The sharp savory taste was surprisingly good, and he was hungry. Anyone who thought riding all day wasn’t hard work had never done it, particularly if your thighs had had time on shipboard to forget the strains involved. He cautiously took a cup of the tea brought around in tin kettles. It was strong and bitter, and experience had shown that more than one would keep him up even if he was tired, like coffee, but it was refreshing.
Ishikawa made a surprised, pleased sound as he lifted some of the rice mixture to his lips with the chopsticks he kept in a case tucked into the sleeve of his kimono.
“Umami,” he said, and looked around at the camp. “Not bad. Salty, a little like dashi. This green tea is truly very bad, but at least there is tea.”
“What do you think of the camp?” Thora asked him.
The catapults and prang-prangs were more or less in the middle of the little army, a sign of the value the Baru Denpasarans attached to them. Thora was shoveling her rice in with a spoon and the air of someone who’d eaten much worse. Deor sat a little way away, absently listening to the conversation, absently listening to a raucous round-robin song some of the local folk were passing from group to group, and absently moving his lips in a preoccupied way that John added together and recognized as composition in progress.
“Sloppy,” Ishikawa said, and then grudgingly: “But the most important things have been done. More or less. I do not like more or less. Even more, I do not like in war. Mistakes kill you.”
Thora grunted agreement at his appraisal of the encampment, and there was a spell of rock-scissors-paper as they decided who of the ship’s parties would take each watch; she and the Japanese and the huge Maori didn’t need a discussion to decide they weren’t going to slumber serenely and rely completely on their hosts. John couldn’t quite decide whether to be glad his rank spared him such chores, or too anxious to sleep at all.
Deor uncased his harp Golden Singer, tuned it and began to play something low and melancholy. He looked up with a smile as Ruan slipped unobtrusively back into their group. The green-brown-orange tartan of his kilt and plaid and his green-surfaced brigandine were as handy at camouflage here as they were back in Montival, or better.
“I saved dinner for you,” the scop said.
“And I’m ready for it, my heart, and give you thanks!”
The young Mackenzie unstrung his bow, gave it a quick check before he slid it into its waxed cover, shed his gear and then sat and signed the bowl with a murmured ritual.
“And this, though it’s less tasty,” Deor said.
He handed his lover a cup of the decoction of sweet wormwood they were all taking; it was good protection against the local fevers, and the Silver Surfer had brought plenty of it. Ruan made a bit of a face as he drank, and Toa chuckled.
“Good for what doesn’t ail you yet,” he said.
“I am a healer,” Ruan said dryly. “That doesn’t mean I have to like the taste of a bitter potion.”
“You’d like those manky little burrowing buggers they get on these islands even less, and it’s good for those too.”
“Larva migrans,” Pip said.
John joined in her shudder. Plant life wasn’t all that flourished in this climate.
Deor went on:
“What did you see?”
Ruan swallowed a spoonful of the rice mixture and frowned. “A great deal of nothin’ much,” he said. “These aren’t my woods, and nothing’s quite the same; not by look or touch or scent or even the feel of the air on your skin or the dirt between your toes. I saw something like deer, and wild pig of a kind, and plenty of birds I couldn’t name. Many are the faces of the Mother!”
He made a sign of propitiation. “I did see that our friends here are no woods-runners themselves; I don’t doubt they’re brave enough and tough fighters when it’s a matter of face-to-face, but save for a few they’re like so many north-country peasants for wilderness work.”
There was a mild scorn in his tone. In the Association lands, the chase was mostly a pursuit for nobles and their paid retainers, beyond the level of throwing rocks at rabbits trying to raid the garden. By contrast most Mackenzies were good hunters and woodsmen as well as farmers and craftsfolk; his folk got a good deal of their meat from the wild, or as they’d put it by the grace of Lady Flidais and the Horned Lord. The Clan’s war-training built on it, given how much wilderness there was in the dùthchas.
“I near got speared twice myself because their sentries were so jumpy, password or no,” he added. “And that they didn’t see me until I was on top of them, when I thought I’d made enough noise to waken the dead in Mag Mell.”
“Their sentries aren’t any use, then?” John said in alarm.
“To be sure, there’s enough of them to warn the camp by screaming as they’re killed by anyone sneaking about. Well, that may be drawing the longbow, but they’re not the best I’ve ever seen. Which is why they’ve got so many out, I’d be thinking.”
“Quantity has a quality all its own, as the old saying goes,” Pip supplied.
John wondered why Radavindraban gave her a glance and snorted with what was half laughter. He finished the rice and began to scour out the bowl; you had to be careful about that, and even more so here than at home given how fast and thoroughly rot set in with this climate.
“Nothing else?” Thora asked.
“Not now. But there’s man-sign in those woods, right enough, if you’ve eyes to see. Using the game-trails, mostly, but human-kind, and lately. Whoever they were they knew how to move in thick cover, the which the most of our friends here do not; also they were barefoot, and from the tracks of their feet they go that way all their lives.”
Toa grunted agreement. “Different shape to the foot,” he said.
“How many?” Thora asked, and Ruan shrugged.
“Less than a score, more than two or three. Speaking of the fresh tracks only.”
“Scouts,” the Bearkiller said decisively. “We’re being watched.”
John sighed. “Well, we knew there were hostiles nearby,” he said. “The people in . . . the large building to the east of the bay . . . saw us leaving, come to that. I’d have us under observation, if I were them. Thank you, Ruan.”
The younger man shrugged and laid his blanket-roll next to Deor’s, sitting with his hard-muscled arms about his knees.
“You’re welcome, Prince. Though it’s my neck too!”
Evrouin handed John his lute-case at a gesture, and he tuned Azalaïs; they were all tired, but a little music was never amiss. The instrument was holding up well, but the hot damp made him anxious about it, and he worked a little oil with a cloth into the gleaming intaglio surface. His fingers seemed to find the softly haunting tune by themselves. After a moment he heard a few faint pings from Deor’s harp as the other man adjusted the tuning and then the first full chords as he joined in. It was one of his aunt Fiorbhinn’s compositions, and the scop had apprenticed to her long ago.
“The Voices Speak” had become popular throughout Montival lately, so much so that there was talk of making it the anthem of the High Kingdom. He and John began:
“Speak to me, they speak to me
Of this place they speak to me—
Of sky and wind, of sea and stone
Of moss and fern and cedar tree
Of cliffs where wild arbutus grow . . .”
One by one all the Montivallans joined in, a wistfulness in their voices.
“Speak to me, they speak to me
Of orcas gliding through the deep
Of eagles balancing the wind
Above the waves where salmon leap.”
The song was like a cool breath in the hot alien night; he closed his eyes for a moment and saw the walls of Portland, and the waterfalls like silver threads down the cliffs of the Columbia Gorge, and the hang-gliders dancing with the sky at Hood Rive
r. The voices rose:
“Speak to me, they speak to me
Of deer that browse the twilight fields
Of stony heron keeping watch
For what the silver sea might yield
Speak to me, they speak to me
Of what has been and what endures
Of summer’s bloom and autumn’s fade
In the circling of the years!
The last verse turned soft with longing:
“Speak to me, they speak to me
In voices humming in my bone
In whispers rising on my breath
In languages that tell of . . . home.”
Pip looked at him a little strangely. “Well, that was . . . interesting.”
Then with a raffish smile: “Do we all have a bit of a nostalgic weep for the old rose-embowered cottage we grew up in now?”
John laughed, and shook his head as he leaned back against the wheel of the catapult. “Just feeling a bit homesick. And come to that, I grew up in castles and manor houses, mostly.”
“Ah, well, I’m closer to home. Though that does make me want to see Montival the more. It sounds spectacular—a bit like New Zealand, in fact.”
“There’s a lot of world to see!” John said, and they shared a smile that meant: young, and the world before us.
Then she yawned. “Though right now, I could use a good bit of sleep.”
Pip wrapped herself in her blanket at arm’s length away from John, using her light pad saddle as a pillow and leaving her bowler hat, cane, kukri-knives, sandals and slingshot within easy reach. John smiled at the way her face relaxed as she went quickly to sleep, making her look much younger. He felt a rush of . . .
Wait a minute, that’s affection, not just lust. Well, mostly not. You’re in danger here, Johnnie!
He was impressed by her uncomplaining ease with the rough circumstances, too. She was a ruler’s daughter and her mother had been a successful adventurer and very wealthy in her own right by the time she bore her only daughter, but while she exuberantly enjoyed the finer things in life she could switch to field living without breaking stride.
Deor had put his harp away and was pacing a circle around their campsite. Every few feet he stopped, faced outward, and drew a sign in the air. The intoned syllable that went with it was felt more than heard. When he had finished, he saw John watching and smiled.
“It’s a thing I learned in Norrheim,” he said. “I galdor the thurs rune to make a hedge of thorns. It won’t stop a determined attack, but it can delay and confuse them. Humans aren’t the only wights in that forest. This place is full of strange Powers. Time to invoke a few of our own. I follow Woden, but tonight I’ll be calling on Thunor, who defends us against the etin-kin.”
John nodded and crossed himself.
“I’ll be invoking the Saints, and for the same reason!” he said.
Then he checked that his belt with sword and poniard were within easy reach and sank back, pulling up a blanket that smelled strongly of horse and listening to the unfamiliar whines and rustles of the alien night.
Even the constellations were different. The stars were bright, though, and a wisp of cloud turned translucent as it drifted across the moon . . .
Same moon at home, he thought. And how I wish I was there! Well, if Pip was there too, that would be even better.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
DÚN NA SÍOCHÁNA
(FORMERLY SALEM, OREGON)
CAPITAL, HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL
(FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)
OCTOBER 31ST
CHANGE YEAR 46/2044 AD
“As the sun bleeds through the murk
’tis the last day we shall work—
For the veil is thin and the spirit wild,
And the Crone is carrying Harvest’s child!
Samhain! Turn away
Run ye back to the light of day;
Samhain! Hope and pray
All ye meet are the gentle Fae—”
The Tennō Heika of Dai-Nippon looked down from the balcony of the guest quarters at the masked and kilted revelers who sang as they danced through the wet, darkened streets. The newly-lit gaslights along the sidewalks flickered in their opalescent glass globes, casting a glow through the misty air where the torches made whirling red streaks. Later there would be bonfires and a feast where an empty place was left, for the spirits and the ancestors, and tales of ghosts and night-creatures. There were interesting similarities to some festivals in Nihon. This half-inhabited ruin was on the border of the Mackenzie dúthchas, an area that encompassed most of the eastern half of the Willamette Valley south of Mithrilwood and Mt. Angel and stretched nearly to the remains of Eugene and up to the crestline of the High Cascades, and many of those who worked or dwelt here were clansfolk.
Reiko was comfortable enough in her iro-tomesode with five kamon in the Imperial crest, made of dark-blue silk subtly patterned below the waistline, since she had a good under-kimono and hadajuban beneath it. If anything it was refreshing out here, since the Montivallans tended to overheat their buildings by her standards and her newly-arrived staff were still working on adjusting the ingenious but shockingly wasteful wood-fired central heating system more to their liking. Back in the homeland you didn’t heat a house at all; you heated the people, or a small enclosed space.
The air was full of the peculiar heavy chill-wet smell of fog, with woodsmoke, damp earth and conifers beneath . . . nothing completely strange, yet not quite like the early part of winters in her own country. Perhaps it was the absence of the sea-scent, never far away on Sado-ga-shima or the other island refuges or costal resettlement beachheads. Homesickness was bitter, and linked to the thought of her father.
Perhaps the home I remember is as lost as Father, existing only in memory. For I am no longer the girl who left it; I am Tennō, and the person within the rank is also new. When I return, I will see it differently.
Then: Father.
The thought brought back the shock of seeing the arrow in his breast and his face gone inhumanly still. A shock that overlaid all the other memories. Even the earliest, of his hands guiding hers as she first made a water-offering or popping a sweet ohagi into her mouth, of the way his eyes would turn to Mother and light with a secret smile sometimes . . .
Let the breath out slowly. Let the pain flow with it; through you and over you, and then it will be gone.
The mental exercise worked, more or less. It worked better now than it had when the wound was fresher. Time helped, having things to do did as well. She had had a very great deal to do indeed in the long months since, things terrible and strange, the dangers of battle and the threat of death by thirst and other things more grisly. Challenges that could be met only by a total focus of will and mind. That had given the inner bruises time to heal a little before she had the leisure to pay them attention. She did not have the luxury of collapse.
The guesthouse with which the Nihonjin delegation had been gifted was large—
About as large as the Imperial Palace back on Sado-ga-shima, she thought with a quirk of the lips.
That was also a pre-Change structure though quite an old one, built for the Tokugawa governor before Meiji, and a museum just before the Change, extended since and surrounded by a small castle they’d improved as time and resources permitted. This building had been part of some institution of learning, abandoned in the disaster, then roughly repaired and boarded up for later use when the Montivallans decided to make this their capital. It had been swiftly but skillfully remade to suit her people’s tastes before it was turned over to them as an embassy, property of the Empire and under its law.
Or at least made over to a Montivallan’s ideas of those tastes taken from old books. The results ranged from the very close to homelike in the case of the tatami mats and the bathhouse to the weirdly disconcert
ing—nobody she knew used that type of toilet—but you had to give them credit for trying. It would have been impossible for them to know precisely how customs had developed in her country since the Change. It had been easy enough to get buckwheat-stuffed pillows.
High Queen Mathilda is a woman of strong giri, Reiko mused. She does not like me—I know I am not a charming person.
One of the reasons she liked Órlaith so well was that Órlaith did like her and had from their first meeting, and that from someone who was rather charming themselves.
But Mathilda cannot help but associate me with the death of her lord the High King, the rebellious behavior of her daughter and heir, and the disappearance of her son Prince John. Yet her behavior towards us is impeccable, because she knows that duty leaves her no choice. I am not drawn to her either as a person—but I admire her sense of duty very much. We are monarchs, bound to it as to a wheel of fire, whatever the consequences for the person behind the mask of rule. This we share absolutely.
This second-floor verandah looked out across very beautiful gardens, in the alien Montivallan style but including promising-looking ornamental cherry trees of the true sakura variety, everything now trimmed and mulched for winter though the grass was still a faded velvety green.
“Winter solitude—” she said, indicating the leafless trees with an incline of her head.
Egawa Noboru, the commander of the Imperial Guard, spoke the next line from behind her, in a voice like gravel moving in a bucket:
“In a world of one color.”
It had been Egawa who introduced her to the poetry of Bashō; her father had had no ear for it and never pretended otherwise though he had been a calligrapher of skill, and her mother preferred Chiyo-ni.
“The sound of the wind,” she finished.
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