S. Stirling - The Given Sacrifice

City of Boise

(formerly southern Idaho)

High Kingdom of Montival

(Formerly western North America)

June 26th, Change Year 26/2024 AD

Cole Salander knew he was going to die. He supposed it was something to do it with your sword in your hand and facing the thing that killed you, though right now he’d have settled for “in bed, asleep, at seventy-five.” Alyssa would have to look after herself, which was a damn-

“Break left!”

Cole went down on the pavement in an automatic dive, landing on his forearms with the sword laid on its flat so he wouldn’t cut himself on it, which was appallingly easy to do.

Tung-snap!

The arrowhead started to follow him, then came back up, then released to arch out into the darkness over the rooftops as a crossbow bolt sprouted in the center of the archer’s chest. Cole heard it strike very clearly, the metallic ping of the mail links breaking mingling with the hard crackle of bone as it sank to the fletching. It must have cut the spine as well, because he went over as limp as a sack of grain, thudded to the pavement and lay leaking from nose and mouth.

Two more crossbows snapped less than a second later, there was the crisp sound of steel hitting tallow-treated boiled leather, and the other Cutter horseman gave a hoarse grunt and fell. He was still sprattling and trying to choke out a shout despite having a couple of twenty-two-inch bolts crisscross through his torso; a man was surprisingly hard to kill quickly unless you got lucky. Alyssa darted in, her hand moved in the darkness, and the man gave a final jerk and lay still.

That little knife was sharp .

Cole rolled back to his feet. “Glad to see you, Captain Wellman, sir,” he said to the officer, sheathing his sword-there was a trick to doing that without looking-and standing at parade rest again.

’Cause it would sort of sound odd to say that I’m glad you didn’t trust me and followed me to see what the hell I was doing.

The camouflage jackets and pants were unmistakable Special Forces issue, plus he knew all the faces. Sergeant Halford was standing there too; he had a crossbow in his hands and his brown face was absolutely blank as he worked the cranking lever, clack-clack-clack-clack-clack-clack -click. The half-dozen troopers behind him were also. .

Giving me the hairy eyeball. It’s pretty obvious I was fibbing just a bit in my report at this point. . lying like a rug made out of dead fish, actually. . and these are all guys who’ve been with the Captain for a long time. I noticed that when he picked them to come in.

Wellman nodded. “Maybe you’ll be glad,” he said, which was a little ominous.

Garcia and Jones had already gone for the horses, slinging their weapons and getting the animals under control with practiced gentleness.

“You know where to take them?” Wellman asked.

“Sure, sir,” Garcia said. “My uncle Larry’s butcher shop is only a couple of blocks away and he won’t ask any questions.”

I’ll bet he won’t , Cole thought.

Politics aside, civilians in Boise were already down to a ration of a quarter-pound of meat every second day per adult. The city hadn’t been properly provisioned before the Montivallan armies closed in, another symptom of the way things had broken down. And the High King’s men had carefully herded every possible Boisean and Cutter soldier into the city, to put more strain on the supplies.

“He sells hamburgers as a sideline,” Garcia went on.

“Can he handle the bodies, too? That won’t cause questions?”

“Sure thing, sir. They’re really terrible hamburgers even when the city’s not cut off, so I don’t think anyone will notice.”

Halford made a grinding noise, and Garcia went on hastily:

“Sorry, sir. Yes, he can hide them under his manure heap. That was my job before I got called up-it was why I reenlisted for the Special Forces instead of going home. Believe me, nobody looks there until the compost guy comes with his wagon.”

“Which with the city under siege isn’t going to happen soon. See to it and rendezvous at the safe house soonest.”

The squad extracted the bolts and found Cole’s where it had stuck in a wall-that was essential because they were easy to identify. The two men detailed to the job took the blanket rolls strapped behind the saddles, wrapped the corpses so they wouldn’t leak-cursing mildly when the wool cloth proved to be most certainly hopping with fleas and probably lousy-and heaved them over the horses’ backs, and walked off looking official. Two other men had taken the dead Cutters’ canteens, and emptied them to dilute the stains.

“I take it you’re not actually named Maria Hernandez, or from Corvallis?” Wellman said to Alyssa while the cleanup went on.

“No, Captain, I’m not,” she said coolly.

She’d wiped the holdout knife on the dead man’s pants and slid it back into the leather sheath sewn into her collar, but there was a splash of blood down her right forearm. She was rubbing her left in the elastic bandage and flat splints.

“You OK?” Cole asked.

“No compound fracture. Yet,” she said.

“Follow,” Wellman said.

The rest of the squad grouped around Cole and Alyssa; he noted that they were bracketing the two without being obvious about it, and from the way she flicked her eyes so did she.

“Ah, sir, it’s a long story but I have something time-critical to do-” Cole said.

“When we’re out of view, corporal,” Wellman said. “You can give me the condensed version of why you’re trying to let someone else’s army into Boise.”

Well, that explains the maybe you’ll be glad to see me part, Cole thought. On the other hand, he’s obviously not just following orders himself, what with killing those two Cutters who were about to do us.

He was sweating a little when they reached the safe house-which was a bunch of substantial three-story pre-Change buildings that had been knocked together, plus a former parking lot now surrounded by a twelve-foot wall of salvaged brick with broken glass cemented to the top, and sheet-metal gates. Part of it was a dwelling-place for the owner, and a little lamplight leaked out through shuttered windows. Wellman let them into the courtyard through a smaller door in the larger gates, using a key; the men relaxed-very slightly-when it closed behind them.

And a little more when they turned away from the dwelling-house into another section of the U-shaped complex. Inside they made sure the shutters were closed before Halford raised the glass chimney of a lantern, lit the wick from his lighter and turned the knob down. The yellow light showed shadowy glimpses of big open rooms with treadle-worked sewing machines and piles of cloth, in bolts or laid out over patterns on long cutting tables, and racks of spools of thread and sacks of buttons and pine boxes of finished product. From the olive-gray color and the shapes and the familiar slightly musky lanolin smell of coarse linsey-woolsey he guessed that in daytime they would be busy with seamstresses making uniforms on government contract.

Yeah, I heard the Captain’s older brother lives in Boise and is something big in cloth, Cole recalled.

Buying raw materials from people who grew flax or kept flocks, spinning it all in a water-powered mill in some convenient location, supplying looms to folks on credit, then buying back the bolts from the weavers and dyeing and finishing the product at his home-place, the usual system. You could make a lot of money that way, certainly a hell of a lot more than a Captain’s pay. Though he didn’t know anyone except their kin who actually liked putting-out merchant clothiers. Well, except by contrast with bankers. And even their blood relatives. .