horde of unwashed, unfettered savages.
The first four residents were posted to Detroit, Saginaw Bay,
Cheboygan, and Ludington. Izo Wantanabe, the last far-flung link in
the chain, was anchored at a place once known as Benton Harbour, twenty
miles north of the point where, on pre-Holocaust maps, the Indiana
state line met the eastern shore of Lake Michigan.
Their primary task was to forge closer trade links, including the
recruitment of more 'guest-workers'. They were to achieve this by
commercial and cultural 'counselling', the purpose of which was to
change the Mutes' perception of the Iron Masters as cold and forbidding
into something more. paternal. Firm (the grass-monkeys despised
weakness) yet benign.
That, in itself, was a job and a half but the residents had also been
entrusted with an equally important, parallel assignment; the gathering
of intelligence.
Following the first incursions by the Federation wagon-trains into
Plainfolk territory in 2989, the conflict between Tracker and Mute had
been drawing ever closer to the borders of Ne-Issan. Lord Yama-Shita
had hit upon the idea of using the residents - Wantanabe in particular
- as forward listening-posts. Their genuine effort to improve trade
relations would provide both the cover and the opportunity to gather
information about the Federation's war machine and its northward and
eastward advance towards the Running Red Buffalo Hills - the
Plainfolk's name for the Northern Appalachians.
As point man, Izo Wantanabe was nearest the action.
Up to now, the probing advances of the warriors from the Deserts of the
South appeared to have stopped at the west bank of the wide, meandering
river the outlanders called the Miz-Hippy. The river had its source in
a cluster of lakes to the north-west of Du-ruta. Wantanabe had only
been on the ground for less than four months so much remained to be
discovered, but according to his initial contacts, the iron snakes had
never attempted to cross this waterway. Whether they could not, or did
not wish to do so, remained to be seen.
The Plainfolk had said the iron snakes preferred to follow the lines of
the ancient hardways - most of which, outside Ne-Issan, had long since
crumbled into dust.
From a captured Federation map acquired in exchange for six knives it
was clear the iron snakes (which their owners called wagon-trains)
would have to cross a number of smaller rivers to reach the
Miz-Hippy.
Izo Wantanabe had not yet seen one of these much-feared killing
