Lord of Order by Brett Riley (the reading list book TXT) 📕

landed upon a second later. The screams, the broken bones, the deep and hopeless sobs. It had probably happened more than once, especially to those who came from far up north. The first arrivals would be contingents from Baton Rouge and Lafayette, Shreveport and Monroe, Natchez and Jackson, which had been absorbed into the larger forces from Atlanta and Houston. Soon enough, prisoners from New York, California, Washington State, and Canada would walk the twin roads built over all that water. Thousands upon thousands of Troublers and enough chain to wrap around the globe bearing down on New Orleans.

But Troy could not give voice to recriminations in Dwyer’s presence. I reckon it would take an age to walk just fifty or sixty miles.

Dwyer nodded. Indeed. I imagine many have died on the road. They will be cut loose or dragged to pieces. More time lost.

Boudreaux sat in his saddle, expressionless. Babb had nodded off, his chin resting on his chest. Troy got back on his horse. Whatever came down the causeway, he would meet it mounted and proud.

After a while, thudding, rhythmic footsteps drifted to them like thunder rumbling through distant mountains. Dwyer stayed afoot another ten minutes, watching through his spyglass. Then he remounted and sat straight, his long hair cascading over his shoulders, his hand shielding his eyes against the glare of the sunlight reflecting off the water. When the rumble got loud enough, Babb woke up and yawned. Boudreaux adjusted his hat and spat again. They waited until the first prisoners came into sight, inched toward them, and finally stepped off the causeway onto Metairie soil.

They walked in ten single-file lines, each chained to whoever walked in front and behind, the tintinnabulation of their steel almost musical. When the guards called halt, the arresting of their motion created an illusion of movement, a wave that seemed to ripple northward along the causeway, taking with it the thuds and the clinks in ever-fading contrapuntal clamors. Looking at the mass of men, women, and children standing in torn and soiled clothes, at feet clad in scuffed boots or fraying shoes or nothing but blood and grime, Troy thought it seemed a miracle they had come so far without trampling each other into bloody paste, without overlapping their chains and tying themselves into knots. They were hungry and exhausted. Only their guards, mounted and bearing the sigil of the Crusade on their shirts, looked fresh. They sat their horses with heads held high, their rifles and shotguns scabbarded, their loaded pistols tied down in their holsters.

Any of em might be the one that kills me, thought Troy. And half of me believes I deserve it.

One of the guards rode up and saluted. Dwyer and Troy returned it.

What news? the herald asked.

Our prisoners walked from Lafayette, Breaux Bridge, Baton Rouge, and St. Francisville, sir, said the guard. Plus a hundred other towns. Behind us, they’re from Vidalia and Woodville, Mississippi, even Natchez. Behind them, who knows? This here’s a motley lot. I’m glad I didn’t have to bring em no farther than I did.

Before them, men and women, children and the elderly, the healthy and the sick. The fierce light of hatred or determination in some eyes, terror in the rest. No food in sight, no water, though every prisoner looked parched, the harbingers of a cruelty that would sweep the earth before it.

Where are the envoys? Troy asked.

They’ll be along directly, said the guard. They was still sittin off a ways and cookin breakfast when we broke camp. I reckon they’re takin their time.

Dwyer turned to Troy. We should square away these heathens. Where do you suggest we direct them?

Troy took off his hat and scratched his head. Probably best just to march em all the way to the southernmost point and stack em up anyplace our citizens ain’t usin. Ernie Tetweiller’s waitin on the road back yonder a piece. He’ll lead em in.

You want me to help him? Boudreaux asked.

No. Escort Jerold home, and check on Jack. He’s itchin to mount up and shoot at somebody. Tie him down if you have to.

Eyeing the massed Troublers, Boudreaux saluted and turned his horse. So much humanity, stretching past the horizon—once they all arrived, New Orleans would look as it must have before the Purge, a great anthill, its catacombs aswarm, the inhabitants walking on top of each other. And if Troy and his friends—who had begun to think of themselves as Conspirators, rather than Crusaders or Troublers—were right, the bodies of the dead would soon choke waterlogged streets and spill into the great river. They would pile against buildings and bloat and rot and burst. No one could live in New Orleans after that, not for decades. The diseases from all those bodies would kill any flood survivors just as efficiently and perhaps more terribly. Then the coming of vermin and carrion animals.

That ain’t God’s work. It just can’t be. And I gotta save em all because how could I know whose soul is innocent and whose is stained? How was I ever supposed to know? And why did I never think to ask until my own neck was in the noose?

The guards whistled and shouted commands, and the weary prisoners trudged forward again, finding that same rhythm and cadence. Many eyes met Troy’s, holding his gaze as they passed. But as before, most looked frightened, pleading, despairing.

Soon he and Dwyer left. Troy would meet the envoys in his office, as befitted a lord of order.

Troy, Dwyer, and Babb had made a table of the lord’s desk as they ate their beefsteak and boiled potatoes. Juice dribbled down Babb’s chin. One of Tetweiller’s runners had just left after bringing the latest news: Incoming Troublers had reached the city’s southern borders and were spreading east and west and back again, wrapping the avenues in limbs and chains. They sat on bare concrete walks, on streets, on grass in front of uninhabited houses and apartment complexes and buildings