Gordon was too weak to strangle Johnny for his incredible, jarring cheerfulness. He tried to smile back instead, but it only made his cracked lips hurt.

A scuttling movement in the corner opposite them showed that they were not alone. There were three other prisoners in the shed with them — filthy, wild-eyed scarecrows who had obviously been here a long time. They stared back with saucer eyes, obviously long past human.

“Did… did anyone get away from the ambush?” It had been Gordon’s first lucid opportunity to ask.

“I think so. Your warning must have buggered the bastards’ timing. It gave us a chance to make a pretty good fight of it. I’m sure we took out a couple of them before they swamped us.” Johnny’s eyes shone. If anything, the boy’s admiration seemed to have increased. Gordon looked away. He didn’t want praise for his behavior that night.

“I’m pretty sure I killed the sonovabitch who smashed my guitar. Another one—”

“What about Phil Bokuto?” Gordon interrupted.

Johnny shook his head. “I don’t know, Gordon. I saw no black ears or… other things… among the ‘trophies’ the crumbs collected. Maybe he made it.”

Gordon sagged back against the slats of their pen. The sound of rushing water, a roar that had been with them all night, came from the other side. He turned and peered through the gaps in the rough planks.

About twenty feet away was the edge of a bluff. Beyond it, through ragged shreds of drifting fog, he could see the heavily forested wall of a canyon cut by a narrow, swift stream.

Johnny seemed to read his thoughts. For the first time the young man’s voice was low, serious.

“That’s right, Gordon. We’re right in the heart of it. That down there’s the bitch herself. The bloody Rogue.”

11

The mist and icy drizzle turned back into flurries of snow-flakes for the next week. With food and rest, the two prisoners slowly regained some strength. For company they had only each other. Neither their guards nor their fellow captives would speak to them in more than monosyllables.

Still, it wasn’t hard to learn some things about life in the Holnist realm. Their meals were brought by silent, cowering drudges from the nearby shanty town. The only figures they saw who weren’t emaciated — besides the earringed survivalists themselves — were the women who served the Holnists’ pleasure. And even those worked by day: drawing water from the frigid stream or currying the stable of well-fed horses.

The pattern seemed well established, as if this was an accustomed way of life. And yet Gordon became convinced that the neofeudal community was in a state of flux.

“They’re preparing for a big move,” he told Johnny as they watched a caravan arrive one afternoon. Still more frightened serfs trudged into Agness, pulling carts and setting up camp in the swelling warren. Obviously, this little valley could not hold such a population for very long.

“They’re using this place as a staging area.”

Johnny suggested, “That mob of people might offer us an advantage, if we find a way to bust out of here.”

“Hmm,” Gordon answered. But he didn’t hold much hope for aid from any of the slaves out there. They’d had any spirit beaten out of them, and had problems enough of their own.

One day, after the noon meal, Gordon and Johnny were ordered to step out of their pen and strip naked. A pair of shabby, silent women came and gathered up their clothes. While the northerners’ backs were turned, buckets of cold river water were thrown on them. Gordon and Johnny gasped and sputtered. The guards all laughed, but the women’s eyes did not even flicker as they left, heads bowed.

The Holnists — dressed in green and black camouflage, their ears arrayed with golden rings — competed in lazy knife practice, flipping their blades in quick, underhand arcs. The two northerners clutched greasy blankets in front of a small fire, trying to stay warm.

That evening their cleaned and patched clothes were returned to them. This time one of the women actually looked up briefly, giving Gordon a chance to see her face. She might have been twenty, though her lined eyes looked far older. Her brown hair was streaked with gray. She glanced at Gordon for only a moment as he dressed. But when he ventured a smile, she turned quickly and fled without looking back.

The sunset meal was better fare than the usual sour gruel. There were scraps of something like venison amidst the parched corn. Perhaps it was horsemeat.

Johnny dared fate by asking for seconds. The other prisoners blinked in amazement and cringed even farther into their corners. One of the silent guards growled and took their plates away. But to their surprise he returned with another helping for each of them.

It was full dark when three Holn warriors in floppy berets marched up behind a stoop-shouldered servant bearing a torch. “Come along,” the leader told them. “The General wants to see you.”

Gordon looked at Johnny, standing proud again in his uniform. The young man’s eyes were confident. After all, they seemed to say, what did these jerks have that could compare with Gordon’s authority as an official of the Restored Republic?

Gordon remembered how the boy had half-carried him during the long journey south from the Coquille. He had little heart anymore for pretenses, but for Johnny’s sake he would try the old scam one more time.

“All right, postman,” he told his young friend. Gordon winked. “Neither sleet, nor hail, nor gloom of night…”

Johnny grinned back. “Through bandit’s hell, through firefight…”

They turned together and left the jail shed ahead of their guards.

12

“Welcome, gentlemen”

The first thing Gordon noticed was the crackling fireplace. The snug pre-Doom ranger station was stone sealed and warm. He had almost forgotten what the sensation felt like.

Second noticed was the rustle of silk as a long-legged blond rose from a cushion by the hearth. The girl was a striking contrast to nearly all the other women they had seen here — clean, erect, laden down with glittering stones that would have brought a fortune before the war.

Nevertheless, her eyes were lined, and she looked at the two northerners as one might regard creatures from the far side of the moon. Silently, she stood up and exited the room through a beaded curtain.

“I said welcome, gentlemen. Welcome to the Free Realm.”

At last Gordon turned and took notice of a thin, bald man with a neatly trimmed beard, who rose to greet them from a cluttered desk. Four gold rings glittered from one earlobe, and three from the other — symbols of rank. He approached holding out his hand.

“Colonel Charles Westin Bezoar, at your service, formerly of the bar of the State of Oregon and Republican Commissioner for Jackson County. I presently have the honor of being judge advocate of the American Liberation Army.”

Gordon arched an eyebrow, ignoring the outstretched hand. “There have been a lot of ‘armies’ since the Fall. Which one did you say you were with, again?”

Bezoar smiled and let his hand drop casually. “I realize that some apply other names to us. Let’s defer that for now and just say I serve as aide-de-camp to General Volsci Macklin, who is your host. The General will be joining us shortly. Meanwhile, may I offer you some of our hill country sour mash?” He lifted a cut glass decanter from the carved oak sideboard. “Whatever you may have heard about our rough life up here, I believe you’ll find we’ve refined at least a few of the old arts.”

Gordon shook his head. Johnny looked over the man’s head. Bezoar shrugged.

“No? Pity. Perhaps some other time. I hope you don’t mind if I do indulge.” Bezoar poured himself a glass of brown liquor and gestured to two chairs near the fire. “Please, gentlemen, you must still be exhausted from your journey. Be comfortable. There is much I’d like to know.