He waved it away, slapping the vine-stock swagger stick in his right hand into the palm of his left. “We were discussing the logistics,” he said.

“Sir, with forty battalions that’s going to be very tight.”

We must move quickly. But we cannot see. The enemy fogs our vision, and above fly hungry birds, ready to eat the seeds we plant.

“Nevertheless, it has to be done. The enemy isn’t idle and we have to hit them before—”

You will not die, birds. You will never have been; yes, you and Those who sent you!

HASTY CREEK RANCH
GRANGEVILLE COUNTY,
CAMAS MILITARY DISTRICT
(FORMERLY NORTH-CENTRAL IDAHO)
JUNE 28, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD

The Sheriff’s property was not far south of the little town of Craigswood; Ritva thought the core of it had been an inn—what the old world had called a motel—and probably picked because there was good water and a place for a mill at a nearby stream that ran down from high wooded hills to the open prairie. That part was far from the center now, used as housing for bachelor ranch hands. The rest was buildings of rammed earth or notched logs squared on top and bottom or mortared fieldstone, or combinations. Law in the United States of Boise had always frowned on private fortifications, but the layout of the ranch had a foursquare strength and the lower windows could all be quickly closed with loopholed steel shutters.

The Dúnedain party arrived just as the purple faded in the west and the warm butter-yellow of lamps started to make stars of windows where the homeplace lay scattered below them. They rode down a gully through pine forest, out of the strong sappy smell and into the open; a wind from the east brought the homey odors of cooking and woodsmoke and manure. The grim-faced and silent older men and younger women who took their horses away and showed them to the quarters where they could stow their packs and wash before walking over to the main house asked no questions.

Sheriff Robert Woburn greeted them in the vestibule where they swapped their boots for slippers and hung up their weapons; no doubt in wintertime it also served to keep too much warm air from escaping. He was a lean man in his sixties, his white hair still thick, eyes a snapping blue and face craggy and seamed. His hand was strong but knobby, and rough as raw horsehide.

“I hope we’re unobserved,” Alleyne said.

“Less traffic here than at St. Hilda’s,” he said. “The Reverend Mother got me the message and I’ve arranged to get everyone I’m doubtful of off the place.”

“It will still leak,” Astrid said. “Just more slowly, hopefully.”

“No help for that. And this here is Major Hanks.”

“The man with the airship!” Ritva blurted; she remembered it vividly.

Not least because it saved all our lives. Though it’s a haywired sort of thing.