The Scourge of God c-2

by S. M. Stirling

  Fred nodded soberly. "I wasn't really that bad, but I could feel the temptation. Thing is, I've seen… what that can lead to."

  "Yes, and to only one place by many roads. But do not fall into an equal and opposite reaction. Though your path lead to a gallows or a throne, if you walk the Middle Way, you need not fear becoming that which you hate."

  Then he moved on to Rudi. The Mackenzie extended his hand, and Dorje took it between both of his for a moment. They felt like sandpaper that had been worn very smooth, old and leathery and strong.

  "You have been an excellent student… for a chiling with an eccentric theology," he said.

  "I regret having to leave so soon," Rudi said. His eyes went to the snowpeaks on the western horizon. "This is a good place for thinking."

  "Regret is vain, and leads to attachment, binding us to the Wheel," Dorje said. Then he laughed again. "But I too have regrets. That I will never see the peak of Kanchenjunga again, or smell the wind that blows from the Roof of the World. Yet this is a good place to lay my bones."

  Then he turned to them all, and spoke:

  "Three men set forth seeking fortune. All three went by the same road. And the one found gold; another came on good land, and he tilled it. But the third saw sunlight making jewels of the dew. Each one thought himself the richer. Farewell. We shall meet again."

  Master Hao turned to follow him, then stopped. "And we shall, as well. Some of you showed considerable promise," he added.

  His flat voice was harsh as ever, but several of the party blinked. That was more praise than any of them had gotten in their months here. He astonished them even more by smiling slightly as he continued:

  "We shall see how you implement what you have learned."

  TheScourgeofGod

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Archer, sage and swordsman keen;

  Black-clad ones who hear the spirits of the trees

  Young prince by kin betrayed

  Princess from evil sire redeemed

  Traitor's treason betrayed by honor of his own;

  He leads them there to meet

  Most ancient spirit of the land From: The Song of Bear and Raven

  Attributed to Fiorbhinn Mackenzie, 1st century CY

  THUNDER RIVER COUNTRY, EASTERN WYOMING

  JUNE 1, CY24/2022 AD

  "But the names you give the gods sound sort of weird," Frederick Thurston said.

  They were all sprawled around the fire, eating or just resting before dropping off to sleep. Rudi flipped a well-gnawed rib to Garbh before he answered, and the half-mastiff caught it out of the air with a clomp of jaws like tombstones falling together in a quarry on a wet day.

  "Well, then, you could call on Them in the forms they took to your ancestors," Rudi said. " Mine called on Brigid and Lugh and Ogma and the Morrigan, or at least a lot of them did, before the White Christ came."

  Fred laughed. "I'd be sort of lonely, calling on the gods of the. .." He searched his memory. "Yoruba? Ashanti? In Idaho, at least."

  "That's not your only heritage," Rudi answered. "On either the spear or cauldron side. There's the matter of your name, to be sure."

  "My name?"

  Rudi grinned and leaned back against his saddle. " Thurston means Stone of Thor. English, I'd say-the Norse would have made it Thorstein . Thunor is how the old English said that One's name."

  "Dad never said where it came from; we're from Maryland, though, far back. Might have picked it up there."

  "And your first name is Anglo-Saxon, too, or German. An Anglo-Saxon being a German who's forgotten he's half Welsh, as the saying goes. It means Peaceful Ruler."

  "It does?" Fred said. "Well, I'll be damned. Where could I find out more about that?"

  "Larsdalen, for starters," Rudi said, and nodded towards Mary and Ritva, who were combing each other's hair and rebraiding it. "Their mother, Signe Havel, is a priestess of that tradition-a gythja, a god-woman; she studied first with my mother, but took things in a different direction."

  "Mom never could stand not being number one," Mary said. Then: "Not that she doesn't mean it, you know."

  Edain Aylward Mackenzie had been silent during the talk of gods. Now he spoke:

  "Someone's coming," he said.

  He jerked a thumb over his shoulder into the night, then licked his fingers and belched slightly. Rudi slid down and pressed an ear to the ground; Ritva and Mary rose, donned their war cloaks, and ghosted into the darkness.

  "That's interesting," Fred replied, elaborately casual, and cut another slice off the buffalo hump. To himself he wondered: How did he

  … hey, it's the dog. Not fair!

  He kept chewing. Bison weren't common in western Idaho, where he'd lived all his life until recently. It was the best meat he'd ever tasted, flavorful, meltingly tender-you could eat it like candy. The contrast with the flat wheat griddlecakes wasn't too great if they were fresh and warm, though.

  He finished and stood, making sure his saber was loose in the scabbard. Edain came to his feet as well and strung his longbow. Then he rested his hand soothingly on Garbh's head where she pointed her nose northward into the darkness.

  Fred looked over to where Rudi was lounging on his bedroll. The Mackenzie nodded slightly, and the young man from Boise raised his voice:

  "You're welcome to share our fire."

  There was silence from beyond the reach of the light, but that wasn't very far; the tough greasewood stems had sunk to a low reddish glow in the pit they'd dug through the thick prairie sod. The meat rested on a spit above the embers, with fat making them spit and flare now and then as it dripped from the flesh or out of the spray of fine bones. The smell of it and the wheatcakes and the pot of beans drifted into the prairie summer night, beneath the huge fresh scent of the grasslands. A kettle of chicory stood on three rocks, keeping warm enough for a slight plume of acrid vapor.

  There was a moment of intense silence; the wind had died, and the moon was down, and only the stamp of a hobbled horse broke the quiet beneath the great dome of stars. Traveling the plains was a great way of making you realize how big this land was. They'd only covered a quarter of it, and it was more than half a year since he'd left…

  Maybe Dad was wrong. Maybe it's just too big to be all one country again. Meanwhile, let's keep our attention on whoever-the-hell this is

  …

  Fred went on:

  "And in case you were wondering, there are two of us in back of you by now. Even if you're moving on, show yourself. And we'd be happier about it if you came in slow. Less chance of someone's fingers slipping off a bowstring that way."

  "I'm coming in!" a voice called sharply. "I'm peaceable!"

  Fred's eyebrows went up. That was a woman's voice; tight with control, and hoarse with strain and tiredness as well. Rudi sat upright, looking casual and relaxed to anyone who didn't know how fast he could move; he'd been pressing his ear against the ground.

  "Only one horse anywhere near," he said quietly. "That's a good trick, Ingolf."

  "Only works well when the dirt's dry and hard," Ingolf replied. "I learned it from a Pawnee scout when we were fighting the Sioux."

  The slow clop of hoofbeats became audible. Then the slight jingle of spurs; the rider was walking and leading her horse. Fifty yards away the figure became vaguely discernible; the bright starlight was enough to show it was wearing a wide-brimmed hat. And to show the violent start as the twins rose like sections of the grass itself in their war cloaks. Starlight caught on the heads of the arrows ready on their bows.

  "I said I'm peaceable-like, dammit!" the stranger said, in a strong range-country accent.

  It was stronger and harsher than Fred's own; he'd grown up in Boise, which had never stopped being a city even when it shrank drastically. Out here where the largest settlements were generally a ranch home-place, speech had drifted faster and farther from the old world's standards.

  "That's nice," Ritva replied. "A lot of people who might be dreadfully bitchy otherwise are
peaceable with an arrow pointed at their briskets."

  The stranger peered at her, and apparently found what she saw behind the arrowhead reassuring-which showed she was either overconfident or more perceptive than the usual run. She came on, looking around their camp as she approached. The two mules that pulled the cart were hobbled, dim shapes grazing not too far away; so were a dozen of the horses. The other nine were tethered to a picket line much closer, where they could be saddled quickly in an emergency; a heap of cut grass lay in front of them. Epona was neither hobbled nor tethered; she raised her muzzle from a doze at the scent of the stranger's gelding, snorted, and shut her eyes again.

  There wasn't much else, except the sleeping bags and saddles arranged around the firepit, though Fred noticed how the fire underlit everyone's faces, making them look a bit sinister…

  And if I were a lone woman coming in out of the dark, I'd be a bit cautious, he thought, and tossed on a few more sticks.

  The stranger dropped her reins and the horse stood; that might be good training, or it might just be exhausted.

  Both, the young man thought.

  It looked like a good horse that had been ridden too far and too fast, and there were silver studs on the bridle and breast-collar and saddle, and on the big tooled leather tapaderos that covered the stirrups. The silver was tarnished, or rubbed with mud, and the rest of the gear-coiled leather lariat, cased recurve bow and small round shield, checked shirt, leather breeches, boots, chaps, a quiver of arrows over her back on a bandolier-also looked good but hard-used. She had a shete and a bowie knife at her broad belt and a pair of soft leather gauntlets tucked through it; the buckle was worked steel, in the shape of a coyote's head.

  The woman…

  No, it's a girl. She's not thirty, the way I thought at first glance, Fred decided. She's about my age or a little less, just dirty and dusty and falling-down tired.

  … looked around the circle of faces; Ignatius was out on watch, and the stranger's glance flicked at the twins and Mathilda for a moment longer. Which was logical; women along and armed made it less likely they were a bandit gang, slavers, or others of dubious character. Not impossible, but less likely.

  She sighed and relaxed a little, tapping the wide felt hat against her chaps. Her face was narrow and straight-nosed beneath the trail dirt, and her hair was bound back in a single braid; it looked to be brown, perhaps with a hint of auburn, and her eyes were blue when the firelight flared a bit. He judged that her height would be about halfway between the twins and Mathilda; five-eight and a bit.

  "Well, you're not Cutters, at least," she said after a second. "Nor friends of theirs."

  "Emphatically unfriends of theirs, miss," Rudi said, standing. She blinked up at the height of him, noticed the kilt, and then looked over at Edain, a bit startled. "Still and all, are they on your trail? Your company is pleasant; theirs wouldn't be at all, at all."

  "They were, but I lost them two days ago, I'm pretty sure." She took a deep breath. "Kane is my name, Virginia Kane, of… of nowhere in particular."

  She seemed to relax a little further when nobody recognized her name. Rudi introduced himself, and then the others. Fred gestured at the fire.

  "Help yourself. And there's water, a good seep in the slough over there for your horse. Barrel's full and we purified it."

  "Yeah, my horse smelled the slough a couple of miles back," she said. "We're pretty dry."

  She stopped to let Garbh smell her hand, watered and unsaddled her horse, rubbing it down and hobbling it before washing her hands and face in a little of the water and drinking cup after cup from the barrel on the cart. Then she dropped her saddle and bedroll in an empty spot, and came over to crouch by the fire. Her hands shook very slightly as she spooned beans onto a tin plate from her kit and cut meat from the hump with a clasp-knife. Fred noted with interest that the little knife had been honed to a wire edge, and that she used it with a pulling stroke that showed experience. She piled the slices onto a couple of flat wheatcakes and wrapped them to make tubular sandwiches.

  Despite that tremor of eagerness she didn't gobble, although she ate with concentrated intensity for a good fifteen minutes; she wasn't gaunt, so it had probably been only the past few days that she'd been missing meals. Fred judged she'd been well fed before that, but active-she had the lean hard look of it, though with enough in breast and hip to please a man's eye. When she'd finished she rolled a cigarette and poured a cup of the chicory.

  Look at the hands, he thought-his father had told him that was the best quick way to read someone. They're not soft, but they're not a working ranch-hand's either, or a servant girl's. Not enough battering, and that dirt's not ground into her knuckles and pores. And her fingernails are well trimmed. Plus tobacco is expensive.

  "Thank you kindly," she said.

  Odard was lying against his saddle, idly strumming at his lute. He didn't look up from the instrument as he said:

  "Left home in a hurry, demoiselle? Anyone after you that we should know about? Someone who might just kill any company you'd picked up… us, for instance?"

  Her hand moved towards the hilt of her shete; then she unbuckled the weapons belt and set it aside slightly-though Fred noticed she didn't put it so far away that she couldn't draw the steel quickly.

  "My… ranch that I was living on got taken over by the CUT," she said carefully. "By a couple of neighbors who'd gone over to the Cutters, at least; and there were Cutter troops around to back them up, a new bunch, not just their levies-Sword of the Prophet, regulars out of Corwin. I had to clear out fast; the Cutters don't live like human beings, if you ask me, and it's worse for a woman. That was in the Powder River country, north of Sheridan."

  That didn't mean anything to most of them. Ingolf whistled softly. "That's a long way to come on one horse, miss," he said.

  Virginia looked at him; her eyes narrowed slightly, noting the difference in accent between him and the others who'd spoken. His Wisconsin rasp wasn't much like her twang, but it was a lot closer than Rudi's lilt or the archaic Portlander dialect or the way Sindarin influenced the way the twins sounded.

  "I had a remuda," she said. "But they were after me. I had to push my horses hard, and leave a couple that foundered or went lame."

  "And are you heading anywhere in particular?" Rudi said.

  She looked at him, visibly considered, and said with a trace of bitterness:

  "Mister, it's more a matter of headin' away from anywhere those maniacs is likely to go."

  Then she yawned; her head drooped, until she pulled it up with a jerk.

  "You can put your bedroll over here on the girls' side," Mathilda said. "And tell us more about it in the morning."

  "… Guide me and guard me this day and all days

  By Your grace, with harm to none,

  Blessed be!"

  Rudi lowered his arms as the disk of the sun cleared the eastern horizon. The plain there was nearly featureless, though it was rising ground and rolled very slightly more than the flatness behind them. Even a slight roll here was deceptive, making you think you could see farther than you could. Was that the slightest trace of blue irregularity on the northeast the Black Hills, or was knowledge born of maps fooling him?

  Hard to tell, he thought. It's tricky to measure distance here by eye. And who knew the sky could be so… big?

  Dawn and evening were the best hours on the plains, he'd found; for a few long moments it was a mystery of brown and green and blue, of long shadows and enormous distance. The morning was cool, and for an instant there had been dew on the grass, but the great cloudless dome of blue all around them augured for a warm day. Grass ran in rippling calf-high waves to the edge of sight, still green in early June, with only the occasional big sage or white-blossomed yucca bush, but with a thick scattering of flowers yellow and pink and blue. A herd of pronghorns flowed past in the middle distance; prairie dogs whistled from a town whose little conical hillocks scattered the land ahead, and then they dove for cover
as a golden eagle soared by on seven-foot wings, its shadow flowing ahead of it.

  "Ah, you guys aren't from around here, are you?" Virginia said carefully.

  Rudi turned from where he and his sisters and Edain had been making their morning prayer; Fred Thurston had joined in. A bit to his surprise, Ingolf had joined them too, standing beside Mary, though he hadn't actually recited the Salute to the Sun with them.

  "No, we're from the Far West," he said. "Except Ingolf here, and he's been all the way West to our home."

  Ignatius was looking a little unhappy about Ingolf, but too polite to say anything in public, and he was sticking close to Mathilda anyway-since Yule, he'd been like a goose with one gosling around her. Odard was with them, of course; he'd been getting more pious lately.

  "You mean from that valley near the Tetons, over past the Wind River country, where they've got the funny religion and all the weird fighting tricks?"

  "We passed through there," Rudi said, grinning. "But we're from farther away than that, and our religion is even funnier than theirs!"

  The ranch-woman went on, still carefully: "Yeah, the skirts look. .. a little strange. No offense."

  "We're from Oregon," Edain amplified. "And these aren't skirts, they're kilts. We're Mackenzies-everyone wears them in our clan."

  She smiled at him, revealing even white teeth. "Except the women?" she said, nodding at Mary and Ritva, and Mathilda, all of whom were in pants.

  "We're Dunedain, not Mackenzies," Ritva said. "We wear pants, or robes. All the Mackenzies wear kilts… well, the older women wear arsaids, sometimes. Mathilda there's a Portlander Associate-women where she comes from wear skirts all the time, except her, she gets a special break. And Father Ignatius is-"

  "A Roman priest, yeah," she said, inclining her head politely to him; he had his Benedictine robe on over the rest of his clothes. "Some of us are… were… Catholic. I'm a Baptist, myself, more or less."