S. Stirling - The Given Sacrifice

City of Boise

(formerly southern Idaho)

High Kingdom of Montival

(Formerly western North America)

June 25th, Change Year 26/2024 AD

The streets of Boise were dark. Cole Salander was used to that where he grew up-night simply was dark, unless there was a full moon-but normally the capital of the United States had gaslights along the main avenues, burning the by-product of the sewage plant. The incandescent mantles had seemed almost painfully bright to Cole the last time he’d been here, about a year ago. Now they were closed down, the iron posts just another hazard along the streets. Here and there a glimmer of lamp or candlelight showed, usually from behind shutters. The air was still and smelled of the smoke confined by the walls, and somehow of fear. In the distance, off to the east, a flare of light showed as a ball of napalm came over the wall, and there was a faint clanging as the fire-wagons headed towards the spot.

“I am completely insane,” Cole Salander said, sotto voce , striking along briskly with his right hand on the hilt of his short sword. “I volunteered for this. I rest my case.”

“Absolutely no dispute,” Alyssa answered in the same low tone, walking with a suitable humility, the (jiggered, non-locking) handcuffs on her wrists. “And I’m twice as absolutely insane as you are.”

He could sympathize. He certainly wouldn’t want to be a prisoner, particularly a woman, in this Cutter-controlled city. How thoroughly controlled had come as a bit of a shock to him-and, he thought, to Captain Wellman. Theoretically the Captain had come in to report to a general who was part of the Emergency Steering Committee about a possible intelligence asset; developing those was one of the things the Special Forces were for , after all. In point of fact there had been a red-robed High Seeker standing in the same room, arms crossed across his chest and shaven head gleaming. The general had slid his eyes in the man’s direction every few seconds, and there had been sweat on his forehead even though the building was cool. And a rayed sun pendant on the breast of his uniform.

Wellman had been silent for a long time when they came out of that; not that you expected an officer to be chatty with the enlisted men, but the Special Forces were a lot less stiff than the Regulars. He hadn’t doubted Cole’s cover story of prolonged flight and hiding; why should he? It was exactly what could have happened if they hadn’t run into that Mackenzie patrol, and he’d gotten a commendation and field-promotion to corporal out of it. Alyssa, complete with an excellent set of false papers prepared by her own side, had been his ticket into Boise; their story was that she’d talk to him and nobody else-it had produced a lot of embarrassing kidding. But the thought of how many things could have gone wrong along the way made him sweat even now.

Especially now. So close to pulling it off. .

A hard multiple clatter of hooves made them halt. They didn’t run-that would be ruin-but simply stood back against the grill of a shuttered store that sold Planters, Reapers and Spreaders, made to order according to its sign. Cole stood at parade rest, with his right hand on the hilt of the short sword sheathed high on that hip. You couldn’t go far wrong by falling back on the drillbook.

About a hundred cavalry went by, heading eastward at a walk, and not in the neat ranks that even Boise’s ranch-country reserve mounted troops used-more of a shapeless clot, kept off the sidewalks only by an instinct to avoid the unfamiliar loom of buildings. A hundred horsemen took up a lot of space even in strict column of fours, and these loomed like an endless horde in the dark. One had a lantern on a pole, from the light containing a tallow dip or two that cast a flickering yellow glow on the hard scarred faces and shaggy plainsman’s horses.

Cutters. Ah, crap.

The light cavalry wore coarse homespun and leather and the gear that he’d seen before on the Rancher levies of the CUT. Mostly steerhide breastplates and arm-guards studded with nail-heads or eked out with strips of salvaged washers or wire-the far interior was poorer in metal than areas closer to the coasts, and more people had survived to use it up. They had steel helmets, though, slung at their saddlebows and leaving bare heads bristle-cropped or shaven or shaven save for a scalp-lock, beards shaggy-wild or braided or trimmed to a tuft on the chin.

Uh-oh, Cole thought. Crap. Goat crap.

That style of haircut was a sign that these men came from areas that had been under the Church Universal and Triumphant’s control for a long time; the Prophet’s elite guardsmen out of Corwin shaved their heads, and they’d imitated it if not the regulars’ discipline. So was the way some of them had the rayed sun that was the CUT’s symbol tattooed on their foreheads. That meant they’d be harder-assed.

All of them had shetes at their belts or slung over their backs or strapped to the saddle-a heavy, slightly curved slashing-sword derived from the old agricultural tool, and common everywhere east of the Rockies. One of Cole’s older unarmed combat instructors had said they looked more like a liuyedao , whatever the hell that was with its pants on. They had recurve horn-and-sinew bows in scabbards at their knees and quivers and round leather shields as well, and there were a few rawhide buckets of short javelins or light lances.

Some of them had strings of scalps dangling from their saddles, too. That and the way they smelled-rather rank even for troops who’d been in the field for a while-made him think they came from the Hi-Line, the high bleak plains of central Montana near the Lakota territories. He’d heard that there was nothing to burn on those dry treeless expanses but dried cowflops, and that between fuel shortages and scarce water and long brutal winters folk had mostly gotten out of the habit of washing regularly there.

He blew out a breath of relief when they passed with just some hard looks, and the glow of the lantern disappeared around an intersection.

“Those stinkers were too close for-” he began.

Hooves clattered again; just two of the horsemen this time, one carrying a newly kindled torch that dripped sparks and shed a flickering globe of red light. They reined in, and the one who wasn’t carrying the torch turned his mount left-side-on to the two on foot. He had his bow in his hand with an arrow on the string and his drawing hand ready, though he carried the weapon point-down.

The archer was one of the shaven-headed ones, and wore a light mail shirt over broad bowman’s shoulders. Mail represented wealth out on the high plains, like the silver studs in his saddle; he looked about thirty, though heavily weathered, with a face marked by dusty white healed cuts on the forehead and cheeks and jaw, narrow blue eyes and a yellow tuft of billy-goat-style beard on his chin bound with leather thongs. The chest of his armor had a symbol picked out in brass rivets, like a number eight lying on its side, which was probably the brand of his ranch-roughly equivalent to the coat of arms of an Associate, which group Cole still privately thought of as those neobarb castle freaks despite the recent change in his political allegiance.

They smelled better, though.

“You,” the man said in the hard flat eastern accent. “Who are you, who’s the abomination bitch, and where are you-two going?”

“Sir,” Cole said-which was stretching a point; the man wasn’t in his chain of command in any way, shape or form. “I’m escorting this prisoner to the Special Forces battalion HQ for questioning.”

Actually my orders are to convey her to Boise garrison HQ at Fort Boise over on the east side, and we aren’t near either, which will look suspicious if this goat-raper knows the town at all. We are pretty close to this place that Fred Thurston heard about from his dad, and which nobody else alive probably knows. . I really hate having my life depend on probably like that. .