Dinner was roast venison they'd killed two days earlier, and a lot of fun-though he suspected it would have been a good deal rowdier if Matti weren't present, and the making of assignations with the servant girls was reasonably discreet under her eye. Rudi refrained entirely.
Though why she minds when she doesn't want to sleep with me herself, I don't understand, he thought. Strange folk, Christians.
When the cake had been demolished, they had the luxury of real coffee. That was still rare and very expensive, since it had to be shipped in from Hawaii or South America, through seas that were often stormy and which held more pirates every year-his mother refused to serve it, except at feasts where everyone could have some. He was cautious about it, because he wanted to be able to sleep tonight. The same trade had brought in the oranges and dates and figs that went around with the sweet dessert wine. The liqueur was from the valley's own vineyards but also an import to the Protectorate, from Mount Angel and done Trockenbeerenauslese style.
When he and Mathilda were alone by the fire she sipped from the golden-colored stuff in her glass and looked at him levelly before she said, "All right, Rudi, spill it."
He shrugged. " 'All my secrets I will share,' " he quoted, from the anamchara oath they'd sworn as chil dren. "But these aren't all my secrets. They're the Clan's secrets. And you're the one who has to tell your mother no when she asks… which isn't something I'd want to have to do."
She winced slightly, then sighed. "I've done it before and I'll do it this time. Now spill it."
"OK, you remember that guy from the east, Ingolf Vogeler?"
"Yeah," she said dryly. "Seeing as we all nearly got killed saving him. You and he and Juniper were spending an awful lot of time talking."
"It was a story worth hearing," he said, and told it.
"What?" she said when he was finished, sitting up and putting her empty glass down, impatiently waving away one of the servants who came up to refill it. When they were alone: "Are you bullshitting me again, Rudi?" Her eyes narrowed. "Because if you are, this is no time for one of your jokes-"
"No, no, I swear it by Brigid and Ogma, may they curse me with stutters all my life if I lie, and that's how we had it from him."
Mathilda's mouth dropped open slightly. "And you all believed it? Juniper believed it?"
"We had reason," he said, going a little grim; and he noted that she thought he was more likely to be credulous than his mother.
Well, fair enough… Juniper had once told him there was nobody more skeptical of charlatans than those who'd been genuinely touched by the Divine. And I've seen a few try to fool her over the years. Anyone stupid enough to try came away sorry and sore; nobody tried twice.
"I'm not all that happy about it, you know, Matti. Things are.. . awkward. Mother went to the nemed."
"The sacred wood? Why, what happened?" Mathilda said, startled and alarmed.
She had never been there except as a spectator for public rites like Juniper's wedding to Sir Nigel at the end of the War of the Eye; even that was pushing the limits of what her faith permitted. She knew what Rudi was talking about, though: a circle-casting and questions asked of the Powers. That was dangerous at the best of times, and when Juniper Mackenzie called, They were all too likely to answer.
I love the Lord and Lady, but They can be dangerous, he thought, remembering her white-faced exhaustion afterwards.
And They show us the Aspect that is in our hearts. Whether the pot hits the kettle or the kettle hits the pot… I think that's why They move so indirectly in this world. They are… too real… for it to be safe for us to meet Them face to-face on this side of the Veil. So we see Them in dream and vision and prophecy, and through Their world itself instead. Even for people like Mom, meeting Them directly isn't something that can be done too often.
He looked up at her. "What is that bit in your Chris tian Bible? About asking for bread, and getting a stone? They told her something about me-have been saying it since I was just born. And it frightens her. Frightens her for me, and also for all of us."
Matti bit her lip, then shook her head as if clearing it. After an instant she burst out: "How can you think They're good, if They do things like that?"
Rudi found himself chuckling ruefully. "You can't tell everything to a two-year-old, can you?" Then he quoted, with malice aforethought: " 'Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me,' eh?"
Mathilda winced and smiled at the same time, started to say something, then decided not to-they'd learned a long time ago that religious arguments were pointless. Particularly when, as she said, arguing doctrine with a witch was like trying to cut fog with an ax. Then she shook her head, as if trying to bring it back to the world of men.
"Well, what happened after he saw this so-called Sword of the Lady? Wait a minute-aren't you supposed to be the Sword of the Lady?"
"Yeah. It's a Mystery."
Mathilda sighed; there was no answer to that. "What happened next?"
Rudi paused for a long moment, staring into the low blue-and crimson flames that danced over the coals in the hearth. He shivered a little, remembering the haunted look in Vogeler's eyes whenever he forced himself to think of what had happened on the island.
"Then he came out of that place on Nantucket…"
Chapter Eight
Nantucket, Massachusetts
September 1, CY21/2019 A.D.
Ingolf Vogeler could hear screaming. After a moment he realized that his own voice was one of the chorus. He staggered backward, and turned his back. His face was slack; before him burned the sword, and the Voice, the Voice…
Travel from sunrise to the sunset, and seek the Son of the Bear Who Rules. The Sword of the Lady waits for him.
He quieted himself, his throat raw. Singh was trem bling and gray; his sister's face was wet with tears, the first time Ingolf had ever seen her weep, even when they'd taken a barbed arrow out of her back with nothing for the pain but a slug of whiskey and a leather strap to clench between her teeth. Kuttner lay on the ground, his wide unseeing eyes staring up into the sky, making little mewing sounds where froth and blood mingled on his lips and bubbles blew to his short panting breaths.
And a fourth, a teenager in the dress of the Sea-Land people. He was visibly the chief's son, but light-skinned and his features sharper than his father's, his eyes hazel-green.
Ingolf tried to speak, but it was as if his mouth had forgotten the trick of it. He started to stumble forward, then stopped and grabbed at each of his companions in turn, shoving them towards the forest. Kuttner was the hardest; at first he tried to wiggle on his belly, then crawl forward on all fours like a beast, and in the end Ingolf had to stagger along with one of the smaller man's arms held across his shoulder.
The burden grew less as they walked into the shadow of the gnarled forest, keeping their backs to…
Ingolf felt himself shudder again. I couldn't describe it to save my life. When I try to think about it I hear the Voice again. And the presence of a hundred unlived lives jostled in his head. Who is Ingolf, then?
That pressure faded with every step; the world itself grew more solid around them, and the memories that weren't died away into a jumble of alien images. They were on a narrow trail through oakwood and smooth barked beeches, panting and shuddering and looking at one another.
"Mother," Kaur mumbled. "Father. Kalil. Goolab-"
"Chub'rao!" Singh mumbled; it was the language he'd heard the two using between themselves occasionally, mingled with English. "Be silent! That was lies, lies, they are dead, they are dead these six years! Daghabazi! Treachery!"
The young man in the Sea-Land costume was looking around with growing excitement, but it was tinged with fear. He spoke unexpectedly in halting English:
"Time… time is summer?"
Ingolf nodded.
"I go… Place of Dreams… get man-dream… snow on ground. Winter."
Ingolf grunted, scarcely taking it in. They went farther, and Kuttner could walk on h
is own, in a shambling sort of way. Ingolf thought of asking what he'd seen, then looked into his eyes and decided not to. His own brain was starting to work again, and he wondered why the tribe weren't still standing there watching. Had there been something that they could see way back there? He found the place they'd stood… and the tracks were old and faded.
It's rained since then, he thought.
He looked at the faint dimpled impressions of bare feet and moccasins among the leaves and litter, and the marks of his own folk's boot heels, and his mind began to whirl again. A beetle walked down into the mark, crumbling a little more sand into it. The outline was soft, not crisp and sharp and recent. Then he looked up at the leaves; they weren't as full and lush as they'd been; in fact, they were starting to look tattered. Sweat prickled him under his armor.
"Let's get going," he said roughly.
They strode down the forest trail. He inhaled deeply to savor the musty scent of leaf mold, the weight of his shete and quiver on his back, anything real. A squirrel ran up the rough bark of a pine and chattered at him. A deer had gone across the trail not too long ago, mark of the cloven hooves still sharp and distinct.
Finally they came across one of the people from the village, a girl about the age of the young man who'd unexpectedly turned up. She was clothed in a deerskin wrap around her waist, with long reddish hair falling past her shoulders, and carried a reed basket full of wild blueberries. She stopped as she saw them, gave a small shriek, dropped the basket and fled with a twinkle of heels, screaming rhythmically as she sprinted. By the time they'd reached the little inlet and the garden fields around the houses, everyone was lined up. They looked frightened…
Ah, Ingolf thought, flogging his brain into action. They're afraid we're back from the dead.
"We're not ghosts!" he called-despite a momentary uncertainty; what if they were?
The young man with them suddenly cried out and dashed forward. Sun Hair pushed past her husband and caught him fiercely to her.
"Frank! Frank!"
The tense silence broke in joyful shouts.
****
"You should stay," Sun Hair said a day later.
"Can't do that, ma'am," Ingolf said, shaking her hand.
They were at the water's edge, and the tide was in; it was barely dawn, and the water farther out looked like purple streaked with cream as the sun broke over the eastern horizon. Kuttner had recovered enough to be looking visibly impatient. Even the gulls' sharp skreek-skreek-skreek overhead seemed to be urging him on-though he knew that was probably his own fear. Singh and Kaur were already on board and hauling up the anchor, which was a hint too.
Her husband was there to see them off, along with most of his folk, and his son Frank. The older man spoke to his wife, but his eyes were on Ingolf. She translated the sonorous words:
"My man says you have brought back his son who he thought was dead for half a year. You have good luck with your spirit that turns aside evil magic, and you are a strong man who can hunt and fight and make strong sons and daughters. If you stay, we'll give you our daughter for a first wife, and build you a house and a boat for fishing and whale catching, and help you clear planting land. The… the… family-"
She waved around at all the people present; the word she was looking for was probably tribe or clan.
"-will be glad to welcome you. Your friends too."
Touched, Ingolf held out his hand to the older man; they shook, a firm hard grip.
"Tell him I'm honored," he said, which he found was true. "But I have my own people, who are depending on me. I am promised to them."
The chief of the Sea-Land tribe nodded; then he held up one hand with the palm out in a gesture of farewell. Ingolf returned it, then waded out into the chill water and vaulted over the side of the sailboat.
And it's over two weeks since I landed here, though I only lived two days of that. And young Frank was there six months, and he thought it was only an eyeblink too. I'm getting as far away from here as I can!
He shuddered as the Voice murmured at the back of his mind. It had been loud in his dreams last night. Would he ever be free of it?
"Let's see how getting really far away works," he muttered to himself. The others didn't notice, lost in their own thoughts. "It wants me to go west, anyway. That sounds fine right now."
Even half a continent empty of everything but ruins and vicious savages didn't sound too bad compared to staying close to that place.
****
"It's a whiles after the date I told Jose to clear out," he said as they neared Innsmouth. A full week, in fact, he thought with a slight shudder.
"Then why are we heading back there?" Kuttner asked.
He squinted across the bright water; the wind had been strong and favorable, and it was midafternoon. Nothing moved but birds, and leaf and branch waving in the stiff onshore breeze. Farther out all you could see was green; now they were close enough to see the build ings staring at them with empty eye sockets, and smell the faintest tinge of rot and ancient smoke under the greenness of the returning forest.
I will not be back east, even if I lose everything I made on this trip, Ingolf knew suddenly. I'll hoe spuds for a living and sleep in a barn for the rest of my life before I come east again. This country is poisoned.
"Why?" Kuttner said again, more sharply.
"Because I told Jose to go, but I'm not sure he did; he could have stayed a bit, thinking he could talk me around if I showed up. If he did go, he'll have left a mes sage. It's not going to be easy, getting out of here alive on foot. Not easy to catch a mounted caravan on foot, either, but we'll be a lot less likely to go into the stewpot if we can."
With fifty men and a train of wagons, you could just bull your way through. Four alone would have to spend a lot of time dodging and hiding. Even on horseback, they'd have trouble catching up. On foot. .. that would be hard. Everyone was perking up; Singh and Kaur nodded soberly.
Of course, Ingolf thought, if we can get out of here alive, it'll be a lot easier with those two along.
They stopped outside the harbor bar to suit up. The tension was almost welcome as they docked and sprang ashore, weapons ready, but the silence remained. Hot sun baked smells out of earth and sea-some familiar, some oddly alien, sharp metallic pungencies and oily half sweetness. They waited tensely, but nothing moved.
"Wait a minute," he said, and jumped back into the boat.
There was a satisfaction in chopping through the bottom, even though the springy material resisted his tomahawk, and then he nearly lost it when it did punch through a weakened patch at last and the splintered fibers gripped it. Water came bubbling through as he wrenched it free; then he slid the handle back into the loop at his back and drew his shete to slash the rigging and the furled sail to ribbons. When that was finished he bent the mast against the joint by hauling on a rope fastened to its top. That took a moment of straining effort, but he was rewarded with a grating rip of metal, and the aluminum pole tipped over.
"Why are you wasting time?" Kuttner said, when he jumped back to the dock; the sailboat was already listing.
"Because someone might have been watching and getting ideas," Ingolf said, as he sheathed the yard of steel in the scabbard across his back and took up his bow again. "I don't want any of the wild men going sail ing for their meat; that would be poor thanks for the folks who helped us. They're less likely to try it if they don't have an intact boat. Now let's get going."
There was a message, left in a hide bag fastened to a tree with a dagger. That was a message in itself-none of the wild men had come back, for they would certainly have taken both. He reached inside and unfolded the papers.
One was a letter on thick cream colored modern paper; some of the fibers in its coarse surface scritched on his calluses. The other was a piece of crumbling pre Change glossy, with a tourist map of Innsmouth on it. The note was short and to the point:
Capitan, stuff at the X. Killed more wild men second attack seventeenth Aug
ust; lost Smith, Alterman and Montoya. We left twenty sixth; see you in Des Moines if not before. Go with God.
X turned out to be a warehouse, a blank windowless building of rusty pressed metal. On the ground in front of it was a circle of fresh scorch marks, where a dozen of the magnesium flares had been set off. He looked more closely, and saw the trip wires of a deadfall setup; there was a wild man, too, dead with a crossbow bolt through the chest. From the looks of the swollen, blackened body and the oily sweet stink and the maggots, the man had been there for at least three or four days, in weather like this. Kuttner had his shete out and was glaring around.
"Relax… relax a bit," Ingolf said.
The Iowan indicated the body. Ingolf nodded. "And nobody came back to eat it," he pointed out. "Jose set this up. Let's see what he left us."
They approached the doors warily, which proved to be wise: Singh pointed out another trip wire, grinning as he stood aside and triggered it with a long stick. A tunng sounded from within the warehouse, and a bolt flashed through the air, landing with a cruch sound in the body of a rusted FedEx delivery van across the road.
"That Jose, he is a clever man!" the big Sikh said, looking more natural than Ingolf had seen him since they landed on Nantucket.
"And inside is what'll save our lives."
He'd been pretty sure of what was inside, from the barnyard smell: their horses, plus a remount each and a couple for bearing packsaddles. There was just enough water left in the buckets and containers set up to last them another day, and the food was about gone. The animals were frantic glad to see them; Boy came and nuzzled him carefully, making extra-sure it was really him, and incidentally checking him over for anything edible. He gave the horse some dried apples he carried, pushing off the others and trying to decide whether he was angry or grateful.
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