When Halldor Halvorsen arrived at Cloud, he rode at once to the ducal palace and asked to see the duke. The usher offered to take him to the major-domo instead. And Halldor, being very hungry, agreed, following him down a hallway to a closed door. The usher knocked.
"Who is it?"
"Franklin, sir. I have a gentleman to see you, asking Noble Hospitality. He says his father is Baron of Floren."
Noble Hospitality—meals, conversation at the ducal table over wine, and a guest room for the night. It wasn't law, but it was custom. "Show him in," the major-domo answered, getting to his feet.
Halldor entered straight-backed and tall, displaying his nobility, but the major-domo saw a youth with grimy face and unkempt hair, wearing filthy clothes of inexpensive cut.
"How did you come here?" the major-domo asked.
"From the west."
"I suppose you noticed the activity in the forest."
"One could hardly miss it. It's noisy enough, and in places trees had fallen into the road."
"The men who work there get all the food they can eat, and shelter, with blankets furnished. Ask for the supervisor. He'll put you to work."
The major-domo turned away then, sitting back down to the records he'd been examining.
Halldor left the palace indignantly, but went no farther than his horse. He, who'd been welcomed by the king, allowing himself to be dismissed by a ducal servant? And had actually considered accepting common labor, just to feed his belly? He retained an image of the work crews: peasants with axes whacking away at trees, while others, with long pike poles, pushed strenuously to ensure the trees fell in the desired direction.
Abruptly he turned, climbed the veranda steps and knocked again, the heavy brass knocker clashing imperiously. Again the usher opened to him.
"What is it this time?" he said.
"I will not allow myself to be turned away by a servant!" Hallvor answered. "I demand to see the duke!"
"The duke is busy, and the major-domo was well within his authority to turn you away." The usher's hand went to a bell cord. "I suggest you leave before I summon . . ."
"What's this about, Franklin?"
"Oh! Your lordship! This young man came asking Noble Hospitality. Algis directed him to the work crews felling abatises, but he insists on Noble Hospitality."
Jonas Duonelaitis had been on his way out with a guard officer. He examined the grubby Halldor. "Introduce yourself," he said. Ordered.
Halldor managed to pull himself a little taller, a little straighter. "I am Halldor Halvorsen i Floren. My father is Baron Halvor Eriksen i Floren."
"Ah! And how do I know you are who you claim to be?"
It was like a slap in the face! What kind of duke was this who wouldn't take a fellow noble at his word? "Sir, I have never been asked such a question before," said Halldor stiffly.
Jonas accepted the reaction calmly. "Perhaps you haven't traveled before to where you aren't known. Here we haven't heard of Floren. Meanwhile we're at war. The kingdom—and your father's barony—are direly threatened. You've seen some of the defensive works being built. It's my purse that feeds the hundreds of men working on them, and my resources are severely strained."
Without taking his steady eyes from the youth, the duke's right hand fished in a trouser pocket and came out with two silver dollars. "This is not a loan. It's a gift," he said, extending his hand.
Halldor took the two coins, staring down at them. Six meals, if he ate cheaply, and two nights at inns, if he was willing to share a bed with vagabonds. He didn't thank the duke, but neither did he reject the coins. He simply turned, and straight-spined, head erect, strode to his horse. Let this miser recognize the kind of man he insulted.
The duke and his guard officer watched him ride away, then Jonas looked at Peng. "I wonder what his father thinks of him. If he is who he claims to be."
Peng smiled. "I believe he is. He was at Eldred's court."
"You know him then?"
"I know of him, and his attitude here is not at odds with what I've heard."
Peng looked forward to talking with Carlos and Luis that evening. The last they'd known, young Halvorsen, with his lady love, had been under detention in Zandria. But he kept that to himself, as of no importance to the duke.
On the third day after that, Halldor reached Hasty, hungry, well-chewed by bedbugs, and host to head and body lice.
By then he had no doubt at all the Dkota were coming. Rumor had it they were on their way. But more convincing, he'd seen abatises being felled around Noka, nearer to Hasty than to Cloud. And on the Great Knees of the Misasip, just a day's ride from Hasty, whole tracts were being totally cleared! No one would undertake such expense unless the reports were real.
He'd thought to stay in Hasty only a day or two—borrow money, rest, eat his fill, then ride home not looking like some kind of fugitive. But home was south, and rumor had it that a second Dkota army was expected via Kato. General Jarvi was said to have taken his army there to whip the savages and send them home with bloody noses, but who knew, really, who'd win?
So he decided to stay in the shelter of Hasty's stone walls till the war was over, and for that he needed money for lodging and food. But to receive—or really to benefit from acceptable lodging, he needed to rid himself of vermin. His twitching and scratching were beyond control. For his last half dollar (he'd stayed only one night in an inn), he was accepted in a public bath, where his clothes were boiled and beaten, his hair shaved to the skin, and his groin and young beard lathered with soap so strong, he'd feared he'd blister. Then came a soak in scalding water, shared with several other men, and finally a quarter hour in a sauna and a plunge in a cold tub. When it was over, he felt renewed—and ready after all to seek work.
He got a job on his first try, delivering produce for a grocer, starting at once with an order to the palace. And yes, considering his need, he'd be paid when he returned with the signed invoice.
He was shocked to discover he was to deliver it with a push cart. A noble pushing a grocer's cart! By the time he arrived at the palace, he hated both the cart and Hasty's cobblestone streets. But he was grateful for his thin young beard, and the dingy white baker's cap pulled down to his eyebrows. He didn't want anyone to recognize him, to see how low he'd fallen. And especially he didn't want to be recognized as the man who'd run off with Elvi, for that, conceivably, could cost his life.
He didn't hear, that first day in town, that Eldred had been overthrown and locked in the dungeon. The mutiny had been displaced, in public attention, by rumors of Dkota armies thousands strong, rampaging through the marches. Where might they be rampaging now? Reports carried by the best riders on the fastest horses, took two to three days to arrive from Zandria or Grove Falls.
Meanwhile Hasty's streets, shops and markets had fewer people than he remembered from before. Even the taverns had fewer people. Not that he had money to spend in them, but he looked. And commenting, was told sourly that "the damned Dkota," were to blame, because Jarvi's army had gone to stop them.
Not until his second day did he hear of Eldred's fall. That too troubled him. It made his immediate situation seem much less dangerous; he'd dreaded what Eldred might do to him if he were recognized. But on the other hand, his father was Eldred's man, promoted by him when the old Baron, Karl Sivertsen i Floren, had been hoisted for false reports, evasion of taxes, and to cap it off, the "accidental" death of a king's investigator.
In fact, in the Royal Domains, barons were totally dependent on the throne, being little more than the king's tax collectors and enforcers.
There were those who said old Sivertsen had been the victim, not the originator of false reports, and with Eldred in the dungeon, the Sivertsen clan might well decide to throw off what they no doubt thought of as the usurper.
In fact, that danger seemed to Halldor more threatening than the Dkota. If the father fell, the son had no safe harbor. So he'd keep his ears and eyes open for opportunities.
Carlos had been given a pass signed by Paddy Glynn. Sergeant Major Paddy Glynn, a promotion bestowed on him by himself. The authority he wielded was disproportionate even to his new rank. Colonel Arvid Bonde (another self-bestowed promotion, from major), ruled the government, so far as anyone did. And it was Paddy who'd installed him, on the advice of Lord Brookins, based on Bonde being the senior military officer after General Jarvi, and cousin to both Jarvi and the late queen.
Bonde in turn was uneasy about Glynn, who ruled the palace guard, but for the time being it seemed best to let be. Clearly the sergeant major understood the need for a legitimate regent, but he'd also tasted power, which made him dangerous.
The real problem was, getting rid of Glynn might spark a new uprising by the guard, and Bonde couldn't be entirely sure of his own troops just then. For his forces and the palace guard were brothers in service, and restlessness was the order of the day.
Nor could one be sure where else ambition and conspiracy might be fermenting.
Patience, Arvid, Bonde told himself. Time is in your favor. If he's treacherous, he'll misstep or overreach—do something wrong—and he has no outside connections to draw on.
Meanwhile, Paddy's signature was authoritative. When he wrote a pass for Carlos del Passo, the new 4th usher, the guards at the palace entrance recognized and respected it, and said nothing when Carlos brought a man back in with him, even though it was night.
It was Sergeant Major Glynn the newcomer needed to see, but it was in Carlos's tiny room the three sat down to confer (Carlos had talked his way into live-in status). When they'd finished their meeting, the stranger left, to take lodging with the elderly couple he'd roomed with when he'd stayed in Hasty before.
Meanwhile, some ten hundred miles southwest of Hasty, Eskonsami Tahmm returned his communicator to his belt and walked down corridors and stairs to the infirmary. There he consulted the chief healer on the state of Master Lemmi Tsinnajinni's recovery.
Afraid of encountering Dkota stragglers, Elvi Youngblood had left the Zandria-Cloud Highway. She'd expected the country she entered to be much like that she'd been passing through, but without the hamlets and villages having been burned. And a few miles south they hadn't been burned, merely abandoned.
Then her horse had gone lame, and soon even an easy trot was too much for it. It simply walked, limping ever slower, and slashing it with her quirt changed nothing. By then she was in a wild tract of forest, lakes and alder swamps, with no idea how far it extended.
Finally the animal stopped utterly, and whipping didn't move it, so she climbed down, weeping in frustration. She didn't even have a knife with which to cut it and drink its blood, and she'd eaten the last of her food the day before. Now she understood what pitiful and despondent meant.
As best she could, she shook it off and began to walk, telling herself she'd soon come to an inhabited place, over the next hill, or on the other side of the forest. She walked and walked, till she wondered if the forest had another side, a remarkable thought for Elvi, whose imagination rarely stretched in such directions.
She walked for three increasingly slow and painful hours, her feet becoming badly blistered. If she'd had a knife, she might have cut her boots to something like Roman buskins, but as it was . . . And when she tried to pull them off, she couldn't. Her feet had swollen. Feeling utterly defeated, she slumped to the ground, beset by mosquitoes, deerflies and bullflies.
So she got up and went on. She had no bedroll, having planned to plead hospitality from farm families, nor any means of starting a smudge fire to sleep by. She was hungry, with nothing to eat, and incredibly footsore, and the insects showed no mercy. She even prayed! Prayed finally that wolves would come along and put her out of her misery, but God sent not so much as a coyote.
Finally, mosquitoes or not, when it got too dark to walk, she collapsed by the road and slept.
Waking to high daylight. Stiff, sore, she got wincing to her feet, hungry beyond belief. Having no real alternative, she walked again, each step agony—until an hour later she came to a clearing. A furlong ahead was another road. Tears of relief began to flow, and she hobbled faster. Halfway to the junction, she saw a man on horseback crossing it, and cried out to him: "Help! Help!"
He stopped, turned his horse. "What's the matter?" he called.
Her weeping was no longer silent. She speeded to a half run, hobbling, crying hard, and he hurried to meet her. "All right!" he soothed, "all right! Here!" Leaning, he gripped her collar and waistband, and half lifting, half dragging, got her up in front of his saddle. "You're all right," he said. "Everything's going to be all right."
Princess Elvi had been pointed out to him in Zandria, and disheveled and forlorn though she was now, he recognized her.
The horseman's name was Armand Schubert, an ambitious youth of twenty-five, and successful cattle broker also dealing in sheep and swine. He too had left Zandria, because when word arrived of Ellbogen being burned, it seemed to him the Dkota would burn Zandria too, stockade and all.
Unlike Elvi, he'd ridden directly south, out of the zone of abandonment, and only then eastward into refugee country. To him the invasion was an opportunity, for he couldn't imagine the Dkota conquering the kingdom. The warriors would get enough of fighting and bleeding, and ride home with their take of honors and women. Meanwhile Hasty would fill with refugees. Meat would be needed there, and he would profit from it.
So he'd left bands of refugee cattle in his wake, committed to him, to be driven eastward by drovers selected by the cattle's owners. He rode on to Hasty, to arrange their sale.
And now perhaps for something more.
After an hour of walking the overloaded horse, they reached an inn in a little place named Fes, where they stopped to eat. Because her feet were so sore, Elvi asked to be lifted down and carried. Taking her in his arms stimulated Armand, but he reminded himself who she was, and what she could mean to him, good and ill. Besides, in his young life, women had never been lacking.
At Fes he tried and failed to remove her boots for her. He would, he promised her, get them off when they stopped at the end of the day.
It's amazing what place names were scattered over the world by the Shuffling. Names you'd expect the ex-inhabitants would gratefully forget: Buchenwald, Treblinka, Magadan . . . Yet here they were, those names, on the other side of the world, carried along in spite of their histories. Histories one might expect their children not to know—those born in this distant place—but those who'd so inexplicably found themselves in new surroundings? Who'd brought the names with them? Who'd known all too well the places that had worn those names before? In fact they had forgotten; those histories were among the memories that had disappeared.
But the names remained. No one knew why, and not even the shuffled had wondered. For them it was an undefined part of something vaguely sensed as missing, that after a time dissipated without residue.
Thus a pleasant village in southern Cloud bore the name Vorkuta, and the mother tongue of the local people was Russian. Though after a generation or so, Merkan was generally known, flavored with a Russian accent, and used mostly with outsiders.
Vorkuta had an inn, not large, but the food wasn't at all bad. If you were fastidious, and paid a modest fee, the innkeeper's girl would give you a boiled mattress filled with fresh straw, and of course there was a wash house and banya for cleaning your body.
With his rescue of Princess Elvi, the ambitions of Armand Schubert had expanded. And his designs—fresh, new, and incomplete—were on her father, who surely would want to reward him.
Four hours after leaving Fes, they reached Vorkuta and its inn. Again he carried her inside, and this time asked for lamp oil, pouring some into one of her boots. By the time they'd finished a mug of ale, the oil had worked its way down to her toes, and pulling the boot off removed only a little skin. So they repeated the process with the other boot. It worked as well, and so had the two mugs of ale she'd drunk. She asked if they could stay there that night. More than her feet were sore, she said. Also she wanted a bath.
Her rescuer was agreeable. "Two rooms," he told the innkeeper. Then her right hand gripped his sleeve. "No," she said. "One room. Please! I'm afraid to be alone. Too many bad things have happened."
Armand rearranged his considerations. "Make that one room then, with fresh straw and a boiled mattress cover."
"A feather bed," said Elvi.
"Do you have sphagnum beds?" Armand asked.
"Of course, sir."
"Free of vermin and sticks?"
"If they're not, you're not charged."
"A sphagnum bed then." He turned to her. "They're different; you'll like it."
It turned out there was only one bath, too, and one banya, so they borrowed robes, and sent their clothes to be scrubbed. Twenty minutes after they'd returned to their room, her abused bare feet were waving above Armand's bobbing buttocks, and when at last the two young people slept, it was soundly. He'd wait till tomorrow to worry.
The principal chief of the Ulster was also the leader of the northern army. A large and powerful man, his Christian name, his common name, was Gallagher, but his ceremonial name was Kills-Buffalo-With-His-Knife—something he'd done twice as a daring youth. He'd since outgrown recklessness, maturing into a man whose actions were measured. Who could make instant decisions when need be, but ordinarily thought things through in advance.
On his march toward Cloud, he'd reached the point where forest dominated the landscape. Since then he'd repeatedly encountered barriers of fallen trees, their tops daunting. Some such barriers, and the gaps in them, led into ambushes where braves were wounded and killed. Even when they didn't, they slowed progress badly, and Gallagher's braves didn't carry food enough for such slowness.
Not wanting to continue in such a manner, he ordered a great camp made, in a north-south belt of prairie. When again the sun rose, he sent out two strong patrols, one north and one south. They were to go far enough to find the end of the barriers, at the same time burning any buildings and killing any dirt-eaters they came to. And to be back at the great camp before the second night, driving with them any spotted buffalo they found.
After about two miles, the patrol that went north sent out scouts in pairs, to explore breaks in the barriers for one that might be the true end. There were numerous gaps, but always, sooner or later, they were blocked, shunted in one direction or another. After a bit, one pair came to a burned forest in its fourth post-fire summer: a broad expanse of lodgepole pine seedlings,4 thigh deep, with islands of aspen root suckers taller than a man and slender as a thumb, amidst the charred snags of an older generation. Not an area where the hateful barriers could be felled. The scouts followed the burn northeastward for several miles, till they came to old forest again, river forest—and another hated barrier. But no sign of defenders.
The two turned north through the burn, skirting the barrier till they came to a prairie that took them to a large river. In their experience, only the Great River, the Mizzoo, was so wide. This, they realized,
was the Misasip. So they rode back to the great camp, and reported what they'd found.
Gallagher decided they'd found what he needed.
Meanwhile both patrols found many spotted buffalo, tended by dirt-eaters whom they mostly caught and killed. The next day they brought the animals to the great camp. The army spent two more days there, resting, eating, and smoking meat. Then, before sunup, they broke camp and started northward, guided by the scouts who'd found the safe way to the Misasip.