A Plague of Swords

by Miles Cameron

  When she woke in the morning, she was nested between them and warm. The sentries had built up the fire.

  “Another beautiful day,” Looks-at-Clouds said, and kissed Irene before she could flinch away.

  Irene snapped her head away.

  Looks-at-Clouds smiled.

  The camp vanished in moments. Irene had noted that there were other women, at least a pair, but she had assumed them to be trulls, but this morning they had bows on their backs. The two blackened their faces at the morning fire and moved off into the woods.

  She wished she were going with them. She allowed herself a brief fantasy, wherein she became a mighty ranger, a queen of the woods...

  Today she had to pack her own things, and she struggled to make her pack as small and tight as Aneas or Gabriel had done before her. She grew frustrated with her blankets; there were two, and they seemed huge, and covered in leaf mold.

  Looks-at-Clouds came and watched her.

  “Shall I help you?” s/he asked in his/her oddly accented Archaic.

  Irene considered the fluffy mass that was her blankets.

  “I would appreciate your help,” she said with all the dignity she could manage, and some utterly false cheer.

  Looks-at-Clouds seized the blankets and shook them so hard they snapped in the still air, and then laid them down. S/he folded them in thirds and rolled them tight, kneeling on them. It took no time at all, and s/he was reaching for the ties that Irene had, with some forethought, looped over the roof pole of her shelter.

  “You understand, yes?” Looks-at-Clouds asked. “You are very quick.”

  Irene wasn’t sure what the green-eyed shaman meant. “I feel very...stupid.”

  Looks-at-Clouds shrugged. “Really?” s/he asked, and smiled, showing too many teeth.

  There was a final whirl of activity, and a bronze cook pot was strapped to the bottom of Irene’s pack, adding substantially to the weight.

  “Your turn,” Aneas said, at her elbow. He was apologetic.

  She favoured him with a smile. “Of course,” she said.

  * * *

  They were on the edge of a lake. It seemed to run south to north, but she couldn’t see the head or the tail of it, because it didn’t run straight. Twice they walked on broad gravel beaches, but the trail always wound back into the deep woods, so that the lake was merely a glitter of light to her left.

  The trees were incredible.

  They were huge. There were giants whose tops she could not see; towers of wood that rose sheer and vanished, straight as huge arrows, their bark almost smooth, so big around that five or six warriors would not have stretched their arms around the trunk. The ground between them was covered in leaf mold and otherwise fairly open, although stands of raspberry cane or scrubby pines and firs dotted the forest floor where a great lord of the woods had fallen at last to age and decay and the depredations of the woodpeckers and the ants. Where ancient giants had fallen, often there was a low rise, straight as a ruler and fifty paces long, the wood long since rotted away. Ferns grew everywhere like a wild crop of some kind.

  From time to time they crossed rivulets coming off the high ridges to the east. The first few times she’d walked carefully to keep her feet dry, but as the day advanced and her fatigue increased, she’d been less careful and her feet had been soaked.

  And it felt wonderful.

  Someone had made her Outwaller shoes of light deer or moose hide, and they dried as she walked. She began to put her feet into the water apurpose; it was cooling, and curiously restful on the feet, and they dried quickly.

  In late afternoon they stopped for the third time. One of the Outwallers, Mingan, who was tall and very solemn and remarkably like his name bird, bent over the trail and sounded his horn, and all the war leaders came at a run. Irene realized for the first time that the party was larger than she’d thought, and there were men and women she hadn’t seen before, moving to the east and to the west.

  There were irks.

  One of them sat with her. She smiled, and Irene smiled back.

  She didn’t move like a person.

  And the two human women she’d noticed earlier. One of them was Alban, and gently born, with better manners, and she curtsied and spoke in halting Archaic.

  “Cynthia,” she said. She was pretty, despite a shirt of mail and a deerskin jupon. Irene had finished her little canteen of water and Cynthia took her to a stream to fetch more. They filled almost thirty canteens, which took them the better part of an hour. Irene was becoming accustomed to the idea of work. There was so much work, and almost everything was done as a team—while they filled canteens, others were looking at tracks, standing guard, scouting ahead.

  Looks-at-Clouds came to help. “They are in council,” s/he said. The shaman—Cynthia called her/him a bacsa—smiled and shrugged. “The enemy has divided and divided again. And also been joined by new enemies. Rukh. What you call giants.”

  Irene didn’t really understand. “What are we doing here?” she asked.

  Cynthia shouldered a dozen canteens. Irene shouldered the rest. She was not afraid of work, but of humiliation and degradation. Carrying canteens with Cynthia seemed...normal.

  Even in her present state, Irene was beginning to sense that they were not trying to humiliate her.

  Looks-at-Clouds picked up the canteens left on the ground, a mixture of military copper canteens, gourds and pottery bottles wrapped in leather. The three of them walked back to the trail. Irene watched the woods carefully. The other two seemed to know where they were.

  Cynthia shrugged. “We’re running Kevin Orley to earth. Before he does any more harm.”

  Irene sighed. “Because he is an enemy of the Muriens?” she said bitterly.

  Looks-at-Clouds laughed. “Orley is an enemy of all people,” s/he said. “And most of the Wild, too.” S/he did that curious thing with his/her eyelashes. “He is the new avatar of Ash.”

  Irene dismissed her vague thought that Orley might be an ally against the Red Knight. “Ah,” she said.

  Again, the leaders were kneeling by the trail. They accepted their canteens with thanks and Irene withdrew, but whatever they had decided, they were finished talking.

  Irene had always imagined soldiers as ignorant; tools to perform needed actions. The way these rangers discussed things suggested that they viewed themselves as participants, not tools.

  That was interesting,

  The sun’s rays began to lengthen, and the woods went from hot to cool.

  Aneas sounded his horn softly, and the whole party turned west and walked to the edge of the lake. It was only a few hundred paces away and her heart quickened in hope.

  She was not disappointed.

  As soon as they halted, everyone dropped their packs. Lantorn and the irks and a man she hadn’t met yet loped off into the woods. Aneas tapped two of the Outwallers and spoke to them in a fluid language, and they grinned and vanished into the trees.

  Then everyone began to work.

  Looks-at-Clouds took her hand and led her into the trees. “Can you use an axe?” s/he asked.

  Irene bit her lip in vexation. “No,” she said.

  “Learn, then,” Looks-at-Clouds said. The shaman was patient. S/he had a little axe and used it carefully.

  “What are we doing?” Irene asked.

  “Stakes for shelters,” Looks-at-Clouds said. “We need thirty-two stakes and nine long poles. Look—a stake is this long. Sharp at one end. This size. No, that is dead pine. Look, I can break it with my hands. No, that is rotten. See this? It is ash. It grows straight. My people say that Tar made the ash for man, because all the other tree kindreds were too weak.”

  Irene watched the bacsa fell the ash sapling in three blows. S/he began to trim the branches like a ruthless executioner.

  “Take all the little branches away,” Looks-at-Clouds ordered. “Good. This is how you take off branches. Cut this way. No, not into the crotch. Like this. It is very sharp. Do not put your foot there.
That is foolish. Here. One hand. Like this.”

  Irene was not patient with herself. She cut and apologized, cut and missed.

  “Stop and breathe. You know nothing. This is no sin. Only stop and learn.” The shaman showed her again.

  Irene cut a single small branch off the trunk.

  “Good,” Looks-at-Clouds said. “Again.”

  She began to move along the trunk. At first, slowly, and then with growing confidence.

  “Already you take no care,” Looks-at-Clouds said. “The axe remains sharp. A little knowledge does not dull it. Be more careful. Breathe. Learn. Be slow now, so later you can be quick.”

  Irene stopped. She took a deep breath, her intention a little mockery, and her eye lit on a flower.

  It was the first flower she had seen in the forest. It caught her eye and her breath and her heart.

  “Ah!” Looks-at-Clouds said. “Yes.”

  Irene reached to pluck it, and the bacsa’s hand closed on her wrist. “It is beautiful where it is,” s/he said.

  Irene burst into tears without any thought or reason.

  The shaman wrapped both arms around the princess. S/he smelled of tall pines and sweat. Irene was not in control of herself for several moments.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Looks-at-Clouds laughed. “I never know what you people mean when you say this,” s/he said.

  * * *

  When all the stakes and poles were cut, they carried them to camp. Looks-at-Clouds taught her to make a travois and pull them in one load. And then she went with Aneas and Cynthia to gather ferns and pine boughs for bedding.

  If she was surprised to see the youngest Muriens working so hard, his shirt off and his body shining with sweat, she didn’t show it.

  Shelters were going up rapidly in the little clearing by the lake. Three fires were started in a long trench. There were tripods at either end of the trench, and poles laid across the tripods, and bronze and brass pots hung on the poles by chains. They were full of water fetched from the stream.

  She had never seen anything quite like it. It was as if a house had grown from the pine needles.

  Aneas paused, his arms full of pine boughs. “It is a lot of work,” he said. “Most nights we simply bed down on the ground.”

  “But?” she asked.

  “We think it will rain—hard. And we have decisions to make.” He began to walk away.

  “May I use your belt axe?” she asked.

  He grinned. “Of course. Be careful...”

  “It’s sharp,” she said for him, in Archaic.

  He smiled and went off, and she began to use his razor-sharp belt axe to cut the soft boughs from stunted pines.

  An Outwaller warrior she didn’t know came and stripped the weapon out of her hand. He was angry. He shouted and she forced herself to stand up to him.

  Looks-at-Clouds appeared from the trees and took the man by the shoulder. He spat.

  “You are cutting too many branches,” Looks-at-Clouds said. “Look. The tree will die.”

  Irene frowned. “There seems no shortage of trees,” she said. “And it is so small.”

  “It may be as old as these giants,” Looks-at-Clouds said. “And the same might be said of people. There are so many. Who will miss a small one. You, perhaps?” But the shaman smiled agreeably and handed the belt axe, haft first, back to Irene. “Take a few branches from each little tree, and walk wider.”

  Irene sighed, fighting the urge to return anger with anger, and did as she was told.

  When all the shelters were floored in pine boughs and ferns, every ranger put her pack into a shelter.

  Irene watched with something approaching horror.

  Aneas picked up her pack. “You get the width of your pack for sleeping,” he said pleasantly. “You are between me and Lantorn. When we trust you, you can choose your sleeping partners.”

  The thought of touching Lantorn made Irene pause. She saw a flash of the fawn, its guts...“Not him,” she said. “Please.”

  Aneas thought a moment. “Very well,” he said. He called something, and the shaman whistled like a bird and did an odd thing, almost like a caper by a newborn lamb.

  “You may have the bacsa on your other side,” Aneas said. “The bacsa is delighted to be your companion.”

  Irene flushed.

  Aneas smiled and she could tell he was annoyed. “Looks-at-Clouds likes you,” he said. There was a complex tone to his words.

  She was still considering what he might mean when she was asked to stir a pot, and she did, watching as men sewed and women sharpened weapons. Two men she didn’t know asked if they could use “her” fire for a pot of pitch.

  She laughed. “Not my fire,” she said.

  That seemed to puzzle them.

  Cigne, the Occitan woman, appeared in a shirt and nothing else. “Hey, Moth!” she yelled in Alban at a big, well-muscled man who might as easily have been a knight as a ranger.

  The man so addressed came and sketched a bow. He was wearing a loincloth and had a flower in his hair.

  “Women bathe,” Cigne said. “Take her pot.”

  “Bertran de la Mothe,” the handsome man said with a bow. Irene wasn’t sure she’d ever seen a man her own age so nearly naked. She flushed.

  “A pleasure to take your pot,” he said.

  “Don’t let his hands within reach of your boobs,” Cigne said. “It’s not your princess-ness he’s after, eh, Moth?”

  “You entirely malign me, cruel lady,” de la Mothe said.

  Cigne nodded to Irene. “Coming?” she asked. She led the way, and they caught Tessen, the irk woman, and Cynthia, also wearing a man’s shirt and no more. They walked through open woods where there was no trail, and emerged onto a beach screened from the campsite by a rocky headland and a turn in the lake.

  Cynthia and Cigne stripped their shirts off and ran into the water.

  The irk was slightly more shy. She walked a little way apart and stripped in the trees. Irene was eager to emulate her, eager to wash away the sweat and the peculiar, sticky grime on her hands and apparently her eyelids. She stripped off her linen kirtle and her shift, which was not nearly as brown with dirt as she’d expected, and the halter she wore to support her breasts. She folded her clothes carefully and walked to the edge of the water and...

  ...it was very cold. She gave out a little scream as her feet touched it and she froze, arms crossed over her breasts.

  Cigne was floating a few paces away. She laughed. “I’d tell you it gets better,” she said, and Irene could see her lips had a blue tinge. “But I’d be lying.” The Occitan woman stood up in the shallow water and began to wash herself.

  Tessen was swimming. She was already far out in the lake.

  There was another head there, swimming strongly.

  “Ah,” Cynthia said. “Tonight our bacsa is a woman. Soap, Irene?”

  “Christ Pantokrator!” Irene said, forcing herself into the water. “Does the bacsa change?”

  “All the time,” Cynthia said. “Oh, Judas-it-is-cold.”

  “They call it Cold Lake,” Cigne said. “For reasons.” She smiled.

  They were all trying to be friendly.

  Looks-at-Clouds swam up to the beach, arm over arm like a racer, and rose to her feet. Even in the evening light, she was obviously a woman, albeit a very slim, flat-breasted woman with hard arm muscles and an abdomen of iron. Her tattoos were impossible to read and spiraled down her arms, and she had a cuff of tattoo on each thigh just above the knee and a girdle of runes around her loins.

  The bacsa found Irene’s eye on her and laughed, and Irene flushed from her navel to her throat in the cold water. The Outwaller kept laughing, and Irene, moved by a happy childhood memory, cupped water and splashed the Outwaller, and in seconds all four were casting arms full of icy water into each other and screaming like girls.

  But the cold water was oddly exhausting. Cigne gave her soap and she washed, very thoroughly, under Looks-at-Clouds�
��s direction, especially her neck and face and hair. The tall Outwaller came and put a hand on her waist and pulled her close, so they touched, and she froze, but the shaman was only smelling her.

  “Good,” the shaman said. She was released, and blushed again.

  The sky was still clear. The women—and whatever the bacsa was—dried themselves with their linen shirts and then used them to dry their hair a little, and then put them on. Cynthia washed hers.

  “Honi soit qui mal y pense,” she said, putting on her now-transparent shirt.

  “She wants the Moth,” Cigne said.

  Cynthia shrugged.

  Cigne laughed. “I rather fancy Lantorn,” she said. “But I can’t tell if he fancies me, or anyone besides his bow.” She smiled at her partner. “And I won’t wet my shirt to see what he looks at, either.”

  “Perhaps I just wanted a clean shirt,” Cynthia said.

  Irene was afraid to appear so naked in front of men, and the comments of the women made her writhe, but no volley of catcalls greeted them in camp. In fact, most of the men were newly bathed too, and they sat on logs, combing out each other’s hair with horn combs.

  “We don’t get to bathe every day,” Aneas said. He was seated on a rock, and he was also naked except for a shirt. “But we’re safe enough here, and we have guards out. We don’t have to hunt today, thanks to some luck.” He smiled at her. “Sit. I can comb hair.”

  Irene sat on a mossy log and discovered that it felt lovely on her legs. She smiled. She tried a little bit of flirtation, learned by watching maids.

  “Mine is a mess,” she said with a smile she thought might be winning.

  “Yes,” Aneas said. He turned and began to talk to Mingan in another language, as if she were not there.

  Lewen, the irk, came and sat opposite her. His hair was already braided, and he lit a pipe from his fire kit and drew deeply on it.

  “I think we have to move faster,” he said without preamble.

  Aneas was invisible behind her. This was confusing to the princess. Each time Lewen spoke, it was as if he was speaking directly to her. And then Aneas Muriens would answer.

  “I understand,” Aneas said. He wasn’t agreeing. He was pulling the comb too hard through her hair.