The Scourge of God

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

THUNDER RIVER COUNTRY, EASTERN WYOMING

JUNE 1, CY24/2022 AD

"But the names you give the gods sound sort of weird," Frederick Thurston said.

They were all sprawled around the fire, eating or just resting before dropping off to sleep. Rudi flipped a well-gnawed rib to Garbh before he answered, and the half-mastiff caught it out of the air with a clomp of jaws like tombstones falling together in a quarry on a wet day.

"Well, then, you could call on Them in the forms they took to your ancestors," Rudi said. " Mine called on Brigid and Lugh and Ogma and the Morrigan, or at least a lot of them did, before the White Christ came."

Fred laughed. "I'd be sort of lonely, calling on the gods of the.." He searched his memory. "Yoruba? Ashanti? In Idaho, at least."

"That's not your only heritage," Rudi answered. "On either the spear or cauldron side. There's the matter of your name, to be sure."

"My name?"

Rudi grinned and leaned back against his saddle. " Thurston means Stone of Thor. English, I'd say-the Norse would have made it Thorstein. Thunor is how the old English said that One's name."

"Dad never said where it came from; we're from Maryland, though, far back. Might have picked it up there."

"And your first name is Anglo-Saxon, too, or German. An Anglo-Saxon being a German who's forgotten he's half Welsh, as the saying goes. It means Peaceful Ruler."

"It does?" Fred said. "Well, I'll be damned. Where could I find out more about that?"

"Larsdalen, for starters," Rudi said, and nodded towards Mary and Ritva, who were combing each other's hair and rebraiding it. "Their mother, Signe Havel, is a priestess of that tradition-a gythja, a god-woman; she studied first with my mother, but took things in a different direction."

"Mom never could stand not being number one," Mary said. Then: "Not that she doesn't mean it, you know."

Edain Aylward Mackenzie had been silent during the talk of gods. Now he spoke:

"Someone's coming," he said.

He jerked a thumb over his shoulder into the night, then licked his fingers and belched slightly. Rudi slid down and pressed an ear to the ground; Ritva and Mary rose, donned their war cloaks, and ghosted into the darkness.

"That's interesting," Fred replied, elaborately casual, and cut another slice off the buffalo hump. To himself he wondered: How did he

… hey, it's the dog. Not fair!

He kept chewing. Bison weren't common in western Idaho, where he'd lived all his life until recently. It was the best meat he'd ever tasted, flavorful, meltingly tender-you could eat it like candy. The contrast with the flat wheat griddlecakes wasn't too great if they were fresh and warm, though.

He finished and stood, making sure his saber was loose in the scabbard. Edain came to his feet as well and strung his longbow. Then he rested his hand soothingly on Garbh's head where she pointed her nose northward into the darkness.

Fred looked over to where Rudi was lounging on his bedroll. The Mackenzie nodded slightly, and the young man from Boise raised his voice:

"You're welcome to share our fire."

There was silence from beyond the reach of the light, but that wasn't very far; the tough greasewood stems had sunk to a low reddish glow in the pit they'd dug through the thick prairie sod. The meat rested on a spit above the embers, with fat making them spit and flare now and then as it dripped from the flesh or out of the spray of fine bones. The smell of it and the wheatcakes and the pot of beans drifted into the prairie summer night, beneath the huge fresh scent of the grasslands. A kettle of chicory stood on three rocks, keeping warm enough for a slight plume of acrid vapor.

There was a moment of intense silence; the wind had died, and the moon was down, and only the stamp of a hobbled horse broke the quiet beneath the great dome of stars. Traveling the plains was a great way of making you realize how big this land was. They'd only covered a quarter of it, and it was more than half a year since he'd left…

Maybe Dad was wrong. Maybe it's just too big to be all one country again. Meanwhile, let's keep our attention on whoever-the-hell this is.

Fred went on:

"And in case you were wondering, there are two of us in back of you by now. Even if you're moving on, show yourself. And we'd be happier about it if you came in slow. Less chance of someone's fingers slipping off a bowstring that way."

"I'm coming in!" a voice called sharply. "I'm peaceable!"

Fred's eyebrows went up. That was a woman's voice; tight with control, and hoarse with strain and tiredness as well. Rudi sat upright, looking casual and relaxed to anyone who didn't know how fast he could move; he'd been pressing his ear against the ground.

"Only one horse anywhere near," he said quietly. "That's a good trick, Ingolf."

"Only works well when the dirt's dry and hard," Ingolf replied. "I learned it from a Pawnee scout when we were fighting the Sioux."

The slow clop of hoofbeats became audible. Then the slight jingle of spurs; the rider was walking and leading her horse. Fifty yards away the figure became vaguely discernible; the bright starlight was enough to show it was wearing a wide-brimmed hat. And to show the violent start as the twins rose like sections of the grass itself in their war cloaks. Starlight caught on the heads of the arrows ready on their bows.

"I said I'm peaceable-like, dammit!" the stranger said, in a strong range-country accent.

It was stronger and harsher than Fred's own; he'd grown up in Boise, which had never stopped being a city even when it shrank drastically. Out here where the largest settlements were generally a ranch home-place, speech had drifted faster and farther from the old world's standards.

"That's nice," Ritva replied. "A lot of people who might be dreadfully bitchy otherwise are peaceable with an arrow pointed at their briskets."

The stranger peered at her, and apparently found what she saw behind the arrowhead reassuring-which showed she was either overconfident or more perceptive than the usual run. She came on, looking around their camp as she approached. The two mules that pulled the cart were hobbled, dim shapes grazing not too far away; so were a dozen of the horses. The other nine were tethered to a picket line much closer, where they could be saddled quickly in an emergency; a heap of cut grass lay in front of them. Epona was neither hobbled nor tethered; she raised her muzzle from a doze at the scent of the stranger's gelding, snorted, and shut her eyes again.

There wasn't much else, except the sleeping bags and saddles arranged around the firepit, though Fred noticed how the fire underlit everyone's faces, making them look a bit sinister…

And if I were a lone woman coming in out of the dark, I'd be a bit cautious, he thought, and tossed on a few more sticks.

The stranger dropped her reins and the horse stood; that might be good training, or it might just be exhausted.

Both, the young man thought.

It looked like a good horse that had been ridden too far and too fast, and there were silver studs on the bridle and breast-collar and saddle, and on the big tooled leather tapaderos that covered the stirrups. The silver was tarnished, or rubbed with mud, and the rest of the gear-coiled leather lariat, cased recurve bow and small round shield, checked shirt, leather breeches, boots, chaps, a quiver of arrows over her back on a bandolier-also looked good but hard-used. She had a shete and a bowie knife at her broad belt and a pair of soft leather gauntlets tucked through it; the buckle was worked steel, in the shape of a coyote's head.

The woman…

No, it's a girl. She's not thirty, the way I thought at first glance, Fred decided. She's about my age or a little less, just dirty and dusty and falling-down tired.

… looked around the circle of faces; Ignatius was out on watch, and the stranger's glance flicked at the twins and Mathilda for a moment longer. Which was logical; women along and armed made it less likely they were a bandit gang, slavers, or others of dubious character. Not impossible, but less likely.

She sighed and relaxed a little, tapping the wide felt hat against her chaps. Her face was narrow and straight-nosed beneath the trail dirt, and her hair was bound back in a single braid; it looked to be brown, perhaps with a hint of auburn, and her eyes were blue when the firelight flared a bit. He judged that her height would be about halfway between the twins and Mathilda; five-eight and a bit.

"Well, you're not Cutters, at least," she said after a second. "Nor friends of theirs."

"Emphatically unfriends of theirs, miss," Rudi said, standing. She blinked up at the height of him, noticed the kilt, and then looked over at Edain, a bit startled. "Still and all, are they on your trail? Your company is pleasant; theirs wouldn't be at all, at all."

"They were, but I lost them two days ago, I'm pretty sure." She took a deep breath. "Kane is my name, Virginia Kane, of… of nowhere in particular."

She seemed to relax a little further when nobody recognized her name. Rudi introduced himself, and then the others. Fred gestured at the fire.

"Help yourself. And there's water, a good seep in the slough over there for your horse. Barrel's full and we purified it."

"Yeah, my horse smelled the slough a couple of miles back," she said. "We're pretty dry."

She stopped to let Garbh smell her hand, watered and unsaddled her horse, rubbing it down and hobbling it before washing her hands and face in a little of the water and drinking cup after cup from the barrel on the cart. Then she dropped her saddle and bedroll in an empty spot, and came over to crouch by the fire. Her hands shook very slightly as she spooned beans onto a tin plate from her kit and cut meat from the hump with a clasp-knife. Fred noted with interest that the little knife had been honed to a wire edge, and that she used it with a pulling stroke that showed experience. She piled the slices onto a couple of flat wheatcakes and wrapped them to make tubular sandwiches.

Despite that tremor of eagerness she didn't gobble, although she ate with concentrated intensity for a good fifteen minutes; she wasn't gaunt, so it had probably been only the past few days that she'd been missing meals. Fred judged she'd been well fed before that, but active-she had the lean hard look of it, though with enough in breast and hip to please a man's eye. When she'd finished she rolled a cigarette and poured a cup of the chicory.

Look at the hands, he thought-his father had told him that was the best quick way to read someone. They're not soft, but they're not a working ranch-hand's either, or a servant girl's. Not enough battering, and that dirt's not ground into her knuckles and pores. And her fingernails are well trimmed. Plus tobacco is expensive.

"Thank you kindly," she said.

Odard was lying against his saddle, idly strumming at his lute. He didn't look up from the instrument as he said:

"Left home in a hurry, demoiselle? Anyone after you that we should know about? Someone who might just kill any company you'd picked up… us, for instance?"

Her hand moved towards the hilt of her shete; then she unbuckled the weapons belt and set it aside slightly-though Fred noticed she didn't put it so far away that she couldn't draw the steel quickly.

"My… ranch that I was living on got taken over by the CUT," she said carefully. "By a couple of neighbors who'd gone over to the Cutters, at least; and there were Cutter troops around to back them up, a new bunch, not just their levies-Sword of the Prophet, regulars out of Corwin. I had to clear out fast; the Cutters don't live like human beings, if you ask me, and it's worse for a woman. That was in the Powder River country, north of Sheridan."

That didn't mean anything to most of them. Ingolf whistled softly. "That's a long way to come on one horse, miss," he said.

Virginia looked at him; her eyes narrowed slightly, noting the difference in accent between him and the others who'd spoken. His Wisconsin rasp wasn't much like her twang, but it was a lot closer than Rudi's lilt or the archaic Portlander dialect or the way Sindarin influenced the way the twins sounded.

"I had a remuda," she said. "But they were after me. I had to push my horses hard, and leave a couple that foundered or went lame."

"And are you heading anywhere in particular?" Rudi said.

She looked at him, visibly considered, and said with a trace of bitterness:

"Mister, it's more a matter of headin' away from anywhere those maniacs is likely to go."

Then she yawned; her head drooped, until she pulled it up with a jerk.

"You can put your bedroll over here on the girls' side," Mathilda said. "And tell us more about it in the morning."

"… Guide me and guard me this day and all days

By Your grace, with harm to none,

Blessed be!"

Rudi lowered his arms as the disk of the sun cleared the eastern horizon. The plain there was nearly featureless, though it was rising ground and rolled very slightly more than the flatness behind them. Even a slight roll here was deceptive, making you think you could see farther than you could. Was that the slightest trace of blue irregularity on the northeast the Black Hills, or was knowledge born of maps fooling him?

Hard to tell, he thought. It's tricky to measure distance here by eye. And who knew the sky could be so… big?

Dawn and evening were the best hours on the plains, he'd found; for a few long moments it was a mystery of brown and green and blue, of long shadows and enormous distance. The morning was cool, and for an instant there had been dew on the grass, but the great cloudless dome of blue all around them augured for a warm day. Grass ran in rippling calf-high waves to the edge of sight, still green in early June, with only the occasional big sage or white-blossomed yucca bush, but with a thick scattering of flowers yellow and pink and blue. A herd of pronghorns flowed past in the middle distance; prairie dogs whistled from a town whose little conical hillocks scattered the land ahead, and then they dove for cover as a golden eagle soared by on seven-foot wings, its shadow flowing ahead of it.

"Ah, you guys aren't from around here, are you?" Virginia said carefully.

Rudi turned from where he and his sisters and Edain had been making their morning prayer; Fred Thurston had joined in. A bit to his surprise, Ingolf had joined them too, standing beside Mary, though he hadn't actually recited the Salute to the Sun with them.

"No, we're from the Far West," he said. "Except Ingolf here, and he's been all the way West to our home."

Ignatius was looking a little unhappy about Ingolf, but too polite to say anything in public, and he was sticking close to Mathilda anyway-since Yule, he'd been like a goose with one gosling around her. Odard was with them, of course; he'd been getting more pious lately.

"You mean from that valley near the Tetons, over past the Wind River country, where they've got the funny religion and all the weird fighting tricks?"

"We passed through there," Rudi said, grinning. "But we're from farther away than that, and our religion is even funnier than theirs!"

The ranch-woman went on, still carefully: "Yeah, the skirts look.. a little strange. No offense."

"We're from Oregon," Edain amplified. "And these aren't skirts, they're kilts. We're Mackenzies-everyone wears them in our clan."

She smiled at him, revealing even white teeth. "Except the women?" she said, nodding at Mary and Ritva, and Mathilda, all of whom were in pants.

"We're Dunedain, not Mackenzies," Ritva said. "We wear pants, or robes. All the Mackenzies wear kilts… well, the older women wear arsaids, sometimes. Mathilda there's a Portlander Associate-women where she comes from wear skirts all the time, except her, she gets a special break. And Father Ignatius is-"

"A Roman priest, yeah," she said, inclining her head politely to him; he had his Benedictine robe on over the rest of his clothes. "Some of us are… were… Catholic. I'm a Baptist, myself, more or less."

Fred Thurston came over to Rudi as she went to gather her gear.

"She's some Rancher's daughter," he said quietly, his face serious. "An important Rancher; probably a Sheriff."

Rudi suppressed a smile. "It's a bit obvious, isn't it? She hasn't the manner of an underling."

"Or the gear of one," Fred said. "That's expensive horse harness-not just the silver, the workmanship-but it's her working tack, not something kept for special occasions. It's a good horse, too. People like that have a hard time disappearing." A grin: "I did!"

Rudi nodded. "Which means that she might be worth the trouble of pursuing, and draw enemies on us," he said thoughtfully. "Hmmm. See if you can draw her out."

The son of Boise's first ruler went over to get his cold meat and beans. Breakfast was leftovers from last night; buffalo hump was so succulent that it still tasted good cold, and the flatbread was only a little stale. Garbh gnawed on some ribs, delighted to get them raw and with all the meat still attached.

"I'm from Idaho, myself," Fred said in friendly fashion.

She gave him a long considering look. At least she wasn't acting like he was a kid; even as the President's son girls his own age had tended to treat him that way, when they weren't obviously trying to get to his dad through him.

It's a bit of a relief to be just another guy, he thought.

"Boise?" she said.

"Yeah."

Her eyes narrowed. "We heard some rumor that they've thrown in with the Cutters."

"Some of them have," he said bleakly. "That's… a lot of the reason why I left."

Her smile was broad and genuine. "Hell, this outfit here might as well have WHS for its brand, for We Hate Sethaz! I wouldn't mind slapping that iron on a maverick. Or a Cutter's butt."

When they'd finished breakfast he tossed the remains of the hump to Garbh. They still had most of the young yearling they'd killed two days ago, but it wouldn't last long in this weather unless they made a drying rack; nine people could eat a deer down to the bones and hooves easily enough before it spoiled, but not a yearling bull buffalo dressed out at six hundred pounds of meat.

Rudi looked after them as Fred took her to look at the remounts, talking animatedly; he smiled tolerantly. The girl was pretty-in a strong-boned, strong-willed way-and they were both young.

Her own horse obviously needed a few days' rest at least. Rudi was wondering whether it would be worthwhile to stop and jerk some of the buffalo-he hated the thought of waste, though of course the buzzards and coyotes had to eat too-when Ingolf came riding in from his early-morning circuit.

"Visitors," he said, and gave Virginia a hard look.

"What direction?" Rudi said. "How many?"

"At least twenty, from the sound, you betcha. From the east."

"Well, boggarts bugger us and the Dagda club me dead," Rudi said in annoyance, controlling a prickle of alarm; that was where they were headed. "Backtracking would be… risky."

Everyone looked at Virginia Kane. She'd said she'd lost her pursuers, and there had been no sign of any until now, but…

"She came in from the west," Fred pointed out. "Not from the east."

Virginia nodded. "Cutters wouldn't loop around through the Lakota country, I don't think. You're already over the Seven Council Fires border. The Cutters are crazy but not crazy-stupid."

"Gear up, everyone!" Rudi said. "Mistress Kane, put your saddle on one of our remounts-your horse isn't going to be fit for much anytime soon."

It was twenty-two riders, when they could see the approaching party. They were spread out over a fair stretch of the grassland, taking their time to swing around the prairie-dog town and drawing in at long bowshot away from the nine-now ten-travelers. Two of them rode on, coming closer with arrogant confidence.

The which they're entitled, since they outnumber us nearly three to one and this is their land, Rudi thought.

Back home, there was usually somewhere to take cover, and you could place yourself by a swift glance at the mountains.

Here… And it's like a bug on a plate I feel, hereabouts. Waiting for the fork to come down…

"Sioux, all right," Ingolf said out of the corner of his mouth. "Don't put their backs up-but don't let them think they can push you around, either."

" This porridge is just right, as the ill-mannered girl said when she wandered into Father Bear's house," Rudi said quietly back; he kept his hands carefully free of his weapons, but his skin prickled with an awareness of where they were.

The two men pulled up halfway between the parties. Rudi and Ingolf walked their horses out to meet them; when they were in speaking distance he raised his hand palm out.

"Hau kola," he said, and used one of the phrases of greeting Ingolf had taught him. "Lay he hun nee kay washte."

"Yeah," one of them replied, the older of the pair. His tone was as pawky as his words. "And the top of the beautiful fucking morning to you, too, kilt-boy."

Both the Sioux riders were in fringed buckskin trousers, beautifully tanned and supple; their hair was parted in the center and hung to either side in braids wrapped with leather thongs. The younger wore nothing else save pants, boots, the skin of a kit fox around his neck and a feather in his brown hair with a red dot on it. He carried an odd-looking standard, with a curve a bit like a shepherd's crook on the end, lined with eagle feathers; the red flag attached to it had a device of seven white tipis grouped in a circle.

The other wore a long buckskin tunic as well, dyed yellow above and red below, with beads and quillwork and bone tubes in rows on the chest, and a steel cap that mounted a headdress of bison hair and horns. Both had bows in their hands, shetes at their belts, lariats and shields slung at their saddlebows. The man in the steel cap was in his forties and darker than his follower, with a few strands of gray in his raven black hair and lines in his big-nosed, high-cheeked brown face. He had a pair of binoculars in a case as well.

All the men behind them were well armed; a few had short lances as well as bows and blades, or stone-headed war clubs; all the ones Rudi could see were young but in their full strength, and looked wiry tough. Several wore leather breastplates, probably tough bison hide, one had a mail-shirt, and all of them had light helmets at their saddlebows. Many had battle scars as well, sometimes proudly picked out with red paint. He hoped the tufts of hair on the lances and shields were just tufts of hair-horse hair, for example, or buffalo.

And not hair hair.

A herd of remounts followed them, with a few near-naked youths in breechclouts riding about to keep them bunched. The herdsmen were mounted bareback, but the grown warriors had good Western-style saddles.

"We're just passing through," the Mackenzie said.

The older Indian's eyes went to the buffalo-hide pegged on the side of the wagon to dry, and to the quartered carcass hanging from the rear of it.

"Passing through, eating our tatonka," he said. "You know, we're sort of sensitive about armed white-eyes coming on to our land without permission, making themselves at home and killing our buffalo. Call it an ethnic quirk."

Rudi spread his hands over his saddlehorn in a peaceable gesture, and smiled.

"We didn't know it was a herd beast," he said.

"It's not a herd beast," the Indian said-Rudi noted uneasily that he hadn't introduced himself yet, either, or used any formula of hospitality. "We herd cattle and horses and sheep and llamas, not buffalo and pronghorn and elk and deer. Those are game, and all the game on the Lakota nation's land belongs to us and our brothers of the Seven Council Fires."

"There seemed to be quite a few of the buffalo. We're ready to pay for it, sure, and you can have the hide and the meat if you'd rather."

"Thanks a lot for offering to give us back our own," the Indian leader said. "Last time round, we said: Sure, it can't hurt, there's a lot of buffalo and water and grass, let 'em take a little now and then when they're passing through…"

He paused for effect and held up a mock-admonishing finger: "And that turned out to be a very bad mistake. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me."

He looked at them, carefully scanning each individual; all the travelers had their fighting gear on. The Portlanders hadn't brought the latest articulated plate suits because they were too difficult to get into without a squire to assist, but Odard and Mathilda and Ignatius all had full knee-length hauberks with greaves and vambraces and kite-shaped shields, twelve-foot lances in their hands with the butts resting on the stirrup-irons. They'd even had time to put the barding on their destriers; Rudi hadn't bothered with Epona, calculating that the extra weight would be more burden than it was worth out here where a horse had room to run as far as its legs would take it.

The Indian finished the once-over and went on: "So unless you're looking for a fight, why don't you just turn around and go right back the way you came?"

"Well, we'd be seriously inconvenienced if we did," Rudi said. "First, because we're heading for the Far East. Next and more important, because the Cutters would kill us all if they caught us, do you see, and there are so wretchedly many of them in that direction"-he pointed westward over his shoulder-"the pity and the black sorrow of it, ochone, ochone."

The younger man grunted, and the older's black eyes narrowed.

"We're at peace with the Church Universal and Triumphant," he said. "And we're not supposed to take in refugees from their territory."

But he said it as if the words made his mouth hurt. His companion grunted again and spat on the grass, then unexpectedly spoke:

"We're not supposed to harm their missionaries, either. But it's funny how many of them fall off their horses and break their necks or get run down by stampeding herds."

Hooves sounded behind Rudi. He looked over his shoulder and swore silently; Virginia Kane was pushing her borrowed mount up beside him, and herself into a negotiation that wasn't going so well. She raised her hand in the greeting gesture and spoke herself:

"Wacantoognaka," she said unexpectedly. "Oun she la yea."

The Indian's eyes went wide. "Virginia? Christ, you've grown!" he blurted.

"I remember you, leksi Whapa Sa, even if I'm a woman now."

"What about Dave?"

"My father's dead," she said shortly. "The Cutters killed him. It was supposed to be outlaws… but I never thought they'd stand by the terms of the peace treaty. And they weren't going to let me inherit!"

"Damn. He was a good man. Yeah, of course you can have sanctuary. Dave Kane was my blood-brother, and we don't forget."

"And for these people too; they took me in and fed me without asking anything for it just because the Cutters were after me."

The man studied her face. "Yeah, I'll stretch it that far. Sorry, tonjan — you're welcome in our camps anytime, but I know it's hard."

"I'm just glad Mom didn't live to see the Cutters take over Skywater."

He sighed and said a phrase that Rudi hadn't heard before and couldn't even render into syllables in his mind without repetition. The swift-rising, slow-falling sounds of Lakota were pleasant, but the strangeness to an English-speaking ear made Gaelic sound like a first cousin.

Our lady guest must have learned some of it early, he thought.

Virginia relaxed slightly; she didn't have any trouble following it. "Thank you for accepting my friends as guests, Uncle Red Leaf," she said formally.

The Sioux leader nodded to her, edged his horse closer and extended a hand to Rudi.

"John Red Leaf, Kiyuska tiyospaye of the Ogallala and the Lakota tunwan," he said resignedly as they shook, then smiled. "Also BS in Range Science from SDSU, class of 1998. This is my son, Rick Mat'o Yamni-Rick Three Bears. Welcome to our land, oh sacred guests, yada yada yada."

Three Bears looked faintly scandalized, at a guess because of his father's irreverence, but shook hands as well. The Mackenzie clansman sympathized; he'd had the same experience with people who'd grown up before the Change. Sometimes they had no idea of what to take seriously.

"Rudi Mackenzie, tanist of the Clan Mackenzie," Rudi said politely. "My sept is Raven. Many thanks for your hospitality. We're from Oregon. Well, most of us."

"Ingolf Vogeler, of nowhere in particular," Ingolf said.

Virginia looked at the warriors behind Red Leaf. "Kit Foxes, Uncle John?"

"Yeah, I'm akicita chief right now. We're out patrolling the border."

"I…" She looked at Rudi, and winced slightly.

She's going to be franker with her uncle John than she was with us, Rudi decided. He smiled and inclined his head to her. And I wouldn't be blaming you, moi glic caileag.

"I think I lost the ones who were after me. Vince Rickover decided right at Dad's funeral that it was time I had protection…"

Red Leaf nodded. "Figures. Wants to marry you to get the land, right?"

She nodded. "But there was a unit of the Sword at his place, the Bar Q-they were what gave him the nerve to move on us. My people would have fought, and we could handle the Bar Q easy enough, but trying to fight Corwin would just get them and their families killed, so I took some horses and ran for it. I think I lost them, but…"

"But we'd better push it hard," Red Leaf said. "The damned Cutters' idea of a peace treaty is that it means whatever suits them from moment to moment-which is sort of unpleasantly familiar, though at least they didn't promise to leave us alone while the sun shone and the grass grew."

Pushing it involved turning and riding a little north of east without losing any time about it, which was the way Rudi's band had been going; the pace was a lot harder, though. The Mackenzie didn't object.

If the people with the local knowledge think it best, it's best, he thought. Especially as this Red Leaf has survived all the time since the Change.

As he thought, the Sioux leader spoke: "So, Rudi Mackenzie, are you guys refugees, traders, or what?"

Rudi thought for a moment. "What," he said. "Very much what."

"Oh, crap," John Red Leaf said four hours of walk-trot-canter-trot-walk later. The Sioux pointed to a circle of vultures in the sky ahead. "Again."

He flung up his hand. The Lakota and Rudi's party had been riding along more or less in a loose clump, shifting as people wanted to talk; now they came to a halt, with the loudest sound the endless sshhhh of the wind through the ankle-high green grass. Virginia, he noted, had been accepted by the warriors as if she were everyone's younger sister, chaffing with them-in English and in scraps of the older tongue, which she spoke as well as anyone in this band, Red Leaf included. These folk seemed to use it about the way Mackenzies did Gaelic, which was to say mostly for emphasis and the odd word for flavor, but rather more so since there were quite a few actual speakers.

It's an odd language they'll be speaking in a few generations, he thought.

The prairie rose and fell, rose and fell in long swales; it was hot now, enough to make Rudi unpin his plaid and fold it into a saddlebag, and it leached out the land until everything looked like a green-brown vacancy, with only the occasional sagebrush for visual relief.

"You know what that is they're circling?" Rudi said, cocking an eye at the buzzards.

"I've got a strong suspicion. Same as last week… oh, well, we can water there."

"And my folk can change out of their armor, so they could."

"Yeah, it looks heavy," Red Leaf said. "Sort of inconvenient, having to stop and get in and out of it, I'd say. With our gear you can be ready to fight anytime."

"It is a bit of a nuisance, I'll grant. But worth it in a stand-up fight, the which is more common where we come from."

The Indian nodded. "I can see that. Less room to run and dodge out on the West Coast."

The whole group proceeded cautiously. More buzzards rose from the ground as they crested the low rise. The two buffalo ahead were very dead, mostly eaten and buzzing with flies; from the smell it had been a couple of days ago. The bones and heads lay near the edge of the muddy little stream-it would dry up later in the summer, but for now it still held a slow trickle between banks of grass thicker and greener than that on the uplands to either side, with a few cottonwoods just coming into leaf. It also made the ground soft enough to hold prints; you could see clearly where the ambushers had pounced from the cover of a clump of rabbitbrush, and the splashing, thrashing fight it had been until two young bulls were brought down.

Epona danced a little nervously until Rudi ran a soothing hand down her neck. He swung to the ground, looped up the reins from her hackamore, and turned her loose; the big black mare mooched a few yards upstream and dipped her muzzle into the muddy water, being naturally too intelligent to drink down current from a body. He looked at the ground more closely, and caught a faint rank odor, like a neglected catbox. The killers had been messy feeders, too, even before the birds and coyotes had gotten to work. Several of the broad-winged scavengers were circling resentfully overhead, waiting for the irritating humans to go away and let them get back to serious eating.

Even in the midst of his annoyance, Red Leaf gave Epona an admiring glance.

Sure, and she's a better introduction than a friendly dog, Rudi thought.

Red Leaf dismounted in turn, and handed his horse over to one of the teenagers in breechclouts; the Sioux war-party had little apparent discipline, but organization seemed to appear like mushrooms after rain when they needed it. From what he and Virginia had said, the Kit Foxes were a brotherhood devoted to defending the tribal borders, and also a social club that organized everything from dances to marriages and acted as a police force besides.

"I'd say that's a tiger's prints," Rudi said, squatting for a moment and tracing the great plate-broad pugmarks with a finger. "But you don't have tigers hereabouts, I'm thinking. And there's at least four different animals, and tigers don't hunt in packs."

"No," Red Leaf replied. "We've got plenty of lobos these days, some grizzlies just lately, but no tigers. We do get goddamned lions, of all the crazy things, the past few years. They follow the buffalo north from Texas and New Mexico when the snow melts; now I hear some of them are wintering in the Black Hills. They breed like rabbits; only rabbits don't have fangs and claws and four hundred pounds of attitude."

"It doesn't look as if they'll take more than you can afford," Rudi said.

There was a herd of several dozen bison not half a mile away, a bachelor herd of bulls cropping at the new grass, and shedding their winter coats. That made them look tattered, but they were plump and healthy. He could see pronghorns from here as well, and some horses that were probably mustangs, and elk, mule deer, cattle that were probably also at least half-feral. When the travelers startled waterfowl out of the little stream, their wings had made a momentary thunder.

This was a spare land compared to the Willamette, but next to some of the deserts Rudi had crossed since he came east of the Cascades it swarmed with life.

Red Leaf glared at him. "It's the principle of the thing!" he said. "And they go for horses and stock as well. People too, if they get a chance, probably."

This Red Leaf was well named; he could use some time in Chenrezi Monastery, Rudi thought. He's a frustrated man, and lets that make him angry. Or to be sure, a spell with Aunt Judy…

"Sure, and it's not my fault," he pointed out.

"You white-eyes were always importing things. Starlings and tumbleweeds were bad enough, but lions?"

Rudi chuckled. "You could scarcely expect the ones running those.. what were they called, Father? Seifert Parks?"

Ignatius came up, telling his beads with his left hand and looking around with the mild intelligent pleasure he showed at any new thing.

"Safari Parks, I think, Rudi. Those are lion prints? Fascinating! There's an empty ecological niche here for an open-country predator that can take down full-grown bison, I suppose, since the extinction of the American lion ten thousand years ago. They must be gradually adapting to the colder climate."

"… those Safari Parks to know the Change was coming," Rudi pointed out.

"My Order's information is that dozens of species have naturalized themselves and are spreading rapidly-giraffe, camels, ostrich, emu, baboons, rhino of both varieties, eland… no elephants, alas. And of course tigers over much of the continent-"

Immigrants all around. And speaking of white-eyes… the Mackenzie thought.

He cocked an eye at Red Leaf's followers as they attended to watering their horses and the remount-herd. About a quarter of them looked much like their leader; broad square strong-jawed faces, narrow-eyed, high-cheeked and big-nosed, with ruddy-brown complexions. A third wouldn't have suggested Indian at all as far as appearances went, if it weren't for the braids and feathers and fringes-there were several blonds and one tall, skinny narrow-faced young man with milk-white freckled skin and hair the color of new copper, come to that. The rest were every variety in between.

And Red Leaf's son Three Bears looked suspiciously lighter than his father, too. Folk had moved about a good deal almost everywhere after the Change, settled where they could and mated as inclination and necessity dictated, with little time or attention at first to spare for the old world's notions of who was what.

The which it would probably not be tactful to mention, he thought. Sure, and there are enough Mackenzies who have similar delusions about being the ancient Gaels themselves. In the long run, believing makes things like that near-as-no-matter true.

"And I'm part-Indian myself," he added. "One-eighth, to be precise about it; one-quarter, for my father."

Red Leaf snorted. "Cherokee, I suppose? Damn bunch of mutts."

"No, Anishinabe. Ojibwa," Rudi amplified, before he caught Ingolf's covert shushing motion.

A ringing silence fell. Red Leaf said: "You ever wonder why we're called Sioux by the wasicun… you guys… oh sacred guest?"

"No," Rudi said politely. "I know that you call yourselves Lakota. It means friends or allies, doesn't it?"

"Yeah; because we're the only friends we've got. Nadewisou is what the Anishinabe called our ancestors-Sioux is what the English made of the French try at saying the Ojibwa word. Like what we called telephone tag, when I was a kid, only through three languages."

"Ah, now, isn't that curious, and it's always good to learn new things. What did the word itself mean?"

" Nadewisou? It means… oh, something like treacherous little rattlesnakes. It's not a compliment. We weren't so fond of them either."

"Ah, well, I won't be usin' it, then," Rudi said cheerfully.

Red Leaf laughed, a little unwillingly. "You don't faze easy, do you, Rudi Mackenzie?"

"Not so that you'd notice, John Red Leaf," Rudi said. "There's no point in it, as far as I can see."

When they were out of quiet-conversational range of any of the others, he went on:

"Who's Virginia Kane?"

Red Leaf sighed and reached into a pouch and rolled himself a cigarette; when he'd flicked his lighter he passed the smouldering twist to Rudi, who hid a smile at the thought of the last time he'd shared tobacco with anyone-if it counted when you were dreaming, and the other party was a god. He took a puff, coughed slightly, and handed it back.

"She's Dave Kane's daughter," Red Leaf said, and looked sideways at Rudi's face. "Big wheel in the Powder River Ranchers' Organization, the PRRO-"

He pronounced it pee-double-r-oh.

"— and he and his father helped us a lot right after the Change-helped us get going, and brought his men to fight on our side when some folks decided that land was just plumb wasted on Injuns, and we backed him up a couple of times when the PRRO's politics got dirty. Or bloody."

"And it's the truth a man should stand ready to fight for his friends," Rudi acknowledged. "And stand between their friends' families and their enemies, if it's needful."

Red Leaf nodded. "There was a rumor he was part Lakota, but I don't know if that's true; he was a good friend for certain, but a bad man to cross. Anyway, after that we were tight with him and the PRRO-the Southern Lakota at least; we visited back and forth, did some trading, that sort of thing. And that kept this part of the country fairly peaceful, which was damned useful when we were fighting the States… the Midwesterners. We got a little overambitious in that direction back when things were still up in the air, thought we could take over our old stamping grounds in the Red River country since Wakantanka had given the white-eyes the grandmother of all wedgies."

"It didn't work, I presume?" Rudi said.

I know it didn't because Ingolf fought in that war, the which I will not mention either. It's a diplomat I'm becoming, or a shameless equivocator, if there's a difference.

"Nah, too many Norski farm-boys with pikes and Swedes with axes in the way. Even with all the, ah, volunteers from here and there we had joining up with us back about then, they outnumbered us bad. We should have gone after the Cutters while they were still small potatoes, but that's my perfect hindsight talking. They weren't a problem then and who wanted western goddamned Montana anyway? Only a Cutter or a Crow would take it on a bet."

"And so Virginia has a claim on you because of her kin?"

Red Leaf looked unhappy. "Yeah, but that's not what's activating my ulcers."

"What is, then?"

"Now that Kane finally got chopped by the Cutters, it means everything but the southern fringe of the Powder River country will be under Corwin's thumb. We were fighting them ourselves until about a year ago, up north of the Black Hills in what used to be Montana-frankly, we got beat, though we hurt 'em bad; we offered the Kanes sanctuary as part of the deal at the end of the war, but they were just too damned stubborn. Now the Prophet's boys might start in on us again if we shelter her… but we can't turn her over. It wouldn't be right. How'd she end up with you?"

"Rode in last night, hungry and dry and about to keel over, and her horse in worse shape than that," Rudi said. "All we did was give her a meal-of your tatonka — and a place by our fire. And just as a matter of interest, the Cutters are fighting in the Far West right now, and might be a little shy of starting up their war with you, so."

I seem to be developing into a collector of disinherited princes, just as Ignatius warned me, Rudi thought whimsically; underneath that was a slight chill. Well, the Rimpoche warned me that I'd be collecting friends and enemies the way a dog does fleas in summertime.

"This is above my pay grade…" Red Leaf said.

What does that mean? Rudi thought. Is that a Sioux saying?

"Above my level of responsibility, I mean. I'd better-"

"Ky-ee-ky!"

The Indian's head snapped around. One of his scouts came galloping in from the westward, waving his bow over his head. He drew rein beside the chief and gabbled details.

The Sioux boiled into motion, tightening girths and checking weapons. After a moment, Rudi's band did likewise.

"Hokahe!" Red Leaf shouted. "Let's go!"