Lancers have a lot of punch, but they're not what you'd call inconspicuous.
Hiding still had its uses-this operation was one-but visibility wasn't equivalent to death, the way it was when he'd learned the pre-Change art of war.
Though hiding armies is still a good idea, and easier than it was, no radar or sensors beyond Eyeball Mark One. But when the actual killing starts, you have to run right up to the other guy to noogie on him and he can just stand there giving you the finger until you do. It still feels weird.
Havel and Hutton and Signe dismounted along with Eric Larsson and his wife Luanne, handing off their reins. The patrol got their mounts into the shelter of the building. A very good eye might see the trail they'd left crosscountry from some distance, but the rolling land made that unlikely. So did the combination of shaggy second growth and forest that covered a lot of it.
Havel nodded to the patrol commander and went walking forward with the others, then stooping; finally they went to their bellies as they came to the ridge ahead. That was no knife-edge crest, just a long low swelling that rose perhaps fifty feet above the level of the countryside and well below the Amity Hills to their west. A sagging board fence grown up in brush and vines marked it, and a few tall firs; they crawled into the undergrowth carefully, pushing forward with helmeted heads and armored shoulders against the thick spiky growth. An occasional muttered curse sounded as a thorn or twig slipped between the rings of chain mail and through the quilted padding beneath.
Then they all uncased their binoculars and pushed back their bowl helmets-the nasal bar made using field glasses impossible unless you did that-and looked through the last screen of tall grass and brush towards the north. There was a burned-out farmhouse not far down the slope, snags of wall reaching up through rampant vine and brush. The ruin stood in a clump of trees; those that lived at all were half dead from the heat of years past, their bare limbs stretching towards the overgrown mound with their other sides in leaf, quivering in the mild breeze from the north. A broken-down barn stood beyond, and after that neglected fields running down to a creek lined with trees; beyond that was another stretch of burgeoning wilderness; the edge of the Protectorate's plow-land and pasture was out of sight at the north end of this stretch, what used to be called the Dayton Prairie.
Two roads ran north-south down the lowland to his right, the easternmost crossing the river on a bridge still intact; someone had gone to the trouble of clearing off the vehicles from that one.
"And that's where the Crossing Tavern is." he said. "Just this side of where Webfoot Road crosses the creek."
"Where the innkeeper's feeding travelers to Crusher Bailey's gang for a cut of the take. The ones who won't be missed too bad," Will Hutton replied grimly.
"Let's not jump to conclusions, Unc' Will," Signe said. "Crusher's gang is working this area, but we don't know their MO and we're not sure the innkeeper's in it with them. My people haven't been able to find out anything one way or another."
Havel pulled a grass stem and stuck it meditatively between his teeth, enjoying the fresh sweetness and inhaling the welcome smell of new spring growth crushed under the rings of his hauberk.
My darling wife has come a long way, he thought, grinning inwardly. She was a vegetarian before the Change, and now she's head of the CIA, as well as a mean hand with a backsword. Well, we probably suit a lot better than I would with Juney Mackenzie-that woman's conscience can make you feel real uncomfortable.
"You been able to find out what the hell the Protector is doing up the Columbia?" he said.
"He's back, but not with most of the troops," she said. "Haven't been able to find out what he was doing. He just ordered a task force together and sailed out of Portland, leaving the Seal with his wife. Then he got back two days ago, headed straight out of Portland west with an escort, and while he was on the road there Sandra called out a hundred crossbowmen and fifty knights and their banners and sent them east over the Willamette-towards Molalla, remember? Arminger went after them hot-foot. Must be something important going on over there. Those visitors of his were involved."
"Can you guess at anything?"
"Well, his daughter's staying with Molalla. The guy was a Blood before the Change, name of Jabar, but he's more sensible than a lot of Arminger's baronage. Firm supporter of the Protector, worse luck."
"Well, whatever's going on over there, it does make it the perfect time to take care of Crusher Bailey," he mused.
He looked carefully at the roadhouse that stood just south of the creek and the bridge, nearly hidden by the trees. He'd never been up here himself, not this far eastward at least; no sense in giving the Protector a free chance at a coup de main. There was a fair amount of traffic on the road; the Protectorate and the other Valley communities were formally at peace despite the occasional skirmish, and everyone benefited from trade in the meantime. He could see individuals on foot, mounted on bicycles or on horseback, carts of wildly varied construction ranging from wooden replicas of nineteenth-century models to cut-down pickups, small herds of sheep or cattle:
The ridge they were using for cover was the last easternmost outlier of the Amity Hills, themselves the northern fringe of the Eolas; none of the heights were over a few hundred feet, but in sharp contrast to the flat open land ahead and to his right. For a while he examined the territory, and the wisp of smoke rising from the sheet-steel chimneys of the way-stop.
"It's on the south bank of: Holdridge Creek, right?" he said.
Hutton nodded. "That runs east into Palmer Creek, an' that goes north to meet the West Fork and join the Yamhill at Dayton, then that hits the Willamette past the big east-trending bend."
The Texan pointed slightly north of east: "That bit there, though, the sloughs over a couple-two miles thataway, they're a lot worse than they were before the Change, com-parin' the maps to the firsthand look I had last week. Swamp and nothin' but. Braided channels and islands, all shifted around. What roads an' bridges there were are damn near all gone and we couldn't tell which wasn't yet, not without being pretty noticeable."
Eric whistled agreement; he'd been on that downriver scouting mission too, drifting along disguised as a barge-load of grain.
"No shit!" he said. "Part of that area was a state park, wetland preserve. Lordy"-a trick of tongue he'd picked up from his Texas-born father-in-law-"but it's wet now! A duck could drown in there if he didn't know the pathways."
"Yeah, and the bad guys can hide out in it," Havel said. "They do know 'em."
Signe chuckled. "It's like the Debatable Land," she said.
"Que?" Havel said.
"Something my esteemed stepmother mentioned. Pam says a long time ago there used to be this stretch of ground between England and Scotland; they both claimed it, and neither one would let the other put in its laws and sheriffs. So there wasn't any law-not even as much as the rest of the border had-and outlaws made their home there."
"Sort of like the Hole in the Wall gang," Hutton said meditatively.