The Scourge of God c-2

by S. M. Stirling

  Ingolf lifted Mary out of her arms. Odard and Fred and Mathilda caught Ritva as she started to topple, tended to the horses, half carried her over to the largest shelter and through the low door of blankets and branches. It was warm within-warmer, at least-with rocks heated in the fire and changed as they began to cool. Father Ignatius began to unwrap the bandages around Mary's head; someone helped Ritva pull off her wet gloves and thrust a mug of hot broth into her hands, and she managed to wrap her fingers around it before it spilled. The liquid almost scorched her mouth, but she could feel every drop of it as it made its way down her gullet and into her nearly empty stomach. She'd eaten the deer's liver, raw, but nothing else in the…

  "How long?" she asked, through chattering teeth.

  Another mug of the broth came, and she was suddenly aware of the salty aroma of the boiled-down jerky and minced squirrel. She forced herself to sip, and help as others got her wet clothes off and herself into her sleeping bag; more of the hot rocks went into that as well, wrapped in her spare clothes. Her mind began to function again as her core temperature rose, enough to be conscious of how weary she was, and even of how the light of the lantern slung from the apex of the shelter jerked and twisted on the anxious faces around her. The pine scent was overwhelmingly strong, like a cool cloth on a fevered brow.

  "You've been gone a day past when we expected," Ingolf said. "What the hell happened?"

  She described it in short words, ending with: "They're not going to follow us anymore. But the warlock and the lunatic with the badges left a blazed trail to where Mary and I met them. That's only twelve, fourteen miles east. How's Rudi?"

  The others remained silent, silent as the blanket-bundled form who lay on his stomach not far away. Father Ignatius said from where he worked:

  "He's no worse… well, perhaps not much worse. The antibiotic cream is containing the infection, but the wound in his back in particular doesn't want to heal… of course, the conditions haven't been very good for convalescence."

  His breath sucked in as he undid the last of the bandages. Everyone looked; Frederick Thurston winced and looked away almost immediately, but he was the youngest of them.

  "I'll have to remove the remains of the eye, cleanse and stitch. The wound is already angry… I wouldn't have expected that, so soon and in cold weather."

  Ritva blinked. "I cleaned it and packed it with the powder!"

  Ignatius nodded, hands busy. Mary stirred, and gave a stifled shriek as she came aware again, then subsided into a tense shivering quiet.

  "Can you hear me?" the warrior-priest said, as he swabbed her face.

  Ingolf was on her other side. The cornflower-blue eye swiveled from the cleric to him, then to the rest of them, and to Ritva, and she sighed. Her hand came up, and the Easterner took it.

  "I… can hear you. It's seeing you that's a problem! How come there's two of you when I've got only one eye left?" Mary said, and bared her teeth in what might have been a smile.

  Ignatius nodded sober approval, took the vial of morphine from the kit, frowned a little as he saw the level, and then began filling a hypodermic. Ritva remembered bargaining for the precious painkiller in Bend, with Mary as the other half of her…

  "I can't use too much of this," he said, as someone came in with a kettle of boiling water and poured it into a shallow basin; the shelter was already set up as a sickroom for Rudi. "I'm afraid there will be some pain."

  "Alae, duh," Mary said.

  Ritva flogged herself into wakefulness while the work went on; her sister's other hand was in hers, and the bones of Ritva's creaked under the pressure of her grip. Ingolf sat at the other. When it was over, he helped wipe away the sweat of agony.

  "Feels… like nice… stitching," Mary said, timing the words to her breath to control it. "We never were… good at embroidery."

  "I've used some of the numbing oil," Ignatius said. "You should sleep now, my daughter."

  "Thanks," she whispered. Then her eyelid fluttered. "Guess… I can live with… one eye."

  "No," Ritva said. "You'll have three, sis."

  "Five," Ingolf said.

  He waited until her breathing grew regular, then tucked the hands inside the sleeping bag.

  "How soon can she be moved?" he asked the priest.

  "Ideally… not for weeks," Ignatius said, and then shrugged wryly as he tossed the last of the soiled cloths into a bowl. "But moving her will be much less risk than moving Rudi."

  Ingolf's battered face closed in like a fist. "We have to. Move 'em both. Twelve miles isn't enough, even with the storm to cover our tracks."

  Unexpectedly, Frederick spoke: "I've seen reports on these mountains. From now on, the storms can come one after another for weeks. We could get stuck here. But there are caves farther up this valley. Dad used them for, uh, scouts, back when we were having problems with New Deseret."

  Ingolf nodded. "We need to get farther away… a cave would be right. We'll rig two horse-travois."

  Ritva let her mind drift away. I don't have anything I have to do right now, she thought. It was enough to make her smile, as the dark flowed up around her like comfort.

  WESTERN WYOMING, GRAND TETON MOUNTAINS

  OCTOBER 15, CY 23/2021 AD

  Rudi Mackenzie dreamed.

  In the dream he rose from his sickbed, looking down for a moment at the thin, wasted form. Edain watched by his side; now and then he poked at the low fire that burned with a canted wall of piled rocks behind it to absorb and throw back the heat. The others were dim shapes in the depth of the cave; Epona looked up and whickered at him, and Garbh bristled a bit and whined until Edain absently stroked her head.

  He turned from them and walked out through the gap in the pine branches that blocked the entrance, knocking a little snow down on his bonnet. He was whole, and free of pain; looking down he saw that he was dressed in his kilt and jacket and plaid, knee-hose and shoes. His senses were keen, but the blizzard outside was only bracing; he could hear the wind whistle in the Ponderosa pines, and feel the sting of driven snow on his face, smell the dry, mealy smell of it as branches tossed in the thick woods above and below.

  But I'm not really cold, somehow, he thought, smiling to hear the moan and creak of the wind's passage.

  He walked down the path. An overhung ridge of rock topped with three twisted trees made the trail kink, creating a sheltered nook in the storm. A man stood there, leaning one shoulder against the rock. A brisk fire burned at his feet, throwing smoke up to where the wind caught it above the ridge and tattered it into the blowing whiteness. To one side a tall spear leaned against the cliffside, broader-headed than most horseman's weapons; he thought there were signs graven in the steel. A horse stood some distance off, unsaddled but with several blankets thrown over it and its head down. It was a big beast, but hard to see; the wolflike dog that raised its head as he approached seemed massive as well. Saddle and bedroll and gear lay beside the fire, and a pot steamed over it.

  The man was tall too, taller than Rudi but lean. As the Mackenzie came closer he saw that the stranger was old; at least, his shoulder-length hair and cropped beard were iron gray. His dress was that of the Eastern plains and mountains, neckerchief and broad-brimmed hat, sheepskin coat and long thick chaps of the same, homespun pants and fleece-lined leather boots, poncho of crudely woven wool longer at the rear than the front. Closer still, and Rudi could see that the lids of his left eye closed on emptiness; the other was the color of mountain glaciers, and as cold.

  "You're welcome to share my fire," the man said, making a gesture towards the pot.

  His voice rolled deep, cutting through the muted wind-howl. Rudi nodded, swallowing a prickling sensation as he bent and poured himself a cup-thus making himself a guest. Not everyone felt that to be as sacred as Mackenzies did, but most folk would think three times before falling on someone they'd invited to share their food. The liquid was chicory-what most in the far interior called coffee -hot and strong and bitter, but this somehow also tas
ted of honey and flowers and a little of hot tar.

  The dog growled at him a little, one great paw across a meaty elk thigh bone…

  No, Rudi thought suddenly. It's a wolf, not a dog.

  The gray man nudged the beast, ruffling its ears as he bent to pour himself a cup from the battered pot of enameled metal.

  "Quiet, greedyguts," he said. He glanced up; a raven sat on a branch that jutted over the rock, cocking a thoughtful eye at the wolf's meal, and another sat beside it with head beneath wing. "And you two remember what happened the last time, and think twice."

  Then he leaned back against the rock again, blowing on his chicory and waiting, relaxed as the wolf at his feet.

  "I'm called Rudi Mackenzie," the young clansman said slowly, as he straightened and met the other's eye; strength flowed into him with the hot drink, easing a weakness he hadn't sensed until that moment. "But I'm thinking the now that I know your name… lord."

  The older man's features were jut-boned, bold of chin and nose, scored by age but still strong, as were the long-fingered hands that gripped his own cup.

  "Call me Wanderer," he said. He smiled a little. "And I know your father."

  "Sir Nigel?" Rudi asked.

  "Him too. But I was thinking of your blood-father. You might say he bought a ticket to the table I set out; him and many of his kin, from out of deep time."

  Rudi finished the cup and set it aside; the last of his discomfort seemed to vanish with it. He raised his head and met the Other's gaze.

  The eye speared him. For a moment he seemed to be looking beyond it, as if the pupil were a window; to a place where everything that was, was smaller than that span across the eye. Then a flash, a searing that was more than light or heat, while being itself flexed and shattered and re-formed in a wild tangle of energies; then a wilderness of empty dark where stars lit, like campfires blossoming. .. and then guttering out as they fled apart, until there was another darkness, one where the stuff of his body itself decayed into nothingness. And in that nothingness, a light that looked at him.

  Rudi blinked and swallowed, daunted but not glancing aside. The deep voice went on:

  "Shall I show you your fate, boy? Shall I tell you if you die untimely or live long?"

  "No, my lord Wanderer," Rudi said softly. "My mother is a weaver, and I know that every thread has its place and is part of the whole. All men die. None die untimely, and no man may live a day longer than he lives. So if you've come to lead me away, I am ready."

  He dared a smile. "Though I've heard you send your daughters for that job."

  And there's a good deal I'd rather do first… he thought.

  Suddenly an image came to him, painfully bright; a room with a bed, and Matti's face exhausted and triumphant as she looked up to him from the red crumpled-looking infant cradled in the crook of her arm, and a shadow of his own exultant joy.

  The Wanderer laughed, and though it was a soft chuckle there was an overtone to it like the crackle of lights over the mountains in winter. There was approval there, but by something greater than men or their hopes and sorrows.

  "Good! Though you won't be meeting Gondul, as your father did. You've pledged yourself to another, and I'm not inclined to quarrel with Her."

  Rudi's mouth quirked. "It seems you've something else in mind then, my lord the Wanderer," he said.

  The figure nodded. "But unasked, I will tell you this: you won't die in the straw of sickness, nor of an arrow in the back, even a cursed one. Though you will not live to feel your shoulders bend with age, or see your hair grow gray."

  "How, then?"

  "You will die by the blade, sword in hand. The King's death, the given sacrifice that goes consenting with open eyes, dying that his folk may live."

  "As my father did, whose blood renewed the land. Thank you, then, lord Wanderer. Though I've seldom called on You by name."

  The Wanderer flicked away the grounds in his tin cup and tossed it to the damp earth beside the fire. "No?" he said. "But your mother has called on Me, in her grove, when you lay wounded and near to death. And you have as well. Come."

  He put his hand on Rudi's shoulder. They took three steps to the edge of the trail to look downward, and his poncho flared in the wind, seeming longer now. A dead leaf flickered out of it as it masked Rudi's face for a moment, and then he sucked in his breath.

  I know that path! he thought.

  It was nightfall on the roadway that ran westward from the waterfall and mill to the gates of Dun Juniper, where the schoolchildren practiced an hour or two shooting at the mark most evenings. The trees beyond and below were Douglas fir, taller and thicker and closer-set than the pine forests of the Tetons, each dark green branch heavy with its load of snow. It was a softer fall than the blizzard about him, of flakes larger and wetter… the snow of a winter in the western foothills of the Cascades, one that would lay a few days at most, not grip the land like cold iron until the end of May.

  Close at hand a column of kilted children were walking through the gathering dark, cased bows and capped quivers over their shoulders, with a few adult warriors among them-one had a lamp slung on a spear over her shoulder, a globe of yellow light in the fog white of the snow.

  "That's Aoife Barstow," he said slowly. "She and her lover died fighting for me when the Protector's men came, only a little later.. . I offer at their graves every year."

  The children started singing. He recognized one clear high ten-year-old's voice. It was his own.

  "Upon his shoulder, ravens

  His face like stone, engraven

  Astride an eight-hoofed stygian beast

  He gathers the fruit of the gallows trees!

  Driving legions to victory

  The Bringer of War walks tonight!"

  "By the name you invoked, by the blood she spilled, by the offering made beneath the tree where she died," the man said softly. "By these you called, and I answer at the appointed time."

  "She… named others than you, lord Wanderer. As have I, full often."

  Images passed before his eyes; he couldn't be sure if they were shapes formed in the swirling snow, or his own imaginings, or as real as the blood he could feel beating in his throat… because that too might be illusion. A tall charioteer's shape edged and crowned with fire, tossing up a spear that was a streak of gold across the sky and kissing it as he rode laughing to battle as to a bridal feast; a woman vast and sooty and bent, wielding a scythe that reaped men; a raven whose wings beat out the life and death of worlds. His hand went to the scar between his brows, where a real raven's beak had touched him in the sacred wood.

  "When I hung nine days from the Tree, I became a god of death," the one-eyed figure said. "When I grasped the runes of wisdom I learned many names."

  He looked up. One of the great black birds moved in the skeletal branches above them. It cocked its head and gave a harsh cry and launched itself away, gliding down the slope on broad-stretched wings.

  "And Raven and I are old friends."

  They turned back to the fire. If this isn't the final journey, then I must be dreaming, Rudi thought, as they crouched by the red flickering warmth, across from each other, sitting easily on their hams.

  The gray-haired man reached into a pocket, brought out tobacco and papers, rolled himself a cigarette single-handed, then lit it with an ember he picked out with a twig. He handed it across the fire; the Mackenzie took it, and inhaled the smoke-he'd done the same before, visiting with the Three Tribes. For a flickering instant as he inhaled the harsh bite across his tongue the shape on the other side of the flames had a prick-eared, long-muzzled face, and two braids of hair beside it beneath the hat.

  "Are you truly that One men named the Wanderer?" Rudi asked boldly.

  He could feel his fear, but it was slightly distant, like the cold of the wind. And well might a man be afraid, to meet Him on a lonely mountainside. He was a god of death; the lord of poetry and craft who'd given the runes to men and established kingship, but also bringer
of the red madness of battle, of everything that lifted humankind beyond themselves. His favorites got victory, but they died young, and often by treachery.

  A puff of smoke. "What would your mother say?"

  She'd answer a question with a question, some distant part of Rudi thought wryly. And if I complain, say that you can only truly learn the truth you find yourself. Aloud:

  "That the forms the God wears… or the Goddess… are many.

  And that they are true, not mere seemings or masks, but that they're not… not complete. As are the little gods and the spirits of the land, or the Fathers and Mothers of the animal kind. They speak to us as we need them, if we'll but listen. For how can a man tell all his mind to a child, or a god to a man?"

  The other nodded. The great wolf raised its head and looked at him, then put its massive muzzle on its paws again.

  "A wise woman, Lady Juniper, a very wise woman… and not least in knowing that what she knows isn't everything that is."

  "You'll be talking to me in riddles and hints, then, I suppose, lord Wanderer?"

  The eye pierced him. For a moment he felt transparent as glass, as if he could suddenly see his entire life-not in memory, but through an infinity of Rudis-stretching back like a great serpent to the moment of his birth… and his conception… and before. As if all time and possibility were an eternal now.

  "Look, then," the Wanderer said. "If you can bear it."

  For a moment the mountain about him stood stark and bare, only here and there a charred root exposed by the gullies cut by long-gone monsoon floods. Heat lay on it like a blanket, through air gray and clear and thick with the tears of boiling oceans. Then it changed and was green once more… but different, somehow; there was a wrongness to the way the trees were placed, a regularity that held patterns as complex as those you saw in a kaleidoscope, layer within layer. A rabbit hopped by…