Sunrise Lands

Then he looked over at Rudi and Edain. "I've got some good archers," he said, to the younger Mackenzie this time. "But none like that. I could use a longbow corps; maybe you could teach some of my men if you're interested in a job… What's so fu

The last was a snap that dampened the smile on Edain's face. Still, he was a free clansman of the Mackenzies, and he spoke boldly.

"I was just thinking of how my father trained me, General."

At his raised brow, the young man went on: "When I was six, he gave me a stave cut to my size. I'd hold it out until my arm ached.. . and if I let it droop then he'd wal lop my backside. I learned to hold it as long as he liked… so then he gave me a thicker stave. When I got a real bow, I practiced an hour a day and longer on weekends, and that's not counting archery classes at school; I learned to care for my string, my bow, my arrows, to cut my own feathers and fletch my own shafts. I practiced shooting in calm, breeze, and strong wind, at still marks, moving marks, targets on the flat and in the air, and dropping fire on hidden ones, and all of them while I was standing… or kneeling… or ru

Thurston looked as if he'd like to interrupt, but Edain continued: "Even shooting blindfolded at a target that rattled! Not to mention hunting. I dropped a ru

A couple of Thurston's soldiers looked alarmed at his insolence, even busy as they were. The general's own frown gave way to an unwilling grin, and his younger son matched the expression.

"Well, that put me in my place. Sometimes I'm still not used to the way some things take so long to learn these days."

Rudi nodded to himself. He'd noticed that about people who'd been fighting men before the Change. Evidently guns had been easy to learn well, easier even than a crossbow.

"Wait a minute," Thurston went on. "What's your last name, son? The real one, not the Mackenzie part."

"Aylward."

"You're Sam Aylward's kid?" Thurston said. "Well, no wonder."

"You know my father, sir?"

Edain sounded half-glad, half disappointed-he'd been living in that shadow all his life, and here it was a month's travel from home. Rudi sympathized; he knew what it was like to have famous parents. In his case it was worse; his were legends on both the spear and cauldron side.

"I met him in 'ninety-one," Thurston said, animated for a moment. "On a mission in the Gulf. And then he dropped in to Fort Lewis back in 'ninety-eight, just be fore the Change… and I heard of him afterward. Ayl ward the Archer, eh? No wonder, then. Wish to hell he'd ended up with me and not the flakes… er, the Mackenzies."

"You know, I love my dad," Edain muttered, as the lord of Boise turned away and began a rattle of orders to his waiting subordinates. "But there are times I get bloody sick of hearing about Aylward the Archer."

"Cheer up," Rudi said, slapping him on the shoulder. "Think of all the years you'll be Aylward the Archer."

From his expression, Edain was-and then suddenly his face fell as he realized that would mean his father wasn't around anymore.

Chapter Eighteen

Approaching Boise,

Idaho Provisional Capital,

United States Of America

June 10, CY23/2021 A.D.

It was an hour or so until sunset and the Boise road still headed northwest, though they'd turn east to enter the city itself. Shadows were begi

"It's all so… tidy," Rudi said, looking around and blinking in the bright summer sun. "Not a board loose or a building unpainted or one poor gasping weed left to propagate its kind."

Truck gardens occupied most of the land this close to the city, watered by canals and spi

Many stopped to wave or shout greetings as the sol diers went by, and some of the closer ones stared at the obvious foreigners.

"So very, very, very tidy."

Rudi spoke with a mixture of mild scorn and grudging admiration. Mackenzies were farmers, and good ones, and that meant that they worked very hard indeed and admired hard workers and a neat job. But they stopped when they'd done enough to get the job done; it wasn't as if there was ever a scarcity of things that needed doing about a croft, and if you had any time to spare you spent it on dancing or a festival or a little fancywork like carving a god-post. Around here. ..

"You noticed?" one of his half sisters said dryly.

"Who could be missing it?" Rudi replied, his tone equally pawky.

"Yeah, you're riding along a road and you drop an apple core here and three people scold you and point to the waste bin," Ingolf confirmed.

"They don't feed apple cores to their pigs?" Edain said, puzzled.

"Yeah, but you've got to put it in the waste bin first. The official waste bin. That's the Approved Procedure. And if you think this is neat and tidy, wait until we get into town. The punishment for drunk-and disorderly is going around sweeping the streets up after the horses and oxen, with some sergeant kicking your ass while you do it."

The suburbs here around the modern city had been torn down with a thoroughness Rudi had never seen anywhere, even the foundation pads of the houses bro ken up; a last few metal frame buildings were being disassembled as they passed through, with bundles of girders lowered to the ground by cables and stacked on big ox-wagons to be hauled away for smithies and forges and fortress construction. The manicured look of the gardens was a little unusual. The walls ahead, though…

"Mount Angel is stronger," Father Ignatius said stoutly.

"It is that. On the other hand, it's also on the top of a four-hundred-foot hill," Rudi pointed out. "The which is a pimple in a plain of exceeding flatness. This is not."

Boise was on the east bank of its river; that ran in a blue band north-south, with three bridges crossing it and mountains rising not far beyond. The walls weren't just tall. Old high-rises had been built into them and infilled with concrete as well. Rudi was used to the giant struc tures of the ancients, but most of them were dead. Seeing them worked into something as natural and modern as the outer curtain wall of a fortress-town was eerie, and it gave the defenses an odd alien angular look.

Traffic was thick on the road; carts with farm produce, everything from baskets of eggs cradled in straw to bur lap sacks of potatoes and casks of wine and flats of early lettuce and green onions and radishes; bigger wagon trains with trade goods in bales and bundles and barrels; people on foot and horseback and an occasional flock of sheep or herd of cattle. They all pulled aside for the general's party; news of their coming had been flashed ahead by heliograph and semaphore-telegraph stations, ru