“Shays.”
* * *
“And how are you, sir?” the train steward asked. “Not so great,” John mumbled. “Drink, please—water, something like that.”
“Sir.”
The steward bowed silently as he left the compartment. The revolution hadn’t reached this part of the Union yet, evidently. Or perhaps it was just that this was a Santander-owned railway, and close to the border, and John was evidently rich enough to command a whole first-class compartment for himself, and another for half a dozen tough-looking armed men.
The view out the window was much like the eastern provinces of the Republic outside the cities. An upland basin surrounded by mountains with snow gleaming at their tops, the peaks to the west turning crimson with sunset. Grass, tawny with summer, speckled with walking cactus and an occasional clubroot, smelling warm and dusty but fresher than the lowlands to the east. Herds of red-coated cattle and shaggy buffalo and sheep, with herdsmen mounted and armed guarding them. Occasionally a ranch house, with its outbuildings and whitewashed adobe walls; more rarely a stretch of orchards and cultivated fields around a stream channeled for irrigation, very rarely a village or mine with its cottages and church spire.
It looked intensely peaceful. A hawk stooped at a rabbit flushed by the chufchufchuf of the locomotive, and the carriage swayed with the clacking passage of the rails. John wiped sweat from his forehead and touched the arm in its sling with gingerly fingers, wincing a little. Better, definitely better—he’d thought he was going to lose it, for a while—but still bad. Thank God the doctor had believed what he said about debriding wounds, but then, a massive bribe never hurt.
Home soon, he thought.
The door to the compartment opened again: the steward, immaculate in white jacket and gloves, with a tray of iced lemonade. Behind him were the worried faces of Smith and Barrjen.
“You all right, sir?”
“I would be if people stopped bothering me!” John snapped, then waved a hand. “Sorry. I’m recovering, but I need rest. Thank you for asking.”
The two men withdrew with mumbled apologies as the steward unlatched the folding table between the seats and put the tray on it. John took a glass of the lemonade and drank thirstily, then put the cold tumbler to his forehead.
“Shall I put down the bunk, sir?”
John shook his head. “In a little while. Come back in an hour.”
“Will you be using the dining car, sir?”
His stomach heaved slightly at the thought. “No. A bowl of broth and a little dry toast in here, if you would.” He slipped across a Santander banknote. “In a while.”
The steward smiled. “Glad to be of assistance, Your Excellency.”
John closed his eyes. When he opened them again with a jerk it was full night outside, with only an occasional lantern-light to compete with the frosted arch of stars and the moons. The collar of his shirt and jacket were soaked with sweat, but he felt much better . . . and very thirsty. He drank more of the lemonade, and pushed the bell for the steward to bring his soup.
I must be reaching second childhood, and I’m not even thirty-five, he thought. Making all this fuss over a superficial wound and a little fever.
Nothing little about a wound turning nasty, Raj said in his mind. I’ve seen too much of that.
There was a brief flash of hands holding a man down to blood-stained boards. He thrashed and screamed as the bone-saw grated through his thigh, and there was a tub full of severed limbs at the end of the makeshift operating table. Unlike Center’s scenarios, Raj’s memories carried smell as well; the sickly-sweet oily rot of gas gangrene, this time.
You even had Center worried for a while.
calculations indicate a 23% reduction in the probability of a favorable outcome if John hosten is removed from the equation at this point, Center said. such analysis does not constitute “worry.”
How’s Jeff doing? he asked.
observe:
—and he was looking through his foster-brothers eyes.
Evidently Jeffrey was out making a hands-on inspection, riding a horse along behind the Loyalist lines. Scattered clumps might be a better way to put it than “lines” John thought.