The camp stretched out around them-endless rows of tents in a half dozen styles, picket-lines and horse corrals, more rows of wagons with their draught poles neatly aligned, pyramids of boxes and barrels of hardtack and beans and salt pork and spare gear stacked twenty feet high. .
And men. Swarming, marching, heaving loads onto and off of carts and railcars from the half-dozen newly laid spur lines, bicycling as individuals and in squads and companies and battalions. Out on the open ground that in peacetime served as pasture for the herds of Des Moines and cleared ground for the murder-machines on the city wall more columns and blocks drilled, the sun sparking off armor and honed metal. Lines of crossbowmen advanced, knelt, fired their weapons in a series of deep sharp tung sounds and worked the cranks. Forests of pikes crossed, countermarched, lifted and fell to the calls of bugle and drum. .
The army of the League of Des Moines was enough to make the hair bristle up under your bonnet. Artos kept a calm front, but he had been staggered by its size as well. In all, more than sixty thousand men were camped here already. He mentioned that, and Abel shrugged.
“Plus what the Sioux can kick in. Though technically the Lakota are your men, now, Rudi. . Artos.”
“Twelve thousand men,” Red Leaf said. “That’s as much as we can spare and still cover our frontier. But they’re the best light cavalry anywhere, and mostly combat-experienced.”
Unlike your plowboys and the Farmer and Sheriff scions went unspoken.
“We can help you with supply; extra bows, arrows, mail shirts, helmets, and things like horseshoes,” Kate put in helpfully, topping him neatly.
Red Leaf nodded. “I gotta say, though, this is impressive. Just the numbers. I haven’t seen this many people all together since the Change, and that’s just the army, not the city. That’s just ff. . damn amazing.”
“It’s not full mobilization,” Heuisink said, jerking his head at the camp. “If we called up all the militia, we could field somewhere over a hundred thousand. More if we had time to train the Unorganized National Guard reserve. We’ve got a program in hand to give everyone some training but that’s for the future. Then if we really had to we could raise a quarter million. That’s not counting any allies. Iowa’s the biggest dog in the pack but we’re only about a quarter to a third of the total population of the Midwest. . nobody knows exactly, we’re the only people who do a real census.”
For an instant Red Leaf looked as though he’d swallowed something sour. Artos nodded soberly. Sandra Arminger had a mania for collecting numbers-statistics, they’d called it in the ancient world-and the Dunedain Rangers had sent explorers very far afield; both estimated that there were between fifteen and twenty million human beings between what had been Guatemala and the high Arctic, halfway through the third decade of the Change Years. Around half of them lived in Iowa and its immediate neighbors; over a tenth in Iowa alone. A rough rule of thumb was that a well-organized farming community could put a tenth of its total numbers into the field in time of war; more if the war was short and close to home.
Potentially the Midwestern bossmandoms could raise a million troops.
“But this is about as many as we can reliably feed out west, providing we get the railways repaired,” Heuisink said. “I have to admit the Nebraskans have been working hard at that and they’re well organized for once, and we’ve been helping. Even so, after a certain point the horses pulling grain eat everything they started out with. That point comes later on steel rails than it does on roads, but eventually you get there anyway.”
That admission made the Sioux look a little less unhappy, but not much. If you had an enemy who could shrug off the loss of whole armies as great as any you could field, and simply replace them with new ones just as large, the end of any struggle became rather predictable. Artos remembered things he’d read and that Sir Nigel had told him about Rome.
“Now it’s time for the State banquet,” Kate said firmly.
Mathilda laughed at the look on Artos’ face. “Enjoy it while you can, darling,” she said. “We’re going to be traveling very fast indeed as soon as they get those treadmill railcarts for the horses ready.”
“Hippomotives,” Abel said and looked at him. “Which will be by day after tomorrow, the engineers say. I’m a little puzzled why you’re taking any troops. It’d be faster still if you and your friends just went hell-for-leather, and you said you need to get back as soon as possible.”
“Partly to make it more difficult to overrun us with a raiding party, and even more the politics, my friend,” Artos said. The which Matti advised me on. “They’re expecting me, back home. Me and the Sword of the Lady.”
He touched the crystal pommel.
“And they’ll be glad to hear of the mighty host you’ve raised to their aid. But a mighty host a thousand miles away is one thing, and soldiers there to see and smell another; a sampling will be. . reassuring, so it will. And I’m making sure that word gets there quickly enough.”
“I’m not altogether certain it’s appropriate to start a whacking great war by stuffing yourself and listening to music, much less speeches,” Artos said.
The banquet was in the throne room of the Bossman’s palace in Des Moines-that wasn’t precisely what they called it, but it was what they meant. A great dome soared above in a fantasy of rare woods and columns, and the floor tiles of colored marbles swept in a circle around an oculus in the middle of the chamber, itself edged with a railing of gilt brass and wrought iron. The banquet tables were arranged in a larger ring around the oculus, and the Regent’s seat was back to the throne at the base of the great staircase that swept upward between two tall bronze statues of robed maidens holding lanterns.
Those glowed as the gas flames heated their incandescent mantles. The scent gave a faint tang beneath the odors of the roast suckling pigs, glazed hams, turkeys, barons of beef or buffalo or elk, lamb and veal, platters of smoked sturgeon, potatoes whipped with cream and scallions and garlic or scalloped or au gratin, tender asparagus, salads of greens and nuts and bloodred tomatoes, hot breads and a dozen more dishes. More lights of the same sort flared and hissed on the huge cut-crystal chandeliers above, and a spendthrift extravagance of fine beeswax candles burned on the tables, glittering on glassware and polished silver and gold and fine cloth. All the wealth and power of Iowa were here, the Sheriffs and richer Farmers, the National Guard generals and the industrialists of the city.
Most of the younger women were in local imitations of the cotehardie Mathilda had introduced and Kate taken up last year, a blaze of brilliant color and jeweled bands around gauzy, elaborately folded wimples and wrists and waists. A rather smaller proportion of the young men were in parti-colored hose and doublet and houppelandes with trailing dagged sleeves, but there was a fair number nonetheless. The sight gave him a moment’s sorrow for Odard. Matti glanced at him and he touched her hand, knowing she shared it; the young Baron of Gervais had delighted in that peacock display. Some of them looked as if they’d plundered the same books the PPA and its Society ancestors had referenced, with a wild disregard for mixing periods.
“At least Mother keeps the Associates to the fourteenth century, mostly,” she sighed.
“Little did you know what you did when you entranced Kate with your tales of court at Portland and Castle Todenangst,” he said to her. “I hear they’ve taken to tournaments, too.”
Matti grinned. “I never really did like the cotehardie. At least I don’t have to wear one here in summer.”