Chapter 1: River World

The Dun Road was muddy for a change, and man and rider were stepping gingerly across the slick spots where water still washed across the surface.

"It's okay Ware, take your time. It'll probably be a real mud bath on the way back," Greg Michaels said aloud to his horse. "This is just the warm up." The rain had come and gone, but it was still too early in the day for the sun to burn the water off the surface, and it was still too early in the spring for the water to evaporate quickly without it.

As he rode, still hopeful that he wouldn't be coming home wet and muddy, unless he managed to fall off his horse, he wondered about the coming gathering. The Porter clan was meeting in advance of the Kendall clan's annual gathering, though Greg hadn't heard that officially. It was getting dark as he finally saw the lights of the gate house. Dan Carmody was tending the gate tonight.

"Evenin' Greg, welcome home," the older man said.

"Evening Dan, am I late for supper?"

"I expect not. There's been Porters stragglin' in all day, and you're about the last of them, I think, except for Jack."

"Thanks. Call ahead to the house if you would, let 'em know I'm riding up?"

"Already did," the guard said, waving at Greg's back as he set off at a trot towards the main house.

After seeing to his horse, Greg ran across the compound to the front door. Haley was there waiting for him, and jumped into his arms with a squeal.

"Hey sis," he said, laughing as he spun her around, "miss me?"

"Damned right I did," she laughed in return. "Especially since I've been stuck here with these ... Porters, for two days now without you!"

"Hey, you were no foundling left in a bundle at the door my dear. I'm for sure a Porter, and we're twins, so what does that make you?" Greg asked, and then without waiting for an answer, held up a mail bag. "Speaking of bundles, the mail was in when I stopped in Hermiston, so I grabbed ours."

Greg thought about the twins thing as they walked arm in arm towards the dining hall. The second generation after the Reaping had been rich with twins, as if mother nature herself had decided to jump in and give mankind a hand in repopulating the Earth. He could think of more than a dozen sets of twins among his closest acquaintances, and almost half of those were just within the Kendall and Porter clans.

The meal was formal in everything but dress. Grandma Carrie and Grandpa Joe were seldom home these days, so things mattered when they were. The couple sat together at the end of the huge dining table that had once been used to accommodate groups of vacationers and tourists seeking to capture a little of the rustic rancher's lifestyle.

Greg and Haley's parents, Wendy and Kory Michaels were there, as well as their slightly older sister Jenna. So was their Uncle Henry and his wife Susie and their sons Sam, Lowell and Jack; Uncle David, his wife Renata and their three boys Ian, Argus and Tucker; Uncle Niel and his wife Jessie and their twins Patrick and Pietra. The rest of the Porter Clan was already in Greer, having moved there to be near the hospital, where Great-Grandma Porter was a frequent in-patient, due to her failing health. Joe Porter held up an envelope.

"Sam Kendall has called for a birthday gathering in three months." Grandpa Joe announced. There were nods around the table. This was expected.

"That means the Kendalls, Porters, and Harwells, of course," Grandma Carrie said. "Everyone with blood ties to the Kendall clan."

"According to this letter, he has asked for representatives from some of the old Cold Lake families like the Arguses and the Nilesons, as well as some of the Hermiston families like the Thorsons, Wilsons and Warners."

There were nods and murmurs around the table. This must be big. The murmurs threatened to get out of hand until Grandma Carrie rapped her glass on the table.

"The fact is Sam Kendall hasn't offered up a new birthday revelation in at least a decade," she said loudly. "This is probably word of some major plot by the Denied, or another call to action from the Catholics."

"I doubt it's the Catholics," Henry Porter argued. "They've been trying to save up the resources for this expedition of theirs and can't even find enough volunteers to staff it properly, but they're not plotters."

"They have been pretty persistent of late in their attempts to get the Council to order a unit of the military reserve to provide security for their expedition."

"Pretty unrealistic you mean," Joe added. "Nobody in the military reserve or on the council will agree to something so foolish. An expedition to the Mediterranean would take years, it would be unlikely to succeed and for what? To rescue a bunch of slowly molding religious relics?"

"Rome and Jerusalem are very important places in these people's faiths," Wendy Porter countered. "They're important to our own history as well. There is some value in preserving some of this history."

"Some value, yes," Niel Porter agreed. "But enough value to prioritize it above feeding, clothing and educating our children? Enough to place it above guarding our herds and crops? I don't think so."

"No, and as I said, neither do most people, or the council."

"Alright," Ian said, "so lets not gnaw that bone to death. We'll know when we know."

"You mean when our uncle Sam tells us," Sam said.

"Please, none of that old Uncle Sam joke. It was worn out from overuse a decade ago," Dave Porter said. It got him a chuckle, but there were no repeats of the old conflation.

"Alright, so which of us should go then?" Lowell asked.

It was a Porter axiom that nothing settled quietly was ever really settled. Choosing who would represent each family and sub-family in the Porter clan was not something to be settled overnight. Heated discussions ensued, and some ascended to the level of argument. Most were friendly, despite their dramatic nature. Sam Porter staked his claim pretty quickly as the representative of Henry and Susie Porter's children. He was the oldest, and already attending classes at Columbia University, at the former Washington State campus at Pullman.

Ian, Argus and Tucker Porter, the three sons of David and Renata Porter actually played the old paper-scissor-rock game to determine their representative, and it was Ian, the eldest, who won. Patrick and Pietra, the other pair of twins in the Porter family were going, as the only children of Niel and Jessie Porter. Their mother patted her swollen belly and said, with a laugh, "Don't worry, you'll be able to argue about who gets to go the next time."

"It will be like this in all the families that have been called," Joe Porter said later that evening. "Brothers and sisters vying for the right to represent their siblings. Lets hope there was no more bloodshed than what we saw here tonight."

Jenna Michaels saddled her horse and slipped quietly away from the ranch before dawn the next morning. She headed southwest on Diagonal Boulevard; what was called the Hermiston Highway. She skirted Hermiston itself when she got there, riding the outer streets until she was able to reconnect with Hermiston Highway on the other side of town. From there she followed it through the ghost town of Bucks Corners until it met up with the old Oregon Trail highway 84. She would follow this route northwest to Boardman, where she could catch a ferry downriver.

"Taegan, pull up a minute."

"Come on Con, you don't want to keep him waiting do you?"

"Pull up, you idiot, I think my horse has picked up a stone."

"Oh, well why didn't you say so."

The two boys pulled to a stop alongside to the road, and Conway Kendall began to slowly inspect his horse's shod feet, looking for a stone or other object that could be causing the horse to favor a foot.