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At a guess, Uncle Jed wanted to ask those some questions.
"Those ones tried to sneak back for their hoors and brats," Jack said with a wave. "But Uncle Jed knew they would, and we were ready for them. The Black Void drank 'em down!"
The young man went on in a less boastful voice: "You folks got much silver?"
"Plenty, for the right goods," Ingolf said over his shoulder.
"That's fine, fine. I sure would like to turn some of the stuff I got into silver. Then I can trade it for livestock back to home a lot easier than riding through blizzards to line camps and swapping around all winter. My Je
"Jack, like I told you, stop flapping your lips. The horseflies will get in there and buzz around in your empty head. Here's the house I'm using," Jed Smith broke in. "You Newcastle men can have the one next door. Some of our folks was using it and cleaned it up before they left and I'll send some of the gals in. You can start your barterin' in the morning, and then we'll leave. We close up tight at night here."
"What's that one?" Rudi said, pointing with his chin at a building with boards nailed over the windows to make an improvised prison.
A few of the Cutters were lolling about on the steps, one whittling at a stick with a foot-long fighting knife, another sitting propped against the wall with his floppy hat pulled over his eyes and his strung bow across his lap. Rudi thought he was asleep until he saw an eye following the horses. A Mormon woman carried a yoke with two buckets of milk up the front steps as the mounted men passed, and others followed behind with aprons full of loaves of bread or covered pots of cooked food wrapped in towels against their heat. They turned their heads aside to avoid meeting the eyes of the Cutter patrol, some of whom called out greetings of their choice.
"Oh, that's where we're keeping the brats," Jed Smith said. "They're part of the Prophet's portion of the spoil."
"Brats?" Ingolf inquired.
"Their kids, the ones too young to be worth anything, under about six. We've got orders to look after 'em careful, for the Houses of Refuge. A lot of them can be raised in the Faith, you see. Or if they're soulless, they can go to the breeding pens."
"Yeah, some of 'em will end up in Corwin," Jack put in. "Not just working-they get to be priests or in the Sword of the Prophet. That don't seem-"
"Jack, what did I say about flapping your lips?" Jed barked. "Don't your ears work or are you a natural-born damned fool like the minions of the Accursed?"
He whirled his pony around with a shift of balance and thighs, and slapped the younger Cutter across the face with his leather hat, hard enough to sting. The younger man yelped and then fell silent, face red.
"See you folks in the morning," Jed went on. "May the Masters keep the Nephilim from your dreams."
"Uff da," Ingolf swore in a tired voice, ru
Smith's cleaned up had been a relative term; no bodies left to rot, or human excrement in corners, basically. Little things like the fan of black congealed droplets that arched across one wall of the kitchen where they'd been left by the backswing of a blade didn't count. A team of village women with mops and brushes had come in to give it a going-over, working in silence like machines in the old stories. When they left, the comrades sat around the kitchen table, beneath a bright lamp; sunset came early inside a close-packed walled town.
The women had left food, too, and Rebecca Nystrup had started a fire in the ingeniously designed tile stove with its iron top.
"Your people have some evil foes," Edain said awkwardly, patting her on the shoulder.
She nodded silently and began making di
"No!" Ingolf said with quiet emphasis, the tone contrasting with his relaxed, casual posture and expression.
Rudi looked at him curiously. The man from Richland was sitting at the head of the table, where he could see out the window into the little walled garden that fronted the house, and through the open door as well. Nobody was close enough to overhear them… but they were visible from outside too. It would be suspicious if they closed up before the night grew cool.
"It'll look damned fu
Edain sat and moodily pulled apart one of the loaves, buttering it and biting into the warm fresh bread. Rebecca looked over her shoulder and said:
"But thanks for the thought," and he nodded, blushing.
Rudi tore a loaf as well. The bread was well made, with an egg-glaze crust that crackled when he ripped it. The butter was sweet and fresh too, although they had to keep a piece of cloth across it to deter the flies. It was the flies and the smell and the thought of where the flies had been that made him hesitate, and evidently the same occurred to Edain just as he was swallowing, for the younger clansman turned a little green under his ruddy tan.
You didn't grow up squeamish about stinks or bugs in a Mackenzie farming dun, but this…
"Ground and center," Rudi said quietly, making himself eat.
Food was life, human toil and the sacrificial blood of the Powers, so it was sacrilege to waste it; and he was going to need his strength, and he'd done without a good deal for the past week. Odard murmured a prayer before he took some of the bread himself, which surprised Rudi. He'd always thought that the young nobleman was only conventionally religious because it was expected of him. He'd confessed to Father Ignatius a couple of times on the trip, but once he'd had to go back a day later before the priest would agree to communicate him, and he'd come away from that one with his ears turning pink.
Sure, and a man's inward self is like the woods on a moonless night, Rudi thought. Even your own self. Especially your own. It always surprises you, sometimes with a noise, sometimes with a jab in the eye.
Ingolf spoke to Edain; his voice was rough, but Rudi thought he detected a certain sympathy in it:
"There are going to be worse things to see and smell before we reach the East Coast, kid," he said. "You've got to get case-hardened pretty quick."
"I've seen fights before and men killed, sure and I have!" Edain snapped. "And worse things… like that Haida raid we were caught in, up near Tillamook on the ocean, Chief, and what they did to that poor woman and her bairn. But this is… very bad."
Rudi replied: "It's worse because here the raiders won, Edain. The which they didn't at Tillamook, and you can claim some of the credit for that."
Edain looked heartened. Rebecca set the plates of food before them and then sat at the foot of the table herself. Rudi found he was hungry enough to enjoy it after all, and a deep drink of cool milk rich with cream. The day's heat was fading, though the thick adobe walls of the farmhouse's first story radiated a little of it back.
"This is… squalid," Odard observed. "And did you smell those animals? I'm no rose myself, not after the way we've been traveling, but…"
Ingolf gave a short dry laugh. "Oh, I know why they're a mite rancid," he said. "They're from the Hi-Line."