IF WE LIVE

When he regained some of his strength, Richard was taken back to Hallen. Laury came with him. He and the other wounded men were delivered to their homes in wagons. Richard walked into the Malins’ house under his own power, but Laury and a swarm of amateur nurses pressed him into bed.

             “You’re lucky you’re alive,” Plott said. “I think that wound to the shoulder punctured an artery. Though that might have saved you from gangrene: the flow of blood probably washed most of the dirt out of the wound.” Plott sighed. “It looks

as if we’ll have to take time to train some medical corpsmen. Their idea of surgery isn’t up to battlefield conditions.”

              “I thought they did pretty well,” Richard said. “They soaked the bandages in wine and whiskey — made me smell like a tavern. And they kept us clean. But they could do with some painkillers.” He shifted his massively splinted arm “And some light-weight casts. “

              Plott and the other visitors left. Laury fluffed pillows and prepared Richard for the night. She pulled the blanket up to his chin. “Stop that,” Richard said. “I’m not that sick.”

            “All right,” She kissed him. “Good night, darlin’.”

            Richard caught her hand. “Hold on. Don’t go, cher. Sleep here with me,”

            Laury was disapproving. “You know better than that. You may be feeling frisky now, but you’re still weak. You need your sleep. “

“I’ll get it. I just meant for you to lie beside me – not to do anything. “

“Well… All right.” Laury got into a nightgown. She settled gingerly beside him. “Don’t want to snag those boards you got tied to you.”

Richard fell asleep. He awoke gasping, and trying to set up. Laury restrained him. “It’s all right, darlin’. You’re with me. Was it the Blacks again?”

“Yes.” Richard shuddered. “They kept coming and coming. I saw their eyes on me, and I knew they were going to kill me… The men and horses screaming. Somehow the horses were the worst.”

“Wasn’t their fight, poor things.” Laury pulled down the top of her nightgown. She held his head against her breasts. “You’re with me, now, and I love you.”

“Yes. Love you, cher.”

Laury helped Richard take a bath. She put a stool in the steamy, sauna-like bathroom and helped Richard sit on it. She took her own clothes off and tied up her hair. She lathered his head, back and chest. “Love your curly locks.”

“You wouldn’t if you had them.”

“Guess not. No woman ever loves her own hair.” she poured a bucket of warm water over him. She gave him a mischievous look. “Have to kneel down to do your lower parts.”

She knelt and made a show of washing his feet, and slowly working her way up his legs. She put her hand on his erect penis. “Why, what’s this? Thought you were supposed to be all sick and weak.”

“Because of your touch, cher. Your beautiful body. I’d have to be dead not to get hard.”

“Well, better get it all clean. Who knows where it might go.”

She washed his penis and testicles. “Wonder if that’s good enough? Better taste to make sure.”

She touched the tip of his penis with her tongue.  She looked up at him with her pale gray eyes. “Love you, Davy.”

“Love you too.”

“That was sure the best bath I ever had,” Richard said in bed that night. “For a while I didn’t hurt at all.”

Laury sighed. “Only trouble is, now I want to fuck even more.”

They heard excited rumors of Kel’s successes. People all over the country were talking about the big battle. Most of the Valens seemed to think that Kel would chase Morik all the way back to his castle. Then Larens got a letter from Kel. He read it out to the others.

“‘I was within days of pushing him back to the river, when I all of a sudden hear that swarms of Stableners’re coming up from the south; thousands of them. They were chasing up the valleys in a way that looked like they were going to cut across my supply line, and maybe even raid into the Westfall. I broke off from him and went east just as fast as I could go, and it was a good thing I did, for it seems like he’s got almost the whole strength of the Stablen called up against me.

“‘We’re taking our stand at the gap where the Westfall River goes out into the forests, the only good place for an army to go into the Westfall. But that means we’re giving up all the forests. My little army can hold the river gap. But we can’t hit out at the Stableners. It’d be too easy for them to mob us or get between us and the gap.”‘

 “So it looks like killing some Hastableners is all we managed to do. At least there’s a thousand-odd of them that won’t be fighting Valen. But we’ve lost the war and the forest countries. Next year Morik’ll be able to come at us from both the west and south. “‘

Morik’s conquests alarmed the Valens, The leaders of the national government hurriedly tried to appear alert and vigilant. They scrambled to take credit for Kel’s victories. Larens was allowed to appoint Kel a vice-marshal of the provincial militia. He extracted a large sum of money to pay for arms and supplies. Much of it went to the spacers.

“James Plott, war profiteer,” Richard said. “The Krupp of Valen. Too bad you’re not a real cannon king.”

 “All right, I get the message.” Plott was tired and harassed. “We’re going as fast as we can. Casting steel is a shitshow. We may have to use wrought iron or weld up steel rods.”

 “I understand,” Richard said. “I don’t mean to nag you. But we’ve just got to have something to keep his heavy cavalry off us. I thought, guns, grenades – that’ll be the battle. But they’re nothing compared to seeing the Blacks come at you. The heavy hammer, as Kel says.”

 “I’ll tell you one more time,” Plott said stiffly. “We cannot make bronze or brass cannon. We can’t get the alloying metals. Therefore — are you following this? It’s got to be iron or steel. We’ll know if we can do it by the time you get back.”

Richard and Laury were taking a holiday. They went to a cabin high in the Blues to finish Richard’s recuperation. He swam and took walks to tone his stiffened muscles. He much preferred the walks. “That creek is too fast, rocky, and cold,” he complained.

“It’s like swimming in a torrent of ice cubes.”

“There’s a place where it makes a pool,” Laury said. “It’s slower and warmer. Come on now: you know you need to work your arms and shoulders.”

She led him downhill. They came to a field of boulders deposited by the stream’s boisterous springtime. It was surrounded by giant Uman trees. Some had leaves like ferns and smooth skin-like trunks. Others were covered with a fur of tiny leaves. All were green from their roots up to their crowns, in a thousand different shades.

 The creek widened and deepened into a pool. There was a little beach of gritty sand among the chunks of rock. A bluff reared up across the water. The creek fell into the pool over a break clogged with water-smoothed rocks. It fell again at the downstream end, running into a series of smaller pools. “Ain’t it fine?”

 “Beautiful,” Richard said. “But it’s not all that warm…”

 “Sure it is. Hottest day I can remember, up this high.” She threw off her clothes and plunged into the pool. Richard followed more cautiously. Laury splashed water in his face and dove under the surface.

Richard ducked under the cold, swift water. He saw that half the pool was filled with a clear, vivid light. The other half, which was shaded by the bluff, was equally filled by a mysterious and rather sinister darkness. The bottom was floored with round, mossy stones as big as Richard’s head, flattened pebbles, shards of milky quartz, and fans of yellow sand. Richard saw a pebble veined with a spectacular red and picked it up. When he surfaced the hazy daylight made the colors look dull and ordinary. He threw it away and dove back into the magic clarity of the water.

Richard rested in dignified ease behind the breakwater provided by a convenient boulder, keeping his place with slight movements of his legs. Laury worked her way to the head of the pool. Suddenly she turned and swam with the current. She darted past Richard, batting playfully at his arm. She jack-knifed into the swiftest current, where the pool flowed out between two massive boulders, The racing press of water flicked her neatly out of the pool.

Richard watched her climb back over the rocks. Her pale, pink-freckled skin glowed against the shadowed greens of the creekside. The wet weight of her hair drew it back from her head. Her slender chest and shoulders made her look young and girlish. The rounded fullness of her thighs and hips was eminently feminine. She clambered over rocks with a wonderful combination of sharply angled elbows, elegantly straight calves, and softly curved buttocks.

Richard looked beneath the water. He saw her disembodied foot appear at the top edge of the pool. A narrow, high-arched foot attached to a slim ankle; its skin was whitened by the chilly water. Laury jumped into the pool with a great splash. Richard saw her lying in a fanfare of bubbles. Her red-gold hair billowed around her head. Then the water swept the bubbles away; it pulled her hair out into a long, neat banner. Her cloud-gray eyes met his through the cool water. She pursed her lips and blew a stream of little bubbles. The water swept them over his face. Her pink nipples and wetted pubic hair stood out against her pale skin.

Richard set his feet against a rock and thrust powerfully toward her. He caught her calf below the knee and pulled himself up against her. They floated to the surface. Richard hooked an arm around a boulder, holding them against the rush of water.

“Laury,” Richard said. “I love you. I want to marry you.” He spoke in a low, husky tone.

“What?” Laury shouted. The roaring water covered Richard’s words. “I can’t hear you.”

Richard yelled into her ear. “Marry me, I said. I love you.”

“Oh. Yes – yes, you know I will. You sure picked a great place to ask.”

Richard laughed and carried her to the little beach. They confirmed the thing on the coarse sand. “Do you truly love me?” Laury asked. “When you had the fever, you’d Sometimes call her name. Miry’s.”

Richard was silent for a moment. “I can’t ever forget her. I loved her. But what we’ve got is something deeper than I had with Miry. If you hadn’t taken care of me, I might’ve died.”

“Nah. You’re strong. You would’ve lived.”

“I could’ve lived, maybe,” Richard said.  “But without you, I’m not sure I would’ve wanted to.”

“Well, I want you to live. Cause I think you’re  going to be a daddy.”

Richard looked at her. “You mean. . . “

“Well, I ain’t sure. I wasn’t counting my days at the start. I didn’t figure you’d get your strength back so quick. But it was bound to happen sooner or later. The way we’ve been carrying on.”

When they got back they had to endure the congratulations. As Laury had predicted, her mother and father were pleased and noticeably relieved. The spacers were brusque and casual. “We’ve been busy with other things,” Plott said. “Making you an unpleasant engagement gift.”

Richard was puzzled.

“The guns, man! We’re making steel guns.”

“Oh. Wonderful. I’d forgotten.”

Plott and Peterson took Richard out to their firing range. “We had a terrible time,” Plott said. “We tried casting, but the steel kept getting full of bubbles and dirt. Finally we switched to welding up steel rods. Wheel it out, men.”

 A team of grinning workmen pushed the cannon from a shed. It was spectacular. The wooden parts of its carefully made carriage glowed from hand-rubbing. The cannon was polished to a mirror finish.

Plott was a little embarrassed. “The apprentices. Since it was a first-off and we had so much trouble, they sort of fancied it up. “

 “The barrel seems pretty thin,” Richard said. “Even for that bore…”

“It’s steel, man” Plott said. “Go on, men — load it up. Show him. “

The workmen pushed a bag of powder and a ball into the gun. “Getting spheres of a regular size and shape is strangely difficult,” Peterson said. “The chief and his men are experimenting with cylindrical shot and explosive shells.”

“Before you ask,” Plott said. “No, we’re not making shells anytime soon. I tried a few, and they’re hellishly dangerous – more to the shooter than they shootee.”

The men elevated the gun, aiming it at a far-off target. The gun-captain poured a little fine-grained priming powder into the touch hole. He cocked the hammer lock firing mechanism. Plott nodded. “Shoot.”

The gun-captain jerked his lanyard. The cannon roared and rolled back. The sound was sharper than the dull boom of the Hastablener cannon. For a moment Richard heard the ball. It made a howling scream and threw up a fountain of dirt beyond the target.

Plott was examining the barrel. “Seems okay. I don’t know how the old-time gunners handled all this shit. Lasers and missiles were much simpler.”

Peterson wasn’t interested in the practical difficulties. “Show him the rifle, chief.”

“Come on out, Able.” Plott introduced him. “My foreman. And, it turns out, a real marksman.”

Able was a tall, vulpine man. He carried a carbine-length weapon and a bandolier of cartridges.

Richard looked at the impressive mechanism at the back of the barrel. “A breech loader, chief? That’s really something.”

Plott was rather proud of it. “Piezoelectric ignition. Closing the bolt penetrates the paper cartridge. The hammer strikes a quartz crystal inside the bolt. Show him, Abel.”

Abel pulled a cartridge from his bandolier. He flicked the bolt with his thumb, opening the breech. He put the cartridge in, and rotated the bolt. He cocked the hammer, brought the gun to his eye, and fired in one motion.

Richard heard and felt the cracking detonation. The far-off target was a metal sheet: it rang from the impact of the shot. The report echoed around the mountain. Abel pulled another cartridge and hit the target again. A third shot – a third hit.

“That target is about two hundred meters away,” Plott said.

“This thing’ll hit anything you can see,” Abel said enthusiastically. “We call it the longhammer.”

“Holy shit.” Richard shook his head. “A few thousand of those and I can stop having nightmares about the Blacks.”

Peterson nodded. “The rifle is the end of the cavalry charge.”

Plott was less optimistic. “You said the bad word – thousands. It’ll take big money to gear up for production. “

“High finance,” Peterson observed. “And low politics. War really is hell.”

Larens was busy with the politics. He brought important visitors to see the cannon and other arms. He wrote many letters. He recalled Kel — Kel, the heroic winner of the big battle; Kel, Valen’s greatest and most famous soldier. Larens was building him up for political purposes, but there was no doubt that Kel would agree with it all. Larens thought that Kel’s expert testimony on the importance of the new weapons would be useful. Though it was a close trade-off. The idea of Kel fighting the Hastableners somewhere in the distance was attractive to all; but Larens noted that some people found Kel’s actual presence a little, well, irksome. You know?

Richard knew. Kel came racing over the mountains. To make sure the wedding was done right, he said. His entry into Hallenwater became an impromptu parade. The crowd cheered their initially conquering hero. Kel loved it. “You’d think I’d already won the whole thing all by myself. Makes you wonder how they’ll carry on when I really beat Morik.”

 “That isn’t the only thing that makes you wonder,” Richard said.

Kel waved to the last of his admirers. “You saying it ain’t sure we’re going to beat him? Hell, I know that. But there ain’t any purpose worrying about it now. ” He pulled Richard aside. “When’s the big day? For you and Laury, I mean”

 “I’m not sure,” Richard said. “They’re still talking about it.” Laury, her mother, and a large crowd of female relations had convened to deal with the matter.

 “Well, it’d better be soon. There’s reasons”

 Richard played straight man. “What reasons?”

“Politics,” Kel said, “How’d you like to be marshal of Hallen?”

Richard stared at him. “What? What are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about power, boy. Me and Larens is thinking about what happens when the war’s over. If we live, that is. You tell us how these new things’ve got to be handled right, or the whole country’ll get into a hellish mess; and you know those assholes in Val ain’t going to handle anything right. So we figure you’ve got to be set up where you’ll have the power to see to things. Be a hero and all.”

“Yeah,” Richard said. “Sure. There’s one little thing you don’t explain — why can’t you be marshal? With me as your vice-marshal, chief of staff, or whatever. The same way we’ve handled it all along.”

“Because those people in Val get to say yes or no to a new marshal, and that damned Land party gang ain’t never going to say yes to me. One of my uncles used to be the boss of Avenshan, and that old devil had a real pointy-toed way of kicking ass. They don’t like us Malins in Val.” Kel smoothed his mustache and smiled. “Can’t understand why.”

“I think I can figure it out,” Richard said. “I suppose I’m just going to be a front man? While my trusty vice-marshal has the real command.”

“Well, sure,” Kel said. “With the whole country depending on how the fighting comes out, I figure we can’t risk having anybody but me for the boss of the thing. You can handle the troops with the new weapons, and I want you to tend to all the stuff about supplies and the other bullshit the marshal has to do. I don’t want to fool with any of that.”

 “Thanks a lot,” Richard said. “‘What you mean is that you want me to do everything boring. “

Kel grinned. “That’s right. But you’ll have the rank, Davy. You’ll be the Marshal of Hallen.”

 “Yes. I suppose it’s all right for a foreigner to be Marshal? But I guess it’s sort of handy that I’m marrying Laury. Makes me seem more like a real Hallener. I wonder if she’ll like that. “

 “No reason for it to bother her,” Kel said. But he seemed almost uncertain. “I mean, you can tell her it was a surprise. It’ll even be true. But maybe she won’t like it much, just at the start.”

She didn’t. She viewed Kel’s schemes with resentment. “I knew he had some kind of plan about you and me, but he could’ve at least waited till after the wedding. He must’ve been fixing this all along.”

Richard shrugged. “Maybe he did. But what he’s saying is true.”

 “And you want the power,” Laury said. “You want him to right, so you can get to be a hero and do things the way you want.”

“Yes,” Richard said. “I want to beat Morik. I want to crush the Hastableners for what they did to us.” He put his hand on her belly. “I want this country – our country – t0 be a good place for baby to grow up and become someone like you, or Kel, or Larens.”

“Not like Kel, please. Daddy’d be good.” She put her hand over his. “Can you see it yet?”

“Oh, yes. I love it.”

Laury looked down at her belly with a satisfied expression. “I like it pretty well myself. Just think – for the first time in my life I ain’t going to be skinny. That’s worth the throw-up time all by itself. Pretty soon nobody’ll be able to think I’m a funny-looking boy.”

A Hallener wedding, Richard learned, was a procession between two feasts. The couple endured bawdy toasts at the first banquet and walked hand-in-hand through the streets. The wedding guests followed the bride and groom to their home. They allowed the couple to escape and got down to some serious eating and drinking.

“We used to do some funny things,” Kel said. “Like after we let them go upstairs, we’d make out like we was going to go on and have our party downstairs; but soon as we figured they’d got busy with themselves, we’d sneak up and screw all their doors and windows shut. Wouldn’t let ’em out for days. They don’t do that kind of thing around Hallenwater; they’re a dull lot.”

“They may be dull,” Richard said. “But there’s a hell of a lot of them. ” The wedding was complicated by politics. Larens felt obliged to invite all his friends and many of his enemies. The two groups seemed to include most of the country’s population. Larens and Kel guided Richard around, muttering explanations of who this or that person was. Most of the names and faces blended into a vague mass, but Kel’s brothers stood out. They were almost as big as he was, and they looked much alike. But they didn’t have his cavalry mustache and guileless smile. They observed the foibles of the lowlander wedding guests with stern disapproval.

“My family,” Kel said. “The meanest bunch in the country. Me and Sissy is the only tolerable Malins – and sometimes I ain’t sure about Sissy.”

Laury joined them. She had her long hair up and wore a white dress. “Hate dresses,” she said. “Just a mess, if horses’re your business.”

“But you look soo good.” Richard leaned over and whispered: “You’re like a cake with frosting on it. I could eat you up.”

“You think so? Guess I could wear one ever’ oncet. Just to keep you filled up.”

“Time to walk,” Sissy said. “Hold hands and look happy.”

Ema and Plott stood along the procession. She let go of him and made a traditional Japanese style bow. “May… May you be happy forever.”

“Oncet given,” Laury said. “A thousand returned.” They hugged, and both burst into tears.

“Sweet life,” Kel said. “Thought we’re supposed to be happy.”

“Hush, stupid man,” Sissy said. “Ain’t tears at a wedding, hit ain’t real.”

They walked to the Malin’s house. “Time to say words,” Kel said. “You nervy?”

Richard nodded. “Don’t know why. I’m tenser than before battle.”

“All you got to do is talk,” Kel said. “Ain’t like the Blacks’re coming at you.”

“Like you’d know,” Laury said. “Step back, uncle. You ain’t the main thing here.” The white dress made her eyes seem a darker gray. She whispered. “You remember?”

Richard nodded. Laury had carefully copied out the vows, and pinned them inside the sleeve of his jacket, lest he forget.

She held her hands out palm up. Richard put his palms on hers. “I wed you, for love and for life.”

Laury repeated the first vow, and added: “I’ll stand with you, and lie with you forever, whatever comes.”

Richard said the second vow and added: “For I am yours, and you are mine.”

“You’re wed!” the crowd shouted. “Now go to bed!”

Laury and Richard went up to the room they had been given. It had been Richard’s sickroom. They sat on the edge of the bed.

Laury was tired and a little downcast. “Well, we’re married.”

 “We sure are.” Richard smiled. “You know the good thing about dresses? You can lift the skirts.” He pulled up her dress and put this hand on her thigh. “I swear, your legs’re already a little rounder. Your skin is so smooth, and you’ve got a flush, like you’ve been drinking red wine.”

“I have. While they were dressing me.” She lay back in bed and hiked her dress up further. She wore no underwear. Her red gold pubic hair was bright against her pale skin. “Wonder if fucking’s any different after you’re married?”

Larens engineered the money and politics the spacers needed to engineer the guns. He invited important bosses to inspect the arms and urged them to buy bonds backed by the sale of the cannon, rifles, and shotguns. Note-holders would get a royalty on each weapon sold. The political barons stuffed their pockets with the notes and went back to the capital. They found themselves considering a measure which required the government to buy thousands of cannon, rifles, and shotguns. Which would make the holders of arms bonds rich.

“It was sure to go through,” Larens said. “Only trouble was, the state don’t have the money to pay for the stuff. Far as I know, it never had that much. Ema and Plott gave me the idea to make another kind of note – a kind of war-note – that the state could sell to get the money to buy weapons. I wondered whether there was enough loose money in the whole country to buy all the notes I was dreaming up, and that sort of worried me; but then I saw a slick way out. We’ll just have them make a law that says the state’s got to buy back the war-notes for at least what they sold them for, anytime people want to sell. That’ll mean people can use them to buy our notes. Which they will.”

Larens shook his head and laughed. He was amazed by his own cleverness. “You see how it’s going to work? Anybody’s got a war-note is going to want to trade it for one of our notes. Because our notes say they’ll pay out on selling real, solid things – cannons, guns, and all – but the state’s just saying it’ll pay out someday, somehow, some way. So any time we need money, we just take all the bales of war notes we’re sure to be getting go trade them for the hard coin the state has to give us.” He shook his head again. “If we were to make enough of those notes, I believe we could suck up ever coin in the country.”

Laury was admiring. “Wonderful, daddy. It’s the lowest, trickiest, most cunning thing I’ve ever heard of.”

Larens’ machinations got the arms paid for, but the military authorities in Val showed no interest in Plott’s rifles. They wanted the impressive cannon and thousands of shotguns, but they didn’t understand the tactical advantages of the rifle.

Kel wasted no time trying to tell them that the rifle was not just a cumbersome and demanding form of the shotgun. “I ain’t wearing my tongue out trying to get those assholes to do right. Ever rifle I get to a Hallen man gives him a better chance to stay alive, and I’m working for Hallen, not those people in the Vale. Besides, it seems like to me that the rifles ought to be in a bunch, shooting just as fast as they can go, like the way we used the bowmen in the forests. Wouldn’t be sensible to scatter them around.”

“I suppose not,” Richard said. “But Morik’s bound to have something better than twenty cannon and a few hundred muskets. The troops in the Vale could be almost helpless against him, while we’re cut off by the mountains. “

“You’re thinking we should fight in the Vale?” Kel shook his head. “We do that, we’ve got to go where the High Judge and his marshals send us. And you know where that‘ll be.”

“In front,” Richard said. “Between them and Morik.”

“Damn right. Jammed in between the assholes and Morik. And he’ll have an army two-three times bigger than ours. Remember the number one rule: when the other fellow’s got the strength on you, there’s only one thing to do – don’t be there. To win, we’ve got to pick our time and place, and we ain’t going to be able to do that in the Vale.”

“It’s a hell of a gamble,” Richard said. “When we fight, we better do a hell of a job of it.”

“Then make sure that we do. Drill your people. See to it that they’re so good that they can whip anybody they come up against.”

 Richard trained cadres to use the cannon and rifles. The cadremen instructed recruits sent by Kel. At first the trainees had to share the few weapons available. Plott was still busy gathering supplies, building machines, and organizing workers. But he was gearing up for production.

The thin plumes of smoke from the ironworkers’ forges swelled into a stationary thundercloud. It was illuminated by the lightning glare of incandescent steel. The roads swarmed with wagons bringing iron ore from the mines in Avenshan. Barrows of rifle parts and the massy, log-like shapes of unbored cannon rumbled from forges to finishing shops. Kel brought large batches of militiamen down to drill and practice with the new weapons. Harassed Guardsmen tried to control the heavy traffic. The roar of cannon and the popping of small arms could be heard all over town, all day long.

Few of the townspeople complained. Things were happening. The spacers decided that they didn’t have time to build conventional factories. Everything had to be done by subcontracting the work to existing Hallener shops. Sissy helped them make deals with the larger subcontractors, trading the work done for shares in what Plott called the Valen Industrial Corporation. Money, jobs and the knowledge of how to make the new products flowed through a network of smiths, carpenters, and other craftworkers. Teamsters were frantically busy; they scrounged the whole country for draft animals. Sissy and other horse-breeders made unheard of profits. Farmers strained to meet the new markets in linen for cartridges and nitrocellulose, fodder for the teamsters’ horses, and bread for the soldiers. The ironworkers consumed the whole province’s production of charcoal, forcing the Halleners to turn to coal. Casually worked seams in the Green Mountains suddenly became a valuable resource.

“The whole country’s stirring,” Plott said. “These people were really ready for it.”                             Richard nodded. “How does it feel? James Plott, empire-builder.”

 The glow of furnaces lit Plott’s face, giving him a messianic look. “Don’t laugh, Richard. That’s just what we are building here. This country is going to dominate the world. It’s got the resources, and the people have the drive, flexibility, and brains to use them. If we’d gotten started a year earlier, or even a few months, Morik wouldn’t have the least chance. Even as it is, I doubt that he can manage it. Sometimes I almost pity him”

 “Morik?” Richard said. “You’re kidding.”

 “He’s a brilliant, murderous bastard,” Plott said. “But his people are primitives, and they’re about to be overwhelmed by forces that they’ll never understand. They think they’re tough as hell, but they’re really just hard; and like everything hard, whether it’s steel or peoples, they’re brittle. When the big moves come, they’ll crack. I think Morik knows that. But circumstances are forcing him to push the changes that are going to destroy the life which made him. And that can’t be a comfortable role.”

 Richard was surprised. “I didn’t know you were so… Philosophical.”

 “I’m not,” Plott said. “But chief engineers do occasionally turn their minds to something other than the best ways to inconvenience their crews. I’ve seen a lot of worlds and a lot of different peoples, but I’ve never seen anything quite like these Valens. Morik may be able to beat them in battle, but the idea that he’s going to rule them with a bunch of illiterate horse-soldiers is ridiculous. They’re not primitive at all. With us to give them a few hints and nudges, they’re bound to win out. They’re about the toughest, smartest, downright canniest people I’ve ever known. Especially the Halleners.”   

 “I’ve noticed,” Richard said. “Especially one particular Hallener.”

“Kel?”

“Him too,” Richard said. “But I was thinking of Laury.”

As the winter deepened, Laury widened. Her clear skin took on a vivid, perfect tone. Her movements seemed more fluid. The bones of her arms and shoulders, which might have been just a little too obviously present, seemed to retreat into her. Her nervous temper was soothed. She often smiled; it was an enigmatic and bewitching expression.

“And your shape is… Swell.” Richard put his hand on her rounded belly. “You’re a regular Ayva.”

 “Ayva? You don’t want to be calling a Hallener woman by that name. Specially not your own wife.”

“Why not? Isn’t Ayva some kind of Stablener mother-goddess?”

“Well, she was a mama, all right; but how she got that way wasn’t so good, Ain’t you heard that story?”

 “Just the name,” Richard said. “And that it has something to do with the Ayvens.”

“It has more than something to do with them,” Laury said. “It’s really a long song, 

that daddy says the Ayvens had made up to fake some kind of claim to the rule of Stablen. The Hastableners say this Ayva is the same as the Wild Girl the Lastableners tell about in their songs, but the Lastablener Wild Girl is a little lost kid that somehow manages to live all alone out on the empty. She learns all kind of secret ways of the Stablen, and makes up her own ways of singing, riding horses, and such. The Hastableners’ Ayva ain’t no little girl – though she’s sure wild enough. She takes to fucking with herdsmen she finds out alone: creeping into their bedrolls while they’re sleeping, which must’ve been pretty surprising for them. Before dawn, she always runs off, and she’s so wild and strange that the men think that maybe they just dreamed her.

“Carrying on like that, she gets a baby in her, and she lays down in the midsummer heat, far out on the wide Stablen, with not another woman or anybody at all to help her. But the wild horses stood ’round her, and they licked the sweat off her, as she lay there in the grass, and nudged the two babies to her breast. For she’d had twins, that she named Amik and Avik.

“The two boys grow up out there with their mama alone, living her wild life. They were just alike in looks, both having black hair and gold eyes. But for all that they were true twins, they could always be told apart, for their natures were different and showed on them. Amik was always laughing and smiling: he stayed with his mama most times, and they sang and played as they worked with the horses and about their little camp. Avik never smiled, and his laugh wasn’t a thing you’d want to hear, for he was one of those men that has a hunger for killing. He wouldn’t do it to eat meat, but just to make some poor beast die, and leave its carcass to lie and rot. Avya didn’t try to change him, because it was just her nature to take everything like it was. But she couldn’t love him like she did Amik.

 “Anyways, the boys grow up, and one day Avik rides into camp and finds Amik and Ayva fucking. She was the Wild Girl that knew no law, see, and Amik was a handsome boy of an age for it. Seeing it done, Avik finds he’s ready for it too, but Ayva says no. I can smell blood on you, she says, from your killing some poor creature. Avik goes off mad, like you’d expect, and says to himself, I’ll show you who gets to do fucking.

Well, Avik had a rope he’d made himself all of horsehairs. A secret thing, because he’d made it to snare the beasts he killed, and to strangle them. And he goes straight off to Ayva, ties her with that rope, and rapes her.

“Ayva is as troubled as a woman can be. She sings in sorrow that her own son has done such a thing to her. Out on the wide Stablen Amik feels more than hears her song, and rushes back to camp to see what’s wrong. He cuts her free, then falls to his knees in fear, because by then Ayva’s sorrow’s changed to rage.  She starts to sing, just soft to herself, laying out all the things she’s got against Avik; and it troubles her so that her voice raises up into a song that was a song. She sings to call up all the world against him. Storm wind blow on him, she says; sun take your light from him; grasses cut at him; let ever’ beast turn on him. And horses, my horses, oh, my sunhearted horses – run! Run!

“Out on the wide Stablen Avik was laying a snare to catch some animal’s legs, when he notices all’s gone still. Not a breath blowing; not a stem stirring; not a shift showing. He looks around, and in the sky that was clear as anything just before is something like a great wall of dark that’s coming from the north and growing higher and higher with every heartbeat. The wind that’s pushing it, that cold north wind, reaches him and near to knocks him down. It pushes the whipgrass flat and makes the stems trash about so they rub against each other to make a million million little cries.

“Avik jumps over to his horse, but it runs away from him; and, as he stands there, the little ground beasts swarm out of their burrows to bite at his feet. The whipgrass slashes at him like to earn its name; and even the timid springer, that fears to get anywhere near any creature bigger than a foal, comes bounding up to butt at him; and he hears the crazy screaming of any number of slinks hunting after him. A great fear comes over him, and he runs and runs, not understanding why, or what to do.

“As he runs, the great cloud wall passed over him and blotted out the light. The rain came down hard, hissing in the air and patting on the land so it was hard to breathe for all the water in the air. But he could still see, from all the lightning that was flashing and crashing around him. And he heard, far off behind the rain, the booming and howling of the wind, the crashing of the thunder, and his own hard breathing — he heard a sound that was the worst of all: like a drummer using the whole world to beat on. It was the whole great herd of his mother’s horses running in the wild race. He looked over his shoulder and saw them in the lightning’s flash, as he ran, as the ground shook so he could hardly keep his feet. The lead horses all gray as the storm clouds, in their hundreds and hundreds, with their tails and manes flying straight out behind and their eyes whited with fury. They caught him just after and ran him down; and with their iron-colored hooves and their bone-white teeth they tore at him till there wasn’t any piece left bigger than your little finger. They say the dappled gray comes from those that was spotted with his blood.

Well, Amik was afraid, having seen how great Ayva’s power was, and he knew that their loving was wrong somehow. It was the guilt of his brother’s blood coming through to him, the song says. But when she threw off her clothes to do some work, he saw the beauty of Ayva’s body. As loving is sweet, living strong, and dying hard: so was she beautiful. So the song says. And seeing her like she was, he couldn’t help himself anymore than she could.

“When she came to him he never could think of anything but the look and feel of her, but he was gnawed by guilt in every heartbeat he wasn’t with her. At last he couldn’t take it anymore. In that spring he had a tent that was woven all of the hairs from the tails of gray mares, that’re the wind’s darlin’s; and he took her to this tent, which he’d stolen from whoever the hell’d have such a thing, like to make a gift to her. That night, while she slept, Amik crept out and sowed the door-flap shut

Now that tent, being made all of a piece from the tails of gray mares, that’re the wind’s darlin’s, would hold against anything. Not any wind nor water nor anything but cold steel could get through that cloth, and Amik’s sown up the door-flap with gut that’d shrunk up hard so Ayva couldn’t pick the laces out. She sat there singing in sorrow of not being free, which it was her nature to be, and that her son and love had put her in there. Even her song couldn’t get through the gray tent’s cloth. But the little ground beasts, that scurry about, could hear where it went through the laces; and they longed to be with Ayva. They gnawed those laces till they parted.

Amik was far out on the wide Stablen working with the horses, but he knew right off that Ayva was free of the gray tent. He saw the ears of the horses prick up all of a sudden, and they all turned their heads the same way and started to run off. The wind freshened and made the grass lean over the same way, so it seemed like the whole world was yearning towards her. It made Amik shiver to see how great her power was. He whipped up onto one of the horses and rode hard to get to her and tell her he’d meant no harm. He felt in fear of his life that she might call up the storm and the horses against him.

“Ayva’d rode off easy, thinking he’d let her go as the best way out of it. When she saw him coming, she thought he meant to put her in the gray tent again. So she sang her horses up to the wild race, which is like a kind of a gait that only she could ever get horses to do. She sang so hard that the south wind came up to press at her back; the grass laid down to let her by; storm-clouds raced over her head; and all the world turned under the hooves of her horses.

“Amik couldn’t catch her – nobody could – but him being her son, he’d got close, so that his horse heard her song and was drawn on by it just like hers were. It came to Amik what she must be thinking, and he tried to yell out that he meant no harm; but he couldn’t be heard for the drumming of the hooves of the great herd of horses following her. He thought to turn his horse, like to show her he didn’t mean to catch her; but nobody but her could turn a horse from the wild race. And though he was such a great horseman, he didn’t dare to slip off his mount, for no man could dismount from the wild race and live. He was caught, and couldn’t do any more than watch what happened.

“They must’ve started somewhere up in the far north of the Hastab, for it says they reached the sea when it started to darken. The Hastab is flat as anything, which you know better than me; but where it meets the north sea the land sort of breaks off and tumbles down into a steepish hill. Ayva rode right over the edge without even slowing, trusting herself to keep her seat and thinking to shoot off along the beach; but there wasn’t any beach. The land broke off sharp at the bottom, and the sea came right up to it so that she fell into deep water.

“Ayva jumped off her horse and sang for the waves to push her back to land. But old ocean, he don’t hear nothing but himself. The waves slapped at her and pushed her down. She struggled all she could, for living is strong and dying hard, like the song says; only at last she was used up and slipped under the water and died of drowning.

Later on the family that calls itself the Ayvens came to rule the wide Stablen, that was her land where once she rode free. And the Ayvens claim that they’re the sons of Amik, that was the son of the true wild Girl herself. Most people that ain’t Hastableners say it’s all lies: that if there ever was a real Wild Girl, she was the one in the old Lastab songs, a virgin that never had any sons at all. But as lies go, it’s a pretty damn good one.