The boat-shaped open gondola dipped and swayed beneath him as he kirted up his robe and climbed care fully into it, stepping onto the aluminum treads of the central catwalk. The crewmen—crew-women—were settling into the seats and pedal sets on either side, strapping themselves in. Their positions left them facing backward, and he noticed that a few wore crucifixes. Not an ounce of spare weight otherwise, though there were clips above each position for a bow and quiver, and a bundled parachute strapped ready.
Hanks sat behind the wheel, his feet on rudder pedals, and a board with control levers and dials beside him.
“Water ballast, emergency valves, ballonet superheat and venting,” he said, indicating them. “Altimeter—that’s from a small airplane—airspeed indicator, rpm on the propeller shaft, main cell pressure, reserve tank pressure. We can switch the torque on the main shaft to a compressor that takes hydrogen from the lift cells and pumps it into metal tanks just above the keel. It’s more economical than venting if we have time.”
“Fascinating!” Ignatius said again, his eyes taking the instruments in greedily.
“No, when we hit clear air turbulence, that’s fascinating,” Hanks said cheerfully. “So what say you strap in too, eh, padre?”
There was a seat on the other side; Ignatius took the suggestion. Hanks turned his head.
“Bosun, drop keel weights three through fifteen!”
The noncom went down the walkway, stopping at every second square of flooring to raise it and flip some thing underneath. Solid thumps sounded from under neath the gondola, and the blimp bobbled very slowly upward until it hung at twice a man’s height from the ground.
“Lead ballast,” Hank explained. “It counterbalances our fixed weight. We drop some of ’em at the beginning to set basic load for the trip, so we’ve got neutral buoy ancy at about ground level. The rest are for emergencies, and the side ballast—”
He pointed to aluminum water tanks along the rail.
“—is for ordinary maneuvering. We try to avoid valving gas or dropping ballast as long as we can—hydrogen isn’t cheap.”
Then, louder: “On superheat!”
One of the crew fiddled with something amidships. There was a thump and a muffled roar as a compressed gas burner went on. That made him itch a little, until he reflected that if it leaked at all, hydrogen leaked up.
And only a mixture with air is really dangerous, he told himself stoutly. And I do have this parachute.
The hot air went up a tube into the central body of the gasbag above. As the hot air ballonet expanded the outer skin creaked a little inside its netting. A sensation of lightness put a grin on Ignatius’s usually solemn face; the ground was beginning to slide away beneath them. The anchor cable rose off the ground and ran up the mooring pole; then it dropped away as Hanks pulled a lever.
“All ahead full!”
“All ahead full!” the bosun cried, in an alto roar.
There was a mass grunt as the crew pushed at the ped als, fighting the inertia of the system—it was as light as possible, but Ignatius did a quick mental calculation and realized that it must still mass a fair bit in absolute terms. The big propeller at the rear of the gondola started to turn, slowly at first and then shifting into a flickering circular blur. Wicker and rope creaked and metal com plained as the thrust surged through gondola and keel and pushed the gasbag against the resisting air.
“We’re under way!” Ignatius said in delight, feeling the slight but definite force pressing him backward in his seat, and suppressing an impulse to bounce up and down in it.
It was a little like being in a pedal car on a railroad, though the feeling was statelier than that alarmingly fast mode of transport. Buildings sank away to toy size below him, and people to scarcely more than dolls—as marvelous now as the other two times he’d seen it. The air grew cooler. . . .
“Damn! Double damn fucking hell!” Hanks barked.
“What is the problem?” Ignatius asked.
“Wind’s out of the east and we’re going backward. But we’re still rising . . . yup, that’s better. We’re getting some forward movement now.”
The LeMay turned northeast, struck an updraft and soared, then curved around the city as the crew settled into a steady pumping rhythm.
Looking down, Ignatius was shocked out of his happy technical preoccupation. Roads pointed inward towards Boise from every direction, and they were crowded—crowded with columns of marching troops and baggage wagons. Sunlight glittered off spear points like morning on rippling water, and long plumes of dust rose from herds of stock driven along for provisions; wagon trains lumbered forward on rail and road with their beige canvas tilts strapped over bale and barrel.
White rows of tents were already going up in places, as regiments dug their marching camps. Cavalry patrols cantered about, tying the whole together. His lips pursed silently, and he gave a slow nod. The lack of frantic bus tle in Boise itself had made him think the locals were taking their time about gathering their host.
I was wrong, he thought. Then with a slight smile: Thank you, Lord, for a lesson in humility!
Sometimes the harshest lessons were the most valuable; as a sage had said before the Change, in plea sure God whispered, in logic He spoke, but in pain He shouted.
“Yeah,” Hanks said proudly, following his gaze.“If the Corwin crazies think they can fuck with us and get away with it, they can think again.”
Chapter Twenty
Snake River Plain, East Of Wendell
Near The Boise/New Deseret Border
July 21, CY23/2021 A.D.
“Good looking farming country, but too hot and dry for my taste,” Edain said.
Rudi nodded silent acknowledgment, hear ing the effort it took the younger man to sound casual. The Snake River plain was flat here, flat and rich with wheat and alfalfa and potatoes and orchards where the fruit swelled towards ripeness, wherever the irrigation canals from the old-time dams still stretched; silvery-gray sagebrush-filled fields had gone out of cultivation for lack of hands to work them or pumps to raise the precious fluid. Much still endured, tilled by the soldier farmers whose earth-and concrete walled villages dot ted the land, grain turning gold under the hot sun, nearly ready for the reapers.
But the fields looked empty today, nobody at work, the livestock driven within the walls for safety or to the distant hills on the edge of sight northward. The gates of the farm towns were tightly barred now, with families and older re servists anxiously atop the fighting platforms watching the army of the Republic march by ... and their sons and husbands and younger brothers joining it, trickles that joined together to swell the endless river of green and brown and steel-sheen that passed, with a rumble of boots and wheels and hooves, a trail of dust and the strong smell of sweat and oil and metal.
Edain lowered his voice: “I’m a bit worried about Garbh, Chief. In a battle and all, a big one.”
The big mastiff bitch looked up at her name, grinning and wagging her tail slightly, then going back to plodding in the dust.
“If it’s any consolation, I don’t think we’re going to do any of the fighting. It’ll be a spectator’s position for us, like the watchers at a baseball game.”
Cavalry patrols made their own trickle plumes of dust at the limits of vision, with sometimes a blink of light off the edged iron of a lance head. A glider hovered high overhead, riding the summer thermals and occasionally heading northward to climb again on the updraft over the rugged country there; it bore Boise’s USAF blazon. Nobody seemed to know if the Church Universal and Triumphant had any aerial scouts, and if they did they weren’t here now.
Mounted couriers or ones on cross-country bicycles dashed up to the command party now and then. The refugees from New Deseret straggling along the sides of the road or off in the fields to either side told their own story, and had since the day’s march began. Rudi felt his inwardness wince slightly as a mother sitting on the bundle that must be all her household’s goods watched him pass
with dull beaten blue eyes, mechanically jog ging the infant that cried against her breast. Two older children sat beside her, and a white-bearded man who was probably her father slept on the hard dry ground limp with utter exhaustion.
Rudi saw his fellow clansman’s eyes skimming over the refugees.
“Worried about Rebecca, too, eh?” he said—not teasing, but a real question.
“Well, we were friends,” Edain agreed. “I’m sorry for all these folk, true I am, but it’s different if you know someone in particular.”
Another courier drew up with a spurt of gravel and dust from under his mount’s hooves.
“Mr. President!” he said, saluting and pointing south eastward.“The Saints’ command group is about half a mile that way, with a couple thousand troops following. They’re in pretty rough shape, sir—a lot more of their civilians and a lot of wounded, and they say their rear guard pulled out of sight of Twin Falls three days ago. The enemy’s snapping at their heels.”
“Thank you, Corporal,” Thurston said. “Please give my compliments to their commander—”
“Bishop Nystrup, sir. Civil official.”
“To Bishop Nystrup, and tell him we’ll be with him shortly.”
Rudi saw Edain’s ears prick up at the name. Ragged tent camps appeared, set up by the civilian refugees and the Red Cross from Boise, and shapeless masses of exhausted people lying where they could in pasture and fallow land. More crowded around a field hospital and the advance guard of the main Boise force, who were handing out buckets of water and big loaves of hard dark bread from wagons.
But they’re not trampling the standing grain, Rudi thought with sympathetic approval. That takes a special type of decency, it does, when you’re hungry and hurt and fleeing for your life.
Just then Edain’s head came around, a swift move ment like a hunting wolf’s. He reined his horse aside and heeled it up into a canter, over to the field hospital, then leaned from the saddle and spoke to one of the helpers. When he came back, he was grinning, if a little lopsidedly.
“That was Rebecca! The Mother’s hand is over her, and that’s the truth!”A scowl. “They have some bad en emies, Chief. Those people aren’t just hurt and hungry. Some of them . . .” He shook his head.
“Regiments . . . halt!” Thurston called, in a flat unmusical tone like angle iron hit with a hammer, as a dark thread grew visible on the road ahead.
The trumpets brayed, relaying the order down the long snake of men and animals that filled the old inter state for miles behind them. The marching regiments did halt, from the back of the column forward and in a ripple that brought the whole to a stop in less than a minute, without any of the collisions or stop and-start you could have expected among ten thousand troops on foot and half as many horses and mules.
“Command group, follow me!”
They legged their horses into a canter, the flag beside the ruler of Boise flapping in the hot wind of their passage; nobody had complained at Thurston’s whim of allowing the youngsters from the farthest west along, though they got the occasional glance. A group of mounted men sat their horses at the head of the troops ahead, beneath another banner—dark blue emblazoned with a golden bee. Rudi recognized the Mormon leader who’d bought the horses from Rancher Brown, looking . . .
Terrible, he thought. And I don’t think he recognizes me . . . just doesn’t have the attention to spare.
The bishop sat his horse among several other soberly clad bearded men, and a clutch of what were certainly soldiers and from their years most probably officers. They all wore olive-green uniforms and steel breast plates, mail sleeves, armguards, and round bowl helmets fronted with the golden bee. The armor was dinted and worn, and the square shields some carried were hacked and splintered, a few showing the stubs of arrows. Several wore bandages as well, some seeping red. As he watched one had to scrabble out of his saddle as his horse col lapsed. The stink of dried sweat from them was powerful even by the standards of soldiers in the field, and their faces were thickly covered with sweat-runneled dust.
“Thank you . . . Mr. President,” Bishop Nystrup said as Thurston drew up, his commanders and aides beside him and the golden eagle and Stars and Stripes lofting above.
He spoke humbly; and unless Rudi was wrong, it was a difficult task for a proud man.
The army behind him was still proud too, but it was beaten, even the unhurt. A ragged bristle of pikes stretched backward in clumps that were not really units, mingled with archers and crossbowmen and a single field catapult that he could see; you could sense the weary shuffle that had brought the broken companies this far.
There were wagons full of wounded interspersed among those still walking, their moans and cries a soft threnody of pain below the sound of hooves and wheels on the broken gravel-patched pavement of old US 84. Supply columns from Boise were doing their best to feed them and take care of the injured.
“We’ll do whatever we can,” Thurston said, swinging down from the saddle and taking the man’s hand as Nystrup clambered down stiffly. “And we’ll do our best to get your people what you need.”
“Thank you,” Nystrup said again. “We’ve already gotten the food and medical supplies you sent, and . . .”
He fought his face to stillness. Thurston turned his own gaze aside for an instant, to let the man recover his self-command.
Nystrup swallowed. “Our rear guard has broken contact with the Corwinites, but they’re close behind us.”
One of the Mormon officers spoke. “We’d have had to turn and fight to keep them off the civilians within a day or two.”
His eyes met Thurston’s, sharing the same thought: And been massacred to the last man.
“Then we’d better coordinate our efforts,” Thurston said, his face like brown iron.
“We’re willing to consider your terms—” the bishop began again.
“My only terms are that we fight together to put down this madman,” Thurston said, clapping him on the shoulder.
Startled, Nystrup blurted: “That’s a change!”
Thurston shrugged. “I’ve made mistakes, but I try not to make them twice . . . and three times is excessive. I do ask for the military command, but we’ll leave the poli tics for when that’s been done. I intend to restore your people to their homes, and the US government won’t ask for any territory—for anything that your people don’t freely grant by their own unforced vote.”
He spoke firmly, and loudly enough that both his own officers and the party from the east could hear him. Some of the Mormon military officers behind the bishop blinked in surprise at that, startled out of their exhausted dejection. A few looked suspicious; many glanced at one another, and there was a murmur as the words were repeated backward down the line.
Well, I’ve never heard a man confess a fault quite that smoothly, Rudi thought, letting one corner of his mouth quirk up. Sure, and I’ll have to make a note of that for future reference, unless the gods give me the gift of infallibility.
And a few of the officers behind Thurston exchanged glances as well—doing it with a discreet flicker of eyes rather than any movement of the head.
“Let’s get your wounded seen to, your troops fed, and your officers can brief me on what you’ve got available,” Thurston said briskly. “There’s a good defensive position about three miles east of here that would do nicely, and shelter these civilians until we can get them west and behind walls.”
“Do you think the enemy will attack today?” Nystrup asked; his voice was calm now.
“No,” Thurston said; several of the Mormon officers were shaking their heads in unconscious agreement. “Not today. But tomorrow, or the day after at the latest.
They’ve got their peckers up.”
His smile was broad and cruel. “That’s the easiest time to trim them off.”
* * * *
“I don’t like it,” Rudi said quietly, as the sun came fully over the eastern horizon ahead of them.
I don’t, for sure and
all. Something . . . something makes me itch. Or gives me a wee bit of a chill on a summer day, and it’s not just the prospect of a fight in it. A fight I don’t mind, and I have the beginnings of a grudge against this Prophet fellow, don’t I just, by the horns!
He stood holding Epona by the bridle a little way from Thurston’s command group, behind the Boise line, his companions around him. The grumbling, rum bling clatter of white noise, voices and armor clashing and feet thudding, made it possible to speak privately if you wished. Garbh was lying with belly and chin flat to the ground, ears cocked, quiet, but bristling in rippling waves.
But Thurston himself seems confident enough. Of course, he’d be acting that way in any case, eh? And he’s taken a liking to me, right enough, enough to let us hang around, and to tell me his thoughts now and then. Well, and so have I to him and his sons. A hard man, yes, but not so hard as he’s been painted. I think he’s seen all he’s done as . . . needful, even when it hurt him to do it.
Mathilda spoke quietly beside him as she stroked the nose of her charger. “The game of thrones, the game of swords . . . I don’t like what they do to people. The ones who have to play them.”
Rudi looked over at her in surprised affection. “It seems your thoughts are running with mine again, Matti. Well, you may not be liking it . . . but our host yonder seems a natural at it.”
Mathilda shook her head and leaned on her tall kite-shaped shield. “I like him,” she said.
“Me too.”
“And I was thinking of how much happier he’d be running a big farm and breeding horses . . . or maybe something like a sawmill or a bunch of riverboats or . . . he’s got the gift for organizing; he reminds me of Count Conrad that way. Him and his lady and their kids, mak ing a home, doing something . . . really useful, not just necessary, the way ruling is.”