He and the others would have said more, but their captain raised a hand and cut it off, saying, “You all got the rest of his life and past it to tell Mosix and his varmints what you thinks of him and them, but time’s a-wasting, right now. The old sun ain’t gonna wait for nothing to come up and start another day, whether you’ve got you enough sleep or not. What we gotta do here and now is parcel out six grown men and big boys who know less about real work nor a four-year-old kid.
“Here’s how we’ll do it: I, as captain, will get first pick of ’em. Kahl, as first sergeant, will get second pick. Denee, you and Sam’ll get third and fourth pick, then the rest of you can draw straws or roll dice or whatever to see who gets the last two.”
“But what about old Mosix, cap’n?” This from someone back in the group of men.
“We don’t want to kill him, for all he’s done and not done for so long, boys, and to put him into the fields at his age would be killing him as sure as running a sword through him would be, though neither as quick nor as merciful. No, I’ve thought on it and I think I’ve got the bestest slot for our esteemed high priest. He can work with Dreevuh’s boy at the sluice gates until he gets the hang of the job, then the boy can go back to farming work and Mosix can take over the sluices until the creek drops, then he can operate the bucket hoist. That’s the easiest job of real work I can think of, hereabouts.”
“Who’s gonna feed him and all, cap’n?” asked the first sergeant.
Wahrn shrugged. “He can keep living here, if he wants to, Kahl, for all I care. This place ain’t more than a mile from the place he’ll be working and he’s got at least one jackass, anyway, if he don’t wanta walk it. Then, too, he can use his evenings to keep the Council Chamber, over yonder, dusted and clean and all . . . for as long as we keep using it, that is. I’ve thought for some time now that we should hold council meetings in the armory, then we could use the chamber to store grain in.”
The two younger priests could only stand, stunned speechless by all that was being said. Old Mosix had opened his mouth to speak on several occasions, but, sensing the true, pure hostility pervading the room, had wisely held his peace, while his secure and comfortable inherited sinecure crumbled about him. He never had been any kind of real leader, rather had he used the authority to which he had been born, that authority come of religious power over the people; that he had used it despotically, harshly, cruelly, had in part occurred because he wanted for courage, himself, and feared and hated those folks possessed of it. And now, when a few strong words, delivered with power, might at least have ameliorated the situation, he had not the heart to voice them.
The old order changeth, giving way to the new.
Milo fretted and fumed, paced and worried throughout the day, from the very moment that Little Djahn Staiklee and his mounted hunting party dis-appeared beyond the rolling prairie hillocks until their midafternoon return, laden with a score and a half of big squirrels, a dozen rabbits and three of the rabbit-sized antelope. They brought back, as well, odds and ends of ancient artifacts looted from the ruins of the suburban homes among which they had hunted throughout the day—whatever had taken their individual fancies: a child’s telescope, an assortment of stainless-steel flatware, a nesting set of pewter cups, a pitted, verdigrised brass eagle, odd bits of chrome and brass and copper, rusty pliers and hammers and other tools, a hand mirror, a copper saucepan with a brass handle, a bronze poker, two rusted spades and so on.
Upon dumping out the contents of a sack—four decapitated vipers, fifteen gigged but still-living bull-frogs and a brace of big fat carp—Little Djahn said, “Uncle Milo, t’other side of the lake, up north of the ruins . . . well, in them, actually, in the fringes of them . . . it’s six, seven boggy ponds, so we didn’t go any farther in, there was all the game we could handle right there. And not just game, either, we got another sack with maybe forty pound of roots and all in it—lotus, water willow, water parsnips, bullrushes, water plantains, cattails and I don’t know whatall. Here-abouts is rich, rich country, Uncle Milo. I don’t think it’s been hunted or foraged proper in a coon’s age, none of it. Wonder why them Dirtmen, down south-east there, didn’t come up and do it?”
“Little Djahn,” replied Milo, “there are some small groups of Dirtmen scattered about here and there who own singular beliefs. One such that I remember from some years back held that their god wanted them and everyone else to eat only plants and that those who ate the flesh of any beast deserved instant death; we had to exterminate that group, after they caught a party of our hunters and skinned them alive before killing them. Clan Ohkahnuh, I think that was.
“You see, in the sprawling nation that this land was before the Great Dyings destroyed it, singular philosophical and religious cults had been proliferating at an accelerated pace for decades. Many of the adherents of these odd groups so detested and feared the general society around them that they deliberately sought out lonely, isolated and all but inaccessible places in which to live, denying access to most out-siders not of their particular bent and discouraging their members from leaving the settlements by various means.
“So, when the Great Dyings did take place—the plagues which did much of the killing being spread by the breath of infected people—more of these rabidly solitary gaggles of fanatics survived than did more normal people living in towns or cities or easily accessible countryside locations. And, of course, superstitious as they mostly were, they and their leaders ascribed their fortuitous continuances of life not to the happenstance of their lack of exposure to carriers of pneumonic plagues but to the efficacy of their particular concepts of life or religion, thus recon-firming their fanaticism in that and all succeeding generations of their kind.
“In those succeeding generations, Little Djahn, a majority of the surviving groups have remained isolated, going so far as to kill or enslave any interlopers who refuse to immediately convert on the spot to the beliefs by which the individual group lives. Most of them are Dirtmen, of course, and some few have died out. On two occasions, I have come across settlements filled with corpses—I have always been certain that one of these had expired one late winter of ergot poisoning in stored grain; what killed off the other, no man will ever know.
“But back to the issue at hand. Until the clans arrive, be very wary while hunting over in that predators’ paradise you found. Those Dirtmen, down south there, may well consider those swamps to be sacred grounds, for some obscure reason, and so would deem you to be not only alien interlopers but blasphemers, as well. Actually, as I think on the matter, that same supposition could be of a piece with the lack of recent looting or salvaging of the ruined town here, too. With such a thought in mind, it might be well for us if we commence tonight a regular night guard of the camp as well as the cat guard on the herd.”
“Justus warriors?” inquired Staiklee.
Milo shook his head. “No, everyone will have to go at it, Little Djahn—a woman or an older child can do the necessary task as well as could one of us. A sentinel is not expected to fight alone or to fight at all, for that matter, only to awake and alert the rest of us, if need arises. I’ll feel a lot better about all this once the clans arrive here to reinforce us.”