The leathery man in his thirties nearly spat that; to dwellers in these dry lands that particular form of destruction was nearly blasphemy. Without water, cattle and sheep couldn’t use the natural growth; water and winter fodder were the secrets to successful ranching.
“We’ll be the next thing to Rovers,” he finished bitterly.
That was the settled Ranchers’ term for those who wandered seasonally with their flocks and herds farther east, living in tents and dwelling in the driest sections. It wasn’t intended as a compliment; filthy savages was a good translation from the local dialect.
“The grass will grow next year, and that’s about it,” Brown finished. “And the only good thing is that we’ve lost so much stock we won’t be overgrazing, even after we’ve lost all the hay and fodder land. We’ve got the breeding stock, but we won’t dare restock to anything like the levels we had before the war.”
“Everyone will help,” Ignatius said. “That is the point of the kingdom.”
“We will,” Eric said promptly. “We’re behind Rudi…High King Artos…on that. And we’ll lean on the Corvallans, and the Clan will kick in.”
“God knows they’ve helped us already,” Brown said. “I don’t like depending on charity.”
“It isn’t charity, it’s caritas,” Ignatius said forcefully. “Rancher Brown, the blow of the enemy fell earliest and hardest here. You have a right to expect the kingdom’s help, just as you shielded the lands to the west. We all contribute as we can and must.”
“But that’s long-term stuff,” Eric said a little impatiently.
Ignatius nodded. “A major capital investment project. Nor is this the only area to have suffered so.”
“Yeah, and until then our logistics stink like an outhouse in August,” Eric said. “A crow flying over this territory would have to carry its own food wrapped up in a sack. We can’t move anything more than a few strong patrols for more than a day’s journey from the Columbia, with the way they wrecked the railroads.”
“Which means our movements become predictable, my son.” Ignatius said. “That is…unfortunate.”
“Arrow right in the ring and you collect the prize goose, Father,” Eric said. “We’ll have to ram straight down their throats. After breaking their teeth and paying the butcher’s bill for that. The roads are in better condition but-”
“- draught animals would eat everything they could haul,” Ignatius said. “And repairing the rails? Not practical for some time.”
Mike Havel found himself nodding. Bearkiller education emphasized engineering at the higher levels-it was useful in both war and peace, and his mother’s father had been an engineer in any case, and had helped set the system up.
“St. Michael’s sappers might know a quick way to do it, but mine don’t,” Eric agreed. “It’ll have to be done a mile at a time, starting with the railheads in the inhabited zones. Let’s see what’s left of the city. Enough to shelter a garrison, hopefully. Armies will have to stick to the Columbia, but unless we plug the gap the enemy could send raiding parties behind our lines. Their horse-archers are too damned mobile for comfort and they can live off even this wilderness for a while.”
Bend’s city wall had been fairly thick but low, the usual thing towns still inhabited after the collapse had run up out of concrete and rubble and salvaged I-beams in the years after the Change. The mass of it had been left in place, removing that would have taken years and thousands of laborers, but more effort had gone into slighting the gates and they were down to chest-level on a horse.
The main force spread out on the empty ground outside, pitching tents and starting campfires; Bearkillers had a set plan for overnight encampments, with ditch and dirt wall and temporary palisade and they enforced it on anyone they were operating with. Eric Larsson dumped his Spartan personal gear where the command pavilion would go up, and heard out the scout commander’s reports.
“Short form, fuck all, sir. They’re gone, that’s the best that can be said,” the man said at the end, tapping the city map, one compiled three years ago with hand-drawn notes on developments since. “This thing’s a work of…what did my old man call it…historical fiction now. Most of the outer wall’s still standing, but I think that’s only because the sons of bitches couldn’t tear it down. They certainly hit everything else-even dug up and trashed a lot of the water system. And…”
The man swallowed; he was a scar-faced cavalryman in his thirties, looking as tough as the leather of his boots. Mike felt a creeping unease at the expression on his face.
“Spit it out,” Eric said.
“They chopped up bodies and threw them into the waterworks wherever they could, sir. Animals, people…kids, too. They seemed to have a couple of hundred kids-”
“The Church Universal and Triumphant levies children for their training and breeding camps from all their subject peoples,” Ignatius said, stone-faced. “If they had already gathered them before the news of the battle arrived and thought they couldn’t remove them east in the winter season…”
“Well…Sir, Lord Chancellor, it’s pretty bad in there,” the scout finished. “Ah…permission to go get stinking drunk, sir.”
“I need to take a look myself,” Eric said, studying the man narrowly. “HQ staff, get us set up here for now, standard procedure. Lord Chancellor, Rancher Brown, you come with me. Eyes-on is always best if you’ve got the chance. Oh, and Murchison, if you feel the need that badly, permission granted.”
He took a bottle from his own modest wicker-and-leather chest of baggage and tossed it to the scout before they mounted again.
“That’s Larsdalen brandy. The hangover won’t hurt quite as much when you arrive and you feel better on the way.”
Mike Havel removed his helmet and wrinkled his nose slightly as they came through the city gate and into the pool of still air held by the walls. He was accustomed to the smell of death, or he’d thought so. There was more of it in the ruins of Bend than he’d ever scented before, and it had everything from the lingering stink of ancient corruption to bodies burned in the fires that had swept the town when the Cutter garrison withdrew a day and night ago.
Their horses skirted another pile of smoldering rubble that had slumped into the street when a building collapsed, bricks and bits of charred two-by-four and miscellaneous fragments. The setting sun behind the clouds threw gray-on-gray shadows around them, and the wind was growing colder as it flicked wet ash and snow from the patches of colder ground around them.
Ahead of him his uncle turned to Rancher Brown.
“Your own patrols find any survivors yet?” Eric asked. “I know we got most of the people out before the city fell, but there must have been someone here or in the area besides enemy troops and camp-followers. Nobody ever makes a completely clean sweep.”
“A few thousand prisoners were kept for labor,” Chancellor Ignatius said from Eric’s other side. “Scouts didn’t report a column on foot when they withdrew. I fear…”
Messengers had been coming and going since the Montivalans forced the unguarded gates. Most of them were local men, refugees picked because they knew the city. All of them looked even more stunned and lost than Mike felt, and some were weeping openly. Bearkillers and cityfolk and ranchers’ men alike walked or rode with weapons poised, but Mike thought that the sense of threat that hung over the ruins was not something cold steel or arrowheads could assuage.
“Survivors? A few. All raving mad, except for some kids who hid out in attics and sewers and such,” the rancher replied. Suddenly his face woke from the calm of shock. “What’s the point of all this?”