Emerald Sea(7)

"I've got to get going," he said after a bit. "Thanks for lunch. Hopefully we'll be able to get together some while I'm around."

"We'll do that," Courtney said with a smile. "We'll make an event of it."

Herzer grabbed his gear and headed back out to the horse. Diablo looked at him balefully when the gear started going on but the horse sat quietly as Herzer saddled up and loaded item after item.

"Is all that necessary?" Courtney asked.

"Not really," Herzer said. "I suppose there are things that I could pick up along the way. But I like the tools that I have."

Finally he was saddled up and gave Courtney a hug and shook Mike's hand.

"See you in town," Herzer said, mounting the horse with a grunt. Diablo sighed and shook himself, not so much telling Herzer to get off as settling his own gear to his satisfaction.

"We'll take care of your farm until it's time to come home," Courtney said. "You just come back, okay?"

"Home," Herzer said, shaking his head. "What an interesting abstract notion." He smiled and waved as he trotted back down the road.





CHAPTER TWO


Herzer turned left and headed south when he reached the road, then quickly moved Diablo to the side as a dispatch rider came trotting from the direction of town. The rider, who was a private in the Federal Army by the look of it, gave him a glance then a salute as he passed. Herzer returned the salute abstractedly, concentrating on a problem.

At the time of the Fall, world population had been just about one billion. The aftermath of the Fall had not seen as much die off as anticipated, mostly because of small towns like Raven's Mill. But the effectively total loss of technology had created enormous implications that were just beginning to sink in. The one that was near and dear to his heart was military manpower. The military technology available was pregunpowder because of the explosive prohibitions still slavishly followed by Mother. Historical battles in pregunpowder days meant that each side had a near parity of forces. But raising large armies was practically out; there was too great a labor shortage. Conscripting large groups meant that something vital simply wouldn't occur; farming, manufacturing, something was going to fail.

Thus it was up to relatively small handfuls of soldiers to protect civilization from the barbarians. And to protect the new and faltering United Free States from the various feudal warlords and the technological despotism of New Destiny.

Like a ship captain of old, Herzer lusted for more men, more soldiers. Too many times he had had to fight in battles outnumbered. Mike would make a superlative soldier but he needed to be right where he was, farming.

Some of the pressure was relieved by new/old technology. The harvesting that Mike was engaged in would have been done by a team of six, at least, in preindustrial times. Powered looms, Bessemer forges, meant that there were fewer people producing more per person. But even with the productivity increase there weren't enough workers for all the potential positions. Which meant fewer soldiers as well.

It was an insoluble problem, but one that Herzer wrestled with constantly. The dispatch rider, for example, was supported by way stations in the controlled areas of Overjay. Each of the way stations had to be manned, and what's more had to have horses at it. Figuring out a better means of communication would mean freeing up all of those people, and horses, for soldiers. Which might have meant sending more than one barely trained lieutenant to Harzburg and ending the problem in a week instead of a year and a half.

These musings carried him through the fields on the way to town and up to the gates. Most of the fields had been cleared before he left but he saw new orchards on the hillsides as well as new outbuildings. The town, whatever Courtney might think, continued to build.

There was work going on at the top of the hills north of town as well but it was more martial in nature. A wooden gate was under construction and a stockade stretched up the hill to the Academy on the right. On the left the stockade had been torn down and a bed of gravel followed the track of the top of the hill.

"Lieutenant Herrick," the team leader of the gate guards said, nodding his head.

"The duke's pushing ahead on the curtain walls?" Herzer asked, nodding at the gravel that was being dropped by ox carts then leveled out by prisoners. More than a few of the prisoners were Changed, taken in the brief foray by Dionys McCanoc against the town. They were, as far as anyone could tell, normal people who had been caught up by McCanoc and converted, against their wills, into soldiers for him.

The actions of the raiders even before their attack on the town had been such that life sentences had been handed down for all of them. There was, however, a good bit of sentiment suggesting that at some point the "normal" humans might be rehabilitated. The Changed, however, short of being Changed "back," were subject to no such sympathy. Generalized sympathy for what had occurred to them, yes, but not direct sympathy for their plight because they were as vicious as a pack of oversized weasels. They were incredibly strong, short, and brutish in appearance and had the personalities of rabid pit bulls. They had been christened "orcs" on first sight and the name had stuck.