The Scourge of God

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

DES MOINES, CAPITAL, PROVISIONAL REPUBLIC OF IOWA

AUGUST 6, CY24/2022 AD

"Well, Victrix Farm may not have a wall," Rudi said softly. "But Des Moines most certainly does, the awe and wonder of the world, to be sure!"

The Heuisink family had traveled openly to the capital in their private railcar, pedaled by men of their own household and faster than a mount could gallop; Rudi and his party were coming in discreet anonymity on one of the plain horse-drawn trains that plodded along the steel way. That gave them plenty of time to watch it approach. They'd seen the skyscrapers first, of course, but those were farther away on the west bank of the Des Moines River, and fewer and smaller than those of Portland or dead Seattle. Those grew from dots on the horizon to stark height as they passed through the last ring of truck-farms and villas, where only the marks of roadways showed where suburbs had been before the Change.

Finally they could see the raggedness of the great ruined outlines, where some had burned and half collapsed in the chaos after the Change, and others had been mined for metal, disassembled from the top down. Then the golden dome of the state capitol caught a gleam of the afternoon sunlight on this side of the river, and the city walls approached across the flat open ground kept bare for defense.

There was a twenty-foot-tall outwork with towers every hundred yards, then a wet moat half bowshot broad and flowing like a slow river, and rearing above it on the inner side a wall twice the height of the first. Its towers were sixty feet high or more and staggered so that they covered the gaps between those on the outer wall. Many of them bore tall windmills, creaking and groaning as their metal vanes turned.

Probably pumping up reservoirs for hydraulic cocking systems, Rudi thought, as an observation balloon tethered to one tower was winched down. Whoever built this didn't miss a trick.

The construction itself was concrete and steel, though faced with salvaged stone; he suspected a welded web of construction girders inside poured mass-concrete. The ramparts had crenellations overhanging it so that murder-holes could be opened to drop things straight down, and they were topped by an outward-sloping metal roof that was definitely not thin sheet.

More I beams, welded into a solid mass. Like the gates of Larsdalen. And the wall around Mt. Angel is taller, and built into the side of a hill four hundred feet high. But the size of this!

The wall stretched out of sight, curving away to the northeast and southwest towards the river. As he watched gaslights flared up along it, a long ripple like a wave across a lake; that showed the thick steel shutters of the firing ports in wall and tower.

"That is… a large city," he said mildly.

Ingolf snorted. "Sixty square miles within the circuit of the walls, more or less. A hundred and twenty thousand people, not counting transients. I wandered around bumping into things like some Rover from the Hi-Line the first time I came here."

Edain cursed softly. That was nearly twice as many people as the whole of Clan Mackenzie-about as many as the Mackenzies and Bearkillers put together, and this was only Iowa's capital city.

"Tarnation," Virginia Kane said; she'd never seen a city at all, until she came to Iowa. Then, quietly: "Fuck!"

Fred Thurston chuckled. "You said it."

They all nodded; cities in the old days had been much larger, of course, but those were the distant times of wonder that none of them had seen. This was now, in the ordinary, prosaic world of the Change.

A sharp rank smell grew stronger as they approached; not anything organic, but a chemical tang Rudi had never experienced before. It made his eyes water a little, as well, like smoke from an invisible fire.

"Coal smoke," Ingolf said. "Coal and coke. They bring it in by rail, and by barge on the river from places like Carbondale."

They'd been talking in low tones; now they fell silent as the train clattered over the bridge that spanned the moat, a slow click.. clack… sounding beneath the steady pound of the hooves. The gate in the wall ahead was just large enough to pass the two tracks of the railway; within was deep shadow for the length of the passage through the wall, but looking up Rudi could just make out the teeth of multiple slabs of metal that could slide down to close it and lock into girders driven deep into the ground below.

"Now, that's a mite excessive," Rudi said mildly. "One alone would make the gate stronger than the wall."

Somebody in charge of this realm wanted a very strong redoubt. The cost, even for Iowa!

Rudi blinked as the train pulled through the thickness of the wall and into the open ground beyond. The streets were brightly lit by the incandescent mantles of the gaslamps spaced along the streets, and more inside the buildings. Northward he could see the high gilded dome again, but with a suggestion of more walls around it-the Bossman's palace, no doubt.

Palaces and forts he'd seen before. The buildings on either side of the railway line were something else again. Corvallis had a few water-powered factories, and so did Portland; even Sutterdown had mills for sawing lumber and breaking flax.

Here there were solid miles of them-tall brick chimneys trailing black smoke, a hot glare of molten metal and trails of sparks as a great cupola furnace was tapped into the molds, glimpses through huge but grimy glass windows into stretches of whirling overhead shafts and belting driving machines and figures attending them-here if people wore overalls the garments were filthy, soiled, covered much more of the body, and were entirely practical linen canvas, not expensive cotton symbols of gentility. The noise was shattering, snorts and grunts like gigantic pigs as mechanisms gulped air, blurring roars from furnaces and drafts, the tooth-hurting squeal of metal on metal, stamping and grinding.

Roads and railway sidings wove among the factories; oxen and horses and men pulled and pushed loads of ingots and coal and timber in, shaped metal out. Rudi recognized some of the products-cloth he supposed came from power looms…

He snapped his fingers. " That's what was bothering me. Back at Victrix Farm, you never heard any looms thumping! I suppose everyone in Iowa buys from here?"

"Everyone near Des Moines," Ingolf said. "If I were a Farmer or Sheriff here, it'd make me nervous having to buy in everyday stuff like that, but you have to get out near the frontiers to find much home-weaving, here."

Several of the others nodded thoughtfully. "I wonder why we don't do that," Ritva said. "We have spinning mills, or at least they do in Corvallis. Granted most people weave when they don't have anything else to do, but it's still pretty tedious."

"It only pays if you've got a lot of people close together and with cheap transport so they can buy the stuff, and a lot of water power," Fred Thurston said. "Dad tried to set up something like that, but it had to be subsidized with tax money all the time, so he shut it down-something for later, he said."

"It's a matter of market size, to be technical," Father Ignatius said.

Rudi kept an eye on the factories. More goods poured out, turned cylinders and pistons for hydraulic machinery, gears, crankshafts, chains, cast-iron pipe. Others were entirely mysterious…

"Tarnation," Virginia said again softly. "It's like something out of an old story. Like magic."

"How the Cutters would hate this!" Mathilda said, grinning. "They get upset when they see a clock, and there's a hell of a lot more than gear turning gear turning something here!"

"How I hate this!" Edain said, and coughed. "The stink's worse than it was outside the walls. Sure and it's like being trapped inside a chimney!"

"You're right about that," Rudi said; his sinuses and throat already felt a little raw, as if he were coming down with a cold. "It's sweating hot, as well. How a man could work next to a furnace in this, only the Gods know. Why don't they put it outside the walls, the way most places do a tannery or soap-boiling?"

"Because the Bossman and his cronies all have shares in these, and they don't want them risked outside the defenses… and it's easier to control things in here, too?" Odard said.

Ingolf gave him a wry look. "Right on both counts."

Odard is clever, Rudi thought. But sometimes he lets you see the way his mind works.

"There's power here, though," Fred Thurston said. "Dad tried to get as many factories going in Idaho as he could. Said the old Americans won a lot of wars because they could produce weapons cheap, fast and plenty."

As if to illustrate the point a load of armor was pushed out of one of the factories on carts with little wheels, breastplates and tassets stacked in bundles according to size and tied securely together. The train they rode slid onto a siding, behind one loaded with bundles of raw flax. The team pulling it stood with their heads down, utterly spent; grooms bustled over to lead them away. Rudi frowned a little. Horses weren't machinery, and Epona-the goddess his horse was named for-didn't like it if you treated them as such. He hoped they'd get a good rest and some mash, and have their hooves seen to; the roadbed of the railway would be hard on them.

A squad of armed men waited when the passengers disembarked, most clutching their bundles of belongings.

"State Police," Ingolf said quietly. "Don't get them riled. They're the Bossman's own sworn men."

The squad looked more like soldiers to Rudi. They were in light horseman's armor, mail-shirts and helms over blue-gray uniforms, and they carried shetes and glaives and crossbows with an ingenious crank mechanism built into the butt rather than the forestock lever used in Oregon. They also looked tougher and more alert than the border garrison the travelers had seen outside Hawarden weeks ago, and a little older.

Their commander had officer's insignia on his sleeve, and he was a pug-faced man in his forties with cropped blond hair and a face that looked like it had been forged in one of the factories.

"All right, you miserable vakis," he said, after the passengers had jumped down on the crushed rock of the roadbed.

Sure, and that's a safe enough assumption, Rudi thought.

The other passengers were dressed in the same sort of clothes Rudi and his friends had been given; shapeless coarse-woven linen and linsey-woolsey. Most of them were fairly young, more than half were men, and they all looked as if they'd grown up doing hard labor of one sort or another, and not getting all that much for it. All their possessions were in the shapeless bundles they carried, and those were mostly small.

The Bossman's retainer went on:

"I am Captain Edgar Denson of the Iowa State Police, Department of Public Safety, and I am going to tell you the rules. You want to live here, you have to work and pay your way, and this is a damned expensive place to live; no matter what Mom and Dad told you, the streets aren't paved with gold-just horseshit, like anywhere else. You don't have a Farmer to pick you up and kiss it better if you stub a toe. You can get rich here-or you can end up starving. It's up to you. Begging is forbidden within city limits. Vagrancy is punished by six months at hard labor. Theft is punished by six years ' hard labor. Armed robbery and murder are punished by life at really hard labor-but life's only a couple of years, in the mines. Understand?"

"Yes, sir!" the would-be townsmen chorused raggedly.

"Now get going. That building over there is the hiring hall-you can pick up some day-labor there. Move! Not you lot," he added.

Rudi sighed. He hadn't expected to slip in entirely unnoticed. You could dress like a local, but that was far easier than looking like one, to anyone who saw past appearances.

"You're foreigners from out of state, right?" Captain Denson said.

"Yes, sir," Ingolf replied; they'd agreed that he'd be the one to speak, having both more experience and a less conspicuous accent.

"And those are weapons, right?" the state trooper said, jerking his helmeted head at their suspiciously elongated bundles.

"Yes, sir. Nobody told us they were illegal."

Denson grinned, an expression with a little too much tooth to be pure enjoyment.

"They aren't. Wearing them in the streets is illegal. Using them except in self-defense is illegal. And remember we don't have capital punishment here. Being dead doesn't hurt. You planning on hiring out for guards in salvage companies? That's mostly in Dubuque and Keokuk."

"We've been out West. We do have enough money to keep us for a while."

"Spend it wisely."

"Here's the money," Tancredo said. "See, not a penny missing." He pushed a ledger across the table to Ingolf.

"You have the most interesting friends, sweetie," Mary observed, as he studied it.

Ingolf winced slightly and bent more closely over the paper. Rudi hid a quick smile. On the one hand, his half sister and the man from Wisconsin seemed genuinely fond of each other. But…

But if we didn't have the same blood-father, I still wouldn't want her or Ritva for a lover. The Maiden knows they're fair women, and smart and funny and good loyal friends in their fashion. But.

The man who called himself Tancredo shrugged and spread his hands.

"I've thought of it as more of a business relationship," he said dryly.

Ingolf picked up his pipe and puffed a cloud, possibly as camouflage. That habit was much more popular here than in the Far West, and about a quarter of the people in this riverside dive were puffing away at pipes, or cigarettes, or rather vile little twisted black stogies; a blue haze hung under the rafters, and the sparse gaslights glowed through it as through fog. From the smell, not all of it was tobacco by any means. The harsh smoke and spilled beer and-from the alley out back-stale piss were the predominant odors, with frying food a close competitor. The plates of catfish in corn batter and fried chicken and fried potatoes had been surprisingly edible.

Ingolf's…

Acquaintance, Rudi thought

… had brown skin, about the same shade as Fred Thurston; that and the tight curls of their black hair were the only things they had in common. Tancredo was in his early thirties, shortish, slender, with an easy smile that seldom reached the upper part of his face, and restless hands that tended to make short abortive moves towards his knives, of which Rudi had spotted three, besides the one worn openly on a belt covered in steel plates. He wore a crisp cotton shirt and a sleeveless leather jerkin, and denim pants and good boots; he also had a gold ring in one ear, and several more on his fingers.

"Ingolf was big in the salvage trade for a while," Tancredo said. "A salvager needs… unofficial contacts… if all the profits aren't going to go on 'fees' and graft. I'm as unofficial as it gets. Hell, my daddy was unofficial too-didn't think it was a good idea to get shipped out of town after the Change and spend the rest of his life hoeing corn for some hick and stealing watermelons and eating fried chicken, sho' 'nuff."

"You don't like fried chicken?" Fred said curiously; he had a plate of bones in front of him.

"Classical reference," the man replied. "Anyway, Ingolf, old buddy, what you want?"

Ingolf flicked his eyes to Rudi. The Mackenzie spoke:

"We're heading for the East Coast; indeed we've an urgent errand there, which has waited too long."

The image of the Sword floated before the eyes of his mind, like an itch he could not scratch.

More haste, less speed, he told himself. Impatience makes mistakes. His voice was calm and friendly as he went on:

"The fastest way to do it would be by water, up the Ohio. Something big enough to handle ten people and their horses, but no more, as far as the head of navigation."

Tancredo nodded, elaborately unimpressed by the fact that they were heading so deep into the death zones.

"You want that done officially? Or unofficially? Because that," he added, "would be very expensive."

"We hope it can be done officially," Rudi said. "We have friends at court, and they're trying to get us permission, or at least an audience."

Tancredo smiled, and this time it reached his eyes. "Ingolf didn't get a great fat wonderful hairy deal from his official friends the last time. Anyone relies on the Bossman deserves what he gets."

"It wasn't the Bossman who finked on me," Ingolf said quietly. "It was Kuttner. And Kuttner wasn't working for Anthony Heasleroad, whatever Tony thought."

"But we agree with your basic point," Rudi said. "I'd be saying that this was insurance, so to speak. If we get the official permissions we wish, then you've gained a legitimate, official profit as a respectable businessman. And if we don't, sure, and you'll be getting a much bigger unofficial one."

Tancredo's left eyebrow went up; then he grinned. "Now let's talk prices and details."

They did, though most of the party stayed quiet; Father Ignatius was off talking with the local archbishop. Rudi finally agreed on a figure with a slight wince; they'd started out with a good deal of money, but this was a major chunk.

But to be sure, once we're east of the Mississippi, money becomes moot. It'll be what we can find or take, there.

"Man, you're talking a ship here," Tancredo said after the bargaining had gone around in the usual circles for a while. "That's a capital asset. And you'll be taking it places where it very possibly ain't coming back, and do you think I could get insurance? No, I could not."

Rudi sighed and reached over the table to shake the local's hand and seal the bargain-he refrained from spitting on his palm first, that not being a rite used much in these lands. The Iowan stretched out his own hand and shook.

And Garbh looked up from where she sat at Edain's feet, growling slightly and looking at the door. It burst open. A draft of cooler air came with it, into the fug of the big room.

"Freeze!" a voice bellowed; one Rudi recognized. "Iowa State Police!"

Captain Denson stood in the doorway, a bristle of billhooks behind him. "Rudi Mackenzie, Ingolf Vogeler, you and your companions are under arrest in the name of Bossman Heasleroad!"

There was a moment's silence, then a murmur of mingled anger and fright. That grew to a roar as Tancredo stood and signaled before turning and walking quickly away; that took just long enough to block Rudi in the booth's inner seat. The man behind the long bar at one end of the room reached below the scarred surface, and the gaslights died. Blackness filled with screams and the crash of tables being overset; the stink of spilled drink filled the air, choking-strong.

"Sherwood!" Rudi called, clear enough to carry to all his own party.

He stood as he did so, turning and reaching for the sword belt looped over the partition between this booth and the next. His teeth bared in the darkness, and he forced his breath to come slow and deep. You took a risk, and sometimes it paid off Lights speared into the common room; the troopers had mirror-backed Coleman lanterns with them, and the incandescent mantles glared into his eyes. He moved his hand away from the hilt of his sword-slowly-and raised both palms shoulder-high as the edged metal of the billhooks rammed close, a circle of them poised to thrust if he moved. The men holding the polearms were shadows, outlines backlit by the second rank carrying the lights, but he could see a gleam of flame on chain mail. A third rank of State Police were behind those, facing back with their crossbows leveled.

Rudi put up a hand, as if blinded. That let him look around; Ingolf was still across the table from him, and Odard and Mathilda were in the same frozen reaching-for-the-sword motion as himself. He let out a silent sigh of relief when he saw that Mary and Ritva were gone, and Fred and Victoria and Edain with them. Edain's quiver had been snatched free of the hatrack in such haste that a gray-fletched arrow had spilled out, and it still spun on the littered brick of the floor.

"No need for trouble," Rudi said mildly to Denson. "It's your lord we came to see, after all."

"Yeah, no trouble," Ingolf said mildly. "Just a word to the wise, Captain, these folks"-he indicated Odard and Mathilda-"are VIPs back home. Whatever the Bossman has against me, he won't be happy in the end if they get roughed up."

"We'll see," Denson said; his shete was drawn, and he used it to reach over and flick their sword belts to his waiting subordinates. "Secure the men. The woman can come along peacefully if she feels like it."

The Bossman's palace was certainly magnificent; the grim massiveness of the citadel built around it since the Change didn't obscure the high dome gilded with genuine twenty-four-karat gold leaf. Neither did the evening's darkness; a golden lamp atop it and four more at the corners made it gleam above the marble and pillars of the great building. The gate passed them through with password and countersign and displays of ID cards, despite Denson and his men being known to the detail there. Under his anxiety, Rudi rather approved-procedures were like habits, and good ones tended to keep you alive, and keep the enemy from putting one over on you.

Inside the walls, lawns and gardens filled the giant rectangle; he suspected that the stables and barracks and so forth were on the eastern side, behind the showpiece.

Though perhaps right now I should be worrying about the location of the dungeons, he thought.

Square in the center was the palace. The middle block had four smaller domes at its corners besides the great gilded piece in the middle, and two smaller but still large buildings to either side had copper-covered domes of their own. The entrance was up a long stone staircase, under a portico of six eighty-foot marble columns with a triangular sculptured portico above. Guards snapped to attention, grounding their billhooks with a stamp of metal on stone. Inside a broad corridor led to the rotunda, with the inside of the dome soaring nearly three hundred feet above; two more hallways gave off to north and south as they approached it. There were polished red-marble columns with gilded finials, floors of shimmering stone in geometric patterns, murals showing ancients breaking the prairie sod, meeting in stiff archaic costumes and hats like stovepipes, fighting with strange, powerful weapons. And it was not a ruin, but the heart of a living realm; guards stood at corridor entrances, gaslights shone brightly, and clerks and officials and courtiers in archaic suits and ties or the more modern bib overalls stood in clumps or bustled officiously by with files even past dinnertime. There was a smell of wax and polish, not the cold abandonment he'd felt in other pre-Change structures.

Sure, and I'd appreciate it more if I weren't tied up, Rudi thought.

The State Police had cuffed their hands before them; they'd also thrust batons between their elbows across their backs, which was painful and allowed two men to steer them by gripping the ends.

Ground and center, ground and center, Rudi thought, breathing deeply again and imagining his anger flowing out with the air.

It didn't, but it did recede; he couldn't afford to be angry right now. Mathilda was striding along with her head up, as if she were in Castle Todenangst; Odard had his lips pursed, as if at some social solecism, and Ingolf just looked blankly watchful. He blinked when they stepped into a great rotunda, the oculus of the dome above them and a great staircase leading up to a second story; above the stair was a huge and well-done if surreal painting of goddesses floating around a covered wagon, holding books, seed and various objects he supposed denoted their sacred functions.

Not what I'd have expected of a Christian land, he thought.

Mosaics of iridescent glass glittered above it. The carved and jeweled throne itself was at the foot of the stairs; he saw Mathilda's mouth quirk. That was precisely the location her father had picked for his throne in the great hall of the Portland city palace-what had once been the Central Library on Tenth Street.

The men who would be King tend to have similar tastes, Rudi thought.

" That's new," Ingolf murmured. "His old man used to meet people in the Governor's office."

The State Police troopers gave the pole between his elbows a warning shake, making his boots skid on the marble tiles. Rudi's breath hissed as he saw who awaited; beside the usual crowd of toadies and flunkies and officials and guards and general reptilia you'd expect around any monarch, a man in the dried-blood-colored robe of a CUT High Seeker stood below the dais to the left; and the Cutter officer who'd pursued Rudi and his friends into the Sioux country was beside him.

Peter Graber, that was the name, Rudi thought. And I'm less glad to see him here than I was riding a mad buffalo, sure and I am.

The Heuisink father and son were on the other side; not under arrest, but looking very unhappy, in a stone-faced way.

The State Police detachment and their prisoners came to a halt; the bodyguards around the throne were in the same gear, but two of them slanted their bills across each other in an X to bar the way to the ruler's chair. Captain Denson came to a halt, saluted smartly, and bowed:

"Your Excellency, we are reporting with Ingolf Vogeler and his associates, as ordered."

It was then that Rudi gave the occupant of the throne a careful look. Anthony Heasleroad was in his mid-twenties, and a hair under six feet. There was muscle on his frame, under a budding plumpness that had just begun to obscure the line of his jaw and thicken his middle under the blue-silk bib overalls. His short hair was sandy blond, and his eyes pale blue, in a short-nosed face with a cleft chin; a strong face, the Mackenzie thought, but not a good one. He leaned one elbow on an arm of his throne and reached out with the other hand into a bowl of chocolate truffles and ate one while the silence stretched.

And that's a boast, too, Rudi thought. Mrs. Heuisink said that only a ship or two a year reached here from the Caribbean.

When he spoke, the Bossman had a smooth well-modulated voice. "I gave you a hundred thousand dollars' worth of equipment and cash, Vogeler. Where is it?"

Ingolf's guards forced him down on his knees. "My people and I got to Boston, and we collected most of the stuff on the list you gave me, Your Excellency," he said. "But you also sent Kuttner with me, and I trusted him as your man. He was working for the Church Universal and Triumphant; they ambushed my Villains in Illinois, and as far as I know the goods are still there. Of course, that was years ago now. They dragged me all the way to Corwin, tortured me, held me prisoner, and if I hadn't escaped, I'd be dead now-and that's not for lack of their trying since."

The Cutter priest looked as if he were about to explode, his face flushed red; the dead flatness of his eyes was more vivid by contrast. Graber stood motionless, his hand near the vacant place on his belt where his shete would rest, but his eyes were never still and his body was poised ready for action. The ruler of Iowa spoke languidly:

"Yes, yes, Sheriff Heuisink has been entertaining us all with his stories of assassins, plots, exiled princesses, mad monks, battles in Idaho…"

The Bossman leaned forward. "But I still didn't get what I paid for, Vogeler."

"I'll fetch it for you, Your Excellency…"

"Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me — "

Rudi took a deep breath and stepped forward; his guards were too startled to do more than grab the ends of the rod, and he wasn't trying to move any farther.

"Your Excellency, if I might be of assistance? You've a right to be displeased that your expedition to rescue the beauties and glories of the time before the Change was brought to naught, sure and you do, by the Gods. But it wasn't my comrade Ingolf's fault; it was the Prophet and his lackeys and spies-"

"Lies!" burst out of the Cutter priest.

Anthony Heasleroad's hand swung out, the finger pointing at the High Seeker; he didn't bother to look around. He smiled slightly at Rudi as he spoke to the man who'd interrupted him:

"First and last warning." Then to Rudi: "It's all he-said-they-said, isn't it? This is amusing, but it'll turn boring if it's like a court session."

"Then let me fetch your goods, my lord. Keep Ingolf here, if you will, as security for it."

Quiet fell again, and Heasleroad gave a sidelong glance at Colonel Heuisink as he thoughtfully ate a chocolate-covered cherry.

"What do you say, Sheriff?" he asked the master of Victrix Farm.

"Our intelligence has nothing good to say of this Western cult, Your Excellency," the older man said carefully.

"Oh, they've been fighting the Sioux-who are such a nuisance and have been for years," the Bossman replied.

Then he clapped his hands together. "I think I'll take you up on that… what were you called?"

"Rudi Mackenzie, tanist of the Clan Mackenzie," Rudi said. "Your Excellency."

"There can be only one," the Bossman said, and laughed; it was more like a giggle, and for some reason Colonel Heuisink shot him a glance.

"Yes, only one. You may go and get my artworks. If you have them in… oh, shall we say one month… you and the others may leave. If not… well, breaking a contract with the Bossman is treason, isn't it? And we all know what treason brings."

Rudi forced himself not to lick his lips. A month wasn't too long for a well-found party to get to where Ingolf's wagons had been left. The weather wouldn't have disturbed their cargos much, from the description; the goods had been tightly sealed in metal boxes, under tight-strapped canvas tilts on Conestogas whose bodies were mostly steel. The problem was that the local inhabitants might well have been busy at them.

"Your Excellency, that's a bargain," Rudi said calmly. "Now, if you'll give the order for the release of my friends and our goods and gear, we can be about your business."

"You can go wherever you want, you mean, as soon as you're over the Mississippi," the Bossman said, a slight jeering note in his voice. "No, no, there can be only one. I said you can go and fetch the treasure."

He looked speculatively at Odard and Mathilda. "These and Vogeler will be safe enough here."

"Look after Matti, Odard," Rudi said softly a week later, and held out his hand. "This is going to be hard on you all, but hardest for her, I think."

"I will," Odard said seriously. His grip was firm for the brief shake. "I'm going to get all the help I can, too."

Rudi Mackenzie nodded and swung into the saddle. Epona danced sideways half a dozen steps as she sensed his tension, and the hooves beat hollowly on the pavement of the bridge. He made his face calm as he nodded to Mathilda; her face held an iron pride, but her eyes were reddened and slightly swollen.

"Did you see the follower?" she asked in halting Sindarin.

"Am I blind?" he replied, and gave her a brief grin.

Captain Denson of the Iowa State Police was standing near her; a full mounted troop of his men were on either side.

"Tell the Bossman that I'll be back as soon as possible," Rudi said politely, gathering up the leading rein of his packhorse.

Denson grinned like a shark. "Most of the wild-men over there aren't cannibals anymore," he said. "Or at least so they say."

Rudi nodded again, and gave a last look at the walls of Dubuque, and the spire of the cathedral rising over them.

"Guard my soul-sister," he murmured quietly to it. "Brigid, be at her side; Dread Lord, be their shield."

He took a deep breath of the air, full of the damp warm river scent, silt and greenery, then signaled Epona up to a fast walk. The bridge stretched ahead, a mile or more of embankment and concrete piers, the center section suspended on cables from a horseshoe-like arch of steel truss beams.

A galley went by underneath as he rode, the oars stroking the blue river water into foam in centipede unison; he could hear the drum of the speed setter faintly through the rush and rumble of the current past the footings of the bridge. The eastern shore loomed ahead, wooded hills like those behind him… but the only buildings were ruins, and a single small fort flying the Iowan flag.

I'll be back, he thought. And Mary and Ritva and the others are there now, and they can act without my holding their hands, can they not?

Eyes were probably watching him from those hills, looking at his gear and horses. He shrugged and sat taller in the saddle; that straightforward greed was easier to deal with than the treachery of princes and the unsleeping hate of the Prophet's men and their demon lords.

"And sure, I'm looking at them," he said softly; Epona's ears flickered back. "The savages, and the foes behind me too. And if they'd stand in my way… well then, the worse for them!"