The High King of Montival

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

GRANGEVILLE COUNTY,

CAMAS MILITARY DISTRICT (FORMERLY NORTH-CENTRAL IDAHO)

APRIL 14, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD

“Maybe it would have been better to go northand through the Dominions,” Red Leaf whispered. “I need to get home soonest, but. .”

“That would mean crossing the Canadian Rockies,” Astrid pointed out, equally quietly. “At this time of year, very risky. They’re much, much higher. Also colder, and not fond of men, like Caradhras.”

He grunted, as if to say And this isn’t a risk?

The eight Dunedain and the two Sioux all sat quietly after that, gnawing on strips of jerky that tasted like salty wood. They didn’t dare light a fire, and the steep lodgepole pine forest was still and cold, quiet save for the scolding of a few jays; they were far inland now, over the old Idaho border north of the Salmon River and several thousand feet up. She shivered a little, as much with exhaustion as the chill; not far away their horses stood with their heads drooping. Still, it was a day when the sky was aching-blue above, and the thin air was full of the awakening scent of the pines. She pulled the air into her lungs and let it out slowly, over and over, until her spirit expanded to fill the high forest.

A warbling call from above and her head came up, swift but not jerky. Then another and she relaxed, coming to her feet and dusting pine-duff off the slightly damp seat of her soft leather trousers. The sentry slid down with no more than a few fragments of bark coming with him, his blurred outline shaggy in his war-cloak and gauze face-mask.

“Man cennich?” she said softly: “What did you see?”

“No sign,” the young man said, nodding westward to where the slope fell away into a river valley. “They’ve lost us or they’re better at hiding than we are at finding, Lady.”

Astrid exhaled, hiding her relief. I’m not even really sure they were following us, she thought. But that’s two days.

“Let’s go, then,” she said.

Then she turned eastward and moved her hands in the broad gestures of battle-sign: Hold in place; await our return for the next three days maximum. They’d need a clear path of retreat across the river, just in case, which was why Eilir and John Hordle were back there with the other half of the party.

It took a minute or two to collect everyone quietly; the Ranger band was spread over several acres of the hillside, for better concealment. While they did she consulted her map and compass, just to be sure. One of the things she’d learned long ago in the early years of the Rangers was how disconcertingly easy it was to simply get irretrievably lost in country you weren’t thoroughly familiar with and end up going in circles. Particularly in unroaded wilderness without man-made landmarks.

I’m happy Alleyne is ahead of us breaking trail.

Now they went in a widely spaced single file; her, then the Indians with her Rangers bringing up the rear and last a horse dragging a bundle of brush-which wouldn’t hide their tracks completely but would make them much harder to read in detail. The two Sioux were nearly as quiet as her folk; forested mountains weren’t their native range, but they weren’t altogether unfamiliar with them either. The sun crept upward and the day warmed, enough to make her sweat a little under the leather-covered mail shirt she was wearing besides her travel gear. They rode and walked in about equal increments; that was good practice anyway, and the terrain made it impossible to do anything else.

The Ranger-sign Alleyne had left was faint, easy to miss if you didn’t concentrate even when you’d helped invent it.

The Histories are frustratingly vague there. Runes, yes, like Weathertop, but that’s not really very specific. Oh, well, it was long Ages ago. We’re lucky so much was preserved.

A rough triangle of twigs, a scuff-mark, a broken weed, all things that could have happened naturally. At one point they guided her down to a rocky stream; they led their horses through it for half an hour. That wading was hard on the hooves and human feet inside the greased, waxed leather of boots, but the risk was worth it to break the trail so conveniently. When they were about to lead the animals back up the bank and check for loose horseshoes and change into dry socks themselves the horses grew restive and someone said quietly:

“Brog!”

A bear it was, an adolescent male grizzly too young to be very massive yet but already near its full length, and thin with spring. For a moment it looked at the equally surprised humans, black nose wrinkling as it took in the scents of man and horse and metal, and then it reared up to its seven-foot height as if to say:

I’m dangerous, so take no liberties!

Grizzlies ate plant food as much as anything-this one had been nipping at green spring shoots-but they were more than ready to kill for meat when they could get it. She put her hand to Arroach’s nose as the animal swung its head up in a startled gesture. Six of the Rangers brought their bows to half-draw and two leveled spears in a moment of stillness that stretched. Then the bear decided to move aside, lumbering up with a crackle through the stiff vines and saplings at the edge of the creek. It wasn’t afraid, nor moving fast, just reasonably cautious, which struck her as an eminently sensible attitude in a chance encounter. She’d hunted bear, but never without careful preparations.

“Go in peace today, Brother Bear,” Astrid murmured.

“Yeah, heel and toe it, namesake,” Rick Three Bears said in relief.

His hand was tight on the bridle of his nervous mount. If the big bruin had turned ugly they would certainly have lost horses before they could have taken it down, and probably warriors as well, since they were not in a position to dodge. Grizzlies took a good deal of killing.

Then the slopes gentled as they descended; they saw plenty of bird-life and game-sign, and now and then some mule deer, but they weren’t pausing even to shoot for the pot. The sun was high enough that the grassy open expanse ahead seemed to shimmer with green and patches of bright blue as they caught glimpses between the trees. The other side was a line on the horizon, vaguely suggesting hills; it must be many miles away, to be so small from this height.

I hope we’re just where I think we are. I don’t want to blunder around wasting time looking for the rendezvous.

“Is that swamp, the blue?” Red Leaf asked. “Standing water with grass growing up through it?”

Astrid smiled and shook her head. “Camas flower,” she said. “It’s early this year, but later it looks even better. This is the Nann i Camas, the Camas Prairie I told you of.”

She could feel the Lakota relax; she’d observed that they liked a big sky and a long view and felt cramped in close country. Dunedain tried to be at home in all types of landscape, but there was no dispute that forest offered more scope for their particular talents.

“Yeah, we got camas in the makol too, but not nearly so many. Too dry, I suppose,” Red Leaf said. “That’s some good-looking pasture out there.”

Astrid breathed a soundless sigh of relief as she saw Alleyne rise from a nest of branches and war-cloak that had made him the next thing to invisible. The rest of the column came up and spread out to either side of his waiting place at the edge of the woods, far enough back that no betraying glint would make them apparent to a patrol out on the prairie.

“Secure?” Alleyne asked.

“No sign of those cavalry. Eilir and John are holding the rear in case we have to move back quickly, but I don’t think so.”

He nodded and called: “Hirvegil, Imlos,” while pointing upward.

The two young Rangers unwrapped their war-cloaks from their packs, and donned them and their claws. Then each ran up a tree with a cat’s hunching speed, picking ones with good fields of view on the back trail as well as ahead.

Astrid unshipped her Zeiss palantir en-crum and leaned against a half-fallen pine to brace her elbows. Back and forth; no sign of man, save for a big herd of red-and-white Herefords already at the very edge of sight and slowly moving eastward with only two mounted cowboys in attendance; they’d vanished within an hour. This was rich farmland, well-watered dark basaltic soil planted to wheat and canola before the Change, but there was no need to till nearly as much now when crops weren’t shipped to great cities far away. Most of it was sparsely grazed prairie where it wasn’t outright abandoned these days, with planted fields only around the widely scattered ranch-houses and little hamlet-towns. The dirt roads that had marked it into square-mile sections had long since grown over in grass and brush, the telephone poles burned and fallen, plowland gone back to green wildness.

Like Eriador in the Third Age, and I saw the beginnings here back right after the Change, she thought, with a complex mix of emotions. Remembering myself at fourteen is like remembering being someone else, almost. Then I was only beginning to know what my fate was, and what I must do in the Fifth Age.

Man’s hand lay lightly enough on the Camas Prairie now that she could see a lobo pack in the middle distance, trotting from north to south in single file. She smiled to herself as she watched them moving confidently with their heads high to keep them above the tips of the thigh-high grass, eight big shaggy gray adults a yard high at the shoulders and four youngsters, gawky adolescent one- and two-yearolds. Then they caught her party’s scent; the wind was light, but from the west. She saw them halt and look her way, then give the canine equivalent of shrugs and head on their journey once more, wary of humans but not particularly frightened. A few bison cows and their calves an hour later were more cautious, veering away before they became more than dots to the naked eye.

Ohtar-warrior-squires-came by with water for humans and horses, and carrying the last of the cracked grain to feed the mounts. They were well-trained beasts, but it tugged at her heart to see them yearning towards that rich tender grazing when she had to deny them.

“You can graze tonight to your heart’s content, my darlings,” she murmured beneath her breath. “I know war is hard on horses.”

The sun crept across the sky and moved behind her; she ate another stick of jerky and some raisins and ignored the way her stomach gurgled. She even tried to ignore the thought of how Diorn and Hinluin and Fimalen would be missing her, back at Stardell Hall. Children grew so fast. . Diorn was past ten now and tried to hide his fears, but the twins cried whenever they saw her getting her war-gear together, though Miresgaliel was an excellent nanny.

Though I’ d be even more upset if they didn’t miss me. And I’ d like to have at least one more. Another boy, say, though a third girl would be welcome too. I’m thirty-eight, time’s getting a little tight. . maybe it would be another pair of twins if we’re lucky? My family always ran to them and so does Alleyne’s. Uncomfortable but it saves time. If we live through this war, perhaps we should let the younger generation have the active tasks and settle down to teaching and policy all the time.

A herd of fawn-colored pronghorns with white bellies and rumps came from the south, pronking and stotting as they went-bouncing along like rubber balls or hopping straight up, apparently for the sheer joy of it, and she saw Alleyne grin as he watched. A few white-tailed deer wandered along the edge of the woods, darting away when they got within a few-score paces of the silent humans and finally realized predators were about; some feral alpacas grazed. A blaring sound in the sky made her look up and see a brace of massive snowy trumpeter swans going by. Other birds swept through northward towards the lakes that lay there, V-shapes of duck and geese and tern; a golden eagle cruised along the forest edge for a while, a seven-foot wingspan of savage majesty hoping to scare up something edible. . which for that breed might be anything up to a pronghorn and certainly included the odd weakly lamb or fawn.

I do like the wilderness, she thought. More than the tame lands. Though the forests of Mithrilwood are even more comely than this. Home is where your children are born.

Then-

“That’s them,” she said, seconds after the two observers whistled the first sighting from their treetop perches-for detail her optics trumped their elevation.

Two groups of horsemen, riding along at a casual trot-canter-trot with remounts and pack beasts on leading reins, one coming from the east, the other from north and east.

“Literally six of one and half a dozen of the other,” Alleyne said. “You’re sure?”

“The blue scarves are the recognition signal, and they’re all wearing them. Either we’re blown, or it’s them.”

It was possible they had been blown; this area had been part of the United States of Boise for over twenty years, though it was lightly governed, or had been until recently. It took only one traitor or a suspicious and conscientious officer making arrests and holding people’s heads underwater until they talked, which everyone did eventually. She reached over her shoulder for an arrow and tied a bit of blue ribbon just below the head. Her man did likewise, and they rose and trotted out into the open. When they’d been standing for ten minutes each of them drew to the ear and shot skywards, and riders stood in the stirrups and waved back at them.

The Idahoans had a perfect right to be here on their home ranges, if anyone asked. They rode up boldly, and Astrid signed over her shoulder for the Sioux to come out beside the Dunedain leaders. The two approaching parties traveled the last hundred yards side by side. One was commanded by a sixtyish man in rancher’s leather and denim and linsey-woolsey with a Stetson on his head, and a Sheriff’s star on his jacket. The other’s leader was fifty-something, dressed in fine fringed buckskins with a bar of white paint across his eyes; there was as much gray as raven black in his long hair, which was bound at the rear of his head with a fan-shaped spray of eagle feathers. The rancher’s troop had excellent horses of a nondescript quarter horse breed; the Indians rode striking-looking animals with almost metallic-golden forequarters and socks, fading to pale gray with patches on the rest of their bodies.

The rank and file of the cowboys and Indians-her lips quirked for a moment-contained surprisingly few men in their prime fighting years.

Teenagers old enough for work but too young for call-up and women, mostly, apart from the two leaders.

The tyrant in Boise had been reaching deep into his pool of potential fighters. Alleyne met her eyes and nodded very slightly.

And most of them Changelings; not just in fact, but technically, as in born after March 17, 1998. That’s happening more and more and it’s a bit of a shock. Counting my ohtar, the majority of this whole gathering are Changelings. I think more than half of all the people on earth may be Changelings now, or will be soon.

A few of the locals had leather breastplates or light mail shirts, and all had slung helmets modeled on those of the old American army to their saddle bows. Everyone wore a saber or the heavy curved blade called a shete, and had bow in saddle scabbard, shield and lariat hanging at their cruppers, quivers across their backs, the gear common to the whole interior range-and-mountain country from the Cascades far into the eastern plains. The Sheriff drew rein first; despite his age he looked tough as the tooled leather of his saddle, though it bore images of flowers and his face had only lines and crags. His eyes were as blue as hers, startling in his weathered face.

“Ms. Larsson,” he said. “Long time no see. Though we enjoyed the letters.”

“Mae govannen,” she replied, putting hand to heart and bowing slightly. “Im gelir ceni ad lin, Arquen Woburn. Well met, and I’m glad to see you again, Sheriff Woburn. But it’s Astrid Loring, now; this is my husband, Alleyne Loring. Alleyne, Sheriff Robert Woburn. We met in the first Change Year, and a couple of times afterwards, though not lately.”

“She and Mike Havel and the rest of their bunch saved our ass the first Change Year,” Woburn said. “That one’s still on the debit side of the books.”

“Ah, yes, the affair of the soi-disant Duke Iron Rod,” Alleyne said. “I’ve read about it in the chronicle Astrid kept.”

“The Red Book of Larsdalen,” she affirmed, with a nostalgic thrill at the thought.

Though the Annals of the Westmen was current, started when she and Eilir refounded the Dunedain. And by then she’d been able to write it in Tengwar.

The other party reined in as well. The leader grinned at her and exchanged greetings, then explained over his shoulder.

“Astrid I know from way back. We owe her a couple of favors. Big ones.”

To her: “Glad to see you got hitched. Any kids, by the way?”

“Two girls and a boy,” Astrid said. “I’ve got some pictures. . later. You, Eddie?”

“Five; three boys, two girls. Yeah, hopefully we’ll have catching-up time.”

He made a signal to his followers-given the number who were women, she couldn’t say “his men”-and they dismounted and began to unload the packsaddles; Sheriff Woburn did likewise. The Indian went on, looking between the Sioux and her:

“So, who are these dudes? The message didn’t say, which is fair enough, seeing as it might have been read by not-good people. I presume they ain’t elves.”

“Neither are we,” Astrid said dryly. “We’re Men, well, People, of the West. These are John Red Leaf and Rick Three Bears, of the Oglalla and the Seven Council Fires of the Lakota tunwan.”

Who are sort of like the Riders of Rohan in some ways. Hopefully they’ ll also come charging to the rescue.

“Hau Kola,” they said, making the peace sign.

“Eddie Running Horse.” He introduced himself and shook hands. “Of the Nez Perce. Or the Nimi’ipuu as we say.”

“Meaning The Real People,” Red Leaf said dryly. “Self-esteem’s a wonderful thing. . and isn’t Running Horse a Sioux name?”

“Not when you say it in our language or in English. And Sioux means rattlesnake, doesn’t it? Or torturer? Or maybe movie Indian.”

“Well, fuck you too, Mr. I-will-fight-no-more-forever,” Red Leaf said.

Alleyne looked very slightly alarmed to one who knew him as well as Astrid did; she caught his eye and shook her head a little.

I think they’re-

Red Leaf and the Nez Perce burst out laughing.

. . joking.

“Eddie Running Horse. . Jesus, were you at the last Crow Fair in ’ninety-seven? Yeah, you were in the rodeo-I remember you.”

“Christ, you never forget a face if you remember me from that.”

“Nah, I couldn’t tell your face from a prairie dog’s ass.”

“Not the first one to note the resemblance.”

“But I never forget a horse. You were riding one that looks a hell of a lot like him.”

He nodded towards the beautiful Appaloosa.

“Yup, he was Big Dog here’s granddad ’s brother, but we bred some Akhal-Teke into the line right afterwards; got the first colts the year of the Change.”

“Shiny.”

“Yeah, it does give their coats that look, not to mention putting in more staying power. Say, I remember you.”

“You never forget a face?”

“No, but I never forgot about hearing how this crazy Sioux named Red Leaf was dragging around a Mongol with a yurt, of all things. A yurt in the Tipi Capital of the World!”

“It’s a ger. Yurt’s what the Russians called them. We use a lot of them these days. Chinua-it means Red Wolf-showed us how, married my little sister too. How’s things here for us ’skins?”

“Oh, not as good as I hear it is for you folks, but until just recently, not so bad. We got left alone most of the time. Trouble with the fucking wasichu as you snakes call ’em every now and then, but what can you do? It’s a little late to say There goes the neighborhood.

“Nothing personal,” he added to Astrid, as Sheriff Woburn glowered a little.

“I’m a Numenorean myself,” Astrid pointed out. “House of Hador, probably.”

And one of your Real People is as blond as I am, so there, she added to herself. Honestly, it’s not like any of us were half-Elven or anything you could get really huffy-stuffy about.

Their followers and her ohtar had pitched camp; staking out horses on picket lines, sending working parties into the woods for dead-falls to use as firewood, and in the case of the locals unpacking food and setting to cooking dinner. That included steaks, fried potatoes, cowboy beans with garlic, bacon and onions, and frybread. Frybread with honey was one of her favorites, and after so long on cold trail rations it was all very welcome. As the evening fell the leaders leaned back against their saddles around a fire, sipping at chicory-root coffee improved with brandy. Sparks fled upward towards the bright stars as the wood cracked and popped, and a rhythmic whoo-whoo-whoowhoo-whoo-whoo-whoo sounded in the forest just upslope, a great gray owl proclaiming its territory to the world and especially to any other owls listening, before it set out on the evening hunt to feed the new chicks.

“So,” Eddie said, his hands busy loading a long-stemmed pipe. “OK, we still owe you one. We’ll get Red Leaf and Three Bears through to Montana. Now that we’re all supposed to be lovey-huggy with those Cutter maniacs, you can go through as Nez Perce trading horses or something.”

“The Cutters don’t have enough horses?” Alleyne asked, his officer’s mind working at the implications.

Eddie Running Horse grinned. “Not like our horses. Plenty of rich Ranchers and those priest-whatevers like fancy stock, let me tell you.”

He turned to the Sioux: “If pretending to be Real People doesn’t offend your dignity.”

“Bro, if it gets me back to Fox Woman and the kids alive, I’m all for it and I’ll make like a goddamn Pawnee. Or paint my face white and pretend to be a street mime, for that matter.”

His son made an inquiring sound. “Classical reference, I’ll explain later,” his father said, and then went on to the Nez Perce leader:

“Figure we could cut kitty-corner up into Drumheller and then go through the Dominions from there, it all being nice and flat along that way and not too far to their border with the Seven Council Fires.”

“Lady Sandra has given our friends a laissez-passer,” Astrid said.

At the uncomprehending looks, Alleyne amplified: “A diplomatic passport. Drumheller and Moose Jaw and Minnedosa have diplomatic relations with the Portland Protective Association; they’ll give Red Leaf and his son help and transport.”

“Doable,” Running Horse said. “Horse traders, or maybe hunters or trappers. . that would be the best cover story, and you could stay in the panhandle almost all the way there; it’s a big country and not many people. With some good remounts, it wouldn’t take long at all this time of year. Except that the patrols’re checking a lot harder these days for draft dodgers, but you’re old enough that won’t be a problem and we could fix it up for your son here.”

A grin. “Maybe he could pretend to be deaf and dumb; I notice he doesn’t talk much anyway. Our good Sheriff Bob here could do an exemption certificate to explain why he’s not pounding his ass on a saddle in the U.S. Cavalry for the holy cause of national reunification. Which, let me tell you, we weren’t all that crazy about the first time.”

“I could,” Woburn said. “Not too often, but I’ve still got enough clout for an exemption. Though the way they’re centralizing everything in Boise these days, God knows how long that’ll last.”

“Draft dodgers?” Alleyne said, a keen hunter’s attention on his face. “There’s discontent with the current ruler’s policies, then?”

Running Horse laughed hollowly as he reached out to the fire and lit a pine splint from it:

“Discontent? Oh, no, no, hell, no. We all just love to die to make that buffalo-headed whistle-ass would-be emperor with a Julius Caesar complex down in Boise the fucking king of the world. If you don’t believe me, just ask him, or read one of the posters plastered on every wall between Drumheller and Utah.”

He lit the pipe, passed his palm over it, puffed and handed it to Astrid with a ceremonious two-handed gesture; she took a puff, fought not to cough at the fiery itch in her lungs and handed it on around the circle herself.

“Said Imperial Wannabe is also known as Martin Thurston,” Eddie added sardonically. “Also known as General-President of the United States Martin Thurston, and according to rumor now Beloved-of-the-Prophet-Sethaz Martin Thurston. Jesus, his dad was slow enough about getting an election going, but at least he did eventually get around to it and he was pretty evenhanded even while he was using the Emergency Powers Act. Official line from Number One Son is that we’ll have elections when the quote present emergency situation unquote is over. Which means sometime around the Fucking Fifth of Never, is my guess.”

“Yup, that’s about what I figured,” Woburn said in his slow deep twanging voice. “Or if we do, they’ll be ‘elections’ the way a gelding is a stallion.”

I doubt anyone elected you two, Astrid thought. Though I don’t doubt you’re popular enough. And anyone who doesn’t like the way Alleyne and Eilir and John and I run the Rangers is perfectly welcome to leave.

The Sheriff went on quietly: “My boy Tom died at Wendell when we fought the Corwin. . maniacs is a pretty good word, Ed.”

“You should hear what our tiwe-t and tiwata a-t, our medicine people, say about them.”

“And ours,” Red Leaf put in.

“About the same’s what the preachers say,” Woburn said. “And the Mormons hate ’em like poison. . Wendell, that was a fight that needed fighting; that and helping the Deseret folks. I wouldn’t be having this here conversation if old General Larry Thurston were still alive.”

“You knew him?” Astrid asked. “Personally, I mean.”

If he had, it had been after she went through. Of course, a good deal could happen in twenty-five years. Thurston had been one more refugee trying to get out of metro Seattle then.

“Yeah. I worked with him when we joined up with Boise, which was relatively peaceful, back in Change Year Four. OK, he was always a serious hard-ass, but he was an honest man too, and he meant it about putting the country back together, as near as anyone could after the Change. Then suddenly after the battle at Wendell back two years ago the President was dead and his boy was running things.”

“Which I recall you weren’t altogether against,” the Nez Perce chief said.

“Not at first. I knew Martin was smart. But then we were allied with the Prophet, who’s all of a sudden supposed to be helping us restore America, and then we’re fighting off in the west. And the story about Frederick Thurston being behind his father’s death. Damned suspicious I said right off, you’ll recall.”

“Not too loudly,” Eddie added.

“Nope. Lately things have happened to folks who got too loud about being unhappy. Or who say they don’t think young Fred was to blame for his father’s death, especially if it sounds like they had Martin in mind instead.”

“Like, Fred Thurston is any better than his big brother?”

“Much better,” Astrid said firmly. “And we have eyewitness testimony that it was Martin who killed his father. Finished him off after the Prophet’s men wounded him, that is. And strong suggestive evidence that he let his father’s command center be attacked by the Cutters in the hope that the President would be killed. In collusion with the Prophet.”

Woburn nodded slowly. “Yeah. I can see that. And. .” He hesitated. “That’s what Mrs. Thurston thinks, too. Thinks that blond bitch he married put him up to it, as well. Not that he needed much persuasion, probably.”

Eddie Running Horse sat upright. “You never mentioned that, Bob!”

The rancher-Sheriff chuckled dryly. “Well, now, what were we saying about what happened to folks who went around flapping their lips a lot, these days? Yeah, I know Cecile. And I know some other people who know her, people who live in Boise and can pass word along.”

“Ah,” Astrid said neutrally, feeling things moving in her head, like the Watcher at the Ford beneath the waters by Durin’s Doors. “That is quite interesting, Sheriff.”

“Poor lady, I sure don’t envy her any, stuck in Boise with that son of hers, and two daughters to look after,” Woburn said. “It’d take a hard man to harm his own kin, but if the rumors are right Martin’s exactly that sort of hard man. Bad man, come to it.”

“Perhaps something could be done about that,” Astrid said, her eyes looking beyond the circle of fire for a while. “That would let young Frederick tell everyone the truth and hope to be believed, if his mother was backing him up.”

“Well, I don’t know,” Woburn said, taking a final ceremonial puff on the pipe. “He’s fallen in with some mighty strange company-this Artos fellow we hear tell of, and those knights-in-armor people and all.”

“Hey, let me tell you about Rudi,” Three Bears said, speaking up in the company of his elders for the first time. “That’s what his friends, Fred Thurston included, were calling him when he showed up in our country. Then-”

Astrid smiled to herself as the highly colored tale of adventure and derring-do sounded. Even compared to the Histories it made a stirring epic; and her nieces were involved with it too, to the honor of the Dunedain and her House.

“OK, that’s impressive,” Woburn said, and Eddie nodded. “But I’m still not sure. . I don’t want to see Idaho invaded.”

“That’s see the United States invaded, Bob,” Eddie said. “And if you don’t believe me-”

“Just ask Martin Thurston, yeah,” Woburn said. “It’s still our home, whatever it gets called.”

He wrapped his hand in a kerchief to reach out and pour more chicory from the tin pot balanced on a stone at the edge of the fire. At his raised brows Astrid held out her own cup. He went on as he clunked the pot back on the fire:

“Still, fighting and killing and burning on our own land. . and then what? Those weirdos building castles here?”

“No, that’s not what we had in mind at all,” Alleyne said smoothly. “We. . we Rangers and the other free communities. . fought the Portland Protective Association and beat them, ourselves.”

More or less beat them, Astrid admitted to herself. Beat them enough that they abandoned any ambitions to conquer the rest of us. And that may be as much due to Norman Arminger dying as anything else; they got less greedy without him to drive them on. Or more patient, perhaps. Certainly Sandra is. Saruman in a cotehardie, if you ask me.

“They’re just one power among many, and nobody’s going to let them hand out fiefs,” her husband went on. “But we do think it’s time we stopped having wars among ourselves.”

Astrid waved her cup. “Why should we fight each other? There’s all the land and all the game and all the grazing any of us need or our children’s children will need for a very long time. Trade will make us richer than stealing.”

She signed and one of her ohtar handed her two small sealed bags of waxed paper, each exuding a faint rich scent.

“For example. .”

She handed them to Woburn and Running Horse.

“The real bean?” Woburn said reverently.

“Jesus!” the Nez Perce chief whispered.

Astrid nodded. She’d never liked coffee all that much herself, despite Swedish and Danish ancestors, but she did love tea, and it had been a good day when the real leaf started trickling in through Astoria and Newport.

“We Rangers make our living guarding caravans and putting down bandits in peacetime, and believe me, the bandits enjoy the holiday when we’re on war-duty. And this is the new world, the Changed world. We can’t have a government that ties everything up in paper and forms anymore. The land is too big.”

“Got a point there,” Woburn said. “Still. .”

“Wouldn’t it be better for Boise to be part of something bigger, but still fully autonomous within its own borders?” Alleyne asked. “And for the ruler in Boise to leave the rest of Idaho to govern themselves in most things, rather than taking your young men and crops and horses for its wars? Especially if, umm, Reunification could come anyway.”

“With a King?” Woburn asked, shaking his head.

“An Ard Ri, a High King. Who presides, but has only enough power to keep us from fighting each other and enforce a few clear rules. No costly standing armies to support, no armies of clerks telling everyone what to do, either.”

“How does that work?” Woburn said. “I like the bit about the clerks. If you knew the forms and regulations they’ve brought in this past year-and there were enough before. .”

“The High King has only what the founding laws and the member realms give him, what they are willing to levy on themselves in money or troops. There will be a Meeting of delegates from each people, to oversee things, as well, and a High King’s court to decide disputes between them.”

Eddie Running Horse nodded. “Sounds OK. I’m not dead set on Boise being the capital of whatever but it would be nice not to have to worry so much about the neighbors.”

Woburn frowned. The talk flowed on late into the night. When she lay at last in her sleeping bag, Astrid cuddled her back up against Alleyne’s and stared at the fading banked embers, glowing like red stars in the deep velvet blackness of a moonless night.

That poor lady, held captive in Boise by a murdering usurper, she thought. Something has to be done about that. Eilir and I swore that oath to succor the defenseless. .