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Mary Havel stepped to her lover?s side and took his arm. Ingolf drew a deep breath and went on: ?Kathy? Alice?? he said, naming his sisters. ?Fine. Both hitched, and their kids-oh, hell, we?ll catch up once you?re settled in. Aunt Cindy and Wanda and the girls have been cooking up a storm since we got the news and the kitchen?s like… well, I?ve been staying clear of it after I delivered the meat.?
Introductions and busyness took over; it was more than a few minutes before they were under way again through more rolling fields of grain and pasture, truck and orchard, though these were empty of houses. Rudi waited until he had a chance to speak sotto voce himself. ?Well, and you?re looking like a man who?s been gut-punched, my friend,? he said.
Ingolf shook his head.?We spent six months fighting like cats and dogs before I left,? he said.? Just short of fists, and that only because we were afraid we?d kill each other if we started. I?d forgotten we got on well enough, sometimes, for years before then. And family is family. And…? ?And your brother knows this is just a visit, not a homecoming for good and all.? ?Yah, yah. There is that. And hell, he?s right: we were both complete dicks about it after Dad died. I couldn?t stand the way he tried to step into Dad?s shoes with me… and he went all Godalmighty about it too… but damn and hell, he was the Sheriff and he had to show everyone he was bossman here. I guess he was too scared not to be stiff, and he?s not the most flexible man in the world anyway.?
A deep breath.?Still, I?m glad I didn?t show up alone and broke, and glad it?s just a visit, too. Maybe we get along better when we don?t have to get along, you know what I mean? It?ll be… interesting to see what else has changed.? ?And maybe seeing it?s a different place will make it easier for you to leave… really leave,? Mary said from his other side.?To let it go when you ride away.?
Ingolf looked at her and gri
Mary sighed with a touch of theater to it.?I?ll just have to settle for marrying you strictly for your looks, I?m afraid, bar melindo,? she said, and they both laughed.
They turned a corner as the road bent elbow-fashion around a clump of woods and could see the…
Not quite a town, Rudi thought, looking at the cluster of buildings half a mile away. Not quite a castle. Not quite a farmstead. Something of all three. ?Ed?s been busy,? Ingolf said, after a long moment, standing in the stirrups and shading his eyes with a hand.?About a quarter of that?s new. And a lot more of the old ruins were still standing when I left. It?s… tidier.?
Readstown proper was about half the size of most Mackenzie duns, perhaps six-score souls in all, including the dozens of children who came tumbling out, wild with excitement over the newcomers. They kept their noise at a distance, though, and the dogs were notably disciplined; there were only a few growls and barks when they?d been called to heel, despite Garbh?s bristling stiff-legged presence. All that was a welcome change from some places they?d stopped on their trek.
There was no curtain wall or palisade around the settlement, not as such, but all the dwellings and workshops at its core had stout fieldstone reinforcement for their first stories, steel shutters with firing slits ready to swing over all the windows, and thick-built covered walkways with loop-holes in their walls linking them together into a series of gated courtyards that would be a hard nut to crack.
For anyone without, say, two hundred men and a siege train, Rudi thought. Give me that many, with mantlets and three or four well-served twenty-four-pounders from Corvallis Ordnance Corporation or the Portland Armory, and I could have it in an afternoon. But they haven?t seen war on that scale here. Yet.
The barns and pens were at some distance, leaving a clear field of fire all around and no shelter for attackers. It was a bit hard to tell what was left over from the old world and what was post-Change; certainly everything had been heavily modified. And more torn down for materials or to get it out of the way, leaving only overgrown foundations and roadways amid small turnout pastures, gardens that included flowers as well as vegetables where lawns had been, and clumps of trees where houses had stood.
At the blank-walled outer face of the largest house of the complex was something he was sure was new, once he realized it wasn?t a silo. It had that shape, save at the top where crenellations barred teeth at heaven; a squat four-story tower of stone and concrete and girder, with the snout of a catapult showing on a round turntable at one upper edge. A pole bore a plain brown flag marked with a bright orange wedge.
The tower?s a good bit younger than Ingolf, or even me, Rudi thought, and murmured a question. ?Yah, Dad built it,? Ingolf said.?Used a silo as the shell and built up around it. Finished it the year he died, the year I left. The catapult?s dual purpose, you can switch out the throwing trough fast; a thousand yards with bolts, five or six hundred with twelve-pound roundshot or incendiaries. This little four-eyed weedy guy from Richland Center built it. Out of old truck parts mostly, the Bossman sent him?round to get all the Sheriffs? places up to scratch. All the ones who?d pay. I watched him do it, watched pretty close.? ?Hmmm,? Rudi said.?Perhaps I was a little hasty in deciding how easily I?d take the place.?
Ingolf nodded without taking umbrage; it was the natural thing for someone in their line of work to think about, seeing a defended steading for the first time. ?That gives me an idea,? Rudi mused.?Do you think you could put one together??
Ingolf blinked at him.?If I had the parts, and a smith and a machinist, yah. Why?? ?A thought. Later, later.?
Not a real fortress overall, he thought silently. But ample for the need.
There was an earth dam and pond to the east where a stream ran down towards the Kickapoo. Two beam-and-plank mills on fieldstone foundations stood there, with big overshot wheels turning merrily. One building gave off the low throbbing notes of millstones grinding flour, and the other a long rrrrrrrrrrrr as a ripsaw went through hard wood; the white water stopped while he glanced that way and the sound died, as someone within closed off the flue gates for the day. Two small churches reared white steeples halfway between there and the hamlet, one Catholic and one Lutheran. A two-story brick building that was probably a schoolhouse for the district stood near them, with an archery range and baseball diamond and football field beside it. Other structures in the distance held the ta
Willing hands bore their animals away to be fed and watered-he had the usual bit of bother convincing Epona that these were friends-and a crowd ushered them through the courtyards. They passed storehouses and weaving sheds, a smithy with its pile of scrap and baskets of charcoal, a combined carpenter?s shop and cooperage in a fragrance of sawdust and sap and varnish and glue, a yeasty-smelling brewery and distillery and cider press, the laundry and the clinic, and all the other dependencies of a great man?s household. He could feel Edain turning like a hound at a scent as they went by a well-equipped bowyer?s workstead, with rows of recurves hanging to dry inside and billets of ashwood ready to be split and smoothed for arrow shafts.
It all seemed well laid out and solidly built, and…
Clean, he thought, sniffing. They?re careful of filth here.
The judgment he made was by a standard no older than he was himself, and a rural one which thought a whiff of horse manure and barn straw perfectly normal, as long as it wasn?t allowed too near the supply of drinking water. The verandah of the main house was close enough to the bakery and kitchens for the smell to make his nose twitch with something as familiar as stables and far more welcome; roasting meat and fresh warm loaves, pies baking and dishes more complex making an intriguing medley.