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Heuisink gave him a long look.?Yeah, legends change. But you youngsters… especially you youngsters, you and your friends, make me wonder. Like I wonder about my sons, but more so.?
Kate wasn?t quite dressed in a cotte-hardi either, or wearing a crown, though she?d wanted to. Mathilda had talked her out of that; both would be too alien here, for now. But her long gown and the tiara in her hair were stately enough, and the expression on her face was stern and remote as she looked out over the crowd.
And the half of being a Queen is to look like a Queen. For what is rank, but people?s belief that you hold it? ?Wonder what?? Rudi said. ?About living by our legends. People have always done that. The trouble with you?-he smiled wryly-?the trouble with the younger generation, is that they?re living in legends. Being eaten by them, maybe. Does that make you more human than we oldsters were, or less? Certainly it makes you different. It?s like you don?t live by them, you live them out. Act them out, without noticing you do. You don?t. .. talk to yourselves inside your heads as much as we did.?
Rudi frowned, then nodded with slow respect.?You?re not the first I?ve heard say something of the sort,? he replied thoughtfully.?But few have put it so neatly. To be frank, from my side it seems that you of the ancient world often hardly lived at all, just watched yourself living.?
They stared at each other in perfect mutual incomprehension for a moment. Then Rudi gri
Heuisink laughed ruefully. The arc of open garden before the great church held several hundred prominent Sheriffs and wealthy or influential Farmers, mayors and National Guard commanders; men of consequence from all over the Provisional Republic, summoned by the semaphore-telegraph net, and brought here as fast as light railcars could travel-which was forty miles an hour or even better, with relays working the pedals. Beyond the fence and a line of spearmen the hill and the streets beyond were crowded with the burghers and commons of Dubuque-sleek traders and brokers and shipowners, solid shopkeepers and skilled craftsmen, ragged day laborers who had nothing to sell but the strength of their arms.
Kate waited for a long second, just long enough for quiet to fall, and not quite long enough for the murmurs to grow again. Then she raised a hand; the bugles blew once more, and the warriors beat blades on their shields, or stamped the steel-shod butts of their weapons down on the pavement, or flourished their bows. When the harsh martial noise stopped, the silence could have been cut with a knife. ?Sheriffs, Farmers and people of the Provisional Republic of Iowa,? she said into it.?Anthony Heasleroad, my husband, your Bossman, is dead. Murdered by foreigners who he gave hospitality as his guests, murdered on Iowan land by agents of the cultist madman of Corwin. Will you let this stand? Will we let our leader be murdered by savages from Montana? Will Iowa, proud Iowa, our home, the last home of American civilization, let this stand? Can they do this to us?? ?Oh, now that?s clever,? Rudi murmured softly.?You are your mother?s daughter, Matti; I wouldn?t have thought of it so quickly, perhaps. Us is a powerful word, and it?s a sorry excuse for a man who isn?t moved by the pull of shared blood. It?s no accident we of humankind took wolves to share our hearths and work and to guard our children, for we too are creatures of the pack.?
The surprised grumble from the audience turned into a sudden roar: ?No! No! No!?
Abel Heuisink?s generation-long feud with the Bossman?s family was forgotten for a moment as he shouted with the others. Fists rammed into the air, and the soldiers shouted with the rest, landholders? retainers and State Police together, until their officers cursed and cuffed them into quiet. The men of note took longer to subside, and the vast crowd of ordinary folk beyond longer still; their voices were like a great beast?s snarl in a nighted forest.
Rudi felt a little prickle up his spine at the sound. He kept a tactful silence himself; he was a foreigner here too, and he judged the temper of the time not overly friendly to outsiders. ?What do we say to these murderers? What is our answer?? Kate called. ?War!? a voice called, and others joined it:?War! War!?
Abel Heuisink started and half turned. A little way beyond amid the notables was a knot of younger men, the sons and in a few instances the grandsons of the oldsters around them-Odard Liu in the midst of them, and the closest to him all the men he?d made his cronies. They had started the call, but others took it up. ?War! War! War!? The chant spread, and then the commons joined in, like a thousandfold echo of Pacific surf upon basalt cliffs: ?WAR! WAR! WAR!?
Rudi blinked a little in surprise when the hoarse bellow cut off at Kate?s gesture, quiet rippling out from the dais to the edge of sight. She turned and held out her arms, and the nursemaid set her son in them. ?My boy?s father is dead,? she said.?And all the promise of a new generation that went with him, a generation born since the Change and tempered in these times of trial.?
Rudi gri
The crowd of townsfolk beyond were mostly those who?d been born since the old world died, or at least didn?t remember it well.
Kate went on:?But his son lives-named for the man who saved us all when the Change came. Gentlemen, Sheriffs, Farmers and people of our great Provisional Republic, I ca
She held the boy over her head in a sudden gesture. ?I need your help. Will you promise that help? Can I depend on you? Will you give me the wisdom of your counsel, the strength of your arms, the courage of your loyal hearts??
The bellow that answered her was enough to make the glass in the cathedral?s great windows rattle audibly. Glancing aside Rudi could see doubt on many faces, but others shone, exalted… and even the doubters were looking around them and reckoning odds, and then mostly joining in. A corner of his mouth twisted up.
Matti?s mother had used that tactic shamelessly among the Associates in the months that followed Norman Arminger?s death at the end of the War of the Eye, trotting her daughter around like an icon. She hadn?t been the only one to use the method in those days, either. Sandra had employed more vivid words than those Mathilda was putting in Kate?s mouth, but even then the Associates had been used to the concept of dynastic loyalty. These Iowans had to be led gently, into things they felt already but had no set form of words to express. ?Farmers, Sheriffs, and people; I will do nothing unconstitutional. The Assembly and the State Senate must be consulted. But will you swear, here and now, to uphold my son?s rights against this enemy from beyond our borders??
Which makes no sense if you think about it-the only threat to young Tommie?s position right now is from his fellow countrymen-but few of these folk are thinking much right now, Rudi knew. And by the time they might, they?ll be committed. She?s made her son, vengeance for his father and the insulted dignity and honor of Iowa one and the same thing. And that honor their own.
The people bellowed approval. So did some of the notables, particularly the younger ones. The rest took it up with a half-second?s lag.