“What he is trying to say is, people have always been violent,” Courtney interjected. “There have always been wars and as long as we stay human beings there will always be wars. The period of the last thousand years was a golden age. And it would be nice to go back to that. But if the cost of going back to that is letting Paul decide what is right and wrong… You can try to limit it by diplomacy but the diplomacy has already broken down. It broke down in the Council hall. When Paul attacked Sheida.”
“Well, we only have her word for that,” Morgen pointed out.
“Oh, good God,” Courtney replied, throwing her hands up in the air. “Herzer, you try.”
“Nope ain’t gonna do it,” Herzer replied. “Morgen, you can say that you just want to sit this out. That’s fine. But people aren’t going to let you sit it out. You can choose to leave Raven’s Mill. I’m sure that there are going to be communities that are not going to enforce the requirements. You can even say that you have strongly held philosophical objections and train to handle casualties. But if you go elsewhere, to a community that says they just want to be neutral or ‘violence never settles anything’ sooner or later Paul’s forces will take you over and not ask your opinion. Or you’ll be in the way of Sheida’s forces and they’ll take you over and not ask your opinion. I for one am not going to let Paul Bowman tell me how to run my life. I know enough history to understand what that road leads to. And I would rather sit here on the ground in the rain and eat maggoty bread than allow him to gain absolute power over Mother.”
“But there’s no way to fight him!” Morgen said. “He’s a council member! They’re all council members. Let them fight!”
“It’s stalemated,” Herzer said with a shrug. “And Bowman wants the entire world under his sway. He is going to come for you, Morgen. And for me and Shilan. Because he thinks it’s the right thing to do. It’s his mission in life. You can sit on one side or you can sit on the other. But if you sit in the middle, you’re just going to get trampled.”
“That’s just… paranoia,” Morgen said, stamping her foot. “You’re all… warmongers! And you can just go to hell, Herzer Herrick!” With that she stomped away.
“Not bad, Romeo,” Cruz said, leaning back. “Pick her up in the morning, have your way with her all afternoon and she’s gone by evening. Not bad!”
Shilan took this opportunity to hit him in the shoulder as hard as she could with a week’s worth of built up muscle.
“Ooow! Jeeze!”
“Less than you deserve,” Courtney said.
“I was just joking,” Cruz replied, rubbing his arm.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
After the argument Herzer hung out with the rest of the group as the afternoon descended into twilight. Two oxen had been roasting all afternoon and the evening meal was a communal barbecue. Reenactors who had either gotten quickly reestablished or who were permanent residents of Raven’s Mill had contributed various side dishes. Herzer got his first taste of cream corn and collard greens and decided that he could live with them. But what mostly surprised him was the incredible diversity. Before the Fall, finding or inventing different food had been an almost universal pastime. For all that there was a sameness. Before the Fall, all dishes were blazingly hot, some to the point of insanity. The only difference seemed to be what type of acid was included, whether you got the delightful piquancy of sulfuric or the there and gone nuclear attack of fluoric.
These foods on the other hand had so much more diversity, not only in the secondary spices that they used but in the very fact that many of them didn’t taste as if they were going to eat the insides off their containers. Some were dreadfully hot. He had a few bites of a cabbage dish and after a chewing on it for a moment he wondered why it hadn’t eaten the spoon. But many of the others were not spicy at all. They were sweet or delicately flavored with subtle herbs.
He was spooning down mushrooms that had had simply been sautéed in butter, wine and just a hint of some herb, absolute ambrosia, when Shilan sat down next to him with two cups in her hand.
“Master Edmund has graciously agreed to let the town raid his wine cellar,” she said, handing him a cup.
Herzer took a small sip and inhaled gratefully. The wine was heavy and sweet, with an almost earthy aftertaste and a decided kick.
“Ummm. This is good,” Herzer said, setting down the cup and spearing more mushrooms.
“Are you referring to the mushrooms or are you being existentialist?” Shilan asked.
“Well the mushrooms, yes,” Herzer replied, holding out some on the fork. “But what I really meant was this, here.” He shrugged as she leaned forward and delicately pulled the mouthful off, nodding her head in agreement. “Better than being out in the woods.”
“Not better than it was a month ago,” Shilan said darkly.
“Yes, true,” Herzer said, pushing the remaining mushrooms around. But there was an odd thoughtful frown on his face.
“Penny for your thoughts,” Shilan said, cocking her head to the side with a smile. But then she laughed.
“What?”
“ ‘Penny for your thoughts,’ ” Shilan replied. “How old is that saying?”
“Yes,” Herzer said, chuckling. “I mean, are you offering to pay a lot of money, or very little? It all depends on the value of the penny.”
“I am willing to pay a lot for your thoughts, Herzer,” she said, leaning forward again and looking him in the eye.
“Hmmm…” he replied with a frown. A muscle in his left cheek worked for a moment. “You said that it was better a month ago and I agreed.”
“Sure,” she said with a slight shrug. That reality was inarguable.
“Yes… and no,” he said, the muscle working again. “This… this…” he said, waving his arms around at the groups talking and eating; in the distance was faint laughter.
“This is two things that were not a month ago,” he continued. “One, it is real. It is not some Renn Faire where if the ground is too hard you can port in a pillow, and when it gets too late you can port home. This is real. If you want a pillow, you had better go out there and figure out a way to make a pillow. I don’t know why that is important, but I can feel it in my soul.” He held up his hand as Shilan started to say something.
“Hang on a second,” he said. “Give me a little bit. The second thing is that it has soul. Before, did you ever see so much passion? So much intensity out of people as you see today? No. Why? Because this is real. Before, before the Fall, no matter what you were discussing, no matter what you were arguing, you knew that the next day you would be getting up and going back and doing more or less the same thing all over again. But the point was, you knew you were getting up! You knew that you were going to be alive the next day.
“Now, the questions are not trivial. Not only lives but generations depend upon them. These people know that not only for themselves, but for their children and the children that they will have, they must work and succeed. And that Mother will not catch them when they fall. That brings a passion and intensity to things that I have never seen before.
“Now if I could press a button and turn it back to the way that it was before, would I? Yes. But that does not mean that I would not have regrets. There is a soul to this, to everything thing here. A soul that did not exist before the Fall. So, yes and… no,” he concluded, picking out one last mushroom. “Damn, it’s cold.”