This forest had been Mackenzie land before the Mac kenzies were a Clan, back before the Change; way back, since the family came out from east Tennessee in his mother's great-great grandfather's time. Generations ago her great uncle had started to tend and plant here-that was why there were so many oaks, and exotics like black walnuts, though nowadays every dun on this side of the valley spread them from the nuts and acorns. He halted under one walnut that reared a hundred feet above the trail and made a reverence to a small shrine there; it had a stone arch and two rosebushes trained to twine together.
"This is where they died," Mathilda said quietly. "Nearly twelve years ago now."
Rudi nodded; that had been in March of the last year of the War of the Eye, when Mathilda had been captive here. Her parents had sent a team of warriors to get her back; they had, and taken Rudi too, and killed the two Clan fighters guarding him, Aoife Barstow and Liath Dunling. He made an offering here every year on the anniversary of it, a handful of salt and wheat and a little of his own blood, to their spirits and the spirit of the tree; it had become a symbol to him that he'd be heading north soon, as part of the agreement that had ended the War.
She crossed herself and brought out her crucifix to kiss. "They fought very bravely, I remember that," she said gravely. "Holy Mary, Queen of Heaven, intercede for them, and for us all, now and at the hour of our deaths."
Odard repeated the gesture; they all sat silent for a moment in respect, then touched their horses into a canter and followed the sled.
It was already out of the trees, out onto the long lens-shaped stretch of benchland meadow that held Dun Juniper on the south facing slope of the mountain. The snow was knee-deep, with more coming as the weather thickened. Mathilda tilted her head back and stuck out her tongue to catch the flakes on it. Laughing, Rudi did the same; even Odard joined in after a moment. They passed the tannery and bark mill and soap boiling sheds, not in use in this season but still giving off a strong whiff of curing leather and boiled fat. The sled had gotten ahead of them, and they leg-signaled their horses to pick up the pace, until plumes of white flew up from their forefeet.
Dun Juniper lay at the middle of the oval, hard up against the flank of the mountain, halfway between the tannery at one end and the little waterfall and gristmill at the other. It had been a low plateau once, where his mother's kin had built a hunting lodge of great squared logs.
Rudi chuckled under his breath as he looked up at the walls looming through the snow; they were as high and strong as Sutterdown's, albeit the circuit of them was a lot less. Snow stuck in patches to the rough stucco, hiding the swirling designs of vine and leaf and flowers under the battlements.
And whenever he saw them, something deep within him said home, wherever he'd been.
"What's the joke, Rudi?" Odard asked.
"I was just remembering something my mother said. She showed up here right after the Change, and met her coven-she'd been in Corvallis; they were in Eugene. And she gave them this little speech, you know, to buck them up because they were all at sea and scared witless with it."
The other two nodded; they were all the children of rulers, in one way or another, and they'd grown up with the necessities of leadership. Rudi went on:
"And she said, 'It's a clan we'll have to be, as it was in the old days…' "
Odard frowned. "What's funny about that? That's what happened, isn't it?"
"Yeah," he said, laughing outright now. "But she didn't actually mean it, not really. She thought it was, what are they after calling it, a figure of speech. She just meant they'd have to pull together to get through. It was the others who decided to really do that, and she says she pretty well just had to go along with it whenever they came up with something, like calling her Chief or Uncle Denni making the kilts when they found that load of tartan blankets. She says it shows how 'leading' means running fast enough to keep ahead of your people."
Mathilda joined in the laughter. "Well, my dad did something like that too," she said.
Rudi raised an eyebrow, intrigued. She didn't usually talk about her father much, naturally enough, since ev eryone outside Protectorate territory hated his memory. And a fair number within, too, for all that his tyranny had still saved their lives, or these days more often their parents' lives.
"Mom says he got a bunch of people he'd known in the Society together, that first day, Conrad Renfrew and the others…"
Odard and Rudi both nodded; a surprisingly large proportion of survivors had been members of the Society for Creative Anachronism and similar groups, and an even larger share of those had ended up in leader ship positions. Enough so that in these latter days social climbers tended to invent Society parents if they didn't actually have them. Not just in the Protectorate, though that was where they'd been most influential, because of the Armingers.
For a while they'd been the only ones with weapons that worked, and who knew how to use them. In a world where you had to fight to take food and fight to keep it, a desperate man with hauberk and helm and shield, a sword and some faint beginning idea of what to do with it, had a big advantage over desperate suburbanites with kitchen knives and shovels. Mathilda went on:
"… and after they'd talked about what was happen ing, and Dad had convinced them things weren't going to Change back and they had to do what he wanted or they'd all die, he said: 'What if a man were to take it upon himself to be king?' "
Odard grinned, catching the reference; or maybe he'd heard the story before. Even when Rudi was visiting in Association territory, people tended to avoid certain subjects-after all, his blood father, Mike Havel, and Norman Arminger had fought like bulldogs with a grip for ten years and then killed each other in a spectacular duel between the two armies they led, and his mother, Juniper, hadn't exactly been friendly with the Armingers either, to put it mildly.
He racked his brains; he'd read a lot of history, particularly of periods well back before the twentieth century-it was fun, and useful, and his teachers had encouraged him, starting with Juniper. Then the fact jiggled into place, along with a memory of his mother and himself curled up on a couch reading a heavy book with a leather cover.
Ah. That was what Oliver Cromwell said, when he was thinking of taking the throne of England, after he'd killed Charles the First. He never did, though. He just called himself the Lord Prot… well, Annwyn take it, was that where that bastard Arminger got the idea?
Matti went on: "And Count Conrad… well, he wasn't a count then, of course… said, 'Oh, hell, Norman, we'll just call you the Lord Protector. You can enter an in sanity plea if the lights come back on, and we'll blame everything on you.'
"And Dad laughed and said: 'Lord Protector? I like it. We'll call ourselves the Portland Protective Associa tion; it'll sound more familiar to the non Society people I want to bring in. And if the lights come back on, Conrad, I promise to take the fall.' "
"Odd to think of important things starting by chance, like that," Odard said meditatively. "Though… when you're reading history, have you noticed how the older stuff seems more real, somehow? The people and the things they say and do, I mean. The closer you get to the Change, the more… weird… things seem. Except things like the Society; my mother's always on about that and how her father was king of some territory by right of combat. That sounds more like real life. It's all the stuff around it that doesn't. Opinion polls, and computers, and Star Trek…"
"The RenFaires, where my mother sang as a bard, they seem to have been pretty normal," Rudi agreed. "She'll be talking about them, and it's perfectly sensible, and then all of a sudden it's… the other stuff around it, like you said. Thinking about it is like trying to grab a live fish with your fingers; it's not impossible, exactly, but it's not worth the effort most of the time. And she sees it on my face, and calls me a Changeling."
They both gave chuckles of agreement as they followed the sledge through the four-towered gatehouse; they were Changelings, which was the slang term for people born after the world was r
emade.
The gates were wide open-it was the middle of the afternoon and peacetime-but Rudi made a reverence with steepled hands and thumbs on chin to the posts on either side; Lugh with his spear, Brigid with her sheaf and flame. There was a pleasant smell of woodsmoke, cooking, animals, infinitely familiar and welcoming.
Inside the walls didn't look as tall, since the bottom twelve feet were built into what had been the sides of the plateau, leaving the inner surface level. The ramparts were lined with small log houses, carved and painted with themes from myth or simple fancy, and in the central area were the buildings that served the dwellers here and the Clan at large: bathhouse, smithy, stables, workshops where every craft from glassblowing to hand printing was practiced and taught, granary, infirmary, bad-weather Covenstead, library and schools and more, divided by graveled lanes.
Just right, he thought affectionately. Not too big like Sutterdown or, Mother-of All help us, Corvallis; but big enough to be interesting, and the woods and fields right there outside.
A crowd gathered around the sled with the big fir; most of the households had their own Yule Tree, but this was one for the whole dun and all Mackenzies too. Rudi waved to them all and swung down from Epona's sad dle; half a dozen youngsters sprang forward to take the bridle, and he picked one the mare had shown some liking-or at least tolerance-for. Another proudly bore off his sword belt and quiver and cased longbow.
The hall itself was the largest building, its shingled roof rearing over the rest like a dragon's scaly back, green in patches with moss beneath the thickening coat of snow. The foundation had been that hunting lodge, a big log box on knee high fieldstone. Late in the first Change Year the early Mackenzies had doubled its size by the simple expedient of taking off the roof, adding more squared logs, and then putting the roof back, to give two tall stories and a big loft. A veranda and bal cony ran around three sides, supported by pillars made from whole tree trunks.
Of course, there had been other modifications… The pillars were carved in running knotwork and elongated stylized animals, then stained and painted with browns and golds and greens-anyone these days would recog nize it as Mackenzie work; this was the original that other duns had copied. At either end the roof rafters crossed one another and rose to face inward in gilded spirals, sunwise and widdershins to balance the energies.
Where the horizontal beams of the balcony jutted out through the pillars they were carved in the shapes of the Clan's sept totems, the heads of Wolf and Coyote, Raven and Bear and Tiger; the grinning jaws held chains that supported big lanterns wrought of glass and brass and iron. The wicks within were already lit against winter's gloom, though it was only a little past noon, and they cast pools of warm yellow across painted wood and trampled snow. There was a reason these were called the Black Months.
The crowd was already freeing the tree from the sledge; they waited for Rudi, though, as he stepped forward to shoulder the heaviest load at the base.
"The Holly King grows old!" he shouted gaily. "Soon he will fall to the Oak King, and the Sun will be reborn!"
One of the twins was back at the other end-it had to be a woman there, of course, and an Initiate.
"The Crone is carrying Winter's child," she called. "But He will be born to marry the Maiden!"
A dozen shoulders took up the tree between them. Someone swung open the big double doors and they dashed up the stairs and into the hall itself. Inside was a great open space the length and breadth of the build ing, the walls carved and painted into a fantasy of leaf and flower and faces out of tales. A tub of water waited at the western end, with a screw and collar arrange ment for holding the Yule Tree upright. He knelt with a grunt-the sapling was as thick as his thigh at the base, and this was going to be tricky. He guided the cut end into the circle with casual strength, then called, "Now!"
All the hands on the trunk and the forked poles laid ready for the moment were teenaged at least; it was a privilege to help with this. He put his shoulder to it, boughs scraping past his face, buried in softly aromatic green needles, and pushed, taking the strain carefully as he felt the weight come onto the muscles of his back and belly-that you were very strong didn't mean you couldn't put your back out; he'd seen it happen. Rudi had been around heavy weights and their handling all his life; he could sense when it began to tilt as the others pushed…
"Easy there- Imrim! Get behind it, man!"
At last the tree was upright in the bath of water, a perfectly symmetrical shape of glossy dark green, the tip between two rafters and just six inches below the floor boards of the second story. Its scent filled the hall as the warmer air coaxed it out, bringing a breath of the spring woods. He knelt again and swiftly spun the screws until they bit into the thick dark furrowed bark and the wood below, then put on the board cover to keep overcurious kittens or puppies or toddlers from falling in or drinking the water. When he stood again, everyone who'd helped raise it stood in a circle around the tree and joined hands, throwing them up three times and whooping.
"Well, there it is," Rudi said to the crowd. "Jack-in-the-Green's little green Jack."
Groans and hoots, and people snatched up twigs and bits of bark that had fallen and pelted him with them. He retreated with his arms over his face, begging for mercy in a falsetto voice; then he sprang forward and grabbed two fourteen-year-olds and caught one under each arm, whirling them around with a back-cracking effort.
When the horseplay was finished he brushed down his jacket and plaid and went to hang them up, checking that his sword and dirk and bow had been placed properly. They had, of course; he touched the long orange yellow stave of yew with its subtle double curve and black walnut riser in the middle, there among the others. He remembered how he'd longed for a proper war bow of his own when he was a kid, practicing at the butts in the meadows below with the rest of his class-Mackenzie education gave the longbow a high priority.
Well, now he had it, from the hands of Aylward the Archer himself; his own height and a handspan more, a hundred and twenty pounds of draw, throwing a thirty-two-inch shaft at four to the ounce.
And it's just as much fun as I thought it would be!
He turned and saw his mother over by the hearth on the north wall, where the house altar rested over the great fieldstone fireplace and a low blaze of split wood burned down to embers. She waved to him: come .
Sir Nigel rose as he watched, and intercepted Sir Odard and Matti. "Come, and I shall thrash you at chess, young man," he said.
Rudi caught Mathilda's eye and gave a slight shake of the head, with an apologetic shrug added to it.
"I'll kibitz while Nigel beats Odard," she said, tak ing it with good enough grace; it wasn't as if she were a stranger to the concept of a state secret, or ever had been. "And then I shall thrash you, Sir Nigel. If you spot me your bishops."
That left only Juniper Mackenzie and Ingolf Vogeler in chairs by the hearth set into the northern wall of the hall. He was looking a lot better than he had; the shadow of the Hunter's wing wasn't on his brow anymore, but he was still painfully thin, the skin fallen in on the heavy bones. She tucked up the soft blanket of beige wool that was around him and poured a little more of the hot mead that stayed warm in a nook in the wall of the fireplace. He thanked her with a shy smile that sat oddly on the battered warrior's face.
Mom's like that, Rudi thought proudly. She's everyone's mother, if they have a good heart and need it.
He'd complained about that once, when he was young, and she'd told him…
What was it she said? Yes: "Love isn't like money-the more you give away the more you get back, and the more you have to give."
And then she'd laughed and told him she loved him best of all, and he'd been all right again. He came over to the hearth and drew up a chair to sit, sinking into the leather cushions and enjoying the warmth of the flickering blaze.
"Glad to meet you when I'm in my right mind, more or less," Vogeler said, offering a hand. After the shake he looked thoughtfully at Rudi's l
ong form. "Maybe we could spar a bit, when I'm back on my pins… I'd like to take the measure of a man who can take down two of the Prophet's cutters fighting in his underwear, and not get a scratch."
Rudi smiled broadly: "I'd like that, Ingolf. They say it'll be a while, though."
Sparring with the same people all the time could get boring-and dangerous. If you fell into a rut and stopped being surprised now and then you stopped learning.
The hall was returning to normal for a winter after noon near Yule, which meant people sitting around talk ing or reading or telling stories, having a beer together or making plans and arguing… but nobody would disturb the Chief and her son at a conversation, and the buzz in the background actually made them more private.
There was a plate of sandwiches on the table beside Ingolf, some honey-cured ham with cheese, some roast venison; he'd eaten only one, and one of the dried-cherry scones.
Ingolf grinned as Rudi picked up a sandwich and raised an eyebrow. "Sure. I keep thinking I'm going to wolf down half a cow, and then I get full. You know how it is when you're getting over something."
He nodded, chewing and savoring the rich strong taste of the deer meat; he did know how it was when you were recovering from a fever or a wound. He'd had one about as bad, and on his gut, before he turned eleven.
After a moment Juniper spoke softly. "If you're well enough now, Ingolf Vogeler, it's your story I would have. Of your own will you're not to blame for what hap pened, but still one of my people is dead, and I must ex plain to an old friend why his daughter was killed in her own home. Also I am the Mackenzie, and the welfare of land and folk is something the Chief must account for at the last."
The easterner licked his lips slightly, took a drink of the mead, and spoke:
"I'm willing to tell you my story," he said, his eyes fixed on the distance. "Christ be my witness, I owe you folks my life and more. But it's… just so damned strange."
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