A low rise being the only type of rise they have around here, she thought sardonically.
It was big for a village but too small for a town, and surrounded by a wall, not very high but thick and of the same hard material, topped with a timber fighting platform and with towers at its corners and beside the south-facing gate. The blocky rammed-earth structures were two stories high on fieldstone footings, and the whitewash that covered them glowed in the sun against the red-brown tile of their low-pitched roofs. Smoke rose from the chimneys there, and a bell began to ring as the railcar came into sight; a flashing glint from the gatehouse was probably a mounted telescope. Outside the wall and south of the gatehouse was a long low warehouse right by the rails.
She recognized the bulky angular look of the pise de terre construction, damp earth hammered down in layers between temporary timber forms that were then moved on to let the mixture cure to a consistency like coarse friable rock. It was popular in the drier interior parts of Montival too, cheap and easy to make since it didn’t need expensive materials or much skilled labor, fireproof, lasting forever if well maintained, and excellent insulation against the heat of summer, the cold of winter, and the arrows of neighbors. Also familiar was a flag flying from a staff on one corner tower; not the actual design but the practice of using the cattle brand as a house banner in ranching country, rather the way nobles of the Association used their coats of arms.
“That’s the Anchor Bar Seven ranch headquarters,” the corporal said. “We’ve been on their land for three hours now. The flag’s not at half-mast, either; Old Man McGillvery must still be hanging on.”
Evidently headquarters was the local term for homeplace; she’d noticed that the dialect here was crisper and more formal-sounding than the ranchland speech of eastern Montival, more like what they spoke in Corvallis but with a subtly odd elongation of the vowels and occasional strange bits of vocabulary. A rustling of paper from behind her showed he was consulting a map.
“The ranch-house there got burned out not long after the Change-people from Calgary-but they drove some of ’em off and set the rest to rebuilding it the way you see.”
“It looks like they expected more trouble. That’s more protection than most ranchers’ homeplaces have in Montival.”
She could hear his shrug before he continued: “Those were hard times, ma’am. We had a couple of big cities, too big to survive, and no mountains between them and the rest of us.”
And he’s old enough to remember some of it-nearly forty but not quite, I’d say, about Aunt Astrid’s age give or take. He’d have been in his early teens. Things weren’t nearly as bad here as in some places, but bad enough.
“We’re not all that far from the old U.S. border with Montana here either,” he continued. “There’s been a trickle of refugees from the Cutters for nearly twenty years; some good people, but some not, and some just desperate. And we’ve had some pretty big skirmishes with the Prophet’s loonies. Not real war before now, but there’ve been raids.”
“And the odd bunch of horse-thieves from the Sioux territories,” Ian observed.
“Nothing serious; they just think stealing horses is a fun rough sport, like we do hockey.”
“Serious enough if they lift your hair while they’re lifting your stock, Corporal.”
“And that’s why we hang them by the neck if we catch them at it, Kovalevsky.”
“Hell, Corporal, you’ve got a really hard-nosed attitude to a roughing penalty.”
Everyone laughed, and the corporal went on to her: “Do you want to stop here for the day, ma’am?”
Ritva sighed and looked upward in thought, tempted. The ranch was a major one, and the homeplace would have a lot of free space kept for riders who slept out with the herds except in the cold season. It would probably be a chance to eat decent food and sleep in a bed, and certainly one to do minor repairs and have a bath or at least a shower.
And to get my sore butt out of these seats.
Riding hurt too eventually-there was an old joke about a book entitled Twenty Years in the Saddle, by Major Assburns-but she was used to that, having ridden at least a little nearly every day since she was four. They’d come over a thousand miles in a week and it was beginning to feel as if she’d bounced all that way with her coccyx dragging on the deteriorating roadbed of the railroads of three bossmandoms and as many Dominions. The temptation didn’t last long. From the sun it was about an hour past noon, and the letters from home piled up at the railhead had all sounded anxious in the extreme, if you knew how to read between the lines. Mathilda’s had made her go white, when she decoded them.
Far too early to stop and no time to waste now that we don’t have to coddle the horses as much, she thought. Granted when you’re going across a continent you have to remember more haste less speed, but we can’t dawdle even one day. She went on aloud:
“Just for a few minutes to exchange news. We should get in at least another three or four hours today and that’s sixty or seventy miles.”
“You’re the boss-lady,” the corporal said; his superiors were cooperating nicely and the redcoat Force evidently had splendid discipline. “Pity. They do some really good ribs with red sauce here. Squad. . rest easy!”
The railcar was on a barely perceptible upward slope. It coasted to a halt just before the long warehouse-style structure that flanked the right-of-way, and the noncom threw the brake lever to keep them from sliding backward. Silence swept in and the endless space stretched to the world’s edges. The wind’s sough around the car was the loudest sound, that and the endless hshshshshshshshs of the rippling grass and the ringing bell from the ranch. They all popped their doors and got out to stretch; Ritva joined in the knee bends and twists, then got her sheathed sword out of the rack and slid it back into the frog on her belt with a habit as automatic as breathing. It wasn’t much cooler, but the fresh wind made her feel as if it was.
Almost as soon as they stopped, a party rode out of the homeplace gates and along the rutted dirt road that led from there to the railway. There were fourteen saddles followed by a light two-wheel cart pulled by a single horse, and her brows rose a little as she examined the riders, especially the ten who looked like soldiers. Part of their equipment was just cowboy working gear-lariats, belt-knives, curved swords, round shields blazoned with the Anchor Bar Seven’s brand, quivers and recurve bows. But the warriors in the party were in mail hauberks as well, knee-length and split to the waist before and behind rather than the lighter, shorter versions common in ranch country, and helmets with horse-tail plumes, and steel forearm guards. They also all carried real lances at rest in tubular scabbards behind their right elbows, ten-foot weapons with pennants attached below the point. Their horses were a bit taller than the common quarter horse pattern as well.
“Is that gear usual?” she said.
Ian Kovalevsky spoke helpfully: “It’s what the Force uses for a stand-up fight. Most of the Ranchers train some of their men to use it as well.”
The corporal was grimmer: “Getting it out between maneuvers means the McGillverys are expecting trouble, taking men away from the herds this time of year. It’s when they put the stock out towards the edges of the property, now that calving and lambing and branding and shearing are over. And you can’t push cows in that stuff; it’s too heavy.”