Sunrise Lands c-1

by S. M. Stirling

  Sunrise Lands

  ( Change - 1 )

  S. M. Stirling

  S. M. Stirling

  Sunrise Lands

  ****

  Chapter One

  Near Sutterdown,

  Willamette Valley, Oregon

  Samhain Eve-October 30,

  C Y 22/2020 A.D.

  Ingolf Vogeler slapped his horse affectionately on the neck; he felt a little better now that the rain had stopped, even though it was the tag end of a chilly October day with a ragged sky the color of damp raw wool rolling in from the west. His gloved hand made a wet smack on his mount's mud-spattered coat; its breath smoked in the harsh wet air, and so did his. The hooves beat with a slow clop crunch on the good crushed rock of the road, sending up little spurts of muddy water whitish gray with limestone dust.

  He summoned up a little of the old excitement at heading into fresh country as he looked about at the Willamette Valley, inhaling the musky-silty smell of fallen leaves and turned earth, and the faint tang of woodsmoke drifting on the wind.

  Riding damp and cold was nothing new to him for all that he'd turned twenty-eight only last summer, but the struggle to get over the High Cascades had been brutal. He'd barely crossed the Santiam Pass alive; the last blizzard would have killed him for sure, if he hadn't had two warm horses, a good sleeping bag covered in oiled bison leather and lined with fleece and stuffed with down, and a lot of experience with cold weather. He hadn't been really dry or warm in the days since either, and he could still feel the storm's white death in his bones, though down here five thousand feet lower things were just uncomfortable.

  Look on the bright side, he told himself. If any of the Prophet's cutters were still on my trail by then, they're surely dead, dead and frozen under twenty feet of snow until spring.

  "Hang in there, Boy."

  Boy smelled powerfully of wet horse; but, then, Ingolf smelled of the wet wool of his jacket and pants, and wet leather and oiled metal from his gear and the harness. It had been a good long while since his last bath, too. You didn't, not out alone in the wilds in the cold season; you didn't take off your clothes at all if you could help it.

  "That town should be coming up soon, Boy. Good warm stable and oats for you, if it's as fine as those yokels said it was."

  The horse snorted and shook its head in what he could have sworn was doubtfulness; the big gelding and he had come a long way together, a lot farther than the remount-cum packhorse on the end of the leading rein, which looked nearly ready to keel over and die. He'd seen that happen often enough; you could usually follow an army by the bodies of the horses. Past a certain point their hearts broke and they just lay down and gave up.

  "You too, Billy."

  He stopped to lean over and give the packhorse some hoarded honeycomb; it barely had the energy to lip it off his glove, and Boy didn't even protest.

  "Just one hoof ahead of another, that'll do it."

  They passed the odd wagon or oxcart, once a flock of sheep whose wet wool smelled a lot worse than his clothes; that had both horses crow-hopping a bit even tired as they were. And plenty of other riders and passersby on foot, now and then a bicyclist; most of the folk wore the funny pleated skirts he'd started seeing as soon as he got down into the valley, men and women both. Ingolf touched a finger to the floppy brim of his leather hat whenever he passed someone, and usually got a wave and a smile back, despite the foul weather; most people seemed to be cheerful and friendly here west of the Cascades, which made sense since they also seemed unusually well fed and clothed.

  Wonder just how far it is to Sutterdown? he thought.

  Traffic had died down as the sun sank, except for a few hurrying in the same direction he was, probably hoping to get inside before the gates closed. That gave him a good idea of when they were likely to shut… and that it would be soon.

  "Uff da," he swore mildly.

  Most places wouldn't let you in once they'd buttoned up, and the ones that did usually charged a fine for open ing a postern after curfew. He touched Boy up with a pressure of his legs. That was hard on him, and even more on Billy… but he didn't think Billy would survive a night in the open right now.

  There were tall hills to his right-the last stubs of the mountains he'd crossed. The rolling floor of the valley opening westward was divided into small farms, their fields bordered by hedges and rows of trees. Within the enclosures were the green of pasture or new-sown winter wheat just beginning to mist the soil, dark brown of plowland with wind ruffled puddles between the furrows or the rather messy look of a well dug potato field, the bare spindly branches of orchards, cherry and apple, pear and peach. Now and then there was a clump of woodlot, oaks and firs, and more thickets along the river. He recognized the crooked stumplike plants on a south-facing hillside as grapevines, still with their spin dly branches unpruned, though he hadn't seen their like often before.

  I have drunk wine, though, and I wouldn't mind some at all, he thought, and smacked his lips absently. Though right now something hot would be very good.

  Days like this, as the shadows grew darker and the wind blew colder, even a young man felt how the years would tell on him in another two decades. He coughed to clear his throat and spit aside.

  There weren't any buildings in the fields apart from the odd byre and shed. The land was all worked from walled hamlets like the one he'd passed not long ago-they called them duns here. The Sutter River gurgled and chuckled to his left, flowing westward into the valley; the steep hills just north were densely forested, dark green and brooding with tall firs.

  Then a scatter of sheds and workshops loomed up to either side of the road out of the misty dimness, showing lamps or furnace light-mostly strong smelling tan yards and pottery kilns, the sort of trades smart towns didn't leave inside the wall. He heard the splashing and grinding sound of water turning millwheels to his right, and saw the occasional yellow glitter of flame through the branches of thick planted trees.

  His lips shaped a silent whistle when he came through the last fringe of bare-limbed oaks into a clear space and saw the town walls.

  "Wouldn't like to have to storm those," he muttered. Even allowing for how the darkness made them seem to loom… "No, sir."

  Must be thirty feet high, and pretty damned thick, he thought. And towers every hundred yards, half bowshot apart, and I'd say they're half again as tall. You don't see many things built after the Change that height.

  He'd seen walls that had a bigger circuit-the town couldn't have more than three or four thousand people; Des Moines had thirty times that-but few that looked stronger.

  And never any painted like that.

  The surface looked like pale stucco; along the top below the crenellations was a running design of vines and flowers with… He peered through the murk.

  Faces. I think. That's a woman's face, isn't it? With vines for hair. And that's a fox or a coyote. And that's…

  The towers along the wall had pointed conical roofs sheathed in green copper and shaped like a witch's hat, which was appropriate if the wilder rumors he'd heard were true. There were two hills showing above the ram parts, off west to the other side of the town. One was crowned by a huge circular building without walls, just pillars supporting a roof; he could see the outline of it because a great bonfire blazed there, and even at this distance he could catch a hint of eerie music and dancing figures. He crossed himself by conditioned reflex at the sight, but without real fear-he'd never been excessively pious, even before he became a wandering freelance.

  Maybe the rumors are true, but nobody said they set on visitors here.

  And it didn't smell as bad as some towns did; just woodsmoke and barnyard, mostly. They probably had working sewers.

  Four more towe
rs around the gatehouse there… right, that's where the bridge leads in.

  The town was built in a U formed by the river, which meant a natural moat on three sides; an old but well kept pre Change bridge ran to the edge of the gate. A carved and painted statue twice life-size was set into the wall on either side, a beautiful woman with long golden hair standing on a seashell on the left, a naked man holding a bow and crowned with the sun on the right.

  As his horse set a hoof on the pavement he heard a thunder of drums from the gatehouse towers, and a screeching, skirling drone that sent Boy to tossing his head and snorting, and made the hair rise along the back of Ingolf's neck. His eyes were still flicking up to the source of that catamount wail when he halted before the gate guard.

  "Never heard bagpipers before, eh?" one of them said with a chuckle. "It's not someone biting a cat's tail, honest. We're bidding farewell to the Sun, you see."

  Ingolf smiled back and nodded. "Just startled me a bit."

  It was always sound common sense to be friendly with armed strangers, and anyway, the one who'd spoken was a good-looking woman about his own age, with a freck led snub-nosed face and lively brown eyes. Which was a little odd, but while fighting women weren't numerous, they weren't so rare that he'd never met one before ei ther. He'd campaigned with a couple who were pretty good, in fact, and one of them had been notably better than that.

  He took off the hat, slapping it against his knee to shed the water, and incidentally to let them see his face in the circle of light cast by the big lamps. Looking him over was their job, and he didn't have anything- well, not much -to hide.

  They'd see a big man, a little over six feet and broad shouldered, with a pleasant enough face despite a scar on his forehead and a nose that had been broken and healed very slightly crooked; his close cropped beard and bowl-cut hair were light brown, his eyes dark blue, and his skin had the ruddy weathered look of someone who spent his time out-of-doors in all weather.

  His gear was likewise plain and serviceable; a thigh length shirt of chain mail under his long leather duster, a yard of point-heavy curved shete hung from his belt, and a ten inch knife balancing it on the other side. A horseman's short horn-and-sinew bow was cased at his left knee; his kettle helmet hung by the right, and a quiver was slung over his back, covered right now with a round shield painted dark brown with an orange wedge; a tomahawk had its three-foot handle through a loop at the back of his belt.

  There was no glitter of gold or gems on hilt and buckle; unlike some fighting men he didn't boast by wearing his portable wealth.

  While he let them look he studied them in turn. Two of the six guards were women, in fact. They were dressed like the others, in pleated knee length skirts of wool tartan-checked in brown and dark green divided by slivers of dull orange, with boots and knee socks and an odd blanketlike stretch of the same material wrapped diago nally across their torsos and pinned over one shoulder with a brooch. Everyone here seemed to wear their hair shoulder-length or better, braided or loose, and the men sported mustaches; one example dangled down below the chin on either side.

  Short swords and bucklers and long daggers rode at their waists. Four had yew longbows in their hands and quivers over their backs, and two held polearms: a seven-foot spear and an ugly thing like a great ax on a six-foot shaft whose blade tapered upward into a point, with a spike-hook on the rear. The man who held it was taller than Ingolf, and broader, and wore a beard the color of rust halfway down his chest. The spear and ax thing slanted crosswise to bar his way; behind them were the open leaves of massive metal-clad gates, and a raised portcullis. There were murder-holes in the arched ceil ing of the gate passage, and another set of gates on the inner side.

  "Who are you, stranger? Where from, and what busi ness would you be doing in Sutterdown?" the young woman asked, with her thumb hooked in her sword belt.

  Now that she was closer he could see she wore a ring of twisted gold around her neck, the open end over her throat ending in two knobs. She had the same accent he'd noticed in the village-the dun-where he'd stopped to buy bread and cheese and ask a few questions this morn ing, but stronger. Sort of a rolling lilt, and sometimes a strange choice or order of words; it sounded exotic and musical but not unpleasant, and easier to understand than some dialects that had grown up in out-of-the-way places.

  "The name's Ingolf Vogeler," he said, conscious of how his flat hard Badger vowels would sound strange here. "Out of the east-"

  "Not Pendleton, I hope," one of the others said.

  "Christ, no, and I didn't like what I saw of the place when I passed through," he said honestly.

  Several of them laughed, nodding, and Ingolf went on: "I'm from a lot farther east than that. East of the Rockies and the plains."

  Best establish that I'm respectable, he thought, and went on: "My father is… was… Sheriff of Reads town in the Kickapoo country, in the Free Republic of Richland."

  At their blank looks he called up the memory of old maps and books from his brief schooldays and added, "Southern Wisconsin, if that means anything to you."

  "East of the Mississippi!" the woman who seemed to be in charge blurted, her eyes growing wide in surprise. "From the sunrise lands! Stranger, you have come a long way!"

  They all looked impressed. Natural enough. People would get excited back to home if someone from here showed up. I'm a little impressed they all know where Wisconsin is. A lot of ordinary folks back home couldn't name Oregon to save their lives.

  "Yup," he said. "I wander and do this and that-caravan guard, peace officer, some cowboying, or any honest work-I'm a passable carpenter and blacksmith, and I can handle horses."

  He touched the side of his duster, where it covered an inner pocket. "I can pay an entry tax, if you have one."

  "No need," the woman said. "All honest travelers and traders are welcome here, but we have a short way with thieves or outland bandits-scourge for the back or Lochaber ax for the neck, as needed-so take warning."

  The hulking redhead with the gruesome bladed weapon grinned through his thatch of beard and hefted it, so that must be a Lochaber ax; he looked cheerful rather than menacing, though.

  "Fair enough." Ingolf nodded. It was what he'd heard about these Mackenzies along the way. "I'm a peaceable man, when I'm let be."

  Her voice took on a formal note as she continued: "Enter then and be welcome, guest within our walls, with the blessing of the Lady and the Lord, who hold dominion here in Sutterdown as the Foam-born Aphrodite and Apollo of the Unconquered Sun."

  Wow, he thought. The names were vaguely familiar, but… They are strange here!

  Aloud: "Anywhere I can get food and lodging for my self and my beasts? And I could use a hot bath, by God! I was in Bend four days ago."

  The big man with the ax whistled; that was a hundred miles, a lot of it very cold this time of year and very steep in any season.

  "You've good horses, then, Ingolf the Wanderer! And weather luck in plenty."

  "Take my word for it and don't try going back east that way until spring, unless you've got skis."

  Just then a voice shouted down from above, where the wild music had been. "Hey, will you be talking through till dawn, then? We can't go home until you close the gate!"

  The woman turned and shouted back: "Would you leave a stranger out in the cold, and on the holy eve of-"

  He didn't catch the next part; the word wasn't one he'd ever heard before.

  "-at that?"

  She turned back to him. "I'm Saba Brannigan Mac kenzie, Mr. Vogeler; my sept's totem is Elk. And my father keeps an inn here, and you'll be very welcome. I'll show you the way; we're being relieved by the night guard now."

  She shook his hand as he dismounted; her brow went up as she felt the heavy swordsman's callus around the inner edge of his thumb and forefinger, and his at the strength of her grip.

  They walked through the gatehouse and into streets laid out in a grid, mark of a pre Change settlement. This one was better kept up and bett
er lit than most and free of sewage stink, the houses neatly repaired and big lan terns on posts where the streets met, the folk looking well fed and prosperous if oddly dressed. But though it was fairly dark-nothing was so dark as a town at night, unless it was a windowless basement-he caught glimpses of things that did look strange.

  A terra-cotta of a bearded face over a door with horns growing from its brow; the wood of a shutter carved into leafy tendrils that seemed to be looking at him somehow; a stone post with a head on top and a phallus jutting from its middle, wrought in knotwork; a set of running and laughing children wearing costumes fantastically shaped and painted…

  He snapped his fingers. "It's Halloween, or nearly!" he said. "Kids wear masks and things back home too, on Halloween."

  "Samhain, we call it," she said, and spelled it out for him: she pronounced it soween.

  He nodded and made a mental note of it; that was the word he'd heard her shout up to the tower. Then she smiled and winked at him and added, "You'll find we take it, oh, a wee bit more seriously than your basic trick or-treat."

  Just then a snatch of song came from another group making its way down the middle of the street, youngsters nearly full-grown dancing amid a cold trilling of panpipes. And singing:

  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!

  A girl led them, with a half-mask shaped like a raven's head covering most of her face. Her black-feathered cloak flared in the darkness as she danced a twirling mea sure and beat a little drum with snake quick taps of her fingers. Saba made a sign with her forefinger and joined in the chorus:

  Samhain!

  Turn away

  Run ye back to the light of day

  Samhain!

  Hope and pray

  All ye meet are the gentle fae.