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"That I have got to hear about."
"How's the family? And Cecilia?"
"Dad's fine and meaner than ever, Mom's fine, my brothers and sisters are all fine-Louise got married to Sheriff Clausen's son Hauk over by Dubuque this May-and Cecilia and I just had a kid, a boy this time-"
"Congratulations!"
"-and young Ingolf is doing fine and crawling like a maniac, driving her and the nursemaid crazy. The farm's fine, our vakis are fine, and let's get the hell home! Man, we've got some serious talking to do! And drinking!"
He turned to his men: "Mitch, hightail it back to the house and tell my father we've got guests, Ingolf among 'em."
The man climbed into the saddle and trotted away down the road that led north from the little town. Heuisink turned to the rest of the travelers and waved.
"Let's get your traps on the wagons. Our house is your house, and any friends of Ingolf's are friends of ours! Stay a week, stay a month, stay as long as you damned well please."
Ingolf said his friends here were well-to-do, Rudi thought. They must be, to have nothing but smiles for ten hungry guests!
The land near Valeria had been intensely cultivated in small orchards and large gardens by the townspeople, the rows of lettuce and carrots and potatoes, sweet corn and onions and turnip greens against dirt black as coal. Beyond that was shaggy common pasture for their beasts, and then more of the same.
A ride always seems longer in open country like this, Rudi thought, as they turned off the road and under a tall timber gate with a hanging sign:
Victrix Century Farm est. 1878. Colonel Abel Heuisink, prop.
Then beneath that, in different lettering:
Emergency Evacuation Center and Registered Farm #21,726
"Almost home," Ingolf's friend Jack said. "This is my family's land, from here on."
Rudi's brows went up slightly; all he could see was land right now, rippling with grass sometimes chest-high on a horse, no houses or even tilled fields.
"What's the significance of the number?" he asked.
"Oh, that's our farm number… back at the Change, every farm that could keep going got a registration number, 'cause all the farmers were sworn in as deputies and Justices of the Peace to handle the evacuation. Last count I heard, there are…"
His eyes went up in the gesture of a man remembering a number: "Fifty-two thousand four hundred and thirty-two Registered Farmers in the Provisional Republic of by-God Iowa. Dad's a Sheriff too, of course… It's about another two miles to the house; that's square in the middle of our land."
The size of a Baron's fief in Portland, Rudi thought. Not much compared to a lot of ranches-but this isn't sagebrush where you need five acres for a single sheep, by Brigit's Sheaf!
"It's a fine stretch of country you have," he said sincerely.
The whole of Iowa was apparently laid out in squares a mile on a side with roads along the edges, and would probably look as geometric as a chessboard from a balloon or glider. That distance meant the Heuisink property must be at least two square miles, and probably three or four… which was very big even by local standards. Rudi looked around himself. Grazing stretched on either side as they entered the estate, but it was neatly fenced, with old-style posts and barbed wire, or in places by bristling hedges of multiflora rose.
Herds of black hornless cattle moved over the fields, their glossy hides tight with good feeding, and horses-some massive Percherons, others tall long-legged beasts that reminded him of Epona-as well as square-bodied sheep, still looking a little naked as their fleeces grew back from the spring shearing. There were herds of black-and-white pigs too, looking like giant moving sow-beetles as they ranged belly-deep in pasture; he could hear them grunting and snuffling as they fed. Occasionally animals of all varieties would wander over to a pond dug in the corner of a field to drink, or to a trough kept full by a skeletal windmill.
The younger man nodded with obvious pride. "None better in the state, and my family have held it since my great-great-grandfather's day; well, parts of it, at least. All of it's useable, too. You go a couple of days' ride north and half the country's gone back to swamp again, but ours is naturally dry."
"This looks to be as good for pasture or grain as you could want," Rudi agreed with perfect sincerity.
Though I might say something of the sort even if I weren't sincere at all, he thought, smiling to himself.
You couldn't go wrong complimenting a man's horses and cattle or his land. He didn't add that he thought it as boring a stretch of the Mother's earth as he'd come across, barring some that were even flatter.
I've seen enough prairies since we left home that they don't bewilder me anymore. At first he'd had a subconscious conviction they weren't moving at all, even when he knew they were. I still miss having something to measure distance by-woods, hills, mountains in the distance.
The land here wasn't really flat, not compared to some of the tabletop country he'd seen and-endlessly-ridden across. It had a very slight roll to it, enough that vistas opened out and closed in again, though slowly. There were few trees, only a clump of oaks and hickories and poplars here and there or a row along the edge of a field, and apart from the cottonwood and burr-oak groves along the banks of the odd slow-moving trickle of creek they all looked to have been planted by human hands rather than the will of the Mother. The grass by the side of the road was sometimes high enough to nearly hide the view beyond, though.
They rode at the pace of the wagons, which were loaded with heavy goods, brick and tile and tools and bolts of cloth and boxes that might be anything, and big bevel and wheel-gears strapped on top of one, machinery for some sort of mill. Besides the teamsters there were six mounted guards in crested helms and mail-shirts, armed with shete and bow; Heuisink had introduced them as our National Guard security detail.
Rudi mentally translated that as my father's household troops.
"Chief?" Edain said quietly, pulling his horse in beside Rudi's when the Iowan noble drifted ahead to Ingolf's side.
"Yes?"
"This is good land," he said, and offered a clump of grass with clods of earth attached that he'd stopped to cut out of one of the fields by the roadside. "You could plant bootlaces here, and by Brigid's Cauldron it would come up bootlaces!"
Rudi hefted the clod as they rode, and rubbed some of the black dirt between his fingers and smelled it. It was full of fine roots, and compressed easily like sponge cake when he squeezed some between thumb and forefinger, the good crumb structure keeping it moist days after the last rain. The scent was rich and almost meaty, as much like well-rotted mulch as soil. He touched his tongue to it, and the taste was neutral, without any acid sourness or alkali bitterness either.
"You're right," he said, dusting his hands off and spitting aside. "As good as any I've ever seen. Easy to work, too, I'd think. They do have a mortal lot of it here, don't they?"
There was fine farmland in the Willamette Valley, but not fifty thousand square miles of it in a solid block. That was more ground than everything from Bend and Sisters to the ocean and from the Columbia to the old California border south of Ashland, desert and mountain and dense Douglas fir woodland and the whole Willamette put together.
"And all this bit here belongs to Ingolf's friend?"
"Since that sign," Rudi said.
Edain shook his head, frowning. "That's not right," he said. "Not decent, by the womb of the Mother and the blood of the Corn King! One family shouldn't have that much."
"My friend, it's in total agreement I am," Rudi said; Mackenzie crofts differed a bit in size, but not even the wealthiest had much more than one family could till with a little help at harvest. "But mentioning it wouldn't be very tactful, if we're to be guests. We need this man's help. Also we're outlanders here."