“My lady,” the officers said, bowing. “We are honored by your presence here.”
“Thirsty, too, I hope,” she replied, laughing and wiping her forehead. “Drink your fill. This is a day of celebration. The barbican is complete. The chief just rammed it with a wag at top speed, and the gate held. The repairs are finished.”
The whole room roared its approval, and a servant took the tray, passing out the beer to eager hands.
“To the baron!” a farmer shouted. The workers thundered the name “Cawdor” over and over.
“And to the good health of our new heir!” a cook added from the back of the hall. “Five pounds going to two hundred, young Alexander Cawdor!”
The assemblage lifted their mugs high and drank in silence.
“Praise be,” the sec man said with a grin, new life showing in his lined face. “May he follow his good father, and not his triple-damned mutie loving uncle, Harvey.”
The workers and soldiers paused, glancing nervously at the baron. Nathan said nothing, then slowly stood and spit on the floor.
“To hell with Harvey!” he bellowed, brandishing a mug, and the hall erupted with cheers.
Reclaiming his chair, Nathan drank from the mug and placed it aside. “How are you feeling, my love?” he asked softly. The nearby workers pretended they could hear nothing.
Weakly, Tabitha smiled. “I’ll live, and our son grows stronger every minute. I had to find him a second wet nurse to feed that outrageous Cawdor appetite. But that wasn’t a problem since so many children had beenlost in the war.”
Nathan placed his hand on top of hers and gently gave a squeeze. “We’re lucky our son lived, which is why I assigned the two of you twenty guards. The ville means nothing if you aren’t safe.”
Hands under the table, Tabitha pursed her pale lips. “Do you really think such extravagant precautions are necessary? Sullivan has been burned, Overton is dead. Who would dare to attack the heir of Front Royal now?”
“Too many,” Nathan growled, leaning back in his chair. The more prosperous the ville became, the more coldhearts attacked, and mercies raided the outer hamlets. The M-16 from their own armory, and the AK-47 blasters taken from the blues were handling the problem easily, but the ammo was getting low quickly, and they had no way of reloading the 7.62 mm rounds. A gunsmith tried using black powder instead of cordite, and the weapon nearly exploded into pieces. Doc Tanner had told them the secret of turning black powder into gunpowder, but that mix of chems was even more powerful. Something purely for cannons, once the blacksmiths finished making them. If ever, he added sullenly.
“Any word from Ryan or the others?”
“None,” she answered. “Is that bad?”
“Neither bad nor good. My uncle could survive skydark itself.” He poured more beer in the mug. Death wasn’t a topic for such a day. The corpses were buried. It was time for the living to forget. “And how does the weather look?” he asked, changing the subject.
“Clear,” she replied, a smile almost returning to her tired face. “No sign of a storm. Sorry.”
“Shitfire,” the baron cursed, and reached into his jacket for a predark steel tube. He fondled it for a second, then opened the container and handed a fat cigar to the nearest man. “Pass this down to Dundee. I bet him there would be acid rain by the end of this week, but he said no. As always, he was correct.”
“You wanted rain, my lord?” the man asked, shocked.
Tolerantly, Nathan smiled. “You’re new here, yes? Thought so. Front Royal needs the acid rain to make sulfur for our black powder. It’s why we have gutters and sewers. Every deadly drop becomes powder in our blasters.”
“Damn me for a mutie.” The farmer chuckled and passed the cigar to the next sec man down.
The predark stogie made it to the old man with only a dozen sniffs taken of the aged tobacco. Dundee tucked it away in a shirt pocket. His joints never failed. There had been twinges of a coming storm, but then they faded unnaturally fast, as if the rain had abruptly gone elsewhere. Damnedest thing.