Sovereign Ice

VI

In the Age Hereafter

Michael

A Fragment is Found

The work beneath the glacier never ceased. Day and night were unknown to us. Great lights on wheels moved forward as we did, laying down their cold, efficient glare along icy walls and slick roadways. Our picks rose in unison, held by an army of bony hands, falling against the ice with the rhythm of heartbeats, for no other sound beneath the ice mimicked that of a human heart. Nor did we breathe, for nothing about our life was natural.

In our flesh, in our eyes, and in our bones, the smallest of machines whirred and clicked with atomic precision. This alien nano-technology had fallen from the sky more than a thousand years past to spread across the surface of our globe. Long before that, of course, it had stumbled away from its own purposes, malfunctioning deep in space. Without that original failure, the alien’s attempt to seed the universe with life would never have hit us as it did: racing toward us like some diseased asteroid to end all that we knew and loved.

Had I a microscope, I could not have seen a single example of these machines that made my dead fingers move, but altogether a film of them could run like oil, or settle as dust across the broken remnants of the world. 

Unknown to me then, these rogue nano-machines —once meant to encourage the development of life on dead worlds— had brought a new form of magic to my own. In the age of ice that had befallen Earth after its impact with the alien probe, the dust itself could be magic and had learned to obey the will of man.

The right magic could grow wheat from frozen fields, set stone or steel to burn, even bring warmth to rivers deep. But it was more than that. In places the alien magic took on dramatic forms: new mountains to deflect the howling wind; lakes deeper than ice could follow; forests that drew warmth from the sun and spread it by their roots into the ground below. 

Then there were more subtle powers, both in the flesh of all living creatures and in the magics only a few could find and tame. In the old world, it had taken more than a thousand years for civilizations to rise from windmills to Wi-Fi, from horses to hand-held computers. In the new world, no less a gulf separated man’s first days of survival from the one in which I had awakened as a walking corpse. The use of magic had come neither quickly nor easily.

It was magic that had animated me and magic for which I did my daily work. Along with my undying fellows, I dug through the rubble of what had once been a neighborhood familiar to me, now buried beneath centuries of ice. What I was looking for was never revealed to me, nor did any word come my way. I could not speak, for my tongue was a shriveled lump within the cage of my mouth. 

It was no matter, for among us all —we zombies of the ice— there seemed no possibility of communication, not even a glance from shining eye to shining eye. We dug and worked. Dug and worked. Occasionally our bony fingers and shriveled arms raised up a new body from the rubble, bringing it forth into our fold. These bodies were infused by our masters with their special version of the alien magic, and animated by this force they soon joined us as we attacked the ice. Our zombie horde excavated in a single direction, our picks cutting slowly through the frozen barrier before us.

If the others could think or worry as I did, I saw no sign. Perhaps they were no more than robots of decaying flesh, but I… I was different! I remembered. I considered. I was somebody, and hour after endless hour I remembered all that I had been. I tried to understand how an asteroid collision (what the news had warned of beforehand) could have resulted in the nightmare world about me, and I fretted over the date of my burial. Had it been a year or a century? That it had been ten centuries and more would never have occurred to me.

Whenever one of my hooded masters came close, I made every effort to catch its attention, but nothing would do. By that I mean I was not free to raise a hand, not able to turn or step in any direction the force within my body did not wish. Had my tongue been alive within my mouth, it would have availed me little, for the hinges of my jaw seemed as frozen as the stone-cold beneath my pick.

I might have gone mad if not for you. Trapped in an eternity of digging, as my body wore itself out against the ice, I allowed my thoughts to return to you. The pain of your leaving was nothing compared to the comfort your memory brought to me in those moments. The touch of your hand, your scent, the welcoming smile that was yours even as you turned to leave, remembering the sound of your quick steps as you took the ramp toward one of the last planes out west. Whether sweet or bitter, no thought of you did less than give me the will to go on, thought after thought until my nightmare might end.

Where were you? Had you survived the holocaust from space? Had you seen the same lurid light of impact that buried me? I wondered and have been wondering ever since. My deepest pain is that you suffered your last moments alone. What I would not do, what I would not change even now, just to be near you in death?

These are my thoughts today, as they were then, as they were on the day the fragment was found.

The fragment.

Only luck placed me at the vanguard of the find. They must have known we were close, for our pace quickened even as the dig narrowed, no more than five of us abreast in a tunnel of our own making. We were all strong, ready workers, among the best corpses our masters had to employ. 

Behind us, dozens of others worked to clear, widen, and brace the trail we blazed. It was clean ice through which we dug, free of the burnt timber and shattered brick that had fouled the mass of our excavations. Clean and white, the ice cleared by our picks fell like fresh snow. When the lights came up close and blazing behind us, the whole scene reminded me of childhood games in winter. I was ten again, fashioning an igloo in the deep snow of home, a few friends engaged eagerly at my side.

The memory was delicious, and I was lost in it for moments before the pick falling to my right clanged off some as yet unseen obstacle in the ice. We turned on the instant, our hands rushing up tight against the heads of our picks, so that we clawed through the last few inches with a feverish delicacy.

What we uncovered was no more than a part of the whole, a fragment. An empty shell thick as a steel beam and golden bright, it filled the small tunnel we had dug and stretched more than a few feet both above and below. That it had once been a part of a sphere was obvious, but of the rest of the massive piece there was no sign. Along with my fellows, I cleared the fragment from the ice, saw close at hand the small, crystal orbs which pocked its surface.

To the best of my knowledge, I alone in digging, clearing, and bracing the half-spherical mass, placed my hand —quite by accident— into a singular opening, a small break along the inner surface no wider than a knife blade. I alone suffered a shock, withdrew my fingers in pain from where I had placed them only to get a better hold. The others with me noted nothing, but only continued to work as they always had.

Within moments, I alone among them felt my dead tongue stir within the prison of my mouth. I felt my lips part and a breath escape my long dead lungs. And for the first time upon awakening in the new world, I felt terribly afraid.

In the Age of Discovery

Skye and Erok

For his part, Skye desired no more than to turn tail and, taking Erok with him, retrace their steps toward the underground sanctuary they had for so long called home. Never had his thoughts been so long away from those of Maya, their mother-goddess, and the metal man was afraid.

 Their only goal had been to see if Maya’s parents survived in the world beyond their sanctuary. It seemed not. And now that the world proved covered by ice and filled with armed, hostile men, could they not at last turn and go?

If only the saber-tooth had shared Skye’s urgent desire. But for the metal man, there was no need of asking. Erok’s voice was forever with him, the big cat’s spirit —from hunger to untamed will— always available within the limits of Skye’s mind. When the metal man reached out to her now, the thoughts touching back seemed unfamiliar. She was still Erok to be sure, but something eager was in the mix, a fevered flow of thoughts, a new burning in the muscle that had nothing to do with the wound taken on her shoulder the previous day.

It was as if this world of ice and blood had awakened something deep inside her, something wild. And no pleading would have her leave it now.

When Skye touched Erok’s thoughts, they were at first comforting: she was looking for him, concerned that he stay close by. But behind these anxieties, the metal man saw more. Erok was only now realizing how invaluable Skye had become in the world beyond Maya’s sanctuary. Without Skye, she would understand nothing of the chaos and drama unfolding everywhere about her. The metal man had proven able to grasp the words of strangers and make them comprehensible, passing them into Erok’s thoughts as though she herself had heard the foreign phrases and made them whole.

Without Skye, Erok would be starving, without the belly full of meat and the close heat of the fires the soldiers had so freely offered. But most of all, without Skye, there would still be an atlatl spear lodged in her shoulder.

Erok padded quietly over to the metal man, who remained sitting near the embers of last night’s fire, knowing he felt as much comfort in her presence as she did in his. As the big cat lay down beside him, Skye automatically began to rub a soothing hand behind her ear. 

The camp was still a-stir after the strange lights that had fallen upon them from the pre-dawn sky. While waiting for the confusion to die away, Skye’s attention was caught by the native woman the pony riders had brought with them the night before. Her hair was short and covered by a kind of stocking cap, a yellow weave of plant fibers pulled low over the ears. She wore a tattered tunic and trousers, both a mix of hide and woven plant fiber. A short, torn cape lay draped across her shoulders, and she kept her eyes low.

 The woman was seated near one of the wagons, DeVries’ surgeon beside her. Earlier, the camp cook had established a breakfast of food and drink on a small table set especially for her. But though safe and cared for, the woman soon fell into a fit of tears. Unlike last night, she was no longer wild or demanding.  She refused to communicate at all and remained seated in such a way that her hands were to her forehead and her head between her knees, the whole of her body wracked with great sobs of anguish.

Skye watched, some part of him drawn to the notion of giving comfort, as he had done when Maya cried for her parents, or over the death of Bear. But the metal giant could not touch the woman’s thoughts, and Skye knew that if he were to approach, his very presence might be misunderstood. 

Whether crying over the children that had been lost to the raiders, her own injuries, or the death of a friend in yesterday’s fighting, Skye could not know. He knew only that between death and laughter, this world offered tears as well, perhaps even a grief that no one —not even those of your own kind— could console.

“The lights, the Major thinks, were this Frost Queen they are after,” Skye explained to Erok absently. “But she didn’t come down from the air. I don’t know why.”

“Maybe she was afraid of the guns,” Erok answered, “afraid of soldiers.”

“The soldiers? They are like you,” Skye said as he worked his metal digits behind Erok's ear and followed with a gentle scratch along the line of her jaw, “they sleep for hours. At least most of them.” Without preamble, Skye added, “Do you want us to go with them?”

“I thought we would,” Erok answered. “Until I know how to find my own food. The Major – I think he is a good man. Better to find than Maya’s father, maybe. He would help Maya too, if we could bring her to him.”

“We need help to find our home,” Skye assured his companion, not even trying to keep the sadness from his thoughts. “But the soldiers, they have a long way to go and this ‘Frost Queen’ to talk to. And it all sounds so cold. A long, cold way.”

“At least they keep us warm,” Erok said, “give food, and tend wounds.”

“How is your shoulder today?”

Skye felt through Erok's thoughts the rough movement of muscle over the aching joint, the fire in the careful stretching of the big cat's leg. All this came to him silently, behind his eyes. As did Erok’s thoughts: “Better. Not bad. I expect it will hurt for a while. And you?”

Applying pressure to the leg with the damaged ankle, Skye leaned this way and that, sending his own imitation of pain into the mind of the saber-tooth. “I can walk.”

With a brush of her head against Skye’s middle, Erok began to apply her rough tongue across the angled planes of his chest, working up to his face in quick strokes that would have torn the flesh from a living man. 

“You have my blood on you,” she said. “From yesterday.”

Without any sense of the ticklishness suffered by men, Skye stood firm against the familiar ablution. He was still being “bathed” when Cooky approached the pair with a leather wrapped package, its contents still steaming from within.

“We’re about ready to move out,” said the camp cook, addressing Skye. He was a balding, sturdy man, wearing a stained leather apron. In voice and manner, Cooky seemed less ready to offer the affected flattery of the others, but whatever his personal concerns, they had not translated into open hostility. In fact, he always seemed quite direct. “Don’t expect I’m going to be slaughtering an ox every day for her, you hear?”

Skye and Erok exchanged glances. “We understand,” Skye returned, then added “Erok can eat once in many days.”

“Even then,” Cooky said. “I’ve more than enough mouths to feed already. Here, I didn’t cook these as much as before.” He opened the leather folds he had carried to reveal two large cuts of bloodied meat, seared enough to be warm but without the wild cooked out of them. “Major’s idea. She needs to get a taste of blood if she’s going to fend on her own. It’s a cruel land for a house cat, even one as big as this.”

With Skye translating the words as quickly as they came, Erok understood the soldier's intent, even as the meat was revealed and a rivulet of blood spilled out of the leather and onto the ground.

“Breakfast,” Cooky said, laying the warm but bloody meal down before her.

Erok studied the offering without the disgust she had experienced seeing the gutted oxen the day before. The smell was far better, too. She licked the smaller of the pieces with the tip of her tongue. The meat was still steaming in the cool morning air, but not nearly as hot as some of the tasty bits that had stung her tongue the previous evening.

The taste too she found encouraging, and with her next lick she lifted the first piece of meat from the ground, catching it on the tiny, almost invisible spines of her tongue. With a small flip of Erok’s head it was between her teeth and then down. The second offering followed suit.

“It seems it is not so much the meat that troubles Erok,” Skye ventured, “and perhaps not even the killing…” He searched for the right word. “It is the… butchering she finds unpleasant.”

This caused Cooky to erupt into unexpected laughter. 

“Figured that out all by yourself, did you?” Cooky asked. 

Skye found himself uncertain of the question, as if the soldier had not really meant for him to consider a reply. 

“First you and your cat," Cooky continued, "Then lights from the sky. I don’t know where in Hades we’re heading, but this is the damnedest duty. You just keep this in mind: you’ll not find many oxen waiting around to be clubbed over the head out here, even if you have your own butcher waiting in the wings. 

"Then there’s the hunting. That will be a game all to itself. The north woods are home to deer, elk, even some wolf packs.” Brushing thick hands against a spotted apron, he nodded toward Erok and finished with “It’s not my place to say, but I’d see about getting her back where she belongs, if I were you. And not bring any more of this weirdness down upon us.”

“I know,” Skye said in such a manner that —though he drew no breath— a sigh was easily implied. “I would like nothing better. And thank you. Erok knows she is in your debt. Thank you, Cooky.” His head suddenly tilted to a quizzical angle, Skye ventured a question of his own: “Cooky? A small text file. Is that the meaning? Of your name?”

“Where in the white hills have you come from!” Cooky exclaimed. Again, there was something in the manner of the man that made Skye feel a real inquiry had not been made. “My name is a small what?” 

Suddenly the cook’s eyes brightened and he reached into the middle of three deep pockets stitched across his apron. What he pulled out was a round disk made of light and dark swirls. It filled the palm of his hand, but was possessed of a fragility Skye could see clearly as tiny bits of it crumbled away in the soldier's easy grasp.

“Haven’t got a proper oven, but the Major doesn’t keep me around for doing what’s easy.” Cooky flipped the disk over to Skye, who caught it one handed with a gentle dexterity that surprised even the metal man. “Made some early,” the soldier explained, “over the heat of the big fire. A surprise for camp tonight. You keep quiet on it, now.”

With the object close, Skye would have smiled too, had he the means. The reservoir of information that made up his memory held more however than random scientific facts and visions of quiet suburbs, long buried in the ice.

“Oh,” the metal giant said, putting it together. “Cookie. A sweet treat.”

“For her.” Cooky motioned toward Erok. “Bet she likes it.” 

As Skye turned, Erok was already sniffing, trying to focus one eye on the sugared treat lost in the breadth of the metal man's hand. As Skye offered it, the saber-tooth’s great tongue took the cookie without hesitation, and Skye himself could feel the sweetness of it as the sweetness cascaded across his companion’s thoughts. Even safe within their sanctuary, her kibbled diet had never offered such a toothsome rush.

“She likes it,” said Skye, bowing slightly. “Thank you, Sir."

"You don't call me 'Sir.'

"Thank you, Cooky." 

While Erok’s tongue described a careful circle across her muzzle and whiskers, the camp suddenly became very still. It was as if the troop were waiting for the thunder of an approaching storm. But it was not the sky which held their attention.

“Let’s move out!” In his best stentorian tones, Major DeVries voiced his order but once. Without hesitation, the other officers took up the call. 

Graynam and his mounted troop positioned themselves to become flankers and a vanguard, splitting off to the left and right and taking the lead.

Color Sergeant Connel stood at the head of the marching parade, a flag staff locked in his belt, his hands firmly about the pole. At the top of the short staff unfurled a flag of crossed rifles beneath the Northern Star, announcing for all the forest to see that the Fourth Troop a Foot was coming to call. 

“Get the wagons moving. Come on! Come on!” someone yelled.

“Forward!” shouted Connel, who then took a stiff marching step, followed by all those behind.

In the Age of Discovery

Major Ulean DeVries

Cutting into the forest proved slow going, especially for the wagons. DeVries’ men were required to fell a tree every few yards and clear a path according to the specifications of a campaign road: rough but passable by five troopers abreast and the biggest wagons that Ayelsford oxen could pull. Within a week or two, the main column would be following DeVries’ lead. The work was further slowed by the need to post watch against attack and, reluctantly, to send his pony riders out in search of the children Lieutenant Graynam had seen captured by Keltoi raiders.

It was hard work, all around, and as the blinding cold of winter retreated, it was made miserable by the appearance of mosquitoes and biting flies. 

In DeVries’ command, officers were expected to blister their hands as readily as troopers, and even the Major took axe to tree with an energy that made the strongest soldier under his command feel like a slacker if he paused for too long. 

What the Major had not expected was to be stopped dead in his tracks above a rocky gorge, not by lack of a way around, but by an elderly woman determined to step directly from the forested heights to the rocks below, and with a yearling babe in her arms! All along the rocky slope below, a tumble of glacial boulders and scree had awaited the woman's sacrifice.

“Lieutenant Graynam!” DeVries shouted as he rode up the slope on the back of a mount, for the scene had been discovered by his scouts, and it had been Trooper Benake —sent back at a pony’s pace—  who brought DeVries forward to the source of the confusion. Graynam, as Benake reported, had moved quickly to stop the suicide.

Upon arriving DeVries noted an earth lodge of sorts, a shelter built partly underground and surmounted by an earthen dome with a well tended fire set before the entranceway. A variety of short grass and a hardy green moss coated the dome, giving the whole the appearance of belonging exactly where it stood among the trees near the edge of the gorge.

At the brim of the fall, toward the end of a long, smooth runway of stone, two tall totems stood, one on either side of the ceremonial walkway. Carved from large tree boles, each bore the countenance of smiling, winged deities, their once delicate features stained by the smoke from generations of fires and polished by the wind to a remorseless stare.

Near the entrance to the lodge, DeVries saw Captain Reese kneeling beside a native woman of strange contrasts. Wearing heavy furs over a cloak and leggings dyed blue and adorned with rich stitch work, the matron seemed lost and shaken. Her long graying hair lay in disarray, as though what had been carefully styled but moments before had been undone by the shaking hands now held close to her face. Nearby, surgeon Raimi was holding what appeared to be a babe bundled in swaddling of the same royal blue.

”Lieutenant--” About to shout once again, DeVries was forestalled by the sudden appearance of Lieutenant Graynam, the tall, young officer poking his head out of the entranceway to the lodge, a plate in one hand and a cup in the other. Upon seeing the DeVries, he strode toward the Major with alacrity and DeVries returned the favor. Stopping about a pace and a half apart, they exchanged sharp salutes, with Graynam fumbling at first to transfer the cup and the plate of victuals he was carrying solely into the control of his left hand.

“Feeling peckish, Lieutenant?” DeVries asked.

“Uh, no, Sir.” All but losing control of the cup and plate after his salute, Graynam attempted to steady them with both hands, while the liquid from the cup sloshed lavishly over DeVries’ right boot and a handful of small round delicacies tumbled from the plate to bounce between the Major’s feet.

“Major, I…” 

Even though the young officer’s countenance was too dark to show a blush, DeVries smiled at the discomfiture Graynam must feel. The Major knew what it was like to stand before a superior officer impatient for answers, and he had no desire to increase the lieutenant’s misery beyond what was necessary to strengthen the young man, who had shown every potential of becoming a soldier’s soldier.

“Of course, of course, Lieutenant. Get on with it.”

“Sir?”

“Your report, Lieutenant Graynam. Your report." 

“Umm. Yes, Sir. Where to start?” And with that Graynam went on to describe the scene at the earth lodge when he and two of his pony soldiers had first arrived. 

”We were circling, hoping to cross the trail of the raiders when we heard singing. Female voices. One young, one old. Not raising their voices together, but a kind of see saw, with one chanting to high heaven, and other giving answer. It all seemed a bit mournful, ceremonial if you take my meaning.”

“I do, Lieutenant, and I’d appreciate it if you’d take a faster road as to why you’ve called me up here.”

Swallowing hard and still self-consciously in possession of the cup and plate from the lodge, Graynam went on. “Well, sir… they were going to kill her. The old woman that is, her and the baby. Expecting her to walk right between those columns you see at the edge there, babe in arms. And they’ve been at it for a while, Major. I mean historically. You can see quiet a few bones and scraps of that blue cloth at the bottom of the gorge. More, I bet beneath what snow's down there.”

“You said a young voice?” DeVries questioned. “Surely not the child?”

“No, Major. There was a sprite right with her, a girl of about 12 or 13, dressed to the ramrod in white furs, helping that grandmother toward the edge. When I saw what was up, I came out of the trees to make a challenge, warn her off. She ran pretty quick, the young one, off toward the village, I’d guess.”

“Made a challenge to a girl of 12,” DeVries repeated slowly, smiling and scratching at his beard with his right hand. “I’ll have to remember that one, Lieutenant. And the woman, what’s her story?”

“Don’t know, Major. Captain Reese got here a few minutes ago, but it’s not just a matter of the local jabber. She’s all fired up, like a drover on sweet water. I think,” he said, holding out the now near-to-empty cup for DeVries to examine, “I think they wanted her that way.”

Taking the baked clay vessel from Graynam, DeVries sniffed its aromatic contents; that the oily liquid within was a fermented beverage there was no doubt. The cup itself was decorated with angular symbols, etched into the clay and filled with a blue paint.

“But this,” Graynam said, his voice suddenly grave beyond his youth, “this…” From the plate, another earthenware creation, he plucked a small ball of rough, dark matter. “Major, I’m woodsman enough to know droppings when I see them. Notice the tiny divot at the top? This is from a hefty size elk, I'd say. What kind of people feed this to old women before they walk them off a cliff?” 

“Steady, Lieutenant. You stumbled on some sort of ceremony. That’s obvious. And you stopped it. She was going to take the babe with her, you say?”

“Yes, Sir.”

Discarding the cup in a way that signaled his own disgust, DeVries moved toward the woman and the other officers in attendance. 

“Don’t just stand there, Lieutenant. You said a young girl ran off. If you can, bring her back here. If not, give us warning when she brings her people back. Whatever this ceremony was, they’re not going to take kindly to our interference.”

“Yes, Sir.” Duplicating DeVries disregard for the cup, Lieutenant Graynam tossed the plate and whistled for his pony.

Removing his cap, DeVries polished the Ayeslford badge on its crown with a few swipes of his sleeve, the action thoughtful and calming. He replaced it with a heavy sigh and approached the earth lodge. 

Surgeon Raimi, holding a very young child, came forward to greet him. When he was standing next to her, she unwrapped the swaddling sufficiently for DeVries to see the child more fully. It was deformed. DeVries had seen worse, but the child's right arm seemed disjointed, with splayed fingers angled wildly at the end. Quickly, Raimi closed the blanket protectively around her small charge, before the cold could do more damage than fate already had.

“Eliminating the weak?” DeVries asked. “An old woman and a deformed child? A sacrifice to some god of spring, maybe?”

“Who knows,” Raimi answered. “It was awfully private for a blood ritual. And I doubt Reese can tell you more. I do need to get this child back to the wagons, Major. They’ve given it something intoxicating too.”

“Of course. Of course, but hold on a few minutes more.” Turning his attention to the old woman, the Major cleared his throat so that the captain attending her would hear. “Reese, front and center! Doc, you stay close enough to the old woman to give a shout if she heads for the edge, a’right?”

Leaving the old woman to come before DeVries, Captain Reese saluted, but with a far more relaxed discipline than Graynam would have dared. The pock-faced officer didn’t wait for the Major to ask, but briefed DeVries in a practiced and succinct manner.

“Major, the old woman’s healthy enough but bashed. Whatever she’s been drinking lets her talk to the ancestors. But even if she weren’t half off the cliff already, I can’t quite get the dialect. Best I can make it, only Graynam could have stopped her from walking right between those totems.”

“Try that again, Captain.”

“You understand, Sir. Thought he was a holy man. Seems the same here as back home.” Reese canted his head toward the old woman. “When he yelled stop, she didn’t know what he was yellin’, just that a holy Herald was on about something.” With a laugh Reese added, “And that mangy standard issue Ayelsford pony of his didn’t hurt either. I don’t think she’s ever seen a mounted man before. By now she’s a bit upset about it all. Confused about our intentions, as it were."

“Lucky us that Graynam wandered by, then,” said DeVries.

“You thinkin’ we just put our foot in it, Major?”

“If Graynam had come across fifty armed men about to cut the heart out of a virgin, do you think he would have charged in alone like that?”

“Well, yeah, Ulean,” Reese took the liberty of addressing DeVries by his first name. “That boy is his father’s son.” 

“I wanted a gift, a show of good faith to present these people with. Graynam was supposed to find the lost children, not saddle me with refugees. Now I’ve got to protect people they wanted dead. I don't think they'll give a damn about our saving lives, it’s our interference, plain and simple, that will gall.”

“Yes, Sir. I guess the lieutenant was just one minute on the wrong side of what you’d rather, Major.”

“I'm not that bad, am I, Captain? Well, no throwing them off the cliff now, is there? We’re too… civilized. Let’s get the woman and child back to the wagons, circle up the lot again and see what happens. Maybe Graynam’s going to have to play the holy man to get us out of this one too. Captain, do you think the lieutenant will actually warn me this time before all hell cuts loose on us again?”

“I haven’t seen young Graynam need talked to twice, Major.”

“Nor I,” DeVries laughed. “Come on. We should be able to get in a few rifle drills before nightfall.”