The Bushido lords would never admit it, but there were
several unofficial methods of avoiding the test of the Hand or Heart. The most common, of course, was to die in the
wastelands during the Test of the Stomach.
Others, such as Bartholomew, managed to prove their worth to the Angels
and joined them instead. Some fled to
the city of NYE, to make a life as best they can. And others simply found a good water source
and settled their, founding their own tiny household. For the most part, they were left alone;
there was no time limit on the Test of the Stomach, after all. But should they prove successful in the harsh
school of wasteland survival, find wives, sire bastards, and had a usefull
skill or craft for trade, they often became minor lords in their own
right. Some were powerful and
successful, some single households eking out a living in the wastes, but all were
technically called lords. After a
generation or two (or more, in the lands of the Codex Bushido, where bloodlines
and honor were a more prickly matter) they were generally allowed to swear
fealty to a major lord and gain a measure of acceptance and protection. In return, they had to abide by the
appropriate Codex-and come in force should their lord call the banners.
The Scum Lord spent perhaps a quarter of an hour preparing
documents. He selected a few wax
tablets, thin sheets of beeswax embedded in exquisitely polished hardwood
frames. Each was embossed on the outside
with the lord’s personal chop (a kalach outlined
in black) and to each of his minor lords he drafted them a simple message: Owsla (the formal, ancient word for
militia) has been called. Come with all
your strength. The tablets were not that
large, and to write too small risked the message being obliterated in the
saddlebag. Thus, there were no pleasantries; those he would save for the formal
documents that would be signed by his lords on arrival. Carefully he secured the wooden covers in
place, sliding them into the cunning grooves wrought into the hardwood, and
took them out to the courtyard, where Bart had ten Angels mounted and waiting.
Good men-I don’t see
any fresh bruises, so he didn’t have to stomp them to ensure compliance. He handed each a tablet. These were old Angels, faces he recognized;
they knew the lands as well as he did so he did not need to explain the route;
he merely informed them where each tablet was to be sent. As he watched them turn their snuffling hawgs
and ride off in different directions, he lit another smoke and sighed. I must
speak to the Artificer Lord first, to see if he can keep that damnable sky
carriage running. He heard
Hyzenthlay approach behind him, and turned to smile at her. There was a large wax tablet in her hand.
“My lord, I have a detailed inventory of the deep larder, if
you would have it,” she said, and held out the tablet.
“Summarize it for me, darling; I must prepare to ride out to
the Hive.” That made her frown; there
was always a risk when approaching the Hive, where stinging bees guarded their
lands and honey with vicious abandon.
But she continued nonetheless.
“Wet goods in the top cellar were devastated by the flames;
virtually all the potatoes and apples were lost as well as the hanging
meats. But the dry goods-jerky, grains,
some dried fruit and nuts…almost everything in the second cellar survived. We may have to subsist on grain for a year or
two, but…” The consorts mouth tightened
dangerously as she finished “…with fewer mouths to feed, we should be able to
survive.”
Khalid put an arm around her and offered her a drag from his
cigarette. “Well done, my lady. What about water?” Water was the most important; it was
impossible to improvise.
“The well was untouched, my lord, as was the armory. Only the upper larder was lost.” She took the cigarette to him and handed him
the tablet in its place. “You will find
details here. I must help the Mamas with
their morning chores.” She kissed him,
daring to linger a moment, and then strode out the gate towards the Angel
camp. Interesting. She would have
never had contact with the Angel Mamas before.
The Scum Lord found the idea of sharing his women with other men
distasteful, but he knew the Angels often felt the same about women sharing a
man. It was noteworthy to see that the
women got along anyway.
Bereft of his cigarette, he rolled another and started out
at a walk for the cellar door. He
stopped for a long moment in the doorway.
The stench of burned flesh was still present; his eyes were stinging as
he stepped down the wooden stairs into cool darkness. He did not take a light of any kind, both
because he did not want to see the scorch marks on the walls where his family
had perished and because he knew these tunnels well enough that light was not
needed.
The cellars below this holdfast were actually a series of
gently sloping, zigzag tunnels that went down in three levels. The first went all the way under the holdfast
walls and came out just on the other side, where a large flat rock masked an
escape tunnel. This cellar was wide and
flat here, and wooden racks had once lined the walls. He turned off somewhere in the middle and
went down a second staircase. The second
tunnel sloped sharper, and went down and out at an angle oblique to the first
tunnel. It contained endless plasteek buckets, leftover from the
founders of this house, where they stored dried grains, fruit, meat and
nuts. Amaranth grew wild out on the Tex
Arcane, and was a common food for the region, and he had close to a thousand
bucket’s worth stored here, untouched by the flame. It will
be bread and porridge for a year, but we will not starve.
Somewhere close to the end of this tunnel, which curved
around the well and ended under the bell tower, he moved a couple of empty
buckets aside and came upon the entrance to the third level. In pitch darkness he descended the ladder,
avoiding a tripwire he had dodged so many times it was practically an old
friend, one wired to another of the family claymores. The Scum Lords of old did not care for
intruders in the armory. The vertical
tunnel was barely wider than his shoulders, and went much deeper than the
others. It opened into a large stone cave
shaped like the bowl of a spoon. He
stopped there to light a lantern that hung on the wall, which brought the
family armory into sharp relief.
Here were some of the holdfast’s most ancient treasures,
claymores and kalaches and sharp
blades and armor, all organized neatly on racks. Ammo of all stripes hung on belts, filled
more buckets, and there was a great pile of kalach
round casings next to his bench to be reloaded, the task he had been about
when the Knife Priestess had delivered her ultimatum. The Lord was interested only in the great ring
of keys that hung on a hemp strap beneath the ten mile cannon, an ancient
weapon nestled comfortably in a dull green crate that read M20 75MM RECOILLESS
RIFLE - PROPERTY OF US NATIONAL PARK SERVICE in the script of the old
people. He picked up the ring of keys
and slung them about his neck. Stepping
over a pile of dusty artillery shells, the Scum Lord blew out the lantern and
made his way up the ladder again.
Bart met him in the courtyard, already mounted, with twenty
more Angels at his back, all armed with picks and shovels. About half the hawgs dragged towing sledges,
the cunning wooden runners by which the Angels towed their plunder. “We ride for the weapons, my lord?” he said,
reigning in his hawg as it snuffled after a chicken.
“Aye, Mr. President, presently.” Keenly feeling his lack of a horse, he
mounted up behind the club president.
Talia was looking at him from the rooftop garden; he waved at her as
they rode out.
After nearly three and a half hours of hard riding-Blind stinking sky gods, but hawgs are slow-they
came upon their destination, far north of the holdfast. The land flattened out here by degrees, and
the copses of trees were becoming rarer.
The land of the wild hawg was drawing to an end, and the land of the
horse beginning-horses were one of the few animals that could simply outrun the
hawg, and no trees pressed close enough for ambush. North, the great plain of grass extended as
far as even his sharp eyes could see, swaying in the gentle easterly wind. It smelled strongly of a storm, as most west
blowing winds did. He cautioned Bart to
have his men take caution with their cigarettes; a small blaze out here could
spell death for a dozen households.
Their destination was a colossal mound of heaped wax and
dirt, nearly ten feet high, sculpted by the constant labor of generations of
bees. They could see the insects in the
air frequently, great fat black things the size of a man’s closed fist that not
even hawgs dared to trifle with, no matter how sweet the honey was. The sting from one of these monsters would
swell the skin until it split and cause a week’s worth of howling agony. The Angels kept a wary eye on the bees
overhead as they swung down to dismount.
First they gathered a great pile of brush and grass, while
the Scum Lord checked the prevailing winds by trailing a hemp leaf on a piece
of twine. He watched it for the better
part of half an hour, then selected a site for the bonfire. It was close to perfect; there was a small
depression there that would aid their efforts.
They built up the fire quickly, mindful of the droning insects.
Harvesting honey was risky enough business, but this was
more than a simple honey harvest. The
cache had been placed here and the holdfast’s founders had built their beehives over it-but ancient bees were weak,
not suitable to survive in this god blind age, and the Scum Lord wasn’t sure
that his ancestors had reckoned on them becoming such monsters to survive. Then
again, maybe we all become monsters to survive in such a world. Or maybe we were monsters all along. The bees were confused, crawling over the
hive, the smoke making them slow and unable to fly. It was then that the Angels moved in, with
picks and shovels ready-and Khalidrah followed with his ring of keys.
He snapped orders as if they were his own men-“You, here,
you, here, you two, here and here.” He
had not done this for many years, not since his own father had checked on the
cache in his youth. The dig sites were
marked with small yellow stones, half buried.
It was a dangerous task, and there was no back talk. The men were motivated by simple
necessity-dally overlong, and risk an agonizing death.
Soon they had unearthed four great plasteek chests the size of beds, each one tightly locked and
painted a different color. They were
towed away on hawg sledges, and the Scum Lord knelt next to each and checked
the contents. His friend hovered just
behind him, a mixture of nervousness and anticipation on his scarred face.
“Rifles,” said Bart, and the lord nodded.
“Moseens. Old even
by the standards of most weapons. And
bayonets. They will serve your Angels
well.” He took out one of the weapons,
caked in dark grease, and worked the action with some effort. Then he tossed the crude weapon to the
President, who caught it and shoved the rust spike bayonet in place. Then he grinned.
“Suitable for my men anyway.
You see that, you god-blind fucks?
Stick ‘em with the pointy end!”
His Angels roared with laughter at that, and he tossed the rifle to one
of the men in turn. The Scum Lord went
to the next chest, which contained ammunition, and then checked the final two,
which contained a wide assortment of other weapons and accessories-including,
most precious of all, fifty kalach magazines,
of the plasteek variety that
holdfasters called Circle Tens. But the
rifles were the true prize; such would make the Angels capable at greater
ranges, and increase their effectiveness against body armor, compared to the
scatterguns they usually wielded. The moseens were crude, not terribly
accurate, and slow to fire and reload even compared to other bolt actions-but
they were rifles. The length of the weapon will allow them to serve for lances at
least. Bayonets fixed will make for a terrifying
cavalry charge. The thought made him
grin; he was picturing a herd of pale, spindly Knifeborn vaqueros spitted on bayonet points as they were ridden down by
Angels. It was a satisfying image.
