Sunrise Lands c-1

by S. M. Stirling

  She was an initiate and priestess; Edain was still sim ply a dedicant, but he knew the voice of the Mother when he heard it… and She was angry. There was blood and death in that sound, and his skin rippled like a restive horse's at the midnight magic in it.

  Rudi nodded grimly. "Let's go, Mackenzies!"

  They did. Rinn and Otter dropped back a little to trot beside Edain.

  "Your girl," Rinn muttered, tracing a sign. "The Night Face has her. The Dark Mother."

  "That means we'll win this fight," Otter said, snarling eagerly. "Good!"

  Edain shook his head. The Mackenzie herself had stood as Goddess-mother at his Wiccaning-and Dun Juniper was the center of the Mysteries. Also his mother was high priestess of a coven. He knew more about it all than most young men his age.

  "No, it means the other side's going to lose this fight," he said grimly. "That's not the same thing as us winning, boyos, and you'd better believe it. Nobody's safe when the Devouring Shadow shows up."

  Rinn winced. "The manure's hit the winnowing fan for true."

  Whether the kettle hits the pot, or the pot hits the kettle… Edain thought, but did not say.

  "Lord Goibniu, shelter us with Your arm," Otter prayed; his family were smiths, and favored the Iron master. "Goddess Mother of-All, gentle and strong, be gracious to Your warriors."

  Fire showed through the murk. They stopped, fitted arrows to string, then moved forward at a walk. Mud squelched beneath his brogans, and the pleated wool of his kilt shed beads of wet as it swayed about his thighs. Edain took a deep breath and let it out, another and another; ground and center, ground and center.

  Dad was right; waiting's hard. The fighting just past spun through his mind in a welter of foul images, like butchering time but with people, and then there was the horror near the cart. Lugh Long-Spear, spare me to avenge that!

  The mud smell was starting to yield to that of burning timber, but the fog was thicker than ever close to where the river ran into the bay, like having wool pushed in your nose and ears. The firelight was like a candle seen through glass thick with frost.

  "Good as a beacon," Raen said to Rudi, softly.

  "Probably why they did it, to show their raiding par ties the way back. The fog works for them, but not if they get lost themselves."

  The Haida had scouts out, but the fog that had helped them hindered now. One loomed out of the dimness, started to level his spear, started to yell, a high thin sound. Rudi killed him with a snapping lunge to the throat and it ended in a gurgle. More yells came out of the fog, from the direction of the burning light. The raiders there knew something was wrong.

  Rudi turned and vaulted into Epona's saddle.

  "Hit them hard and keep moving," he said to the Mackenzie warriors. "They won't know how many we are if we don't let them have time to think, and by the time they do the Tillamookers will be here."

  Then he filled his lungs and called, a great brass cry like a chorus of trumpets given words:

  "We are the point- "

  Edain drew a deep breath and joined in as the others took it up:

  "We are the edge "We are the wolves that Hecate fed!"

  "At them, Mackenzies! Follow me!"

  A knot of Haida warriors loomed out of the fog, standing guard over a clot of several dozen locals, men and women and children bound and sitting on the ground; bundles of tools lay beside them-adzes and broadaxes and two man saws and drills and the rest of what you used for working wood.

  The whole party dashed forward. A sudden banshee wail from beside him made Edain start; Eithne had been quiet since they left the dead woman. Now she wrenched a spear away from one of the Sutterdown men as she gave that appalling cry, a snatch so hard and swift he yelled in turn from the pain of his bruised fingers as she dashed past.

  It was what the Clan called a battle spear, six feet of ashwood with a foot of double-edged blade on one end and a heavy steel butt cap on the other. There was an art to using one…

  Eithne charged into the knot of guards with the spear blurring over her head like the fan of a winnowing mill, shrieking, face contorted into a gorgon mask of horror, striking with butt and blade edge and point, leaping and using the torque of the spinning length to whirl herself around in midair. The guards were taken by surprise; one died in an instant splash of red as the blade whipped across his throat, and another as the butt crashed between his brows with a smack like a maul splitting oak and his eyes popped out of their sockets.. ..

  Too many of them for her to handle, Edain thought grimly, setting his feet and ignoring everything else. Got to The string of his longbow went snap on his bracer. A man about to swing a war-hammer with a head of pol ished green stone into the back of Eithne's skull went down as the arrow tore through his throat in a double splash. Another, another…

  Dimly he was conscious of shooting better than he ever had before, even at Sutterdown at the Lughnasadh games just past, when he'd carried away the silver arrow. Not much distance, but bad light and moving targets-and some of the arrows were passing close enough to Eithne to brush her with the fletching, a shaft for every two quick panting breaths.

  Things burned behind them: sheds and houses and the ribs of a fair sized ship on a slipway. Four big boats of cedar and fir were grounded bow-first on the mud nearby, shark-lean flat bottomed things forty or fifty feet long, their prows carved in blocky angular depictions of ravens and orcas and hawks colored black and white and bloodred. Heads were spiked to the wood below their grinning jaws.

  Edain was even more distantly aware that Rudi and the others were doing something… cutting the bonds of the first set of prisoners, and the men were snatching up their tools-a maul or a broadax made a weapon, if you were strong and full of hate.

  The freed captives swarmed over the last of the Haida guards. But more raiders were coming in, driving peo ple before them, often laden with huge bundles of their own goods; and then armed Tillamookers started arriv ing themselves in dribs and drabs, hunting through fog for the flames and the sounds of battle. Village militia with hunting spears and crossbows and farming tools, the town guard with glaives and poleaxes, a snarling scrambling brabbling fight amid burning buildings and ankle-deep mud and shoreside rocks that shifted underfoot as the fog began to lift. Some of the Haida tried to keep them off while others heaved to push the boats back into the water.

  The core of them broke only when the baron came with his knights and their menies behind them, their fighting tails of men whose trade was war; barded des triers, lances and men-at-arms and wet-gleaming gray chain-mail hauberks.

  He remembered seeing Rudi racing down the beach with gobbets of mud flying out from under Epona's hooves, throwing torches into the Haida boats. Three of them were burning, black choking smoke as the oiled cedarwood caught. Then the last started to slide free, and there was a savage scrimmage around its bow. A Haida chieftain with a raven's wing on his helmet thrust a spear down at Rudi and Raen and Juhel de Netarts, and swords were scything up at men along the ship's side who clubbed back with oars and tried to row it out deeper. Raen fell back wounded and Rudi reached down to pull him out of the red stained water, throwing him across his horse's crupper, and Edain put the last arrow in his quiver through the Haida as he thrust downward at Rudi's face.

  A few raiders jumped into the water and swam into the bay, but the others threw down their weapons…

  Edain staggered as silence fell, suddenly aware of his chest heaving against his brigandine as he struggled to suck in air, and the stink of his own sweat mixed with the tacky iron smell of blood. Or what felt like silence fell; there was still the crackle of fire-and the shouts of men trying to put it out, and others from the wounded, and a great crowd of people. A Catholic priest came up with a wagon, the red cross on its side and a load of bandages and salves within, and a brace of women in plain dark dresses and wimples-nuns, they called them. They began setting up a field hospital. The baron's lady and his mother and a round dozen of others in cotte hardis and
ordinary women in double tunics pitched in beside them.

  The people cheered the Mackenzies, waving scythes and pitchforks and spades, some of them dripping red; people were pounding him on the back, harder than he'd been hit in the fight.

  And they cheered Baron Juhel and his men as well, and harder, holding up their children to see the good lord who would not leave his people to the terror from the sea. Rudi looked around, visibly thought for a moment and then dropped back from where he'd been riding at the baron's side…

  To leave the cheers for Juhel, Edain realized suddenly, blinking and feeling as if his mind were floating up from deep water into the sun. Well, that's the sort of thing a Chief has to think about, eh?

  The sun was out now, burning away the last wisps of fog; he blinked against that, and the harsh smoke stung his eyes and made him cough, conscious of how dry his mouth was.

  Juhel de Netarts had his plumed helmet off, hanging from his saddlebow, and pushed the mail coif to fall back on his shoulders. The smile he'd worn as he waved to his people slid off his face, and though he was well short of thirty he looked a lot older.

  "God's curse on them," he swore, looking up at the burned ribs of the ship on the slipway. "I put money I couldn't afford into this, and borrowed more against Lady Anne's inheritance, and so did a lot of her subjects, at my urging. We were going to send it far south-down the coast to the Latin countries, and deal for coffee and sugar and cochineal on our own, make Tillamook a real town again with its own traders, with jobs for craftsmen and cash markets for our farmers. Those bastards in Corvallis and Newport skin us on every deal, and the Guild Merchant in Astoria and Portland aren't any bet ter. Now… now I don't know what the hell I'm going to do."

  "Petition the Lady Regent," Rudi said promptly, dabbing at a long shallow slash on the angle of his jaw and holding a swatch of bandage to it. "Get Lady Anne to deliver it. Say if you get three years' relief of the mesne tithes from your barony, you'll promise to put all of it into rebuilding. She wants people like you to do well. It's good for revenue, and it gives her more bargaining power with the Guild Merchant as well. That should let you repair the shipyard as well as the rest of the dam age-it's just wood that burned, mostly, and you didn't lose many of your skilled workmen or their tools."

  "Thanks to you for that," Juhel said, and looked at him dubiously. "They'd have gotten away otherwise, and taken a lot with them. But the Spider's awful tight with a coin. Happier taking it in than giving it out. Usually bleating about the tithes just gets you what the sheep gets at shearing time."

  "Yeah, she's not what you'd call openhanded. But she knows you have to spend to get, believe me… and I know the Princess Mathilda, and that her mother listens to her."

  Juhel grinned delightedly and clapped the younger man on the shoulder.

  Ah, Edain thought. And the tanist doesn't even have to come right out and say he'll urge the princess to advise her mother. What a Chief he'll make for the Clan someday!

  Rudi lowered his voice: "And if I were you, I'd be very careful. The Haida knew too much about just where and when to hit you. Something smells there, and not like attar of roses, either."

  Juhel nodded, then walked his horse a few steps over to where the other Mackenzies were grouped. Raen's friends and kin from Sutterdown had laid out his body and those of three others; they weren't keening them, being among strangers, but they'd put the coins on their eyes and laid holly on their breasts, and were chanting softly:

  We all come from the Mother

  And to Her we shall return;

  Like a stalk of wheat

  Falling to the reaper's blade Otter and Rinn were a little way off with nothing worse than nicks and bruises, accepting basins of water, soap and towels and bits of food and mugs of beer from an admiring crowd that seemed to include a lot of teen age girls, starting to grin as the relief of surviving their first hard fight sank in. Eithne leaned on her spear, still white and tense, sweat like teardrops making tracks through the blood on her face.

  "Lord who holds this land," she broke in, her voice with an edge like sharpened silver. "What will you do with your captives?"

  There were about a dozen of them, mostly wounded, bound and under guard. Juhel looked at her oddly, and shrugged.

  "Take off their heads and send them to Portland, I suppose, mistress," he said. "Easier than sending all of them."

  "No," she replied. She pointed with the spear.

  The whole length of it still glistened dark red as the blood grew tacky. Juhel looked at her… but over her head, rather than in the face.

  I wouldn't like to meet her eyes right now, either, Edain thought as she went on, giving orders like a queen:

  "Is it that there's an ash tree there, not far from your castle, tall and great?"

  The nobleman nodded, and his look grew odder still and more sidelong.

  "Put your men about it-about it in a circle, wearing iron and carrying spears and the emblems of your god. Bring your dead and lay them beneath a cairn with the blessings of your Mass priest. Then hang the evildoers from the tree in sight of the dead and leave them for three days and nights. Do that, and you'll have… luck, luck for you and your land. Do that, or bury them living at a crossroads with a spear driven in the earth above."

  "Ahhh…" Juhel swallowed, crossed himself and looked aside, shivering a little.

  Rudi gave him a nod, short but sharp, and the baron drew a deep breath.

  "I suppose we might as well hang them now. Sir Brandric! See to it! And the rest, as well."

  "A pleasure, my lord. Very much a pleasure," the tall grizzled knight who commanded the garrison of Castle Tillamook said, and stalked off barking orders and grinning.

  Eithne's knees buckled then, as if something-or Someone-withdrew a hand that had worn her like a glove. She shook her head as Edain tried to help her, then almost fell. When he caught her in his arms the eyes rolled up in her head and she went limp; somehow he'd been expecting her to be heavier, but it was the familiar slender form he picked up, though her head rolled against his shoulder. Cold fear worse than any he'd felt in the fight clawed at his gut as he bore her over to the aid station the nuns had set up, letting the spear fall to lie in the wet trampled grass.

  One of them bent over the pallet he laid her on, pushed back an eyelid, felt her forehead and took her pulse with professional briskness. He showed her how to unbuckle the brigandine along the side and draw it off.

  "Just stress and exhaustion, but a bad case of it," the nun said, clucking her tongue and drawing blankets over her. "A young girl's got no business doing this! She'll be fine with sleep and a good meal-just a few little cuts and scratches and some bruising here. Now, if you're not going to help, young man, get out! She won't be waking for a good many hours, and I've got urgent cases to see to."

  Edain blew out his cheeks in a whistle of relief and backed away; they were busy here, and he would be as useless as an udder on a bull.

  Rudi and the local lord had dismounted, holding their horses' heads not far away as they spoke.

  "Remind me never to piss your people off, Rudi," Juhel said with feeling.

  He looked at the spray of dead where the Mackenzies had struck out of the fog with surprise and terror at their backs; bodies in the mud with gray fletched arrows in them, or tumbling gashed and bloodless in the cold seawater. He shook his head.

  "Dad fought at the Battle of Mount Angel back in the Protector's War, and evidently he wasn't exaggerating."

  While he spoke, a crossbowman with his arm in a sling came up leading a pony Edain recognized. Young Gas ton was on it again, looking none the worse except for some dirt and bruises. Garbh trotted at his heel, then dashed over to Edain and gave a single bark as if to say, The job's done.

  The baron's heir gulped a little at some of the sights around him and went paler, but sat his pony proudly beside his father. Juhel looked at him for a moment with a quiet and tender delight that went oddly with the blood-splashed armor and sword, and p
ut his hand on his shoulder.

  Then he looked at Edain and smiled. "I've thanked Rudi," he said. "But I haven't thanked you yet, Master Aylward. I saw you save my son. That was bravely done, and done for strangers."

  Edain felt himself blush to the roots of his hair, and shrugged awkwardly as they shook hands.

  "It's a poor excuse for a man who won't fight for his host, or help out a little kid caught in a battle," he said shortly. "Besides, I didn't notice these Haida buggers telling me they wouldn't hurt me if I were to kindly stand aside."

  Rudi grinned. "He's a good man to have your back," he said, and clapped Edain on his. "And that's a fact."

  Juhel laughed. "I don't doubt it. Fought with you before, has he?"

  "No," Rudi said. "This was your first real fight, eh, Edain?"

  The younger Aylward nodded, and the Chief's son went on: "But I thought he would be someone I wanted with me if it came to one. Now I know it."

  Juhel's brows went up. "If that was your first fight, I'd hate to see what you'll be like in ten years! But you did save my son; you put your back between him and those arrows. Name a reward, and if it's mine, it's yours. In honor I can't do less."

  Edain drew himself up despite the burning tiredness that made him want to crawl into the nearest haystack and sleep for a year.

  "I didn't do it for that, sir," he said. "I'll take your thanks, and that's all that's needed-the gods and the Three Spinners will see to any reward."

  Juhel looked bewildered, and Edain cursed himself as he saw the beginnings of offense. For a fact, he didn't understand how an Association noble's mind worked. Outsiders didn't understand Mackenzies, and that was a fact too.

  "There is a gift you could give him, Juhel, and one he'd value highly, though he'd never ask for it," Rudi said.

  He was grinning again, like a fox for all that his totem was Raven.

  "What's that?" Juhel said. "Horses? Weapons? Gold? Land, even?"