“Asgerd ’ere gave me back a bit of a rub, where it were stiff this last while. Now I’ll ’ave a nap, if you can spare me. Be fresh for the big dinner, eh?”
The woman blinked. “That’s a fine idea, we’ll be eating about sundown. Nola and Nigel are in their truckle beds there too, be careful not to wake them, now. It was hard enough to get them asleep and out from underfoot.”
“Oi will, luv. They sleep ’ard as they play, at that age, eh?”
She looked after him and shook her head, then looked at Asgerd. Blue eyes met blue.
“Well, and how did you manage that? Without clouting him hard enough to crack the thick stubborn skull of him, to be sure.”
Asgerd ducked her head. Edain’s mother was mistress of this household, and she knew her manners.
“Good mother, I… I just told him I’d been raised on a farm and knew what to do when a man pulled his back, and not to be foolish but to lie down so I could fix it.”
She indicated the bench. Melissa Aylward came over and looked at the dish of improvised liniment, sniffing at it.
“Essence of meadowsweet and sunflower oil. That would do nicely. I add a little mint-water when I make up a batch for the stillroom.”
“My mother does too,” Asgerd said. “But there wasn’t any to hand.”
Melissa nodded. “So it isn’t all swords with you, then, girl?”
“Oh, no,” Asgerd said, surprised; though they hadn’t had much time to talk, or she thought much inclination on the older woman’s part. “I trained to arms, we all do in Norrheim just as you do here, but I wasn’t a shield-maid until my man Sigurd… the one I was to marry
… was killed. By the Bekwa savages, led by a red-robe, a trollkjerring of the CUT. I heard that the night I first saw Edain.”
Quick sympathy lit the other woman’s face, and Asgerd turned her head aside slightly.
“That is a good loom,” she went on determinedly, walking over to where it stood tall at the other end of the big room. “My mother has one much like it-a bit higher, a little narrower.”
“Sam made it for me… sweet Brigid, twenty-three years ago last Imbolc,” Melissa said.
Asgerd touched the satiny finish of the wood, pegged and glued together from oak and ash, beech wood and maple, and carved with running vines at the joinings. Just now it was set up to weave a stretch of blue cloth with yellow flowers at the corners, half done but already lovely. One of the good things about weaving was that it could be interrupted for something more urgent and taken up again an hour or a day later; she supposed that was why it was usually woman’s work, though she’d known men who did it well. If there was anything that made for interruptions more urgent and more often than a small child, she’d never heard of it.
Melissa went on: “He copied it from Lady Juniper’s that she had from before the Change-she taught me to weave, like many another. We like to work here together in the winter afternoons, Sam and I; he’ll be at the bench, and I at the loom.”
Asgerd looked more closely, whistled under her breath, and traced one of the joints with her thumbnail. It was so close-set there was hardly even a catch when she ran it across the surface; the whole of it was like that, mortise-and-tenon joins pegged together with almost invisible smoothness. Even the king-bolts that could be taken down to disassemble the whole thing for storage were countersunk to be out of the way yet instantly accessible.
“This is beautifully made, so light and yet so strong!” she said.
Every ounce of unnecessary weight in a loom’s moving parts was something you felt in your shoulders and back after a day spent weaving; any half-competent carpenter could knock together something that relied on sheer bulk, but paring weight to a minimum without losing strength or rigidity took real art at every stage from selecting the materials on.
“Like fine cabinetwork,” she went on. “I’ve never seen better.”
Melissa swallowed. “Sam always has been proud of his carpentry and joinery, though, sure, he doesn’t talk about it much,” she said. “People came from all over to learn it from him, those first years. Bows yes, but not just those, and he made… oh, looms and churns and a dozen other things, getting ideas from books and old things from museums and then figuring out how to do them properly. And they came to learn farming from him, too, the old ways of doing it, he’d go ’round giving a hand to all and showing the way of it. There’s many alive and well today on the ridge of the world with children and grandchildren of their own, who would have starved half to death or outright died without my Sam!”
Asgerd nodded. After courage and loyalty, a man’s pride was in the strength and skill of his hands, the work that fed his children and made strong his house and kindred. She knew that love of craft as well, and the kindred pride in keeping going uncomplaining when your bones groaned with weariness and all you wanted in the world was food and bed.
“Lovely,” she said again, and sat at the weaver’s bench.
When Melissa nodded permission at her inquiring glance she ran her hands over the heddle and beater, touched her feet to the paddles that would shift the warp and weft and the cord and lever that would throw the shuttle, looked at the little wheeled baskets that held supplies out of the way and yet to hand.
“This would be a pleasure to work at,” she said. “I can feel how everything’s just where you want it.”
“That cloak you brought, was that your mother’s work? It’s well done,” Melissa said. “Only a little worn, and you must have used it fair hard on a journey like that.”
“She taught me but it’s my work, good mother,” Asgerd said, letting a little of her own pride of craft show. “That journey cloak, I sheared the sheep and cleaned and spun the wool and wove it; it’s a twin to one I made for Sigurd to use when he went in Viking to the dead cities. Just plain weaving, of course, nothing fancy like this, but it has worn well, and it’s kept me warm and dry many a time.”
“It must be nearly waterproof, done with the grease in that way,” Melissa said.
Then she sighed and sat on the bench before the loom, beside the girl.
“I’m… I know I’ve been less welcoming than I might. Than I should have been. I’ve been… anxious about things, sure and I have, and more things than one. And the Lady is taking me out from under the dominion of the Moon now, into the Wise One’s hands and near to my croning.”
That puzzled Asgerd for an instant; her people didn’t have a formal ceremony for that, as they did for coming of age. Then she nodded understanding.
“All of which I offer as some poor excuse,” Melissa said.
“Good mother, I didn’t expect a dance of joy when your son came home with a stranger, a foreign bride. You don’t know me or my kin or my very folk. I could have been an ill sort, one who did him no credit. I’m not like that, but I expected to have to prove… Well, if a man of my kindred, say one of my brothers, had come back with a Mackenzie maid for handfasting, it wouldn’t have been all hot mead and kisses at first from the women of my kindred either!”
“It’s been hard, with Edain away, hearing nothing but the odd letter, and those often of some battle or peril he’d been in and me not even knowing,” Melissa said softly, her eyes seeming to look beyond the wall.
“I can see that. I’ve been frightened for him more than once myself, even there with him! Though it was a comfort to have Artos King on hand.”
Melissa nodded. “Rudi… Artos… is a great hero, one whose song will live forever. Yet it’s perilous to stand too close to a hero in a tale! He’s been in and out of this house all his life, and I love him too; Lady Juniper was my sponsor in the Craft, and… But Edain is mine, my first son, the babe I bore beneath my heart and carried in my arms, new life in those years when it seemed death had swallowed all the world.”
“And he always will be your son,” Asgerd said. “You and the good father raised him to be a fine man, strong and kind both. My man, the one I will walk beside all my days, shipmates through life, and wh
o will be the father of my children. The grandchildren I will lay in your arms, good mother.”
“I would like that, sure and I will like it very much indeed,” Melissa said.
Then unexpectedly, she chuckled. “Though with twins only two years old myself… I hadn’t expected that, after twelve years without a hint and not for want of trying. There’s a good many infants around this house the now!”
“The twins are fine children!” Asgerd said, with genuine enthusiasm. “So strong already, like little Ratatoskr-squirrels for dashing and climbing, so bold and fearless!”
“So hard to keep out of everything that might burn, cut, drown, crush or poison them!” Melissa said. “The great thing with grandchildren is that you can hand them back to their parents and get a moment’s rest now and then!”
Then she extended a hand. “Shall we start again, and see what comes of it, Asgerd Karlsdottir? Asgerd Aylward Mackenzie, too?”
Asgerd took it in both of hers. “I would like that. And now let me help with the rest of this feast. I can chop and mince and peel a potato and knead bread and roll pastry and baste meat, even if I don’t have all the kitchen arts you do.” With a wry smile. “Of which I have heard the praises sung near every evening for full three thousand miles of campfire meals, let me tell you!”
Melissa laughed again, carefree this time. “Girl, with that in your ears day and night, it’s surprised and astonished I am you didn’t hate me already by the time you arrived!”
They stood and made for the door, arm in arm.
CHAPTER FOUR
DOMINION OF DRUMHELLER (FORMERLY PROVINCE OF ALBERTA) WESTERN NORTH AMERICA JUNE 21, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
R itva Havel blinked. “I thought I was fully recovered from the concussion,” she said, stepping back and lowering the point of her wooden blade.
“Aren’t you?” Ian Kovalevsky said anxiously, doing likewise and letting his shield down.
Neither of them went entirely out of stance until they were three paces backward. He was barely limping anymore, and neither was she, though they were still being careful. Not as careful as Dr. Nirasha would have liked; but they were both in their early twenties, in robust good health and in a profession where a fairly casual attitude towards risk was part of the package and wounds just a cost of doing business. Ritva doubted the doctor would have approved of the padded practice gear, or the cloth-wrapped wooden swords in their hands. The hot, bronze, hay-smelling distances of the shortgrass prairie stretched around them, with the white walled mass of the Anchor Bar Seven homeplace tiny in the distance, and the blue eye of the little lake and the green-and-yellow streak of the irrigated land. An eagle cruised not far away, looking over a flock of ewes and lambs, but respectful of the mounted shepherdess’ bow.
“I thought so, but I could swear that’s-”
She went over to her saddle by the picnic basket; their mounts were grazing free, both being too well trained to need hobbles. The binoculars were securely cased; she freed them and trained them to the northwest.
“Ah, the palantir en-crum,” Ian said; he’d been picking up a little of the Noble Tongue. Then he blinked. “That isn’t a bunch of cowboys or militiamen, is it?”
“No,” she said, without taking the glasses from her eyes; her voice bubbled with delight and curiosity. “I’m afraid not.”
Kovalevsky looked down at the picnic basket with its earthenware jug of beer, roast-beef sandwiches and pickles and salad and Babushka pirozhki, sweet pastries stuffed with sour cherries and nuts. His vanishing hopes were in his sigh. Ritva began stripping off the practice gear. The redcoat did the same.
“Who is it?” he asked in a resigned tone, absently rubbing at the still-sore point on his right buttock where the arrow had struck.
A series of liquid trills answered, and then she shook her head and dropped back into English: “Sorry, forgot.”
Poor boy. You actually had a pretty good chance of getting lucky, she thought. You’re sweet, which is a welcome change from Hrolf.
“I think it’s my aunt,” she went on. “My mother’s younger sister. The Hiril Dunedain. A party of my people.”
By the time the party reached her it was obvious. A dozen Rangers, all of them known to her-the Dunedain weren’t so many yet that she couldn’t remember them, especially the ones based out of Mithrilwood. She waved and called greetings to the green-clad riders. They had a couple of Anchor Bar Seven riders with them, probably from the patrols; one peeled off and galloped for the homeplace.
Lots of remounts and they’ve been pushing hard, she thought.
You could go nearly as fast as a rail-borne pedal car if you had three or four horses and switched off several times a day. For a while, at least, and if you didn’t mind your backside getting thoroughly tenderized. There was a very old joke about a book titled Thirty Years in the Saddle, by Major Assburns.
And in front of them all were Aunt Astrid with her disturbing eyes of silver-rimed, silver-threaded blue, Uncle Alleyne blondly handsome, Uncle John bulking huge under a red-brown thatch just showing some gray with his greatsword slung over his back, and raven-headed Aunt Eilir beside him grinning. The whole ruling quadrumvirate of the Folk of the West; it must be something important to bring them all out here in the middle of a war when they’d be badly needed closer to home. Everyone dismounted, and Ritva went to one knee, put hand to heart and bowed: “Well-met, my liege-lady and kinswoman; and all of you, my kin, my brethren.”
Astrid smiled and advanced, holding out her hands. Ritva placed hers between them. Close-to you could see that she’d spent many days in the saddle moving fast, but she showed the strain little as yet, though there were small lines beside those odd compelling eyes.
“Ritva Havelion, you have brought honor to the People of the West. You have helped to bring our King, your kinsman, back once more to his people. You have helped to lay the very foundations of the Kingdom of the West, of Montival. Mae coren! Very well done!”
Ritva felt herself blushing, and astonished at it. Off by yourself, you could think of Astrid Loring-Larsson as something of a figure of fun, however formidable. In her presence, the sheer burning power of belief caught you up again. Looking into the moon-rimmed eyes, you saw yourself as something else again from the light of common day.
I don’t think I have it in me to believe in anything quite that strongly. Does that mean I’m more sane, or something less than she is?
Then, rebelliously: But I probably have more fun!
“Did you see Rudi… Artos, Aunt Astrid?”
A brilliant smile answered her. “We did, at Castle Corbec, for the handfasting with Princess Mathilda.”
Neithan! she cursed silently. Bad luck to be laid up healing.
She didn’t resent it… much. There simply had been no time to waste waiting for her, and she hadn’t been in any condition to be moved. War was like that; she might have been crippled or killed, with only a little less blind luck.
“And we saw the Sword of the Lady. Marvelous, a wonder, like Glamdring or Orcrist or even Anduril Flame of the West!”
I hope you didn’t tell him that, she thought. Mary and I tried to convince him to name it Anduril and he didn’t react well at all.
“Through it the light of the Elder Days is brought to Middle Earth once more. And we are on a mission of our own at the High King’s command,” she went on. “One which will bring the Rangers glory and undying fame!”
Uh-oh.
“The code name is Operation Luthien.”
We are so fucked! she thought.
“We’ll need fresh horses, Ritva,” Alleyne said; he dropped into English for that, looking at the redcoat. “I understand they’re available here?”
“Yes, sir,” Ian Kovalevsky said. “This ranch raises them and sells saddlebroke four-year-olds, and the Force and the Militia regiments have brought in more.”
Ritva introduced him, adding: “A very brave man, and he fought extremely well against the Easterlings… the Cutters
. The Force are the local equivalents of the Rangers.”
A party was riding out from the tented camp beside the homeplace. They cantered up the rise and drew rein, a dozen men in light-cavalry gear over plain gray-green uniforms of linsey-woolsey. Their leader was a toughlooking bandy-legged little man of about forty with a face like an intelligent rat and sergeant’s chevrons riveted to the short sleeve of his mail shirt. He took off his helmet as he dismounted, scratching vigorously at his cropped graying brown hair, and then his eyes went wide in astonishment.
“Little John? John ’ordle? Fuck me sideways! You’re alive?” he blurted in a thick clotted accent.
“Was last toime Oi looked!” Then the big Ranger did a double take himself. “Geoff? Geoff Bainbridge? What the ’ell are you doin’ ’ere, Geoff? You were on Salisbury Plain, last toime Oi saw you, drivin’ a Challenger. Oi got over ’ere from Blighty about fifteen year ago. Thought you were a gonner these twenty-five years.”
“Ah were on a trainin’ course at CFB Suffield, me and two thousand others, just before the Change. Lucky as fuck that were an’ all!”
“You don’t know the ’alf of it, mate!” Hordle said feelingly.
“Aye, Ah do. An RN ship docked at Churchill three year back and dropped off a packet o’ English newspapers. Sounds laak it were raaght bad back ’ome for a while. Expected Leeds were totally fooked any road-seems Ah were raaght. Raaght bad all round, sounds laak.”
“Bad? Fuckin’ ’ell, worse than bad, mate. Worse than bad… but over quick, for most of ’em at least. How’d things go over ’ere?”
“It were raaght rough the first couple o’ years ’ere too; fuckin’ Calgary and Edmonton near dragged us down wi’ ’em an’ buggered t’lot o’ us. Would’ve, if hadn’t been so fuckin’ cold, that got most who walked out. Then we got things sorted out, laak. Ah’ve got a wife an’ kids and a bit o’ a farm goin’ a ways north o’ ’ere now. Till Ah got called oop fer this lot, any road.”
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