Bend was three thousand feet lower than the summit of the pass, and it was sunny and mildly warm and Lord and Lady bless us dry this bright noonday, and the smells were of river water and turned earth and woodsmoke as well as everlasting pine sap as they came towards the city. The white fangs of the mountains-she could see Three-fingered Jack and the Sisters and Mount Jeffer son-were merely pretty from here. Up there at this time of year you soon started thinking they hated the tribe of men, like Caradhras in the histories of the War of the Ring. At least there weren't any orcs, or bandits either in this season.
"And I wish you wouldn't snore when we have to share the same little tent," Ritva went on to her sister.
"I do not snore!" Mary said indignantly. "Besides, our flet back at Mithrilwood isn't much bigger."
"Yes, you do snore, and at home there's a wall between our beds at least," Ritva said, and continued with ruthless logic: "Besides, I snore. And therefore you snore."
"How do you know you snore? I was never rude enough to tell you, " Mary said.
A boyfriend had informed Ritva that she snored like a water-powered ripsaw and slept with her mouth open-something not easy to express in Elvish, and it was among the reasons she'd dropped him-but she wasn't going to say that right now.
"How do I know you've been eating beans?" she said snidely instead, and they both laughed.
Epona chose that moment to start a purposeful move towards a cartful of baled alfalfa hay on the road before them. They both moved their mounts to cut her off, and the big black mare stood staring at them with one hind foot slightly raised, swishing her tail, ears just a bit back. For a horse, Epona was extremely intelligent, disturb ingly so; you could see the thoughts moving in her great dark eyes as she looked at you.
"Remember what Uncle Will said about her when she's doing that?" Ritva said.
"Yeah." Mary chuckled, and dropped into Texan accented English for a moment. " 'Girls, she ain't lookin' at us that way 'cause she loves us.' "
The other horses fell back into an obedient clump when Epona decided she wasn't going to make trouble, even her daughters Macha Mongruad and Rhiannon. Contrary to what a lot of people thought, it was the lead mare that ran a horse herd… and there was absolutely no doubt about who was boss mare when Epona was around. The problem was that when she was away from Rudi she got less and less interested in what people wanted.
They had their own mounts and a spare each, dap pled gray five-year olds with a big dash of Arab blood; and besides Epona and her get there were six others, all big warmbloods and battle-trained-what Portlanders called destriers, bred and taught to carry armored lancers in battle.
Destriers weren't much seen this side of the mountains. Folk out here favored quarter horse and other ranch breeds, mostly: agile and tough and suited alike to working range cattle or to the quicksilver eastern style of mounted combat. Destriers of the quality they were bringing cost more than a knight's armor and weren't common anywhere, the Association's territories included. They'd let the coats get rough and shaggy, and the light packsaddles were an additional disguise, but there was only so much you could do to hide their quality from people who knew horses.
Epona wasn't carrying anything, of course. She never did, except to bear Rudi.
It was good to get the fortune-on-hooves they were driving to the paddock of the livery stable the Dunedain used here, a bit outside the walls of Bend, over towards the forested slopes of Pilot Butte. The proprietor was busy when they came up, giving a worm killing herbal drench to a blindfolded horse, a messy but essential task you had to do every couple of months at least, involving funnels and rubber hoses; they'd treated theirs before the trip started. A couple of his employees ran to open the log-frame gate. Part of the turnout had fine grass, watered from the Falls North canal, and a larger section a little higher bore gray-green sagebrush on good firm dry soil. There was a strong smell of manure from the heap beside the stables, and a smell of scorched metal and ting-ting ting from the farrier's shop.
The owner himself came over when he'd finished the task, looking muddy and swearing under his breath. Horses didn't like having their mouths held open and things pushed down their throats; despite steel-toed boots he limped a bit where this one had stepped on his foot accidentally-on purpose.
"Mae govannen," he said, which sounded odd in a ranch-country twang.
Then he dropped back into English, since that exhausted his Sindarin: "Pleased to see you ladies again."
"Good to see you again too, Mr. Denks," Ritva said, mentally pushing the lever that switched her thoughts to English likewise. "You don't look too busy."
"Still the quiet time of year," Denks said as she leaned over to shake his hand; he hitched at his suspenders and then ran a hand over his glistening bald scalp. "We get some traffic down from the Columbia in winter, and from out east, but you're early to come over Highway
20."
Then, cocking an eye at the horses and making a tsk sound: "Look rid hard and put away wet, these 'uns."
Epona was doing a circuit of the five-acre field, tail and head high, followed by her progeny. The others headed straight for the water and feed. There wasn't much grazing in the high country this time of year, and anyway horses like these couldn't get by on grass alone.
"Nice-lookin' critters if you like 'em big," Denks went on.
"Well, we'll be here long enough for you to feed them up a bit," Mary said; they'd slung bags of milled oats over each horse's back to get them over the moun tains. "And have them reshod. We'll be needing some more stock-nothing fancy, enough to pull a Conestoga; harness-broke mules would do. And we'll be having a good deal of stuff dropped off here."
The man nodded without asking questions, which was welcome but not unexpected; he'd done business with the Rangers for years. They stored most of their gear with him in a hayloft as well, taking only their swords, some money and documents, and a change of clothes into the city proper.
That involved a half-hour walk through the outskirts-places where suburban tracts had lain, burned over or torn down for their materials. Now they housed everything from truck gardens to warehouses full of raw hides to the tanyards that turned them into leather with a stink of lye and acrid bark juice to plain weeds and sage brush and greasewood and stubs of wreckage. The city walls were the usual type, concrete and rubble around a core of salvaged steel girders; they were thick and strong, but the inhabitants hadn't bothered to smooth the outside as much as some places did, leaving it rough and gray-brown with edges of rock sticking out.
Which was a good metaphor for Bend in general. The clotted knot of would be entrants on the road outside the eastern gate wasn't very big, but it wasn't moving much either, besides yelling and waving their arms and making their horses rear and snort. Being on foot the twins could push forward until they saw the reason; a Rancher and his cowboy-retainers arguing with the gate guard. Ritva smiled to herself as he grumbled and eventually paid over the entrance tax the city charged.
The CORA-the Central Oregon Ranchers' Association-was as much of a government as this area had; its assembly met here in Bend, and its lariat-and branding iron flag flew over the gatehouse. But though the city of Bend had shrunk drastically, there were still fifteen thousand souls living within the circuit of the walls in a bend of the Deschutes River. Its town council was scrap pily independent of the big herding spreads, and so were the small farmers of the irrigated areas north and south of town.
Just to add spice to life in these parts, the ranchers all quarreled with one another regularly too, partly from things like strayed unbranded mavericks ending in the wrong roundup and partly from sheer bullheaded cuss edness. They got the essentials like defense and keeping up the dams and canals done, somehow, but you always wondered how when you saw their usual barroom-brawl notion of governance.
"Not much like Corvallis," Mary observed.
" They're organized down to their bootlaces," Ritva agreed. "I'm glad Bend doesn't do that peace-bonding nonsens
e on your sword."
Inside the streets were more crowded, as was inevitable in a walled town; empty spaces had been built up, and some of the single story buildings raised a story or two. More people were on horseback than in a town west of the mountains, but by way of compensation there were good if thronged brick or board sidewalks, and squads of dung scoopers.
They walked past cobblers' and harness makers' shops-Bend was famous for its leather goods-and bookstores, furniture makers, stores selling pre-Change and modern cutlery and pottery, clothiers and tailors with a hum of pedal driven sewing machines, a print shop, cookhouses and taverns, and an entertainer strum ming his guitar and singing with a bowl in front of him. They didn't drop any change in it; he used the whining nasal style of singing popular around here, and neither of them liked it.
"Mah horse is gone bad lame, mah dog done died, my woman don't love me no more and I ain't got no money for beeeeeeerrr, " Mary crooned, in the same fashion.
Ritva laughed. It sounded a lot funnier when you said it in the Noble Tongue.
"You've created a new style, sis," she said. "Country and Elvish."
For a moment Mary's face turned sad. "The reason I don't like that type of song is it reminds me of Dad," she said. " He liked it-or something a lot like it, I think."
"Yeah," Ritva said, putting an arm around her sister's shoulders for an instant. "I miss him too."
They'd been two years short of ten when he rode away to war and never came back, only his body in a box, and their mother was different after that. These days their recollections of him felt faded somehow, as if they were memories of the memories rather than the thing itself. But she could remember the effortless strength as he scooped both of them up, one under each arm, and twirled them around until they were all breathless and laughing…
Then they passed a school where children sat on the steps eating from their lunch boxes.
"Meren aes," Mary said.
Ritva could feel she was making herself cheerful; she nodded agreement as she realized she was hungry too. Time dulled grief, which was a kindness of the Lord and Lady to humankind. The smells of grilling and roasting and frying from the cookshops and taverns and street vendors were making her mouth water.
"E yaxe olgaren nubast gwasolch," Mary went on.
"Yeah, I could use a hamburger and fries," Ritva replied.
The phrase translated strictly as cut-up cow beneath bread with edible roots, but usage had made the modern meaning plain.
"I like that spicy ketchup they make here."
Macy's Traveler's Rest was familiar too; it had been a motel before the Change, though now the courtyard parking spaces held a timber bunkhouse for those with out the rather stiff charge required to rent a room for themselves. The same people owned the grill/bar next door, and beyond that was a public bathhouse with a good reputation and plenty of hot water; between them an alleyway had been turned into a bowling alley-cum- shooting gallery. Voices and an occasional shout and hard thunk came from there as they walked down from their room-the Traveler's Rest was safe enough to leave ordinary gear unattended.
A hopeful voice called out, "You girls new in town?"
The words were unexceptional, but the tone wasn't and neither was the low whistle; from his worn leather clothes, the man was from the outback, probably in town for a spree, and it was only too apparent he and his friends hadn't visited the bathhouse yet. He wasn't much older than they were. Ritva sighed internally; that wouldn't have happened back west over the mountains, but the Rangers weren't quite as familiar here. They both turned so the loungers could see the trees-stars crown on the front of their jerkins and take in the left hands resting casually on the long hilts of their swords. Another of the men started whispering in the ear of the one who'd spoken, but the speaker pushed him aside.
"Anyone can sew stuff on their shirt," he said, then turned what was probably intended to be an ingratiating smile on them.
It would work better without that black tooth, she thought.
The hangers-on had been whiling away time throwing tomahawks at the target down at the other end of the closed-in alley; it was a balk of seasoned oak, and they were throwing hard at a chalked-out human outline on it. You had to throw hard to make a hatchet stick in an oak target fifty feet away, as well as getting the rotation just right-several had hit without the blade striking and bounced back halfway to the thrower's bar. One or two of them had wooden mugs of beer; and throwing edged iron around while you were drinking was truly stupid.
"Toss me one of those," Ritva said with a smile.
"Hey, these are dangerous; the edges are sharp," one of the others said.
He tossed one anyway, slow and underhand. Ritva caught it and flipped it to Mary, who threw it back.
"A couple more."
The men looked at one another; a couple of them grinned. They started throwing more of the hatchets, some of them harder and faster, but without hostile intent. The twins intercepted them and began flipping them back and forth to each other, a pair, then four, then six, then eight. Then they turned so that they were both facing towards the target and walked up to the throwing line; the onlookers scattered as the whirling figure eight of sharp iron approached.
"Hathyl hado!" Ritva cried, and suited action to the words: Throw the axes!
Thunk! and the first tomahawk sank into the chest of the target, its handle quivering. Then they had to snatch the hatchets out of the juggle with one hand and throw with the other; that took concentration, but they'd been practicing tricks together a long time. Thunk-thunk-thunk…
"Thanks for the entertainment, boys," Mary said to the spectators politely, and they walked on towards the bar and grill, leaving an echoing silence behind them as the men contemplated the neat grouping in throat, midriff and crotch.
"Rym vin thuannem," Ritva said, feeling slightly guilty at her own enjoyment.
"Well, yes, we were blowing our own horns," her sister acknowledged. "But remember what Aunt Astrid said about spreading legends. That's a help to all the Dunedain who ever come through here in times to come."
Ritva snorted. "Just a conjuring trick, anyway. Tomahawks are more trouble than they're worth."
A couple of the customers scurried back from the windows to take their seats again as the twins pushed through the swinging doors of the bar and grill and into the dim interior, their feet scrutching in the sawdust on the plank floor. A plain middle-aged waitress in a yellow dress and white apron came over. They returned her smile as they pulled out chairs at a vacant table and hung their sword belts over the backs.
"Hi, ladies," she said-they'd been promoted from girls the last time they visited. "Welcome back to town-what'll it be?"
"Two bacon-cheddar burgers, Sarah," Ritva said, and then sighed in exasperation as she realized she'd stopped thinking-and speaking-in English again, and her Sindarin had gotten an amused raised eyebrow.
She repeated it in the common tongue and added, "Mayonnaise, onions… got any tomatoes?"
"Dried or pickled?"
"Pickled. Two mugs of root beer."
The twins passed the time waiting for their food by playing mumblety-peg, resting their daggers' hilts on the backs of their hands and trying to set them point down in the floor by flicking them off-they weren't the first by a long shot, to judge by the state of the boards. The hamburgers' smoky richness was a welcome change from venison jerky; hard work outside in cold weather made you crave fats. And they were only ten cents each for patrons of Macy's.
As they left, Mary looked down at the list she'd taken out of a pocket in her black Ranger's jerkin. Bend was a good place to pick up supplies for a trip; routes from north and east and west and south funneled trade and travel here, and sellers came where the buyers congre gated. So did the best makers and artisans this side of the Cascades.
"One steel-axle twenty-foot Conestoga wagon with extra covers for the tilt, spare wheels and hubs and tire rims," she began.
"Nayak!" Ritva said, winc
ing slightly and thinking of the price: "Painful!"
"It's not our money, sis. Hmmm… shovels, picks, axes, hauling chains, grease bucket and keg of good-quality axle grease, heavy jack, caltrops, lariats, hemp twine and rope, canvas, extra shoes and boots, sweaters, hats, knit socks, underwear, needles and thread, soap, blankets, oilskins and tarpaulins, three tents, saddler's tools and leather, horse shoe blanks for cold-shoeing, small hollow anvil, farrier's tools, nails, lanterns, alcohol for lanterns, flints and wicks for lighters, water barrels and a keg of water purification powder, medicine chest, horse medicine chest…"
"Did you ever wonder how the Fellowship made do with only one pack pony?" Ritva said, looking over her shoulder.
That ordinary-looking man might have been follow ing them. On the other hand, he went into a shop as she watched, so probably not.
"They probably didn't change their underwear or use soap," Mary said.
Aunt Astrid would have been appalled. They both had the thought at the same time, and giggled.
Then: "And there's the food."
Buying first-quality in bulk would be expensive this time of year, before the crops started coming in.
"We shouldn't load too much," Ritva said.
They both knew you ended up foraging or buying locally eventually on a long trip; that was why modern trade routes tended to detour around deserts, unlike the pre Change interstates. But…
"I think Rudi's going to be taking us through out-of the-way places where foraging takes real time. With a twenty footer we can afford a little weight, and Denks will help us with stowing the loads. Let's see… barreled salt pork, smoked hams, bacon, jerky, hardtack in sealed boxes, dried beans, dried peas, dried fruit, shelled nuts, cornmeal, whole-meal wheat flour, yeast in sealed packets, milled oats with molasses for fodder, sea salt…"
"Did you notice who got stuck with the chores on this glorious quest?" Ritva added as they came out of a feed store several hours later, squinting up at the after noon sun over the Cascades. "Admittedly we're the ones who can do it without attracting much attention, but… They'll have us fetching the tea, next."
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