"You're just a clansman, and I'm the Horned Lord come in the flesh," Brannigan said.
"Well, you are, " Rudi pointed out.
"Only in the Circle," Brannigan said.
Ingolf looked a question over at the innkeeper's daughter. "Dad's High Priest of the Sunhill Coven here," she said casually. "So when he Calls, the God comes to him. Mom's the High Priestess. Lady Juniper is High Priestess of the whole Clan, of course-she's the Goddess on-Earth. The living vessel of the Mother."
"Oh," Ingolf said. And I'm not going to ask more about that until I know my way around! he thought.
"You're not staying at Raven House?" Brannigan went on to… Rudi, Ingolf thought. Rudi Mackenzie.
"Nah, Mom and Sir Nigel and the infants are in, and some guests from overseas, and a whole lot of other people from Dun Juniper, so we just dumped the hunting gear there, said hello, and came on over. You mind putting us all up? The girls can share a room if it's tight, and you can put me and Odard in another."
"You snore, Rudi," the other man in the party said; that must be Odard.
He was dressed like the brown-haired woman in T-TUNIC, shirt and pants; his were of beautifully woven dark blue cloth embroidered around the neck and hem with gold, but there was a circle on his chest with what looked like a Chinese symbol in it-Ingolf knew enough to recognize them. He went on with the air of a man making a concession:
"You could chivalrously sleep here on the floor by the hearth and give your room to the Princess. It would be more suitable to her state to have one all to herself."
"I'm not sharing with you, Odard," the brown-haired woman said, pointing a finger.
"Oh, of course not, Your Highness," the man said smoothly. "I said all to yourself, didn't I?"
"Then you'd have to sleep on the floor too, Odard." Rudi grinned. "Which isn't like you. Chivalry or not."
"No, no, you sleep in front of the hearth, Rudi, and I'll share with the twins."
"And then you wake up, Odard," one of the siblings said.
Her sister just snorted; they both looked down their noses at him-about half-serious, Ingolf thought.
"No, plenty for you and the princess and your friends to have one each," Brannigan said, laughing at the by play. "Business gets slow after the Horse Fair, and slower after Mabon. Highway 20 won't be open much longer-it may be closed now. They've already had snow up there, though we got one in from over the Santiam Pass just a little while ago-that's him. He's from far back east, way far. East of the Mississippi!"
He nodded towards the booth in a corner; Ingolf raised his glass politely as they nodded at him; they looked in frank curiosity, then gave him what he recognized as the same expert's once over he'd given Rudi. There was a little more than that in the way the three young women looked at him; they put their heads together and said something in a language he didn't recognize, and giggled for a moment.
Then they went off to their own table, still bickering amiably. Like pups in a litter, he thought tolerantly, from the lofty height of twenty-eight, and asked: "Princess?"
"Oh, that's Mathilda Arminger," Saba said. "She comes from up north; her father was the Lord Protec tor of Portland, and she's his heir, so they call her the princess. Mike Havel and he killed each other in the War of the Eye, eleven years ago-no, sure and I'm lying, it's twelve years the now. By the Sun Lord and the Foam-Born, but the wheel turns faster each time!"
Ingolf felt his brows go up. "Their kids seem awful friendly," he said.
And meant it. He recognized the playful banter, of a style you used only with those you knew well, and it brought a pang of loneliness. He hadn't had the like since the Villains were wiped out last year.
"Long story," Saba said. "Part of the peace agreement was that she'd come here for part of the year, and Rudi… Artos… would go north."
He nodded thoughtfully; that sort of mutual exchange of hostages was common enough. The Bossmen of Richland and Ellisworth had a similar arrangement back home, which was a big improvement on calling out your farmers and their following of refugees to burn down barns and chop one another up.
"And the other guy is Sir Odard Liu; he's a knight of the Association-the Portland Protective Association, that's what their top people call themselves-who comes down with her. His father was a nasty piece of work, too; Lady Eilir and Lady Astrid killed him-"
At his inquiring look she amplified: "Lady Eilir is the Chief's eldest child; Lady Astrid is the twins' aunt, their mother's sister and Mike Havel's sister in law, she's the Hiril of the Dunedain Rangers. They're anamchara, soul sisters. Astrid's married to Lord Alleyne, the son of the Chief's husband, Sir Nigel. His son by his first wife back in England, that is… he and the Chief have two daughters. Sorry to dump all this on you!"
He filed away the unfamiliar names and relationships; family was usually the key to understanding politics, which could mean life and death.
"And Odard?"
"Odard's not bad… except that he thinks he's the Lady's own gift to women."
"That's a delusion I've never had," Ingolf said. "I always thought it was more that women are God's gift to an undeserving mankind."
That got him a laugh. He went on: "You've got a mixed lot in here."
"We do," she said pridefully. "The Sheaf and Sickle is famous all through the valley."
She pointed out a few. "Those two are Bearkillers, from over to the west of here; Mike Havel founded their outfit."
A tough-looking pair, with bold challenging eyes.
"See those little blue scars between their brows? That means they're initiates of the A list-sort of like being knights, but they're a lot less likely to be assholes than the ones from the Protectorate, sure. And that's a monk from Mount Angel. Father Ignatius-if there were more like him, I'd think better of Christians. No offense."
"None taken," Ingolf said, sincerely enough.
The cleric was a spare muscular young man in a black hooded robe; Catholic clergy were still thin on the ground back east, but Ingolf would have pegged him for a fighting man, except for the dress. He read from a small book and told a rosary with his left hand, occasionally taking a sip of wine or a bite of a frugal dinner of bread and cheese and smoked fish.
Ingolf listened as Saba spoke, but found his eyes straying to her more and more often, until she laughed at him and finished her brandy.
"See you around, Ingolf Wanderer."
****
He'd barely turned out the lamp in the small tidy sleep ing room when the door opened again. He reached for the belt with his weapons where it hung from the bed stead, and heard her quiet chuckle in the dark as the scabbard knocked against the wood.
"I'm not that fearsome, am I, Ingolf?" she teased.
"Let's find out," he suggested.
The whiteness of her skin was half glimpsed in the darkness as she slipped out of her robe and under the quilt. Some hours later they lay in a happy tangle, warm while the rain tapped at the west facing window.
Wow, he thought again. They're not shy around here, either!
Suddenly a thought occurred to him. It should have been earlier, but he'd been lulled by the friendly reception. Still, you could never tell…
"Your father isn't going to mind, is he?"
Then he yelped as she tweaked his chest hair, hard. "That's for waiting until now to ask! No, of course not. I'm a grown woman; it's my business who I worship the Goddess with."
He rubbed at his chest and then settled her back on the curve of his shoulder. "Worship is what you call it here? Beats fasting and prayer, I can tell you that!"
" 'All acts of love and pleasure are My rituals,' " she said; it had the sound of someone quoting. Then she chuckled. "And She is well and truly worshipped!"
He smiled himself; that was the oddest compliment a woman had ever given him, but far from the worst.
"And I haven't been with anyone for a year, since Raen died. Time to let him go. You're a strong man, and I think a good one. If you leave, I've had the night and m
aybe a child-I always wanted more than two. And if you don't leave… well, we'll see, shall we?"
She yawned and stretched and settled herself, with a thigh flung across his; he could feel her breathing slow ing down to the deep regular rhythm of sleep, and his own followed.
****
Ingolf's dream was the same as always: the screams of his comrades, the terror of the blinding light that pierced hand and eyelid, and the sword, the sword hanging impossibly in the blaze, the Voice tolling in his mind.
When he woke, he thought himself still asleep for an instant, his chest heaving and sweat running down his neck. In a moment more he'd wake to the warm stuffy darkness of the room and find Saba beside him, and they'd go down to breakfast. He'd find what jobs he could do around the inn, or for neighbors, and get to know people before he started asking around. Maybe the Voice would leave him alone for a while.
Then he realized that the long curved dagger raised above him was very real, and threw himself aside with a great hoarse shout. Saba screamed as well, as the razor edge kissed her flank and left a trail of red as it plunged into the quilt and let free a blizzard of goose down.
Thought too swift to notice with his waking mind made him ignore his shete; the long weapon would be deadly awkward in these cramped quarters. Instead he stripped the bowie and tomahawk out of his belt and rolled to the floor, bounding erect with a shoul der roll. There was a full triad of them, three knives glimpsed in the dark, hooded faces covered to the eyes by black half masks. His stones tried to draw up into his belly as the faint light from the window glinted on the sharp metal in their gloved hands. A knife fight was bad enough at any time; knives moved too fast to really see or block well.
A knife fight naked in the dark against three opponents who didn't care if they lived or died…
"The Ascended Masters have called your name, apostate," one of them hissed. "Did you think mountains and ice could save you from the Prophet's judgment?"
Then to Saba, as they spread out and approached: "Silence, pagan whore!"
The speaker tried to backhand her out of the way as she struggled free of the tangled sheets. She caught the arm, heaved and twisted to lock it with a speed and skill that would have been a pleasure to see in better circumstances, and swung the elbow wrong end for ward against the bedstead with all the strength of her arms and weight of her body. The joint broke with an ugly crackling crunch of tendon and bone, like a green branch giving way across your knee. Her hawk-shriek overrode the Cutter's scream of outraged pain:
"Scathach! Scathach!"
The knifeman's ululation at the ruin of his arm was cut off as her foot raked up and kicked him under the jaw with explosive power, toes neatly rolled back to present the ball of her foot. She snatched at the knife as it fell from his nerveless hand.
Ingolf roared and lunged himself; the thrust of the bowie in his left hand rammed into a jacket lined with mail Chapter Two
Sheaf a nd Sickle Inn, Sutterdown,
Willamette Valley, Oregon
Samhain Eve, C Y 22/2020 A.D.
Rudi Mackenzie dreamed.
He saw mountains, but not the mountains of home, green and steep where the Cascades rose above Dun Juniper's walls. These were bare save for a scattering of silvery gray scrub, up great walls of rock and scree to the glaciers floating far above, and he was all alone except for Epona. His senses were sharp; the smell of cold rock and aromatic herbs and old sweat soaked into wool and leather, the rattle of stone under shod hooves, far and faint a baying like wolves, but he knew it was men. The horse's breath came sharp, and there was a sense of overwhelming grief and dread…
****
A hoarse shout kicked him into wakefulness. He'd al ways been one of those who came alert easily; an inner clock told him it was the third hour past midnight, the hour when the Hunter came to lead away the old and sick, the time when sleep guttered closest to death. He swung his feet down and grabbed up sword and buck ler and opened the door in the same motion, and went down on one knee to peer out first. Nothing in this short length of corridor-he had good night vision, even in the velvet darkness. The rain was back, and the drum ming on the strakes of the roof made a white noise that drowned everything but the sharpest sound.
In the room across, a lantern flared as a door cracked open; that was Odard, always cautious. His head came out at the same level as Rudi's. The twins were on this side and down one; as he watched their door opened too, and Ritva-or Mary-rolled out, coming up in a crouch with longsword in one hand and dirk in the other.
No, it's Mary. She has that little scar over her hip bone. The twins tried to look as similar as they could, which was why he was careful about it.
Mathilda was the last door down, and a mirror showed there stuck in the wax on the end of a candle stub. She checked the ground before coming out in her knee-length nightshift, blades ready; the embroidered garment looked a little odd with a sword belt buckled around it.
A faint clash, the sound of metal on metal, and more voices. Their eyes met, and she nodded. The scream had come from around the corner to his left; how far down was hard to tell. The new noise came from the same direction. None of them had their body armor with them, or missile weapons, or any shields besides his buckler. They all had sword and fighting-knife be cause they'd been reared to put them on as automatically as shoes whenever they went outside their own home hearth doors.
Not worth taking time to get dressed, he decided. It would be if we had our war harness, but all clothes do in a fight is comfort you.
Ritva dashed down to the corner in four deer swift bounds, then dropped flat to peer around the edge, landing on her fisted hands with the blades still in them.
Rudi called up his knowledge of the Sheaf and Sickle's layout as the rest of them followed. It was chaotic-Brannigan's steading had grown over the years from the original core of the pre-Change tavern and microbrewery, knocking together half a dozen old buildings and modifying them as the business and the number of chil dren and grandchildren and employees and their fami lies grew. New doorways and corridors and staircases, and new chimneys for woodstoves and fireplaces…
The five of them gathered at the intersection, natu rally keeping back where they couldn't be seen from the next stretch of corridor. Odard had brought his bedside lantern, but with his shirt wrapped around it so the light it threw was muffled. The fruity smell of burning alcohol and hot wick melded with the acrid sweat of tension.
Eyes gleamed in the darkness, and teeth showed as bright as the steel; none of them was what you'd call timid, or complete virgins when it came to a fight, but sudden death in a friendly inn wasn't something that happened every day. And they were all of them children of field and farm, river and hill and forest; a town was an alien environment to them, much less fighting in a warren like this building. He could tell they all felt as cramped and out-of place as he did.
He had his buckler, a little foot wide roundel of steel shaped like a soup plate, with a hand grip in the hollow boss. As it happened, they also all favored double edged longswords with cross guarded hilts. The others were carrying their daggers as parrying weapons; Mathilda tossed strips of woolen blanket to each of the shield less ones, and they quickly wound them around their left forearms. That wasn't much protection, but it was a lot better than nothing.
Always thinking ahead, that girl, Rudi thought, with a taut grin. Let's see, half a minute since I heard that first scream…
"Follow me!"
Left down the corridor, bare feet nearly noiseless on the wooden floorboards. More light leaking out from under doors as people woke; one Corvallan merchant opened his, saw warriors naked as the swords in their hands padding by and prudently slammed the door shut again, with a thumping to show he was bracing a chair against it. The sound of fighting was louder now: an un earthly shriek of astonished agony, and a Mackenzie battle shout in a woman's voice:
"Scathach! Scathach!"
Someone calling on the Dark Goddess in Her most terrible
form. Scathach: She Who Brings Fear. The red work of killing was being done within earshot. You didn't invoke the Devouring Shadow unless you really meant it.
The corridor ended at the door to the kitchens. To their left was a staircase that went through a ninety-degree turn as it rose to the second floor and a row of guest rooms. Mathilda slipped in front of him; she'd brought along her candlestick-and-mirror arrangement, and he nodded as she went up the stairs two at a time. The rest followed in a silent rush that froze for a moment as she reached the top and extended the mirror just up over the lip; they poised, ready to attack if someone peered over the edge. Light spilled from above; someone had lit a lantern, and their dark-adjusted eyes saw the dim flame as brightness.
Then she put down the mirror and spoke in Sign: Six with shetes and shields. Three facing this way, three the other. One door open between them; the fighting's coming from there.
Decision flashed through him, and his hands moved, quick and fluent: Matti, Ritva, Mary, you go back down, through the kitchen and up the other stairs-that's how they're planning on getting away.
They turned and raced down and around the stairs, leaping recklessly despite the razor-edged steel in both hands, as sure footed as wildcats. Rudi looked over and met Odard's slanted blue eyes. The other man smiled and shrugged ruefully. Rudi filled his lungs and called on the Crow Goddess in an enormous shout as he leapt:
"Morrigu! Morrigu!"
"Haro, Portland! Face Gervais, face death!" Odard yelled, the battle shouts of his nation and his House.
You screamed at a time like that to freeze your enemy for a moment. This time the freezing bit didn't work. The men facing him and Odard attacked immediately, the forward pair moving with smooth precision and the one behind alert on the balls of his feet, ready to step in if one of his comrades went down. They were wearing loose mottled gray-brown jackets with hoods and cloth masks that covered all but the eyes, trousers of the same material, and stout boots. It made him feel a little conspicuous in his underdrawers and bare feet, but not nearly so much as did the yard of sharp curved steel slamming towards his face.
Sunrise Lands c-1 Page 3
