The Tears of the Sun (57 page)

Ingolf sighed. There were places that could store refrigerated blood for a while, but they were few and far between. Triage was an ugly fact of a fighting-man's life, but it
was
a fact. You weren't doing anyone a favor if you let a man who had some chance to live die just to keep someone who
didn't
have a chance going another half hour. There were times when the only favor you could do a comrade was a quick knife-thrust; at least they'd been spared that.

“The third?” he said.

“Sir, Olson got hit on the head hard enough to dent his helmet in, but he was doing fine and then . . . he just started breathing funny and died, real quiet.”

Ingolf nodded. Head wounds were tricky that way; there was no way to see inside a head, of course, and nothing much the doctors could have done if you
could
see inside. They could pick fragments out of a depressed fracture or trepan for pressure on the brain if you were lucky, but that was about it. He'd been knocked out once and had had blinding headaches at intervals for six months afterwards; sometimes men never did entirely recover from a clout to the skull; and sometimes they just died, like Olson.

Three more dead made ten too many, but fewer than he'd expected. Ten dead altogether and thirty non-walking-wounded of whom only half a dozen would be crippled for life was a light butcher's bill for an engagement that size, but then winning always made for a lighter payment. The Boiseans had taken five times that. Still, you died just as dead either way.

“The rest seem to be doing well. The doctors here are excellent, that's what our Doc Jennings says. One of them went to the same school his own teacher did. And uh, Lord Rigobert left some of his medics too, and more medical supplies, so we've got enough morphine for the bad cases. He pulled out at dawn, couldn't have slept more than a couple of hours, that's one busy man. The Tithe Barn thing we've got all the wounded in is as comfortable as you could expect, sir, it was just used for a grain store, pretty clean.”

“I'll drop in on them again today,” Ingolf said.
And it won't be quite as bad this time.
“The rest?”

“Camp's pitched in the reaped fields about a half mile out of town. Still putting up the tents.”

Which wasn't urgent; in weather like this it was probably more comfortable to just roll in your blankets than sleep in a stuffy tent. Most men preferred them if they had a choice, though. Probably because they gave an illusion of permanence, of home, in the enforced nomadism of a soldier's life. They were a shell you could take with you.

“There's a good well of clean water we can drink straight, plenty of it and a wind-pump, and the distance might, ah . . .”

“Make it harder for bored troopers to come into town and get drunk and cause too many problems,” Ingolf said.

The younger Richlander nodded. “Yessir. And maybe we should provide working parties to our hosts, sweat some of the devilment out of them once they get over the fight and start feeling bored and randy again. Uff da, this officer's job, it's like being a nanny, isn't it, sometimes! I figure that's why Three Bears put the Sioux even farther out.”

Says the graybeard of twenty-four,
Ingolf thought.

“That, and they don't like being crowded; and he's scouting out to the north right now. Supplies?”

“Plenty, sir, we don't have to touch the reserves. Lots of firewood ready cut. Lord Maugis here gave us a bunch of the sheep.”

Maugis shrugged and spread his hands. “Sheep and battles go ill together, and the meat won't keep in this heat. That was my demesne herd, too.”

The Richlander nodded. “And all the vegetables and fresh bread and fruit we can use, which is making the men happy, and some pretty good beer, I'm having that carefully rationed. We paid, of course.”

“Of course,” Ingolf said gravely.

He and Mary glanced at each other. They had permission to draw on the Crown accounts through Sandra Arminger, but Rudi was still fairly heavy with gold—the friendly new government of Iowa had given them a substantial going-away present to mark the alliance. As it turned out, gold was relatively more valuable here in Montival. Ingolf knew why. There were more ruins in the east, particularly more big ones, and the big ones were where most of the precious metals could be found. You had to have a grasp on the economics of the trade to succeed as a salvager. The difference in purchasing power was about two-to-one for gold, a little less for silver.

But it's going to run out someday not too far away. Wars are really expensive, and then Rudi's going to be dependent on his mom-in-law for an allowance. Which will make everyone else unhappy or even get them thinking she's taking over using him and Matti as a false front, and I've noticed other people in this neck of the woods aren't too fond of the PPA.
Or
he's got to get them all to pay him taxes so he can be independent, which will also make them unhappy, and he'll probably have to borrow a lot from the bankers too. The Destined Prince with the Magic Sword is wonderful, but less wonderful when he asks you to cough up every tenth bushel and piglet and takes out a mortgage on your farm.

Maugis smiled. “Cash is always useful, Esquire,” he said; Jaeger blinked a little at the unfamiliar title. “But note that my bailiff is selling you
fresh
produce.”

It took a moment for Jaeger to get the implications; Mary snorted a little under her breath, but Ingolf thought the man wasn't slow, just deliberate.

I'm not selling anything that would be useful in case of a siege,
in other words.

The captured Boise officer had been eating with concentrated attention; probably they'd been on thin rations for a while. The enemy army was so big it was straining their logistics just by being all in one place, and they'd also probably looked forward to getting somewhere they could forage from the enemy. Ingolf waited for him to slow down and make a second trip for dark red Shuksan strawberries and cream. He could ease himself by thinking of it as plunder.

“Have your wounded been treated properly, Captain Woburn?” Ingolf asked, a formal note in his voice.

The man nodded, equally
correct
as the saying went.

“Yes, Colonel Vogeler. I wouldn't be here, otherwise. My medical officer survived, he's been working with yours, and he tells me that they received the same care as your men. I've visited them and they're as comfortable as possible. The rest of us have been well treated and well fed, and the guards are no rougher than necessary.”

He swallowed; he was an unremarkable-looking young man, medium-brown hair and blue eyes, with a rather long bony face and weathered skin, not big or small but hard-looking and very fit, with large hands and wrists. He forced those eyes back to Ingolf.

“Thank you, sir. It's . . . not exactly what I'd expected.”

“You're welcome, though technically you're Lord Maugis' prisoners.”

“Thank you as well, then . . . my lord,” the Boise officer said.

Maugis nodded gravely. “You are welcome, Rancher Woburn. It's an obligation of chivalry to care for the defeated.”

That brought an odd look; he wondered what sort of propaganda Boise pumped out about the PPA. Boise went in for propaganda a lot, posters slathered all over the place, he'd seen that traveling through its territory on the way to tell Rudi about the Sword, and then again when they all came back heading east; they'd returned by the northern route, through the Dominions. He doubted General-President Martin Thurston had stopped the practice when he took over from—after killing—his father Lawrence. He'd certainly put out enough lies about his brother Fred being responsible for their father's death; Fred had been one of the Companions of the Quest, and Rudi intended to see him in charge in Boise when things were settled.

Assuming we win, of course. And
“
assume”. . .

Boise's posters never said much that was good about this part of the world, and probably a lot of it was deserved, though not as much these days as in the past. There were still barons who would have been a lot rougher than de Grimmond, though, even with the High King issuing orders.

Ingolf spoke again: “Your men fought hard against odds when we surprised you, no panic. And they're very well drilled. When you reversed front on us after that arrow-exchange it was like one man moving; it's a difficult maneuver and I've never seen it better done. If we hadn't had an ace you'd have gotten away and hurt us badly in the process.”

“Ah . . . thank you again.” Bitterly. “Those sheep were a trap, weren't they? Bait.”

“Yup,” Ingolf said, and ate a bite of honey cake with whipped cream.

“And I led us into it and lost half my command,” the younger man said with soft bitterness, looking down at his bowl. “Lost all of it and me, too. It'd be easier all around if I'd taken an arrow in the eye. And I'm supposed to be a trained officer!”

“Son, if something looks too good to be true, like a nice tasty flock of sheep just begging to get put on the grill, it usually is. If it's any consolation I got sucker punched pretty much the same way back . . . when I was younger than you are now and had a command I deserved a lot less that you did yours. Training does only so much. Experience you have to get the hard way. You pay for it, and your men pay for it, and that's just the way it is in this screwed-up world.”

Woburn looked up, eyes narrowed in thought. “You're not from around here, are you, sir? I can't place your accent.”

“Nope. I'm from the Free Republic of Richland . . . the Richland in Wisconsin, not the Richland over near Kennewick on the Columbia.”

The other man's eyes widened. “The Midwest? Then—”

He shut up quickly. Ingolf ate another forkful, before he said judiciously: “Yup. It really is true that Iowa and the others are marching. On Corwin, for starters, but they're going to keep right on going as far as Boise and they're not likely to be in a real good mood by then. Hell, after the way the Cutters killed their Bossman on his own ground, the Iowans aren't in a good mood
now.
Iowa's run by his widow these days, you know. I was there when they mustered outside Des Moines. Must have been seventy, eighty thousand men—and that wasn't counting the ones who were joining 'em later. They've got more if they need 'em.”

“That's a large force,” Woburn said, a little white about the lips. “Still, numbers aren't everything.”

“They're mostly pretty green, except for a few from Fargo and Marshall who were in the Sioux War,” he added honestly. “But there are a hell of a lot them and their gear and logistics are good. The Sioux are coming west too, and they've got blood in their eyes and scores to pay off. You had some experience with them yesterday.”

Woburn was silent for an instant, then doggedly returned to his food. “And thank you for . . . stopping those . . . Sioux.” He'd probably been about to say
savages
. “They'd have killed us all.”

Ingolf nodded. “They're not what you'd call fond of the CUT,” he said mildly. “They've got good reason, and there weren't a lot of rules when they fought 'em the last time, out there on the High Plains east of the Rockies.”

That brought the other man's head up. “We're soldiers of the United States, not that f- . . . not the Prophet!”

What everyone else called the United States of Boise called itself the United States of America, and some of them actually meant it. Ingolf chuckled slightly. “Captain Woburn, have you ever been out of Idaho before?”

He opened his mouth, closed it, then said with stubborn honesty: “No. Never even as far as Boise until I did the Officer Candidate School course.”

“Well, I've been all the way from Nantucket to the Willamette. More than once. And young feller, the United States is deader than . . . than Rome. Than f-. . . freaking Babylon, come to that, or those other places in the Bible, Nineveh and Egypt and whatnot.”

“All the way . . . are you
that
Ingolf Vogeler?” Woburn blurted, his eyes going a little wide.

“Yup.” Ingolf nodded towards Mary. “And that's
the
Mary Vogeler, formerly Mary Havel. Rudi's sister. High King Artos' sister, Mike and Signe Havel's daughter, Astrid Loring's niece.”

She smiled charmingly. “My mother and father met your father a long time ago, in Idaho. The Camas Prairie, isn't it? Just after the Change.”

Woburn took a deep breath. “Well, that's, ah, startling. Yes, I remember Father telling me about that.”

“I'm sure he told you about the fight against Iron Rod,” Mary added.

“And Captain Woburn?” Ingolf went on calmly. “Just for your information, I was at the Battle of Wendell, when old general Thurston died. He was wounded by the Prophet's men, but his son Martin killed him, your current ruler and the one who came up with this alliance with the Prophet and the CUT. I know Fred Thurston didn't do it, Martin did. I was there.”

“So was I,” Mary said crisply.

“Is that the truth?” Woburn said quietly.

Ingolf shrugged. “Either my word's good, or it isn't, and you'll have to be the judge of that for yourself.” He held up a hand. “Just think about it.”

Woburn gave a jerky nod. “May I ask what's to be done with my men?”

Maugis nodded in turn, smiling politely and slipping in a small needle: “The High King's orders are that all Boise prisoners are to be kept separate from the Prophet's men . . . I trust that's satisfactory?”