feeding, it's stirrup-high out there in places.

After a while they came to cultivated land in big square fields; he rough-estimated four or five hundred acres. The wheat and oats and barley had all been reaped, and green clover was poking up through the blond stubble. The flax looked about ready to pull, the last of its blue flowers gone by and the plants chest-tall and browning, and there were low-growing rows of sugar beets. Some of the other crops were odd to his eye. Back in the Willamette maize was a garden vegetable, grown to eat boiled or to be canned in mason jars or pickled with tomatoes and onions in relish.

Here there was acre after acre of it, the heads just tasseling out now and casting a faint haze of gold over the distant part of the green block. The stalks were nearly as tall as a mounted man; you could look down endless rows, and the clatter of the leaves made a strange rustling sound that surged and died with the wind. More fields were growing some bushy plant.

"What's that?" he asked.

"Soybeans," Heuisink said, surprised. "You don't have them? They're mighty useful."

"I've heard of them," Rudi said. Mostly from my mother, who hates tofu with a passion. "The climate's not right for them in our country. Or for maize either."

The younger man laughed. "It's hard to imagine farming without beans and corn!"

Then he inhaled deeply and smiled; an overpowering sweetness marked a hayfield, where five horse-drawn mowers in a staggered row cut knee-high alfalfa and laid it in windrows to dry. The workers waved their hats at young Heuisink, and he returned the gesture with his billed cap.

"Pretty good year, so far," he said with satisfaction. "No blight on the alfalfa, either. What do you grow out there?"

"Alfalfa, to be sure. Wheat and barley, oats, potatoes, orchards-" He and Rudi talked crops and weather for a little while-another topic of conversation that was good almost anywhere, since life itself depended on it. When they came in sight of the house -evidently he meant the whole settlement by that-Rudi blinked a little in surprise. There were some of the things you'd expect; turn-out pasture for dairy cattle and working stock surrounded by board fences, a couple of big orchards-apple, pear, cherry-which looked young, but flourishing, and a twenty-acre tract of garden truck. Some of the early apples were starting to turn ripe, glowing red through the green leaves.

But…

"There's no wall!" he said.

No sign of defensive works at all, not even the earth berm and barbed wire a farmstead in law-abiding Corvallis territory would have. The settlement looked obscurely naked without it, like a man fully dressed save for his missing kilt. Every single Mackenzie dun had a good log palisade around it at the least, with a blockhouse at the gate-Clan law required it.

Jack Heuisink nodded pridefully. "We have order here in Iowa! And have since the Change-or nearly. Well, we've got an emergency fort we keep up with the neighbors, over there about a mile, but we don't live in it, the way I hear they do in some places. We just keep it maintained and stocked."

And sure, I suppose it is a prideful thing not to need walls, Rudi thought.

It showed how strong Iowa was on its borders, and how well patrolled inside them. He'd noted that few men or women went armed here, too, unless they were warriors by trade.

But on the other hand, things can change. And they can change much faster than the time needed to build a wall. Whereupon the memory of pride, my friend, would be no consolation as you sat in that fort and watched your home burn, at all, at all.

Ingolf had dropped back into hearing range. "You've also got Nebraska and Marshall between you and the Sioux, Jack," he said dryly. "And Richland north of you, and Kirkville south. They've got walls around their settlements, you betcha. And there's the Mississippi between you and the wild men eastways, and you've got a river-navy for that."

"Well, yeah, Captain," he said. "But things here never did go to hell the way they did in a lot of places."

He turned to Rudi: "Dad says there was just so much damned food around that folks here had to make a real effort to starve; silos and elevators in the towns, bins on the farms, trains and trucks stopped on the roads and rails stuffed with grain. Things got bad enough, but there are almost as many people in Iowa now as there were before the Change."

"I can believe it," Rudi said. "I'd never imagined that there could be so much good land in one place."

"And it was all cultivated then-corn and beans, beans and corn, right out to the horizon, land that's pasture now or not used at all," the younger Heuisink said. "Lots of cattle and hogs, too, though they kept them penned up so tight a lot died before Dad and the others could get them out to the fields. Still, there was plenty left once they got things organized."

"And until the Change it all fed tens of millions far away who did not survive," Father Ignatius said, and crossed himself. "Madonna, intercede for them. Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison."

The two younger men looked at him. Now, that's true, but I wouldn't have thought of it, Rudi mused.

"Yeah, we were lucky, Padre," Jack said gravely.

"Then you would do well to add wisdom to it, my son," Ignatius said. "For however much luck God sends, sinful man can-"

"-manage to screw the pooch somehow or other," Odard cut in.

Then he made a graceful gesture of apology when the priest frowned at him; Mathilda stifled a giggle. Ignatius looked stern, but he had to fight to keep one corner of his mouth from quirking up.

And he's no older than Ingolf, Rudi thought.

"That is one way to put it, Baron Gervais. Ah, we have arrived," the priest said.

The core of Victrix Farm was a tall house, three stories of white-painted clapboard with a shingle roof and wraparound verandas at ground level and above. It was flanked by two others much the same, looking as if they'd been put in since the Change and joined by roofed galleries, and all set amid lawns and flowerbanks behind windbreaks of tall old trees; evening's shadows flickered across the white walls and graceful windows, and a yellow lamp-flame lit in one of the upper windows as they watched.

The great barns and sheet-metal sheds, the silos and granaries, workshops and corrals were downwind to the east, and a substantial village lay on either side of the road southward. The cottages were smaller but mostly frame and white-painted like the house, obviously built of materials salvaged from the dead suburbs and stretching back in short lanes on either side of the road that led to the master's dwelling, shaded by trees that looked about a generation old. A few houses converted to storage sheds were of lime-washed rammed earth, relics from the years of resettlement; Rudi estimated the hamlet had room for two hundred people, give or take and assuming the normal three or four children per household.

A bit fewer than you'd expect from the cultivated land, he thought, in the quick estimate any farmer-or warrior-could make.

This Victrix place had around four hundred acres of plowland and lea, not counting rough pasture; and apparently excellent equipment to go with the fine fat land-reapers, disk-plows, mowing machines, hay balers, cultivators, and threshers-so they probably produced a hefty surplus as well.

Children and dogs were playing in the lanes, or working at chores with the chickens and turkeys and gardens and homes. Field workers were walking in, or riding bicycles home, or dropping off from a couple of wagons fitted with benches, and he could see a woman putting pies to cool on the ledge of a kitchen window. Smoke rose from chimneys, and a smell of cooking food filled the air along with the homey scents of any village; his stomach growled-it had been a long time since a not-very-good lunch. The folk he could see looked well fed, well if roughly clothed, and not overworked; they greeted their lord's son with easy courtesy

But less of bowing and forelock-knuckling than yo u 'd see in, say, Barony Gervais, he thought dryly, as the wagons headed off towards the storage sheds and the guardsmen to their homes.

Besides the homes the village had a schoolhouse shuttered for the summer and flanked by a small reading-room-cum-library, a bakery, a butcher's, a tavern and two small shops selling sundries, a smithy, a leatherworkers' shop and a carpenter's, a clinic and doctor's office, two churches with spires, a baseball diamond with bleachers, and a drill field with an armory attached where the local militia's gear was stowed. It had a sign that read NATIONAL GUARD SPECIAL RESERVE.

"And we've got piped water to all the vaki houses now," Heuisink said, pointing to a row of great three-story windmills that turned briskly with a metallic groaning noise and poured their yield into earth-walled water tanks. "Plus hydraulic power for grinders and so forth. And a swimming pool for the vakis, not just one for the house."

He spurred ahead to carry the news of their arrival. "Vakis?" Rudi asked Ingolf when he'd gone.

"What they call the work-folk here," Ingolf said. "From evacuee; you know, city folk moved out to the farms, what they call refugees most places. Though the Heuisinks treat theirs well-they all get a share in the crop and what the Colonel sells of the farm, and they can run stock of their own on the pastures. A lot of these Iowa farmers still just give vakis their rations and a little pocket money, the way they did when all they could do was hoe a row if they were pointed at it and shown how."

Odard and Mathilda nodded-the Portland Protective Association had done something much like that before the War of the Eye forced reforms on them, although under the newfound aristocracy that Norman Arminger had created from his Society cronies and gangster allies, rather than the pre-Change owners of land. Edain snorted quietly, voicing his feelings on that matter, but then the Mackenzies-meaning mainly Juniper Mackenzie and her friends-had split up their land into family units as fast as the refugees had learned the skills they needed. Sam Aylward had been a farmer's son in England, too.

Ingolf shrugged. "Don't use the word in front of the Colonel, by the way; he doesn't like it. They're bigger than most even here in Iowa, of course. Back home in Richland, the Farmers and the Sheriffs need their refugees to back 'em up come a fight, of which we've had a fair number, so they rent them land of their own and don't try to make them work full-time on the Farmer's fields. Here…"

"You'd be pretty silly to try and treat cowboys bad. You wouldn't see 'em for dust, if they didn't just shoot you," Virginia Kane said. "In the Powder River country we never allowed any of that slavery nonsense the Cutters have. Though I've got to admit, some refugees did end up doing chores on foot around the ranch house all their lives, if they couldn't learn to be useful with the stock. Not most of 'em, though, and surely not most of their kids."

"Yeah," Fred Thurston said. "But a ranch isn't like a farm, Virginia. Dad left the Ranchers pretty much alone back home in Boise, but he made people who owned big crop farms split up their land as soon as people could handle it-had to use troops to make 'em do it, sometimes. And he used the army to bring land under the furrow, then settled guys on it after they'd done their three years. He wanted to keep hired workers expensive and scarce, and for everyone to serve in the army and then the militia."

"I don't think your brother, Martin, will necessarily continue those policies," Father Ignatius said thoughtfully.

"No," Fred replied, his lips compressed. "But I will."

"We Dunedain don't do much farming at all," Ritva said with satisfaction. "Something I've never regretted. We do Rangers' work, and we hunt."

Mathilda sighed. "We Armingers don't farm either," she said dryly. "But we need the peasants or we don't eat-and neither would you Rangers, unless you didn't mind no spuds and bread with the venison, and nothing but buckskin to wear. You just do it at second remove."

"One more thing," Ingolf said, his voice dropping as much as it could and still carry to ten riders. "Colonel Heuisink's first wife and the kids he had with her were in New York on a visit when the Change hit. He gets sort of out-of-sorts if it's mentioned, even now. Or at least he did when I met him before, and I doubt he's changed."

They all nodded; that sort of thing was common enough among their elders. The pain of never knowing what happened to your kin was made worse by the grisly knowledge of what had probably happened to anyone caught in the big cities, which started with quick death by fire and violence for the lucky and went downhill from there. The stories brought back by explorers from Oregon who'd probed into California were still enough to chill the blood, and they'd heard Ingolf's tales of what lay in the death zones of the East Coast, where scattered wild-man bands still lived out their grisly game of hunt and dreadful feasting.

Grooms came to take their horses when they drew up on the curved graveled driveway before the house; Rudi had the usual minute's trouble persuading Epona that the stranger wasn't someone she should hammer and bite. When he looked up, Colonel Abel Heuisink was walking down from the veranda.

The master of Victrix Farm was about the same height as his son, but older than Rudi had expected-in his sixties, with only a fringe of cropped white hair around a bald dome. His spare frame was erect and vigorous, though, and his eyes bright as turquoise in a seamed, tanned face; he wore the usual bib overalls and cap of a Hawkeye gentleman.

"A pleasure to see you again, sir," Ingolf said.

"Always a pleasure to see the man who hammered some sense into my boy Jack, Captain Vogeler," the older man said. "It was more than I could ever do."

"You couldn't put him on the latrine detail for a month. That helped."

The master of Victrix turned to take in the rest of the party, blinking a little at Rudi's kilted height. When he shook hands it was a brisk no-nonsense gesture.

"Come on in," he said. "Plenty of room at dinner."

Showered and in his set of clean clothes, Rudi felt much more human. The room he'd been given was larger than his at home in Dun Juniper, with a window that overlooked the gardens behind the house; it smelled pleasantly of rose sachets, and there was even a shelf of books above the desk, and the luxury of a private bathroom. The floor was interesting; he recognized broad heart-of-pine planks, worn but beautifully fitted-they must have been there since the house was built a century or more ago.

Our host's kin are old in this land, he thought. Good for folk to have roots.

A servant girl knocked at the door. "Dinner, sir," she said, poking her head around it and smiling with her yellow-brown braids swinging on either side of a freckled face.

"In a moment," Rudi replied, made a last adjustment to the lie of his plaid, and walked out.

Dinner was to be served on a screened-in veranda at the rear of the house, pleasantly open to the breeze as the sun set on this hot summer's day, with a view of a rose garden blossoming with white and crimson, and a stretch of lawn with a swinging chair. Garbh was out there beneath a huge oak that had a tractor tire slung from one branch by a rope, gnawing on a bone and surrounded by several cautiously curious local dogs.

Rudi's nose told him what awaited the humans just before his eyes could.

Now, don't be drooling down your plaid, Rudi Mackenzie, he told himself. You must do the Clan credit among strangers!

A cold roast suckling pig lay at one end of the long table in brown-glazed glory on a slab of carved oak, with an apple in its mouth; a sirloin of beef rested at the other, pink at the center where a thin slice had been shaved away. Between them were breads and hot biscuits and yellow butter, salads of greens and cherry tomatoes and onions and peppers and radishes dressed with oil and vinegar, potato salad with its creamy whiteness flecked with bits of red, deviled hard-boiled eggs with their yolks replaced by minced ham forcemeat, platters of fresh boiled asparagus, cauliflower and eggplant baked with cheese, sauteed mushrooms, glazed carrots…

Well, so much for being afraid we'd impose, Rudi thought, and wrenched his attention away for the introduction to his host's wife, Alexandra, and his daughter-in-law, Cecilia.

"Padre, will you do the honors?" Abel Heuisink said to Ignatius; from the crucifixes, Rudi assumed the family were Catholics.

They all bowed their heads, and then the pagans murmured their own graces, which got them startled glances.

Mrs. Alexandra Heuisink must have been around twenty at the Change; in her early forties she was still very attractive, in a full-figured way which her cotton dress showed to advantage, and it was obvious where Jack had gotten his reddish brown hair. Jack's wife, Cecilia, was dark-haired and quietly pretty with very pale blue eyes; her children were apparently too young to sit at table. Besides the married daughter off towards Dubuque, the other children were Jack's twelve-year-old younger brother, George, agog for the travelers' tales, and sisters, Andrea and Dorothy, quiet and grave at first with so many strangers present; they were about two years apart, alike enough with their russet ponytails to be twins at first glance.

Rudi gave them an account of the buffalo hunt with the Sioux, and got wide-eyed wonder; Virginia Kane told a story of Coyote Old Man, and got a laugh.

"I wish I'd been with you!" George burst out, when he'd heard a bit more of the band's passage.

His father gave him a stern glance, and his elder brother an exasperated one; obviously having run away to soldier in a free company himself undermined any prospective words of wisdom to a youngster with his head fermenting full of romantic yeast. Rudi grinned at the boy.

Time to deflate his enthusiasm a wee bit, he thought. No danger of doing it too much, not with a spirited lad like him. Heroing is something fate and duty inflict on you, boyo, not a grand game you seek out for the fun of it.

"Not while we were holed up in that cave, and my sister"-he nodded towards Mary-"and I were like to die."

"Did it hurt?" the boy asked with ghoulish enthusiasm; no normal lad that age really believed in agony and death.

I did, Rudi thought. But then, I met them earlier than most. Aloud he went on with malice aforethought:

"It wasn't that so much, as not being able to go to the latrine by myself, and having to be swaddled and cleaned like a baby."

The two younger girls made disgusted faces, and George looked as if he'd like to; he also went thoughtful for a while.

" This hurt," Mary added, tapping her eye patch. "But that wasn't as bad as knowing I'd never get it back."

Jack winked at Rudi behind his sibling's back, and the two elder Heuisinks gave him slight, silent, grateful nods.

He didn't let conversation interrupt his eating more than he had to until well into the meal. It concluded with apple and cherry pies and ice cream with walnuts, and then the children were sent off; Cecilia shepherded them away. The two blond maidservants cleared the table, and everyone moved to softer chairs around a low settee where they set out a pear brandy much better than the indifferent wine which had accompanied the meal, and real coffee in an old-looking silver service and bone-china cups.

"Thank you, Francine, Marian," Alexandra Heuisink said. "That'll be all."

The girls looked a little startled, but went. Alex went on to the group:

"They're perfectly trustworthy, but what you don't know, you can't blab."

Abel nodded: "I'm not in as good odor with the current Bossman as I was with his father."

"Dad's head of the Progressives," Jack explained, nibbling a biscuit. "He's the Vakis' Friend-sorry, Dad, but that's the word people use. Anthony Heasleroad's a Ruralist."

"Anthony Heasleroad is a Heasleroadist first, last and always," his mother said, as she poured the coffee. "And his father was a strong-arm artist who got into office by what amounted to a coup d'etat. And murder, in my opinion."

"We did what had to be done, 'Zandra," her husband said. "I know your father was a good man-"

"-who had a convenient accident," she replied. "He was also the legitimate Governor, and he wouldn't have tried to make the position hereditary."

"Yeah. But he would have let us be swamped instead of closing the Mississippi bridges. We certainly couldn't afford a civil war then, things were too close to the edge. We all saw what happened in Illinois. And we don't want one now."

"Maybe Tom Heasleroad was a necessary evil, but damned if I can see why Tony's necessary at all."

"He's got the State Police and the Ruralist Party on his side, Mom," Jack pointed out. "It's necessary not to get sent to the mines for sedition and violating the Emergency Legislation."

"True," his father said. He turned to the travelers. "Sorry, but if you're going East, some of this local politics is relevant."

"Some of it sounds unpleasantly familiar," Fred Thurston said. Virginia Kane nodded beside him.

"Do have some coffee. We get a little these days," Mrs. Heuisink said, taking some knitting out from a basket beneath her chair. "Just recently."

"The coffee's the only thing we've had that didn't come from Victrix Farm, apart from some of the spices," her husband said proudly, relaxing from the tension of a moment before.

"It's a fine estate, sir," Rudi said. "I've come all the way from the Pacific Coast and haven't seen better, and few to equal it. Though of course it must have been finer still, before the Change."

"You folks still use farm for the holding a man who works the soil cultivates, don't you?" Abel Heuisink said.

"Yes. Well, we Mackenzies say croft; they say farm in Corvallis and the Bearkiller territory and virgate in the Portland Protective Association."

Abel Heuisink smiled a little sourly. "Before the Change, Victrix Farm actually was just a farm in that sense of the word, though a pretty big one-a lot more of it was cultivated, too. Cash grain, mostly. My family and six or seven men handled it all with some contract work now and then, and I could have done with fewer if I hadn't bred show stock as a hobby. Then it turned into a refugee camp. And now it's more like a town than a lot of Iowa towns were, back then."

Rudi nodded wisely; he knew that folk had been thin on the ground outside the cities before the Change.

It seems unnatural, but then, things were unnatural in the old times.

"All that machinery," he said. "With so few hands to eat the produce, it must have been a gold mine!"

"I kept it as a loss leader," Heuisink said. When Rudi's eyebrows went up: "As a tax write-off. That meant… in those days, we were taxed on our incomes. If you had a business that was making a loss, you could balance that against other income and pay less."

Baffled, Rudi blinked, thinking of the rich fields outside.

"How could land like this not pay? People had to eat then too, and to be sure there were so many of them! And with machines to do the work, you could sell nearly all of it."

His host chuckled. "Farmers used to ask themselves that question all the time. The short answer is that there were a lot of people between us and the hungry mouths, and they made the profit."

As a nobleman used to paying levies and to making them on his vassals, Odard's thoughts were a little different:

"How could the Crown know your income to tax it, my lord Heuisink?" he said. "I mean, the old American government. Did they send clerks around to assess your fields?"

"You told the government what your income was," he replied. "And I'm not a lord, young man."

Odard gave a charming smile and spread his hands. "You are by the way we'd reckon things in the Portland Protective Association's territories, sir. I'm a Baron myself back home; perhaps you'd say Farmer here. But about that… income tax, did you call it?"

"Most of my family's income came from stocks and bonds, investments."

The travelers nodded; all of them at least knew what those were, in theory, except perhaps Virginia Kane. Seeing that they'd followed him that far, Heuisink went on:

"The law required you to report your total income every year."

"And people actually told what they had, Lord Heuisink?" Mathilda said, her cup halfway to her mouth. "That's more power than my mother has as Regent of the Association, by Saint Dismas! It's hard enough to collect the mesne tithes and the tallage and corvee and the salt tax!"

"You had to tell, or the IRS would get on your case, young lady. Believe me, you didn't want that to happen."

"Ah," Odard said wisely. "Rack? The steel boot? Pincers? Not," he added piously, "that we Associates do that sort of thing anymore. Not much."

Their host looked at him sharply, obviously wondering if he was being mocked and then looking even more startled when he realized the younger man was perfectly serious.

"Worse than that," he said. "Audits. But as you say, Mr. Mackenzie, it's good land… and that's what matters now. Thank God I didn't let my accountant talk me into selling it and putting all the money in Intel stock! His son actually keeps my books here now."

He poured himself a brandy and leaned forward. "But it's your story I'd like to hear." A glance around. "From the introductions, you can all tell me things about parts of the country we hardly hear rumors from these days. So, Mr. Mackenzie… Unless you'd like to start, Captain Vogeler?"

Ingolf looked at Rudi, who gave a fractional nod.

This all started with you riding into Sutterdown, with the Prophet's men waiting for you and everyone all unknowing, he thought. Unless it really started with that prophecy Mother made at my Wiccanning… or with the Change… or the creation of the universe, so!

Ingolf knotted his big hands for a moment, considering, and then began:

"Well, Colonel, you know we… my Villains and I… got sent East, heading for Boston, going on four years ago now."

The magnate nodded. "Waste of resources, but young Tony was set on it. Not that I grudged you the contract, though that offer of a job is still open."

"Yah, but I had my people to think of. And he sent Kuttner along with us. Well, Kuttner had-said he had-secret orders from the Bossman that we pay a visit to Nantucket…"

Heuisink sat quietly while the story spun out, and fireflies glittered like captive stars in the gardens outside, and some sort of cricket shrilled. The others began theirs when Ingolf left off with his arrival in Sutterdown…

By Ogma the Honey-tongued, that was more than a year ago! Rudi thought.

When they'd finished, a long silence fell.

"Well," the master of Victrix said at last. "If I didn't know you were a reliable man, Ingolf Vogeler, I'd toss you all out on your keesters right now. Even so, I'm dubious."

"It's a wild tale," Rudi agreed. "But our enemies seem to believe it, so."

"Yeah, and that's one more reason to take it seriously… most of it, at least. This cult out West has ambassadors in Des Moines now. At court," Heuisink added, using the term wryly for some reason.

"Oh, court intrigue is something we're used to," Mathilda said helpfully.

The others nodded. Abel Heuisink looked at them and sighed.

"Sometimes I think I've lived too long."

TheScourgeofGod